Nobody Came (19 page)

‘My pretty little slave boys,’ he murmured as he jerked the leads to make them stand up. Blake pushed me forward and the ‘slave boys’ brought up the rear of our sad little column as we went through to the main room where another three men, including Anderson, were waiting.

‘Hello, little boy,’ said the man who visited us to the boy in the cowboy costume. ‘Are you my own little coy boy?’ His hand stretched out, caught hold of the boy’s arm and gently pulled him closer. He pulled out a large black sweet and popped into the little boy’s mouth. His cheek bulged as he sucked it, but unlike most children given a gobstopper his mouth did not turn up at the corners; neither did his eyes light up. He just stood passively by the man’s side gazing blankly at him.

‘Hey, Quasi,’ called Parker. ‘Be a good boy and fill my glass.’

He shoved it into my fist and pushed me towards a table where bottles of drink were standing. ‘Make mine a whisky, old chap,’ he said in mocking tones.

I stood there clutching my cloak round my naked body and feeling confused. Whilst I could recognise a gin bottle, which bottle had the whisky in it? And how much was I meant to pour into the glass?

Parker’s booted foot swung out and caught me on my leg.

‘Now, Quasi, now! I mean it! While you’re there, fill two tumblers from the jug and bring them over here for my thirsty slave boys.’ He giggled then, a sound that reminded me of Neville, and I shivered.

I shuffled over to the table, peered at the bottles and just managed to make out from the labels which one was whisky. All the time I was conscious of that hump, which rubbed against my skin, and my nudity under the cloak. I carried his drink over with one hand, and when I reached him his hand slid across my hooded head and back until it rested on the hump.

‘Ugly sad little fucker, aren’t you, Robbie?’

Again that giggle left his mouth. ‘Bring both of their drinks at the same time. You’ve got two hands, so use them.’

I gave up the effort of clutching together the edges of my cloak. I somehow knew that if I stopped those futile efforts it would at least reduce some part of his sadistic enjoyment.

‘Hey, Robbie,’ said Blake in tones already blurred by alcohol, ‘have a drag of this.’ He passed me a rolled-up cigarette. I put it to my lips and dragged the smoke down into my lungs. It smelled and tasted funny, not at all like the Woodbines I had smoked before. He took it from me, sucked on it himself then passed it to Christopher, whose pale cheeks hollowed as he sucked as hard as he could. ‘That’s my girl, Chrissie! Take it deep!’ Blake laughed at his own little joke, which no one else seemed to share.

‘Have a drink as well, Robbie,’ he said and filled a paper cup from the jug, then shoved it into my hands.

Suddenly I was aware of how parched my throat felt and I gulped it down. I poured out more drinks, dragged on another funny-smelling cigarette and drank some more of the lemonade-tasting drink.

Someone turned the light off, leaving the room lit only by the glow of the candles. Music came from a record player: something fast and rhythmic with drumbeats. My head spun, my myopic eyes darted around the room trying to see into the shadows. It was either after that second lemonade or the funny-smelling cigarette that everything seemed to have grown darker, the candlelight brighter, the men’s faces larger, their laughter more raucous and every note of music sharper and clearer as it vibrated in my head.

The man who visited us patted my head. The little cowboy was sitting firmly on his knee, his thumb in his mouth and his eyes glazed. At some point his cowboy trousers had been removed.

Another man, who had not spoken since I had been in the room, told me to fetch him a drink. When I gave it to him his hand rubbed that hump before sliding under my cloak to fondle me. I felt his nails, long for a man’s, digging into my skin, heard his breathing quicken, then his foot lashed out and I stumbled back. ‘That’s for being such an ugly little bastard,’ he said and turned to Parker.

‘Give me one of yours.’ He stretched out his hand, caught hold of the boy’s lead and pulled him over.

Other hands grabbed me and slid over my body, pinching and nipping at me. I know one of them was Anderson, the warden. The room spun.

My sight might have been very blurred but I could see the pretty boy being pulled down onto Blake’s lap and I realised that the little boy in the cowboy outfit was not the only one whose trousers had been removed. I saw Blake’s flushed face slobbering over Christopher’s bejewelled neck and face while his hand moved up and down under the white ballerina skirt.

The man with the long nails took his boy into the shadows. I heard the noise of stinging slaps followed by a cry that was quickly muffled. A sigh of satisfaction followed, then loud groans and finally a shout. They didn’t come out of the shadows for a long time.

I felt I was almost in a dream as the candles flickered. Whirls of smoke drifted into the air and the sweet smell of those cigarettes mixed with another smell I recognised – the one that reminded me of stale fish and sweat. Someone came over to me, placed another cigarette in my mouth and my eyes drooped. I felt hands on me, heard distant laughter.

‘Watch the floor show,’ a voice murmured in my ear, and through half-closed eyes I saw the two ‘slave boys’ placed head to groin and heard the swish of the silken whip as it rose and fell.

I tried to sit up but I couldn’t; the room was spinning too much. My vision was blurring more and more. My gaze rested briefly on Matt. I saw his head bobbing up and down and his small hands resting on large hairy thighs.

More hands were touching me then, and I felt my hand being forced around a penis and moved up and down. Then someone was doing the same thing to me. Hands kneaded my backside and ran all over me. I mostly kept my eyes closed and just willed it to be over. Everything started to slow down, and at some stage I must have fallen asleep.

I awoke to feel someone shaking me.

‘Party over,’ said a voice and the two boys, Matt and I were taken to the room where our clothes were. A few minutes later we were back in our dormitory.

Christopher and the little ‘cowboy’ didn’t appear until the next day. The little boy stared blankly at something only he could see and Christopher had dark circles under his eyes. As he turned his face away from us I saw glitter on his cheek.

‘You OK?’ Martin asked me gruffly after breakfast.

I nodded quickly. I didn’t want to talk about it and I don’t think he did either. But over the next few days, when we were on our own, I started asking Martin and Pete more about the parties. I needed to know, even though I could sense they didn’t want to tell me.

‘There’s no point worrying,’ Pete said. ‘You’re not one of the pretty ones so you probably won’t be a regular. You might even get away with just your initiation party.’ He shuddered, and I got the impression he was remembering his own. ‘They lose interest when you get older. Once you’re past twelve they don’t bother so much.’

This was reassuring, but there was a part of me that needed to know the worst. I suppose I thought I could prepare myself in some way.

‘It’s the little ones I feel sorriest for, when they give it to them in the arse,’ Martin said sadly. ‘It never happened to me, thank God, but one boy told me that the pain goes right through your bottom and up to the top of your head. He said afterwards it hurt him to walk and that it bled out of his arse.’

I winced and screwed up my nose in sympathy. And then I had a horrible thought: was this what had happened to John?

‘Have you heard about birthday parties?’ Pete asked. ‘Sometimes they have a birthday party for a boy. Take him in the middle of the night; sing happy birthday to him. Then one shoves his cock in the boy’s mouth while another one squeezes his balls so hard it hurts. The boy can’t scream or yell, because if he does and his teeth just touch that cock, there’s another punishment waiting. They put him in a bath full of cold water, push his head under and hold him there until he chokes and starts to lose consciousness.’

We were all silent, thinking how terrifying this would be.

Martin spoke next, very quietly. ‘A boy told me that the worst thing that ever happened to him was that they masturbated him until his cum squirted out. He said he felt like his own body had betrayed him, like they could control him completely. He really hated himself for that.’

I glanced at Martin and wondered if he was talking about something that had happened to him, but he wouldn’t say any more.

‘Just keep your head down,’ Pete advised. ‘As I said, you’re lucky you haven’t got your brother’s looks.’

Now I knew more about what happened at parties, I became even more anxious when the men crept into our dormitory at night. Would it be my turn again? What would happen to me next time? And when the footsteps went past my bed and stopped by someone else’s, the relief was overwhelming.

W
hen I look back on those days at Haut de la Garenne, of course much of it is blurred. I remember the staff lashing out at us for no reason. A hand would whack us across the head when we least expected it or a cane would land on the backs of our legs, but these were such daily occurrences that they ceased to be remarkable. I remember the terror of being taken down for a party and not knowing what the night would bring. Although I got off lightly, probably because I was plainer-looking and older than most of the boys there, I saw some horrific sights.

I do remember that there were snatches of normality, that there were times when we forgot to be scared, times when we played games, times we laughed, times we ran in the fresh air, times when we forged friendships and even snatched quiet, private time when I liked to curl up under a tree and read.

Some memories have receded and become part of the grey fabric of my early life while others are so powerful that they have overshadowed them.

Three of those memories have left their imprint firmly in my mind – imprints that, as hard as I might try, will never be erased.

The first was when one of us fell in love.

Our group were all at the age, somewhere between thirteen and fourteen and a half, when hormones start to waken, and girls, who were once seen as playmates, someone to laugh with and tease, have turned into mystifying strangers.

Pete was fourteen when that happened to him. Only a few months younger than him, I was curious, even vaguely interested, but not to the extent that it ruled my life. So at the time I didn’t see what all the fuss was about when Pete fell in love.

Her name was Dianne. She was pretty – even I could see that; a tiny, fine-boned, thirteen-year-old girl with long, straight blonde hair that fell in a silky curtain to her shoulders. Her clear skin was like peaches and cream, her nose small and her mouth full and pretty. Her huge blue eyes looked at her surroundings and us with very little interest.

Pete’s eyes had picked her out the moment she came into the home. We all wondered why she had been put there. She didn’t look as though she was a habitual shoplifter or disappeared for days and refused to say where she had been or who with. But we did recognise the aura that clung to her: a mixture of crumpled innocence, hurt and vulnerability, which she tried hard to conceal.

Pete was besotted within hours of first seeing her and made it his business to find out as much about her as he could from the other girls.

Dianne’s mother had remarried and within days of that ceremony had complained one moment that her daughter resented her new stepfather then the next that she had tried to seduce him. She said she could no longer cope with her teenage daughter and couldn’t be expected to tolerate her behaviour in the marital home.

Dianne’s story was rather different; according to her, the new stepfather had tried to paw her with his sweaty hands at every opportunity. At first she said nothing to her mother and just tried to avoid being alone with him. That worked until the day she returned home from school to find he had left work early and was waiting for her in the empty house.

She managed to fight him off and run to her mother’s workplace. There, between heaving sobs, she told her what had happened.

The mother wanted her new husband more than she wanted Dianne. She went to the welfare office and the authorities chose to believe the adults’ version of events, that Dianne had tried to seduce him. We, on the other hand, all believed Dianne.

Lots of boys tried to talk to her but her blue eyes just looked indifferently back before she ducked her head and hid behind that curtain of silky blonde hair. But somehow Pete, with his puppy-dog devotion, gained her interest.

It might have seemed a long time to him before she allowed her small hand to be held by his larger one, but it was only about a week. Even a day seems like forever to a lovesick teenager. When it happened he was ecstatic; a huge grin was plastered across his face, and at every chance he got he bored us with his constant references to his darling’s perfections.

Martin, Marc and I would look at each other, raise supercilious eyebrows and smirk. But he was oblivious to our boyish mockery, for Pete was in the thralls of first love.

They met outside in the gardens and went to a place where they thought thick bushes would conceal them. Innocent kisses were exchanged, arms went around slim shoulders, a blonde head nestled trustingly against Pete’s chest. In the common room and at meals their eyes met, they smiled small private smiles with each other, and laughed at jokes only they could understand.

I can’t say that at the time I didn’t feel a spark of jealousy creeping in. Pete was our mate; we all did things together. But the other side of me somehow felt warmed by it. It was a slice of happiness that I, on the outside, could still enjoy.

But of course it was only ever going to be a temporary happiness. Without knowing it, Pete had broken a basic rule of survival: don’t show interest in someone a warden wants for himself.

Pete and Dianne were seen together and it was noted; being young and still retaining some naivety, they took fewer and fewer precautions. All of us knew about the pretty boys, and we had all experienced beatings, but somehow we never thought that anything much happened to the girls.

They waited, those wardens; bided their time. They didn’t just want her; they wanted Pete to learn his lesson as well.

When she was fast asleep they came for her. There were three of them. She was no match for them, and even if she had been able to run, where could she have gone?

She was so light that all they had to do was pick her up out of her bed and carry her down to the cellars. They didn’t touch Pete; there was no need to. They would enjoy watching him suffer later.

At first she refused to speak to him the next morning. ‘Go away,’ she said when he came up to her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked when he saw the pallor of her face and the downcast eyes with lids that were swollen from her tears. She shrugged off his hand, turned her head from him and walked away.

He followed her. He had seen the bruises on her face: the ones just under her ears, the mark a hand makes when it holds down a head.

‘Who did it to you?’ he pleaded.

‘No one did anything,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone.’

He walked away, head down, feet dragging, looking like a puppy whose owner had just kicked him.

He begged her to talk to him. For days she didn’t.

During those days she walked with her arms wrapped around her body as though to hold her pain in. Every night they came and took her, until she no longer even tried to resist.

In the end she told Pete what those men had done. How they had held her down and pulled her nightdress up. Somehow, she said, that felt even worse than if they had removed it. Two of them held her legs and arms apart, the third raped her. She bled a little that first time.

‘My first virgin,’ he said with a satisfied smirk.

‘They’re the best,’ said the second one, before ramming himself into her.

‘It hurt,’ she said. ‘It hurt a lot.’

They gave her a drink, which made her drowsy, took some of the pain away. Then the third one had her; he told her he was going to outlast his two colleagues. She didn’t know if he had or not because everything went fuzzy. They told her then that she was theirs; that they could have her whenever they wanted.

‘I’ll tell,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell.’

They had laughed at her then. ‘What? Your own mother said you were a dirty little whore, always after your stepdaddy, so who’s going to believe you?’

That was the first night; the second and the third it was the same. She drank the drink they gave her and smoked those sweet cigarettes. On the fourth and fifth nights they tried something new. This time when they took her down to the cellars they gave her the drink first and put a cigarette in her hand, the type that made the world seem better. They caught hold of her, but more gently this time, then they entered her, all three of them, each one choosing a different orifice. They were careful not to be too rough, so she wasn’t badly injured. They took it in turns moving her into different positions and in between she gulped the drink down and dragged more of the sweet-smelling smoke deep into her lungs. Finally, they cast her aside; a discarded broken plaything they no longer wanted.

So she told Pete. She wanted someone to tell her it wasn’t her fault.

But Pete was too young, and besides, what could he do? He wasn’t capable of mending her or even comforting her. I bumped into him just after he’d heard all this and he blurted it out to me in a state of shock.

‘How could they?’ he kept asking. ‘How could they?’

I tried my best to get him to calm down to no avail.

‘I can’t bear it,’ he said. ‘I have to get out of here.’

‘Don’t, Pete. You know what will happen if you run away.’

But he wasn’t listening. He was in such a state that he just started running and I watched him as he took off down the road and became a speck on the horizon.

It was several days later when we heard what happened to him. I guess one of the wardens told some of the boys and they came to tell Martin and me.

Pete had been picked up by the police and put in the back of their car. He must still have been burning up with rage at every beating, every torture and every act of sexual abuse that had been inflicted on him during his time in the home mingled with his grief and rage at Dianne’s destruction. With a scream it all burst out of him. He reached over the seat, put his hands around the policeman’s neck and squeezed. The police car swerved, Pete’s arms were forced down and handcuffs came out.

He was not brought back to Haut de la Garenne. He was taken instead to the mental hospital where he was wrapped in a straitjacket.

Dianne was also transferred. I heard she went to the unmarried mothers’ home.