Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters

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СКАЧАТЬ Dad’s next of kin and the nurses and doctors had to deal with her when it came to talking about Dad’s condition and asking for decisions. It didn’t make any difference to them that he had been about to divorce her. Marie was cut out completely from all the medical information and from all the arrangements, which obviously pleased Mum. As long as Dad was unconscious she had complete power over all of us.

      Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Dad was only alive because of the life support machine.

      ‘Anyway, the doctors have told me there’s no way he’s going to pull through,’ Mum said. ‘They think it’s time to turn the machine off, but the final decision is up to me.’

      Marie gave a gasp and put her hand to her mouth. ‘No, Lesley. Please don’t. Don’t give up hope. There might still be a chance.’

      I clung to Marie’s arm, trying to make sense of what they were saying, but I knew from the look on Mum’s face that she had made up her mind about something. Something important.

      ‘He was no good as a husband before and he’s certainly no good to me now.’ Mum was revelling in her ability to make such a life and death decision about the man who she believed had betrayed her so badly, enjoying the ultimate revenge, no longer bothering to keep up any pretence at being the grieving widow.

      ‘He was divorcing you,’ Marie protested. ‘He was living with me. I’m his next of kin, not you. I should make the decision.’

      ‘I’m his legal wife,’ Mum screamed, making heads turn and bringing the nurses running to calm things down. ‘You’re just his whore!’

      Marie tried to explain the situation to the nurses and one of them ran off to find a doctor, but it was no good. If Dad had been able to speak he would have said that he wanted Marie to handle everything and Mum to be nowhere near the place, but there was no way he was ever going to speak again. Marie realized there was nothing she could do, that Mum had the law on her side, but still she tried to plead with the staff.

      ‘It’s my decision,’ Mum insisted to the doctor, ‘and I say turn him off!’

      Overcome with grief Marie kept fighting back even though she probably knew she didn’t have a chance of changing Mum’s mind, begging her to think again, but Mum was becoming angrier and angrier that Marie was daring to challenge her decision. The argument escalated into more and more noise until hospital security had to be called to stop them resorting to blows and Marie was told she would have to leave the premises.

      ‘You can leave him here with me,’ Mum said, gesturing towards me. I shrank as far behind Marie as I could.

      ‘No way. He’s staying with me,’ Marie insisted, gripping my hand tightly. ‘It’s what William would have wanted.’

      She knew that Dad would never have wanted me to go back there and she was already frightened of what Mum would do once she got me alone. Knowing she had the law on her side, Mum asked the hospital staff to call the police. There was no way she was going to allow Marie to keep something that was hers, even though she didn’t really want me herself. Marie stood firm and we all waited as the staff circled nervously around us.

      When the police arrived they separated the two women off into different rooms and interviewed Marie first. I clung to her as she tried to explain how Dad had been allowed to have custody of me because of the way Mum had treated me in the past, and how his one wish was always that Mum shouldn’t be allowed to get her hands on me. But there was nothing she could say that could make any difference to the facts of the situation; I legally belonged to Mum and if she said I was to go back to her then I was going to have to go. The police probably couldn’t see what the problem was, knowing that Mum was already bringing up five other children. I listened without fully understanding what was being said, until a policewoman knelt down beside me.

      ‘You have to go with your mummy now,’ she said, and I started screaming ‘No! Don’t make me!’

      There was nothing Marie could do any more. We went out into the corridor where Mum was still gloating.

      ‘They’ve turned him off now. There’s nothing more to hang around for. Come on, Joe.’

      Marie burst into tears as Mum dragged me, sobbing, towards the exit. Just a few days earlier Marie had imagined she was going to spend the rest of her life with Dad, bringing me up as if I was her own son. Now she was a single mother and my baby half-brother, born just a couple of months before the accident, was all she had left to remember my father by.

      As we walked home, Mum made sure I knew what had happened. ‘Your dad’s dead now. He ain’t coming back. He’s fucking dead,’ she told me.

      ‘Has he gone to Heaven?’ I asked through my tears.

      ‘No, he’s gone to hell where all the nasty people go! God said he was no good and so now his body is going to be burned to ashes. It was God who threw that cigarette into the petrol but he didn’t do a good enough job, did he? So now his body is going to be taken to an oven and burned until it has crumbled to pieces.’

      As she talked I remembered watching the burning cigarette end bouncing back into the garage, carried by that fateful wind. Was that the hand of God I had witnessed at work there? Who else would have been able to control the wind like that? Her sneering words had a horrible kind of logic to them and I was left with a picture of my dad burning in hell for all eternity, just as I’d seen him do when he ran around the garage.

      I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe.

      ‘Don’t think you’re anything special,’ she told me, squeezing my hand viciously, ‘just because you were your dad’s favourite, and just because you saw him going up in fucking flames. You’re not special at all. You’re nothing, and I’m going to prove it to you. Just you fucking wait.’

Chapter Five Smelly Woof

      From the moment we walked in the door of Mum’s big end-of-terrace Victorian council house, I was under no illusions at all about my place in the family pecking order. Far from being special, I was relegated to bottom of the heap. Larry and Barry appeared in the hall, and Larry’s first words were ‘I see the little bastard’s back,’ before he kicked me and Barry punched me on the arm.

      Mum called Wally downstairs and explained to the three of them that I had been spoiled rotten by my dad and needed to learn my place in the family as the lowest of the low. Having been Dad’s favourite I was seen as being part of his betrayal of her, and it wasn’t hard for her to persuade the others that I was a spoiled brat who thought he was better than them.

      Whereas Wally, my eldest brother, now aged seventeen, was inclined to be sympathetic to me because I was such a small child who had been through such a terrible trauma, Larry and Barry, aged fifteen and fourteen respectively, were more than happy to be given permission to indulge the vicious streaks that ran through their natures and to treat me as badly as possible. They were like bloodthirsty soldiers who had been given permission by their commanding officer to rape and pillage an enemy they had been brainwashed into believing was subhuman. Mum made it clear that showing me sympathy was not allowed. If Wally wasn’t going to join in my persecution he could expect to be on the receiving end of beatings himself. It all seemed very simple to her; if you weren’t on her team then you were obviously with the enemy.

      Ellie and Thomas (then aged four and three) were still too little to play any part in my humiliation. СКАЧАТЬ