No One Listened: Two children caught in a tragedy with no one else to trust except for each other. Alex Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ Mum’s exhaustion and pent-up frustrations about other things that made her explode like that rather than the actual announcement itself. Isobel was determined not to change her mind, although she felt very guilty about letting Mum down and upsetting her.

      When I announced I had quit the church choir she went even more over the top. I was around eleven years old and going through a bit of a rebellious phase at the time. I had actually sworn at the choirmaster during the practice that evening, which had resulted in me being ordered out of the room. I stormed off and disappeared for a few hours. The choirmaster phoned home and so Mum knew exactly what had happened and started ranting on to Isobel about me.

      ‘I’m going to call social services,’ she raved. ‘I’ve got to get something done about that boy!’

      By the time I finally walked in through the front door she had lathered herself up into a real state of fury, but I stuck to my guns about leaving the choir and refused to go back. I think I might have provoked the whole confrontation deliberately in order to give myself an excuse to leave, so Mum was right to be angry with me, but I was still shocked by the sheer force of her disappointment.

      Part of Mum’s motivation could have been to get us all out of the house and out of Dad’s way as much as possible, which was fine by us. There were certain times of the day, usually in the later part of the afternoon, when he might wake up and emerge unexpectedly from his room, coming down to the kitchen to make himself some food. At those times he didn’t want us anywhere around. He believed it was ‘his time’ and ‘his space’ and we would have to make ourselves scarce. The mere sight of Isobel or Mum would remind him how much he hated them and didn’t want them around.

      It was best for all of us if we weren’t in the house at that time if we didn’t want to risk inciting his anger. If we had a day off sick from school we had to be very careful not to be in the kitchen during periods that he considered to be ‘his’. He spent as much of his life behind the bedroom door as possible. Isobel and I never ventured through it – we had barely even glimpsed through the crack when it was opened for him to go in or out – so we had no idea exactly what he did in there to entertain himself all day. We just dreaded the times when he was forced to come out into the real world in order to eat or go to the bathroom.

      There were so many things for us to do outside the house that it wasn’t a problem most days. As we got better at our various sports and activities Isobel and I were entered into competitions that were further away from home, and before I left the choir we would sometimes go on trips at weekends to sing at weddings in other churches or even cathedrals. Then we got paper rounds, which got us out of the house for a few hours on a Sunday morning and gave us some spending money of our own. Isobel got the round first, being older, and used it as another opportunity to go running, hauling a trolley behind her as she pounded the streets. When her weekend running commitments got too much, she handed the paper round on to me. The people who ran the newsagents were happy with that because it meant they could go on delivering the papers to the same address each week and they knew it was likely I would be reliable because Isobel had never let them down. The Sunday round was the best one to have because we didn’t have to get up as early as the weekday people, who had to finish their deliveries before going to school, but we still got paid the same rate. Part of the job was to insert advertising leaflets before delivering them. I managed to convince Mum that it was harder for me to do that because I was left-handed so she used to help me, much to Isobel’s annoyance.

      Although doing so much meant our days often ended up being a bit of a rush, both Isobel and I were always happy to do whatever Mum suggested. It was the only way of life either of us could remember and large parts of our social lives revolved around the activities because that was where we made many of our friendships.

      Compared to most boys my acts of rebellion were pretty minor, like talking in class or swearing at the choirmaster. I did bunk off school for a day now and again, but very seldom. To Mum, however, with her strict regime of education and self-improvement, this was a cardinal sin. She couldn’t bear the thought that I was wasting even the smallest opportunity to get a good education. On one of the few occasions I did wander off, she came home early one day to get her car serviced and caught me and my friends outside the school. She marched us all firmly back in through the gates, even though it was nearly the end of the school day by then, which was not good for my street credibility. She almost always came home at the same time, so I couldn’t believe my bad luck when I was caught on that occasion.

      The school occasionally sent her letters about my general behaviour. She left before the post arrived in the mornings, so Isobel and I would try to intercept as many as we could before they reached her. Mum knew that I wasn’t concentrating fully on my work, even though I was still in the top set for just about every subject, and she became more and more exasperated with me the further I dug my heels in and rebelled against authority. At one stage she threatened to move me to her school, knowing how embarrassing it would be to have a mother who was on the staff, and knowing that I wouldn’t want to leave my friends. I knew it was an empty threat because she would never have done anything that might have endangered my education, so then she began threatening to send me to boarding school if I didn’t behave better. Even though I knew the cost of it would have been completely beyond her means, I never wanted to call her bluff on that one. She could be very determined when she set her mind on something. As well as not wanting to leave my established group of friends, I wouldn’t have wanted to be separated from Isobel.

      ‘I’ll go to boarding school,’ Isobel piped up in the middle of the argument about me leaving the choir, which deflected Mum’s wrath away from me for a while. Because of that interruption Isobel got kicked out of the house that night instead of me, even though she didn’t have any shoes on at the time.

      Mum must have been bottling up so much anger and resentment that when some little thing like the choir incident happened she would completely lose her cool. She even kicked the dog out with Isobel, as if that would teach us all some sort of lesson. Alfie must have thought it was a bit of an adventure to be allowed out for an extra walk without his lead. At moments like that I think the whole world must suddenly have seemed to be against her and she imagined for a moment that she wanted to be rid of the lot of us. Her moods never lasted long, though – not like Dad’s endless, snarling misery.

      Whenever Dad got to hear about me doing anything remotely naughty or rebellious he would be delighted and would encourage me, deliberately going against everything Mum was saying. He seemed determined to make me more like him and less like her and Isobel. I don’t know that his encouragement made much difference to me. I think I would have been behaving the same anyway, but it did give me a bit more courage to be cheeky at school, knowing that it won his approval. Every small boy wants to please his dad, even when he’s as weird as mine was. Once or twice I even went back to the house during the day with my friends when we should have been in school, and Dad seemed to approve, which impressed them. But as soon as Mum came home he told her all about it, wanting to rub her nose in how much she had lost control of me, I guess, and how her children weren’t always the hard-working little angels she would have liked them to be.

      The strain on her during those years must have been enormous, and we didn’t know the half of it at that stage. I feel guilty when I look back now, but I was just being a normal, spirited teenage boy. In retrospect I guess her life was hard enough without that additional pressure.

       Chapter Six

       Isobel

      The row started because Alex had got himself thrown out of choir practice and then announced he wanted to leave the choir altogether, but for СКАЧАТЬ