Joe Peters (25 page)

Sure enough, McDermott turned up on the doorstep at our house the next day to tell me how disappointed he was. He said they weren’t calling the police but that I wasn’t to come round to the garage again. I was as bitterly disappointed with my behaviour as he was. He
had been the first adult who had taken the time to be my friend without being paid by the social services, the first to treat me decently without wanting something from me in return and I’d messed it up by betraying him. As usual Mum gave me a beating for being stupid enough to get caught, but I felt I deserved it anyway for being so treacherous towards McDermott and so careless of his friendship. Yet again I had proved that Mum was right and I was a bad lot. I still feel guilty about stealing that ring, even to this day.

It is hard to shake off the conditioning of years. Mum had always encouraged us to take whatever we could and as we got older she would send us out on any number of organized scams. Back when I was fourteen, for instance, she had decided the whole family should become regular churchgoers. She had grown friendly with a local vicar, who she’d met in the pub. She told Thomas and me that we were to go and help him to look after the Sunday school kids and take the collections in church during the services.

‘If you can,’ she told us, ‘put your hand into the collections and stick some money into your pocket. Try to get as much as you can.’

Her request didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary to us, it was just the way things were. That didn’t mean, however, that we weren’t scared of getting caught, knowing that she would give us a good battering if we
were. For the first couple of weeks we were far too frightened to do anything, but she kept on and on at us and in the end we gave in, shoving handfuls of money down our underpants when the vicar wasn’t looking, shocked to find how easily we got away with it. Regular members of the congregation used to put in envelopes with their name and their donations written on the outside and cash on the inside, so we knew which were the big ones. Some of them used to give up to forty pounds at a time. Opening them when we got home was like celebrating Christmas every week. To give us more incentive, Mum finally agreed to give us a cut of the takings rather than keeping it all for herself and to our shame we fell for it. We got greedier and greedier every time we got away with it, pushing more and more of the envelopes into our underpants every week.

After a year or so, the vicar noticed that his takings were badly down and worked out that we were by far the most likely source of the shortfall. One Sunday there was a different vicar conducting the service, but Thomas and I didn’t take much notice until the usual one appeared behind us, tapped us both on the shoulder after the collection had been taken and asked us to step outside halfway through the visiting priest’s sermon. It turned out they had been watching us without us realizing and had seen every move we’d made. Thomas had chickened out that week so I had nicked his share as
well, and I hadn’t even bothered to push it into my underpants. I’d grown so cocky about the whole operation I’d just stuffed the booty into my pocket.

‘We know that money has been going missing,’ the vicar told us once he got us outside. His voice was calm but firm, as if he was very sure of his facts.

‘What you trying to say, you prick?’ I demanded while Thomas was stuttering and stammering around in a blind panic

‘I want you to empty your pockets,’ the vicar continued patiently, choosing to ignore my aggression.

‘You’ve no right to search us,’ I said, climbing up onto my high horse.

‘In that case,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m calling the police.’

‘Have you seen us stealing anything?’ I challenged him.

‘No, but we know a number of our members’ donations have been going missing.’

‘Maybe it was the church clerk who nicked them,’ I suggested.

‘No, Joe, it wasn’t.’

I kept arguing for as long as I could, desperately hoping something would occur to me before I had to empty my pockets and be exposed.

‘Empty your pockets,’ I commanded Thomas, my voice brimming with righteous indignation at being so falsely accused. ‘Just to show him you’ve got nothing.’

In the split second that the vicar was distracted by Thomas’s movements I transferred the envelopes from my pocket to my underpants, almost castrating myself on the sharp edges in the process. Once he had seen that Thomas had nothing he turned to me.

‘Nothing in my pockets,’ I said cheerfully, turning them inside out and praying none of the envelopes would work their way down my trouser leg while I was still standing in front of him.

‘Fair enough, lads,’ he said, nodding for us to go. I could see he knew what was going on but had decided not to pursue it any further just then. As I walked gingerly away I must have looked as though I’d had an accident in my pants. When I got home I told Mum that we were going to have to pack the scam in because the vicar was onto us, which did not please her.

That evening he came knocking and told Mum that he didn’t want Thomas or me in his church any more.

‘Why?’ she asked, her eyes wide with innocence, as if this was the first she’d heard of any problem. ‘What have they done?’

‘They’ve been stealing money from the collections,’ he told her gently, as if worried about shocking the poor, dear woman with such shameful news about her own children.

She gave a wonderful performance, saying she couldn’t believe what she was hearing and clipped us round the
ear in front of him, despite us squealing our innocence and accusing the church clerk of being the culprit. The vicar seemed satisfied that justice had been done.

‘Thank you for sorting them out,’ he said. ‘Obviously you are welcome in the church any time, but not them.’

Mum didn’t bother with the church any more after that and Thomas and I got another beating for being greedy and taking too much money.

‘But you’ve been spending it!’ I protested, my courage growing a little more with each confrontation, but she didn’t want to hear anything from me – she just wanted to vent her anger at losing such a good source of income.

I went back to the care home the following day, nursing my latest bruises, but then she came round to apologize and promise yet another fresh start if I came home. So yet again I allowed her to sway me and went back.

She moved on from sending us to church to sending us on shoplifting expeditions, giving us very specific instructions about what to get for her. Clothing was a favourite and she would tell us exactly what sizes to go for. Thomas and I became expert shoplifters, stuffing things into our rucksacks that she could sell down the pub later the same day. We would steal pots and pans or toys or anything she wanted. She soon realized that she could turn a better profit from flogging our ill-gotten gains than she could from our car-washing business and she became more and more ambitious in her demands.
Thomas and I were walking past a bike shop with her one time and she nodded towards some bikes that were on display outside.

‘I want them,’ she said. ‘All four of them.’

I couldn’t see how Thomas and I were going to get away with two each so we had to recruit a couple of friends and persuade them it would be a lark. We plucked up our courage while we were out of sight and then made a run for it, grabbing the bikes from their stands and riding off, laughing as the irate shopkeeper shouted after us. I never liked stealing, but it was better than being beaten by Mum and it always set the adrenaline rushing. Apart from wanting to avoid a beating for disobeying her orders, I wanted to do things to please her, to win her love, to try to prove that just because I was Dad’s favourite she didn’t have to hate me forever. I was her son too and I was willing to do whatever she asked within reason to gain her love.

I only ever got caught shoplifting once, in Woolworths. I was with Thomas but he had managed to get away before I was grabbed. I was terrified when the store detective who had caught me said he was going to ring Mum. That was a much more frightening prospect than having to deal with the police. I pleaded for mercy but it had no effect and in the end the store manager called both the police and Mum. Yet again I was trapped in a room with my eyes on the floor, unable to say anything
in my defence because Mum was standing right beside me, listening to every word. The police asked the manager if he wanted to press charges.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to leave it at that because his mother seems quite strict.’

‘Oh, believe me,’ Mum said, ‘I’m going to sort him out when I get him home. He won’t be doing anything like this again.’

The store manager seemed satisfied as he watched me being literally dragged out of his office by my ear. Once we were safely in the house I was given another beating for being so useless. I then headed back to the care home for sanctuary, telling them that I didn’t want to stay at home any longer. It sometimes felt as though I was trapped in a cycle that would never be broken – in care, back at Mum’s, in care again. At least I had choices, though, and that made me feel a lot stronger than I ever had before.

T
homas and I got closer over that year. I was fifteen and he was almost thirteen by then and my best mate in the world as well as being my baby brother. I knew he had been through many of the same ordeals as me and that gave us a bond I didn’t share with anyone else. At weekends when I was at home, if we had any spare time, he and I would go scrumping apples in next door’s garden, which drove our neighbour mad. Or we would go over to the woods behind our house just to get away and talk about our lives and our plans for what we would do the moment we were old enough to escape Mum once and for all. The neighbours tried complaining to Mum once or twice about us stealing from their garden and she actually used to stick up for us, which meant she fell out with them just as surely as she had fallen out with poor old Paddy at the previous house.

Larry and Barry remained unbearable, though. I never had any kind of decent relationship with either of them. One day I went for a wander in the woods on my own and, as I trampled through the undergrowth, I suddenly came across Barry lying naked on his back with his legs in the air and Larry on top of him. My stomach turned over at the sight.

‘Get off him!’ I shouted, giving Larry a shove.

Larry grabbed hold of my arm tightly. ‘You’ve got no right to fucking say anything, and if you do you’ll get a battering!’

They carried on with what they had been doing, and it made me want to retch. It brought back so many disgusting memories that I had suppressed of what happened at Uncle Douglas’s house: twosomes, threesomes, the men who just liked to watch, and that older lad who’d enjoyed it all and explained to the rest of us how to do it right. How could Barry be getting pleasure from something I had found such torture? But then, he was twenty-four now and I’d only been nine when it started.

‘Fuck off, you little wanker!’ Barry shouted.

I walked away feeling angry and confused. Once my eyes had been opened to it I realised it was happening all the time and the two of them were constantly disappearing off into the woods together. They tried to convince me that it was all just a bit of fun and that I should join
in with them but I couldn’t get my head round it. I’d been in the outside world enough to realise that it wasn’t normal behaviour for brothers to have sex with each other. It was sick and wrong and I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.

I found it increasingly difficult to stay in the house knowing what was going on and I went back to the care home yet again, needing some space to sort out my mixed-up head. After a while I became worried about Thomas still being in that environment so I went home to try to persuade him to come away with me and we could tell someone about all the sick things that had happened in our house.

‘No, no,’ he was adamant. ‘Mum’ll kill me if I tell.’

‘That’s what she used to say to me,’ I said. ‘But she never did.’

‘Yeah, and look where it’s got you!’ he shouted. ‘You’re in care and no one believes anything you say. What have you got? At least I’ve got a home and a family.’

‘That ain’t a family.’

I threatened to tell someone about our ‘family’ myself and he became angry. We ended up fighting, which was something we had never done before. He was able to handle himself well by then and he did me a fair bit of damage before I realised I wasn’t going to get anywhere and walked away. By the time I got back to the care
home I was absolutely stewing with anger and exploded in my bedroom, smashing everything I could get my hands on. A key worker came running in and tried to calm me down but I was past listening to reason and in the end he had to restrain me forcibly. I put up a fight, my anger making me strong, and I managed to escape from him, running downstairs, swearing and shouting all the way, slamming the doors as I went. I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew I wanted to get away.

Once I got outside I could see all the other key workers sitting around in their room, having a meeting. They looked so smug and so useless, sitting there behind the picture window, deciding all our fates but having no idea what it actually felt like to be us. I picked up a brick and hurled it through the glass with all my strength, hitting one of them on the shoulder. Then I turned and ran as fast as I could, still with no idea where I was going, just wanting to get away from everyone and everything. Worried that I was going to do something really stupid the staff at the home called the police out to bring me back, although I don’t know why they bothered.

By about five o’clock I was back in the home and the window had been boarded up. The man in charge of all the homes in the area called me into the office. He looked like someone who had finally had all he could take.

‘You,’ he said, ‘pack your bags and get out. And don’t come back.’

‘I ain’t got nowhere to go,’ I spat.

‘Go back to your mother. You’ve got a home to go to.’

‘You don’t understand …’

‘You’re not coming back in here. You’re sixteen now so we’ve got no duty of care to you.’ My birthday had passed unnoticed just a few weeks before.