Joe Peters (11 page)

When the doorbell rang Mum took the glass back from me and placed it carefully on the coffee table before going out to let the welfare worker in, welcoming her into the house as though she was delighted to see her.

As I stood there, shaking, I could hear her talking outside in a sweet, reasonable voice she never used around the house when it was just family. ‘Hello, do come in … How nice to meet you … It’s so kind of you to come and see us … Come through and meet Joe.’

When she came back into the room she was smiling all over her face and treating me as though I was her most precious child.

‘Sit down here, darling,’ she crooned at me, pointing to the corner of her settee, something I had never been allowed to do before. I was terrified of what might be going to happen next as the woman I suspected might be my executioner entered the room behind her, looking
deceptively friendly. As she came towards me the welfare worker held out her hand for me to shake.

‘Hello, young man,’ she said in a warm, kind voice.

Assuming I was about to be hit, because that was all I had known for the previous three years or more, I reacted instinctively to defend myself and bit her hand, instantly proving that everything Mum had told them about me being aggressive and disruptive was true. The woman screamed and my teeth stayed tightly clamped into her flesh. I didn’t want to let go because as long as her hand was between my teeth she couldn’t use it to hit me.

‘I am so sorry,’ Mum said, taking my face between her fingers. ‘Come along Joe, let go now.’

I expected her to punch me in the ear like she normally would have done in such a situation and braced myself for the blow, but instead her touch was gentle and caring.

‘Come on, darling,’ she coaxed sweetly. ‘Let go of the nice lady.’

When they finally prised my teeth open I started kicking and screaming, determined not to be taken to my execution without putting up a fight. I figured I had nothing left to lose now if they were going to kill me anyway. Mum restrained me, kindly but firmly. I dare say the welfare worker was impressed with her saintly maternal patience in the face of such provocation.

‘I can see why you haven’t enrolled him,’ the woman said as she sat down on one of the chairs, nursing her wounded hand and eyeing me nervously in case I flew at her again.

‘I can’t let him mix with other children,’ Mum said. ‘Not when he’s liable to behave like that.’

‘I do see what you mean,’ the woman assured her sympathetically, ‘but I’m afraid he must go to school. It’s the law. There’s a lot we can do to help him, and to help you.’

Unable to speak up in order to defend myself in any way I had to listen while Mum did all my talking for me. Before he went away Wally had been trying to help me to talk but at that stage I had only just started to be able to form single sounds like ‘aah’ or ‘the’. It was impossible to communicate anything with such limited words. To the welfare worker I must indeed have looked like a deeply traumatized, virtually feral creature. Although the authorities told Mum that I would have to be enrolled at school, because that was the law, no one could really blame her for trying to keep me away from the rest of the world, taking all the burden of looking after me upon her own shoulders. When they looked at my notes they saw that it was true that I had witnessed my father’s death and had been struck dumb as a result, and the picture must have seemed as if it was all clicking neatly into place. The family doctor backed up everything
Mum said, confirming that she had taken me to see him soon after Dad’s death and that I had already lost the ability to speak by then.

‘He’s a very aggressive and disturbed child,’ he had written, remembering what Mum had told him at the time, and probably remembering our visit all too vividly.

Mum had an explanation for everything.

‘Seeing his dad bursting into flames in front of him has tilted his brain,’ she explained, using a phrase she had invented herself and would repeat over and over to anyone who’d listen. ‘That’s why he’s so disturbed. He’s a terribly fussy eater too. That’s why he is as thin as a stick and poorly looking. He’s a terrible worry to all of us. It’s because he won’t eat properly that he has become malnourished and his teeth have all rotted.’ She babbled on and on as if the emotional strain of it was more than she could bear, that she had to unburden herself of all her worries now that she had found someone kind enough to listen.

‘We know you’re a good mother,’ the welfare worker gently reassured her, falling completely for the act. ‘But you have done wrong by keeping Joe at home and trying to deal with him on your own. We can help you. That’s what we’re here for. You must trust us to do the best thing for him and for you and the rest of your family.’

Mum seemed to be loving the attention she was getting. Her initial nervousness about how things would
go when they found out about me had vanished; she had discovered a way of getting away with everything she and the others had done to me over the previous three years and of coming out looking like a heroine.

Once the welfare worker had gone, having reassured us that everything was going to be fine, Mum stripped me of my new clothes and bundled me straight back downstairs to the cellar. I was quite keen to go before I did something wrong and made her lose her temper. Once I was locked back in the dark I sat on the mattress and thought deeply about everything that had just happened, trying to work out what it all meant.

From my point of view, once I had realized that this woman was actually there to help me rather than kill me, it occurred to me that things could be about to improve dramatically for me. Now the outside world knew that I existed, surely it would become obvious to Mum that she couldn’t keep me in the cellar for much longer. If I went to school I would be able to make friends and I wouldn’t have to be alone all the time.

Sure enough, a few days later I was taken back upstairs and Mum informed me that things were going to change from now on.

‘If you promise me you’re going to behave now,’ she told me, ‘you can move back into Larry and Barry’s room.’

Remembering how my older brothers had treated me in the past, I would much rather have gone in with
Thomas and Ellie but I knew that option wasn’t on offer so I made no sign or sound of protest. I didn’t want to risk upsetting her again by seeming ungrateful for anything she was offering, not when things were just starting to go my way.

‘It suits us for you to come out of the cellar now,’ Mum told me, ‘because Amani wants to use the room for other things.’

I guess she didn’t want me to get the idea that she had been made to do anything she didn’t want to do just because the welfare worker had been round. She wanted to make it seem as though it was her decision to bring me out of the dark, as if she had decided I had been punished enough now for my past crimes and that I should be allowed to have another chance at living amongst the family to see if I had learned my lesson and mended my ways.

If I thought I was going to get equal treatment to other family members, though, I was sadly mistaken. Even though I was allowed to share my brothers’ room, I was still not allowed to play with any of their possessions and I still had none of my own. At teatime on the first night that I was out of the cellar Mum shouted for me to come down from the bedroom, where I had been banished to, to the kitchen. My heart was thumping as I descended the stairs, already able to smell the hot food but not knowing what sort of reception to expect from
the others. The rest of the family were all sitting round the table as I stepped hesitantly through the door and I saw there was one empty chair amongst them. I had never sat round the table with them since Dad had died and I felt self-conscious and a bit excited as I lowered myself timidly onto the chair. I was starving and could hardly believe I was actually going to be given proper hot food on a plate. Amani was looking at me strangely so I avoided his gaze, staring hard at the table in front of me, determined not to misbehave or upset anyone and lose my chance of getting fed. I was aware that everyone had gone very quiet, as though they were all waiting for something to happen.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Mum demanded.

I didn’t understand what I had done wrong but Amani hit me so hard with the back of his hand that I was sent flying onto the hard tiled floor, back where they all thought I belonged.

‘How dare you sit with us, boy?’ he snarled down at me. ‘What have I told you about behaving yourself, you little bastard?’

‘You’re putting me off my food,’ Mum complained, giving me a sharp kick.

‘Get under the table,’ Amani commanded, while Larry and Barry sniggered happily. As they threw my food down on the floor, grinding it in with their feet and
ordering me to lick up every scrap, I realized nothing had really changed at all.

Now that I was out of the cellar they told me there were new house rules and if I broke them I would be straight back in my cell. My clothes were always to be kept upstairs in the wardrobe and I was only allowed to wear them if I was going to school or if there were visitors to the house. Amani said that I must always put some clothes on if there were other people around because of all my bruises and scars.

‘You look disgusting,’ he told me. ‘A right mess.’

During the times no one had any other use for me I was told I would have to sit in the corner of the bedroom, away from the window, and to do nothing until they had a chore for me. If I was caught playing with anything or disobeying them in any way I would get a taste of Amani’s leather belt. I was certainly never allowed to play outside the house. It was as though I had been moved to a different cell, but at least this one was warm and light and smelled better. There were moments when I missed the privacy of my basement. Down there I’d had no idea how slowly time was passing, but in the bedroom I could always see the clock and the hands hardly seemed to move at all as I sat there and stared at it for hours on end, willing them to speed up so another day would be over and I would be closer to the moment when I could escape as Wally had. The sound of the
clock would seem to get louder and louder in my head – ‘tick tock, tick tock’ – as the days ground past. I would put my fingers in my ears to try to shut it out but I never could.

‘You can’t sleep on the floor any more,’ Mum told me. ‘You’re making the place untidy and you’re making the carpet smell. You’ll have to share the bed with your brothers.’

Larry and Barry were not pleased to have me in the bed to start with, kicking and punching me all the time to let me know how much they disliked me.

‘You stink,’ they told me. ‘You’re an ugly little bastard.’

Amani warned them not to punch me in the face because someone from social services might see the marks, but they were free to do anything else they wanted. It wasn’t long before they realized that having me in the bed with them meant they could relieve their sexual frustrations as many times a night as they felt like, just taking turns to rape me, while sometimes using one another for mutual sexual relief as well. They both seemed to like doing it to one another but they always had to force me because it hurt and I didn’t like it. If I tried to resist their demands they would tell Mum I was doing something bad and I would get a battering for it. I gave in to almost everything they wanted because anything was better than getting a battering from her,
even that. I knew she would never take my side against them and I knew that there was always the threat of being taken back down to the cellar hanging over me. Some nights I was scared of going to sleep because of what I might wake up to find my brothers doing to me, and when I did finally drop off out of exhaustion I would immediately fall into the same nightmares over and over again.

In the dream I would be creeping downstairs, trying to get away from them to the front door. I would be able to see a white light under the door, like a thin slither of freedom on the horizon, but the harder I fought to get to it the more I felt myself being dragged back in slow motion, as if by a terrible weight. If I ever managed to haul myself all the way to the door and pull it open I would immediately wake up in a state of terror. I still sometimes get the same nightmare even today.

My bum was nearly always sore in the morning from the things the boys did to me, and often it was bleeding as well, which made me frightened I would leave a stain on the bedclothes or the carpet, which would have been a punishable offence.

Amani still took me to his bed whenever he felt like discharging his frustrations, even though I was out of the cellar most of the time and everything he did was in plain view of everyone else in the house. He didn’t bother to be secretive about it because he didn’t care what
anyone thought. The whole family knew he did it and they all knew exactly what was going on. Maybe he did it with some of the others as well – I wouldn’t know because we never talked about such things. It was as if it was the most normal event in the world for a grown man to be having sex with an eight-year-old boy in his mother’s house whenever he wanted to. It was as if I was still there for everyone’s convenience and I sort of assumed that was the way life had to be because it had never really been any different since the first time Mum brought me home after Dad’s death.

Amani wasn’t there every night, I discovered. I found out that he was still staying at Aunt Melissa’s as well as at Mum’s, moving back and forth between the two of them, getting the best of both worlds. I believe he told Melissa that he was working away from home and it was some time before she found out how complete Mum’s revenge against her had been. I don’t know how Mum felt about having to share her man with another woman yet again. As it was her doing the stealing of another woman’s husband this time, maybe she felt better about it than she had when it was her husband who was messing around.

When I found this out, I hoped briefly that Amani would mention to Melissa some time how badly I was being treated. Surely she would ask what went on at the house? Wouldn’t she wonder how I was? But I guess he
told her everything was fine, because I never saw or heard from her.