Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again.. Joe Peters

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СКАЧАТЬ fan and used to play the songs in the car on the days when he drove me around to keep me out of Mum’s way. The music was embedded in my head as firmly as the images of Dad burning to death in front of my eyes. It unlocked happy memories of our short time together but also reminded me of the cold horror of his love being snatched so cruelly away from me so young, the only love I had ever known.

      When the song ‘My Boy’ came on, the surge of emotion took me by surprise. Images of my father and me together in the car, of sitting with him in the garage while he worked and of watching him running around in flames in front of me became overwhelming, and my laughter at Mohamed’s wild antics turned to a choking sensation in my throat as I struggled not to cry. Dad used to play that song to me all the time, over and over again, telling me I was his boy. It was ‘our song’.

      The harder I fought to hold back the tears the more overwhelmed I felt by the emotions that the song unleashed in me. Mohamed stopped in the middle of his dancing, shocked to see that my tears of laughter had turned so suddenly to misery.

      ‘What is the matter, Joe?’ he wanted to know. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

      ‘It’s the song,’ I said, not trusting myself to be able to explain any more than that.

      ‘I’ll turn it off. I’ll turn it off.’

      ‘No,’ I said, not wanting to reject the memories of Dad and be left back in the awkward silence. ‘I want to listen to it.’

      ‘Not good song?’ Mohamed asked, obviously worried that he had upset me.

      ‘It’s memories. My dad’s song.’

      As I listened to the rest of the track and cried, Mohamed stood beside me and put his hand on my shoulder until it was over.

      ‘You want to listen to it again?’

      ‘Yeah,’ I nodded, no longer trying to hide the tears, wiping my running nose on my sleeve.

      ‘I will go and make us some food while you listen,’ he said, putting the track back on and disappearing out to the kitchen to leave me alone with my memories.

      ‘No more Elvis,’ Mohamed announced when he came back into the room a few minutes later. ‘I am making us a nice curry.’

      As the smell of cooking drifted into the room and my saliva glands started to work, I realized that I was really hungry. I had never tasted curry before, but I was ready for anything by the time he had managed to find a second chair to go beside the little garden-style table he had set up for us to eat from, and I dived straight in the moment he put the food in front of me, shovelling it into my mouth. The next moment I realized there was sweat breaking through every pore of my skin and my eyes were streaming with tears again, but for a different reason. It felt as if my mouth was on fire and I gulped water from the glass he had given me.

      ‘Hot, hot, hot!’ I gasped. ‘More water.’

      Mohamed giggled as he went out to get a jug. ‘It is only a mild curry,’ he said, laughing.

      ‘You call that mild? It’s taken the roof of my mouth off.’

      He had given me a spoon to eat with, but he was tucking in himself with his hands, which shocked me. I had spent so many years forced to scrabble for scraps of food off the floor as a child at home that I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to eat like that and get their fingers so stained and sticky if they didn’t have to. I certainly didn’t intend to follow his example. If it could burn my mouth the way it had, I didn’t want to risk burning my fingers too.

      We were both easy in each other’s company by then. He talked about his family and where he had come from and how he had arrived in England with his father. He tried to prompt me to talk about my life, but I didn’t want to even think about it, let alone talk about it, and he didn’t push me. I had also told him the lie about my family waiting for me in Charing Cross and I didn’t want to give him any reason to think that he should try to stop me from running away from home. Now that he was becoming my friend I felt bad that I had told him lies. I had always been falsely accused of being a liar when I was a child and I hated the idea that now I was actually turning into one.

      ‘The record “My Boy”–is that your dad’s record?’ he asked once we had finished eating.

      ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I could see that he was looking at me, waiting for me to go on. Reluctantly I told him about how Dad had died in the explosion in the garage he worked in, while I was sitting in the car watching, just five years old, but I didn’t tell him anything about what had happened after that, once Mum got her hands on me and started to wreak her campaign of revenge, hiding me away from the outside world for years. I could see that he was shocked enough by what I had told him: there was no need to go any further. He stopped asking questions, not wanting to upset me any more. I could see that his eyes were beginning to glaze over with tiredness and I was certainly exhausted myself, but I wanted to put off the moment of going back on to the street for as long as possible.

      ‘I can drop you back to the station now if you want,’ he said eventually, ‘or if you like I have a spare sleeping bag and you can sleep here for a few hours. I have no bed to offer you, I’m afraid.’

      I could see that he was being very careful not to make it sound as if he was trying to take advantage, and I had also realized by then that there wasn’t a bed anywhere in the flat. He hadn’t given me any reason to distrust him and had shown me nothing but kindness.

      ‘OK,’ I said, as casually as I could manage. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting a few hours’ sleep.’

      ‘Good.’ He seemed pleased that we had made a decision and bustled around clearing away the plates and folding up the table so that there was room for two sleeping bags on the floor. Almost the moment he put the light out I heard him start to snore.

      Lying on a hard floor was not comfortable. Even at the worst of times, when I was locked in the cellar at home for days on end, I had still had an old mattress under me. But as I wriggled around trying to find a position I could sleep in, I was aware that I was going to have to get used to it, because once I got to London it was likely I was going to be sleeping rough for a while before I made my fortune or met the love of my life and managed to get a roof over my head.

      Eventually I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew it was half past four and Mohamed was nudging me up from a deep sleep, out of which I was very reluctant to pull myself.

      ‘You must get train,’ he said when I finally came to the surface enough to remember where I was and to make sense of what he was saying. At that moment all I wanted to do was slide back to the blissful oblivion of sleep, but Mohamed was being insistent. ‘I make you a drink.’

      He came back from the kitchen with a glass of orange squash.

      ‘I will be back in a minute,’ he said, disappearing out of the room again.

      I drank the orange and got up to go to the bathroom. The door to the other room was ajar and I could see him down on his knees with his forehead touching the floor. I had never seen a Muslim at prayer before and had no idea what he was doing. It seemed to me that the whole world was populated by nutters, but at least Mohamed was harmless.

      A few minutes later he came out and made me something to eat, and we set out for the station in the taxi. We arrived a few minutes early, so he came in to wait on the concourse with me. There were already crowds of passengers bustling СКАЧАТЬ