Joe Peters (6 page)

I was only allowed to use the bathroom when she said I could so I soon became unkempt and dirty, in contrast to the immaculate cleanliness of the rest of the house. Then because I was so dirty I wasn’t allowed to use any of Mum’s crockery in case I spread my germs and diseases to the others.

‘You’ve inherited the “dirty disease” from your filthy fucking father,’ Mum told me. ‘I don’t want you infecting the rest of us.’

When you’re little you believe whatever your mother tells you, so I assumed it must all be true, that I must be inferior to the others in some way. The fact that I was the family dog became a standing joke and later they bought me a metal dog’s bowl for my Christmas present, laughing happily at their own wit as they gave it to me. It was as though I was there to entertain them. They were constantly thinking up new ways to amuse themselves, like offering me my meal in the bowl and then throwing the food at me anyway, or spitting on it before making me eat it up, saliva and all. They called me ‘Smelly Woof’ when they were pretending I was their pet, and I knew I did smell, mostly of my own wee, which would escape me involuntarily when fear overcame me and I lost control of my bladder. If I had been allowed a bath occasionally maybe I wouldn’t have stunk the house up and made them all so disgusted with me.

As the days went past a mixture of shock, fear and grief was taking control of my head and sometimes it wouldn’t let the words come out of my mouth. There were so many things I wanted to say but when I tried to talk the muscles in my throat would seem to freeze, refusing to obey me, making me stammer and stutter as I attempted to force the words out. It felt as though someone was trying to strangle me into silence. All I could think
about was my dad. I was constantly seeing the pictures of him burning and Mum’s words going round and round in my head. I tried to say, ‘I want to see my dad’, even though I knew the words would earn me another beating, but as I struggled to find them my tongue would stumble. Wally was the first to notice that I was stuttering.

‘I’m worried about Joe,’ he said to Mum.

‘What’s fucking wrong with him now?’ she wanted to know.

‘He’s not talking.’

‘It’s probably a throat infection,’ she said. ‘He’s fine.’

Over the following week the stutter became worse and worse. By the end of it my brain had completely lost control of my voice and I fell totally silent, unable to form even single words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘help’. Mum thought at first that it was just me messing about and being difficult but eventually she had to admit that Wally might have a point and agreed to take me to see the doctor. Sitting in the surgery she related my story to him, giving it all the necessary drama and pathos to make it clear that she was really the one who was suffering the most, having lost her husband and been left with six children to bring up.

‘The poor boy was there to witness it,’ she told him, her voice catching on the tears she was pretending to
swallow back. ‘He saw his lovely father going up in flames in front of his eyes, just a few weeks ago. The two of them were so close, it’s hit him hard.’

The doctor examined me and listened to everything she had to say and then explained what he thought had happened.

‘I believe Joe has been struck mute from the shock of what he’s witnessed,’ he said gently.

He was obviously as concerned about upsetting her as he was about whatever was wrong with me.

‘William was such a good husband and father,’ she started up again. ‘This is a tragedy for the whole family, but especially for Joe. And now my little boy has been struck dumb as well. How long will it be before he can talk again and get back to his normal self?’

‘It could just be a short-term condition,’ the doctor said doubtfully, obviously not having a clue. ‘Or it could be a long-term problem. We’ll just have to see how things develop.’

By the time we left the surgery the penny had dropped in Mum’s head that I actually had become mute, and it wasn’t just an act. She was partly annoyed with me for causing her yet more inconvenience and for trying to draw more attention to myself, but I suspect there was a part of her brain that was already beginning to see the possibilities, even at that stage. If I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t tell any tales.

It would be four and a half years before I was able to speak properly again and by striking me mute my brain had finally delivered me completely into Mum’s power. I was totally helpless. Now that I couldn’t speak, my frustration grew even greater, exploding out into uncontrollable physical tantrums and I started hitting furniture, throwing things and kicking doors in my silent rages. I didn’t realize it, but the worse I behaved the more I was playing into Mum’s hands, proving just what a difficult child I was and what a wonderful woman she was to be bringing me up on her own, especially when she had so many other children to care for at the same time.

Mum actually seemed to enjoy violence, relishing watching it almost as much as she relished doling it out herself. She used to rig up a sort of boxing ring in the second lounge at the house and make my three oldest brothers fight each other, with her as their coach and cheerleader as well as their audience. The room was not as smart as the rest of her home since she displayed all her best furniture in the other lounge. It was a part of the house that no one from outside the family would ever be invited into. It contained just an old fire and a tatty settee and chair. It would have been a comfortable ‘family room’ if we had been the kind of happy family to have such a
thing. It was certainly a place where Mum could relax and unwind and not worry if there was some blood spilled on the carpet. There were always curtains drawn across the windows, with nets pulled tight behind them for extra protection against prying eyes. Even if she opened the windows to let in some air she still wouldn’t part the curtains, not wanting anyone from the outside world to be able to glimpse into her private fiefdom and witness what she was getting up to. When she felt like some entertainment she would sit down in that room with a cup of tea, pushing the older boys on and on like gladiators in Ancient Rome, until one of them drew blood.

‘Go on,’ she’d jeer at them, ‘punch him! Fucking kill him!’

If they tried to refuse they would get a beating from her, which would be far worse than anything they could do to each other. It didn’t matter if they were really hurt, she would insist they continued to fight until blood had been spilled, beating them with a garden cane if they tried to stop. She couldn’t allow any disobedience, couldn’t show a single moment of weakness or kindness in case it undermined the terror that she relied on in order to reign supreme over us all. Once one of them was bleeding she would allow him to come out of the ring and she would bring in another to take on the winner. She would tell them that she was just trying to teach
them how to fight, toughening them up so they would be able to look after themselves in the outside world, but it seemed more like she did it to indulge her own blood¬ lust. The only person they really needed to protect themselves from was their own mother.

Most of the violence in the house was inflicted directly by her. If any of us dared to disobey her, or even just looked at her in the wrong way, she would immediately lay into us in a blind rage. Sometimes she wouldn’t even need to have a reason; she would just become angry and take it out on whoever was nearest. She would grab Thomas and me by the hair and literally swing us round by it until our feet lifted off the ground, sending us hurtling into the walls. Her strength sometimes seemed superhuman. If she didn’t manage to get a satisfying liftoff first time she would repeat the manoeuvre until she got it right.

As part of her hard-done-by widow act, Mum successfully sued the garage for several thousand pounds in compensation for Dad’s death, and Graeme closed the business down soon afterwards. Dad’s best friend Derek felt so guilty about not being able to save Dad when the flames were engulfing him that he wrote a suicide note and drove his car off the motorway, killing himself in the crash. It seemed as though the repercussions from that little gust of wind were going to go on forever, like ripples on a pond disturbed by a stone.

Mum was determined to crush my spirit and put a stop to my disruptive behaviour once and for all and she beat me up so violently, so often, that I finally understood I must never question her or so much as look at her directly again. She was constantly warning me that next time I annoyed her she would kill me and as I lay on the floor in a battered heap I had no reason to doubt her. She made no effort to hold back the full force of her strength when she hit out; there was no self-control, no fear of causing damage, no worries about killing someone. It had become normal for me to be punched in the head or kicked over and over again for no reason at all. Even if I was behaving myself I still drove her mad, just because I was there and because I reminded her of the humiliation Dad and Marie had put her through.

The fact that I was now virtually silent, making only little squeaking noises instead of speaking, seemed to fuel her annoyance even further. It was as if she believed I was mocking her with my whimpering, my pleading eyes and frantically shaking head as I tried to dissuade her from hitting me any more. As far she was concerned I was no longer a human being; I had degenerated into a hated animal to be kicked and punched and abused at every opportunity, like a beaten dog slinking around in the shadows with its head down and eyes to the floor.

When I first lost my voice I found other ways to communicate. If I wanted something I would point at it
and grunt and even that would drive her mad and so soon I stopped communicating at all. She made no secret of the fact that she detested me more and more every day; nothing I could have done would have made any difference by that stage.

‘Don’t fucking point,’ she would snarl, giving me such a hard slap I would be knocked off my feet.

‘Don’t fucking look at me!’

‘You smell fucking terrible!’

Everything was an excuse to hit me. It went on and on and on. She channelled every ounce of anger and disappointment she felt towards the world in general and my father in particular, and took it out on me. She would encourage the others to do the same and Larry and Barry were happy to cooperate, delighted to have someone so much further down the family pecking order than themselves. They always wanted to do things to please her, and they soon learned that any humiliation they wanted to inflict on me would earn her approval as well as satisfying their own sadistic instincts.

I was still sleeping on the floor in Larry and Barry’s room. Wally had his own room at the top of the house and Thomas and Ellie shared another room. I would have much preferred to have been in with them but I knew better than to argue with any decision Mum made. I had to stay in the bedroom all day long, except at mealtimes, but I wasn’t allowed to play with anything in there
that belonged to my brothers. If I so much as touched one of their belongings I would be given a beating and I had nothing of my own to play with. The boredom of just sitting there all day long increased the feelings of isolation and frustration that were building up inside me, until I was just itching to break out into mischief or destruction but never daring to.

At night I had no mattress or pillow, only a single blanket. Larry and Barry shared a double bed and resented having me in the house as much as Mum did. They bullied me at every opportunity and whenever they made a noise that disturbed Mum they would make sure I took the blame. She used to put us all to bed by six or seven in the evening so that she could have some solitary drinking time for herself. We would usually be awake again at four or four thirty, itching to get up and move about. Larry and Barry would start messing around together, fighting in bed and farting on each other, and if they woke Mum up she would shout through the wall.

‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘It’s Joe,’ they would yell back. I would open my mouth to protest my innocence, terrified of the punishment I would inevitably receive, but no sound would come out and Larry and Barry would giggle triumphantly as they waited for the entertainment that would follow.

Furious at being woken and at the thought that I would dare to play up after all she had done to tame me,
she would come storming in and give me another beating. The fact that I had no voice with which to plead my innocence was probably irrelevant as I doubt she would have believed me anyway.

Larry and Barry were thick as thieves and they used to order me to do things that they knew would get me into trouble. Being five, brimming with repressed energy and boredom, and eager to please my big brothers to avoid getting a beating from them, I was easily influenced and always ended up being the one who got caught. Whenever there was any trouble Mum would blame me anyway, even if it was obvious it couldn’t have been anything to do with me.

‘None of this ever happened till you came on the scene,’ she’d say about some minor infringement of her rules, and then she’d give me another battering, dragging me around by the hair with my mouth stretched open but the screams refusing to form in my throat.

One dark morning, just a few months after Dad died, Mum had finally had enough of me disturbing her sleep. She pulled me all the way down the stairs by my hair, shouting at the top of her voice.

‘This time you have gone too fucking far, you little bastard. You’ve pushed me too far. I’m finished with being patient with you. I’ve fucking had enough!’

I really believed that she was finally going to kill me. She’d told me often enough that she would do it one day.

There was a door under the stairs, which I had assumed led to a broom cupboard; I had never seen anyone opening it and no one had ever mentioned what lay behind it but I would be finding out soon enough. Dragging me behind her along the hall floor, Mum threw open the under-stairs door. I saw another staircase stretching down into the darkness below and I felt a terrible foreboding of what might be in store. Was this where she took people she was going to kill?