Joe Peters (3 page)

In his determination to keep me out of her grasp Dad went to the courts to say that Mum was an unfit mother
to me and that I would be in danger if he left me with her. There were hearings and discussions with the welfare services and his sister Melissa has since told me that she began to believe that Dad was becoming overly protective and obsessive about me. No one in the outside world could know what Mum was really like towards me.

Dad’s relationship with Mum had reached such a low point at one stage that he became convinced Thomas wasn’t his child. I don’t think he was right, but someone must have told him something about seeing Mum messing about with another man that had made him suspicious and once those suspicions took a hold he didn’t seem to be able to shake them off. Maybe subconsciously he wanted Mum to have betrayed him so he wouldn’t feel so bad about his affair with Marie. Or maybe he thought Thomas would be safer from Mum’s campaign of revenge if it turned out that he had been fathered by another man.

Marie must have been desperately in love with Dad to have put up with so much and to have continued to take him back even after he had got Mum pregnant twice more. When he went back to Marie for the final time Dad promised her he was going to divorce Mum on the grounds of her adultery, although I don’t know how he thought he was going to be able to prove it. Marie told me with great excitement that she and Dad were going
to get married one day soon and we would be a happy family together. I was delighted about this and couldn’t wait until it was all sorted, but they must have been painful, turbulent times for all the adults involved.

Marie then fell pregnant as well, adding yet another layer of anger and bitterness to the store that Mum was building up inside her head. This final insult tipped her over the edge and she actually went looking for Marie with physical revenge on her mind, like some bizarre sort of Wild West gunslinger. When she found her she beat her up badly, pouring all her anger and resentment into her punches. It would be impossible to overstate just how strong my mother was when she lost her temper; she was still slim at this stage but she was such a tall woman that no one was a match for her when she was angry. To us who were on the receiving end it was almost as though she was possessed by demons.

The beating made Marie all the more nervous and anxious to stay out of her way and not to annoy Mum any more than she had to. Occasionally when I was with Marie I would slip up and call her ‘Mum’, because that is what she seemed like to me – far more maternal than the screaming, battering woman I had been born to. She would quickly correct me and tell me to call her ‘Auntie Marie’, terrified that if Mum found out what I was doing that she would go completely mad, seeing it as yet more evidence that Marie was trying to steal her child as well
as her husband. Mum might not have wanted anything to do with me herself, but she certainly wouldn’t have wanted Marie to have the satisfaction of taking me away from her.

While they waited for the divorce to grind its way through the system Marie changed her surname to Peters so that we would seem more like a family unit. She even took to wearing a wedding ring because in those days around our way there was still a stigma attached to single mothers in many people’s eyes.

But the shadow of Mum and her wild, violent temper was always hanging over Dad and Marie, making them both nervous in different ways, always looking over their shoulders, expecting her to pounce at any moment shouting abuse and throwing punches. My younger siblings and I were a link that would always be there, never letting Dad escape completely from this unwise, youthful alliance.

One day he received a call from Mum to tell him that Thomas, who was not yet two, had been taken into hospital covered in burns. By that stage Dad must have accepted that Thomas was his because he rushed straight to the hospital. Thomas had been admitted into an intensive care unit, with burns all the way down one side of his body from his head to his waist.

‘There was a pan of boiling water on the stove,’ Mum told him when he asked her what had happened. ‘He
was sitting on the floor and Larry slipped and knocked the pan all over him.’

I doubt if Dad believed her story, however convincingly she told it, but there was little he could do to prove she was lying until later, when my oldest half-brother Wally confessed that what had actually happened was that Thomas wouldn’t stop crying and so Mum had thrown him into a bath of scalding water in a fit of temper. Whatever the truth, Thomas was left badly scarred and needed endless skin grafts over the following years. Dad was angry enough when he heard Mum’s own version of the story, wanting to know why she wasn’t watching over such a small baby more carefully. When he found out Wally’s version of events he immediately brought Ellie to live with us at Marie’s, while Thomas stayed on in hospital, struggling for his little life. Dad might not have been as close to Thomas or Ellie as he was to me, but he still didn’t intend to leave them to the mercy of a woman who was capable of doing such things to a defenceless small child.

Mum, however, wasn’t about to allow him to walk off with her precious Ellie and she was constantly coming round to Marie’s house, banging furiously on the door, screaming abuse and demanding they give her children back, laying into Dad and Marie with her fists whenever she had a chance, bringing in the welfare workers and arguing her case for being allowed to keep
her own children rather than handing them over to her husband’s ‘whore’. There was no way she was ever going to give in quietly and go away so in the end Dad was forced to compromise and allow Ellie to go back to her since she had never done her any harm. When Thomas was eventually released from hospital, Mum grabbed him and took him home and there was nothing Dad could do about it. But he wasn’t going to let me go. For a while it looked as if Mum might be going to settle for that and give up picking fights over me, but not for long.

After the day Mum grabbed me from Aunt Melissa’s, dragged me home and burned my hand on the iron, Dad reported the incident to social services and they duly went to interview Mum. Yet again she managed to convince them that it was Dad who was the violent one, not her, and she was able to show them the bruises where he had punched her when they were struggling over me. She could be incredibly convincing when she wanted to be. It was as though she was two different people: the one who faced the outside world with a sweet smile, and then the monster who erupted once we were behind closed doors. She was brilliant at convincing anyone in authority, such as teachers and social workers, that she was a wonderful mother, struggling bravely on with bringing up her children alone. For them she would put on a wonderful act and anyone who knew her better was too
frightened to contradict, allowing her to keep up her respectable façade in the eyes of the outside world.

I didn’t have any problem about being with Dad all the time, and when I was little his employers were very understanding about having me around the garage, even when I caused trouble – like the time when I let the handbrake off in his Capri while I was locked inside to play. I can clearly remember the horrified look on Dad’s face as the car rolled steadily down towards the main road with him desperately trying to hold it back, calling out to me to pull up the locks so he could get in while I was laughing happily at all the attention, jumping up and down with excitement. I must only have been about three at the time, maybe just four.

‘Good boy,’ Dad kept shouting. ‘Open the door! Open the door!’

It wasn’t till we were out in the road that I realized the danger and by that time it was too late and the car was travelling too fast for me to be able to get the door open in time. People scattered in every direction at the sound of Dad’s shouting and fortunately we managed to get right across the road without hitting any of the passing traffic or pedestrians, the car dragging Dad along with it. We eventually came to a halt against a wall with a hedge on top. The impact sent me flying and my head banged hard against the dashboard. Not wanting to leave me in order to run and get the key, and still unable
to persuade me to unlock the door in my dazed state, Dad smashed the window and pulled up the lock himself. When he finally managed to pull me out he hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe. He was crying from the shock of the whole thing and never even told me off. He probably let me get away with more than he should have, but I certainly wasn’t complaining about that.

No one in the garage minded that Dad brought me to work – he had been there so long he was pretty much the boss – but it became harder for them to turn a blind eye when Mum started turning up and causing fights, trying to get me back from him, accusing him of kidnapping me, ranting on about his ‘whore’. I’m sure she didn’t actually want me, unless it was to get the benefit payments; she just didn’t want him and Marie to have something that she believed belonged to her. She had heard about the handbrake incident and tried to use it to prove that Dad was being an irresponsible parent by taking me to work with him. She never missed a trick in their on-going war.

More often than not she would be drunk when she decided to make these visits to the garage, and she would always be spoiling for a physical fight if she could provoke Dad into giving her one. Whenever he saw her lurching in through the doors Dad would shout to the other lads working there, telling them to take me into
the office out of harm’s way and we would watch the two of them battling it out through the windows. I already knew that I didn’t like my own mother. I was scared of her and watching her in action through the grimy glass made me all the more certain I wanted to stay with Dad and Marie.

‘Come to Mummy,’ she would say, holding her arms out to me as if she expected me to run joyfully into them, but I wouldn’t be able to move, rigid with fear at the very sight of her. Even when I knew Dad was there to protect me I would still pee myself with fright when she started shouting at me. She always seemed to be shouting and screaming, attacking everyone and throwing spanners and other tools around. If she managed to get close enough she would scratch at Dad’s face and eyes as he struggled to restrain her.

Dad wanted to avoid hitting her himself if he could help it, so he used to call his sister Melissa, who lived nearby, and get her to come and sort Mum out for him. Aunt Melissa loved my dad, just as everyone did, and would do anything to protect her little brother. She would come charging down the street and the two women would have the most colossal fights outside on the garage forecourt, pulling one another around by the hair, slapping and kicking with all their strength. Aunt Melissa would always win so after a while Mum started to run away as soon as she saw her coming, diving into a
waiting car that one of her drinking buddies from the pub would have brought her over in, the driver revving away like a bank robber on the run. I think Mum enjoyed the drama of it as much as anything else.

The harassment was continuous, with Mum endlessly ringing the house and the garage as well as turning up looking for fights. She used to scratch the paintwork of Dad’s car and smash Marie’s windows with bricks, trying everything she could think of in her campaign of hate and revenge. Eventually it became too much and Graeme, the garage owner, had to tell Dad that the constant scenes with Mum had to stop because they were starting to upset customers and interrupt business. He couldn’t allow them to go on if it was making customers too nervous to come in. He called one evening and asked Dad to meet him the next day for a chat about what they should do. That night Marie and Dad discussed the situation.

‘It’s not good for Joe to have to keep witnessing these scenes,’ she said. ‘You need to leave him at home with me. He’s five years old and he’ll be starting school soon enough – I can just keep an eye on him till then.’

‘No, no,’ Dad was adamant. ‘Lesley’ll be round here to get him if I do that. He likes coming down the garage anyway.’

It was brave of Marie to offer to look after me because she was as scared of Mum’s violence as everyone else was,
apart from Aunt Melissa. Mum was a tough woman, who was able and willing to hit hard. She was capable of knocking grown men out with a single punch, let alone a petite woman like Marie. Marie and Dad talked about it endlessly that night and eventually he agreed that he should at least leave me at home with her the next day while he went in to discuss with Graeme what they were going to do about the situation.

So I stayed with Marie the next morning and Dad came back at lunchtime to get his tools. He always had his own special set of tools that he guarded with his life and wouldn’t let anyone else touch, not even his mates at the garage.

‘I’ve told Graeme I’ll get a court order to keep her away from the garage,’ he said. ‘But he thinks that if Joe doesn’t come to the garage for a bit that will mean she’ll stay away too.’

I was standing listening to them as he collected up his tools and went towards the door. He glanced back at me.

‘Do you want to come to work with your dad?’ he asked with a wink.

‘No,’ Marie interrupted. ‘What would Graeme say if he found out?’

‘Graeme’s not there this afternoon,’ he wheedled. ‘He’s all right. Just one more time. It won’t hurt him.’

‘I’m not happy about this, William,’ Marie protested. ‘You don’t want to risk losing your job.’

‘It’ll never come to that,’ Dad insisted, so Marie gave in and let me go.

That was an afternoon I’ll never forget as long as I live, the afternoon my life changed for ever. I can remember every single detail of every little thing that happened that day, because the details are etched on my brain and thirty years on I still relive them in my nightmares. As I slipped my hand inside Dad’s big fingers and walked out to the car that lunchtime, I had no idea that life as I knew it was about to come to a brutal end.

I
t was a cold, windy day in February. Dad and I had just driven up to the garage and parked on the grass verge when one of the other mechanics, a good friend of Dad’s called Derek, waved him over to a car that was up on one of the ramps.