Patchwork Man (8 page)

I spent the day anxiously avoiding Jaggers or any of his crew. It was fairly easy during the day. There were lessons to endure, although even then I enjoyed learning. I had to pretend otherwise in the home but I had my secret passions. English class – and one piece of literature in particular was one. For the other boys, hearing the teacher expound on the principles of honesty and truth in something like
To Kill a Mocking Bird
was an exercise in boredom. For me it was inspiration. Lucky perhaps that we had such an enlightened and rebellious young teacher at the time. Of course it wasn’t part of the curriculum but the book was all the rage because of the Hollywood blockbuster starring Gregory Peck. Not what the school head would have approved of if he’d known that his newly-appointed young English teacher was subversively reading it with his class under the guise of ‘looking at society’s norms in literature’, but for me it was exceptional and ground-breaking.

I’d sneaked into the back of the local flicks when the film was being screened just after Jaggers first arrived. The front of house ticket seller was doubling up on her roles as usherette and sweet kiosk salesperson and I slithered into a back row seat and was completely blown away by both the actors and the notions within the story itself. Thereafter I’d modelled my attitude to the Win/Jaggers situation initially on Atticus Finch, and tried to remain impartial but principled. Atticus became my hero, and remained so when I later made law my career. Ironic that we were secretly reading about rape, repression and inequality in school and I was secretly living it in the children’s home. Unfortunately principle and practice can still make cowards of us all. At times I’m glad the fictional Atticus couldn’t have met me when I think of all the times then that I bowed to pressure and relinquished my beliefs for the sake of saving my skin, and at others I wish I could have debated the rights and wrongs of some of the cases I’ve taken since with such a hero. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself? Maybe being true to oneself includes self-preservation when it is only oneself that would be harmed otherwise?

But I couldn’t dodge Jaggers forever. Night was the time when I could no longer avoid vulnerability and without the threat of reprisal from Win, surrounding me like a dark angel enfolding me in its wings, Jaggers struck. I had tried to stay awake, counting the springs on the underneath of the bunk above me, and reciting my times tables in my head but eventually the insidious down of sleep crept over me and I succumbed. I woke panicky and unable to breath, crushed flat on my stomach but head rammed to one side. I struggled and the coating over my face invaded mouth and nostrils, wet and sticking to my skin with the moisture from my breath, plastic sucked deep into my mouth with every shuddering gasp. Jaggers whispered harshly in my ear.

‘Shut up and stay still or you’ll suffocate, you asshole.’ My head swam and even though the dorm was dark, it seemed as if everything was dropping into a night so dark not even stars could pierce its depth. Even lying still my head spun giddily and my hearing faded in and out as I started to lose consciousness. The plastic bag was secured tightly round my head and I could feel the pressure and then the searing pain as Jaggers violated me. ‘This is what I’ll do to you every night your dearly beloved brother Win is holed up in sick bay unless you leave his gang and join mine.’ It was a mercy I was almost unconscious because confusion and lack of oxygen deadened the pain to a mere fraction of what it could have been. When he was done the unnatural practices I’d previously feared as a kind of far-off threat were a reality. Homosexuality was prevalent in prisons, although I don’t believe now Jaggers was a homosexual. It was more that he was sharing with me – and no doubt many others – the pain and defilement he’d suffered. Maybe transforming it into a tool for control made it more palatable for him.

Just before I passed out, he removed the bag and left me gasping and retching on my soiled sheets before curling into a ball. My body raged at the abuse and I thought I wouldn’t ever sleep again as I relived each moment of desecration in the quiet desperate hours before dawn. It was only then I wondered where the other members of my dorm were and why no-one had come to my aid. Clearly it had been a carefully orchestrated attack and my dorm companions avoided me the next day and the day after that in embarrassment. After the first angry reaction, I realised – just like Tom Robinson in
To Kill a Mocking Bird
– there could be no impunity for me. I was
the
target, the stool pigeon, and no matter how much they might want to help, to get between me and Jaggers would have been as lethal as getting between Tony and the knife that killed him. It was my first lesson in acceptance and forgiveness. I forgave them their abandonment of me and I learnt acceptance of the role I knew I had to play. I just wasn’t sure how to play it yet. One other thing became clear – that I should find a way to never be as vulnerable again.

I played a dangerous double game, acceding to Jaggers and pretending to Win when he made it out of sick bay, grey-faced and several pounds lighter. I joined in with both gangs’ raids and for a time it seemed as if I might get away with it. I knew whatever I did I wasn’t going to let myself be subjected willingly to the abject terror of the suffocation and rape ritual Jaggers promised if I didn’t play ball with him. My duplicity came to an end, and a new beginning, when Jaggers came up with a plan to finally rid himself of Win altogether, and I was given the starring role. Looking back now, I wonder why he was so adamant that Win needed to be dealt with. We were down to mere weeks before his sixteenth birthday. Control I suppose – and that ruthless need to destroy he always carried within him.

It was the first mugging either of the gangs had been involved in. Until then our crimes were amongst ourselves or against arch enemies such as the biker gang. We confined ourselves to petty larceny and a minor amount of vandalism to local shopkeepers but this was an audacious and deliberate plan to rob a third party – someone totally uninvolved with our petty internal politics, and an old woman to boot. Jaggers and one of his lackeys had been observing the old dear who lived in the end terrace just before the corner shop. She had to be about ninety, shuffling along in her carpet slippers, clutching her small pink floral shopping bag and battered brown leather handbag.

‘She goes every Tuesday, collects her pension and then comes home. Hers and her husband’s. There’ll be all of thirty quid in that bag.’ Jaggers was jubilant, ‘And you’re gonna get it, Kenny, but you’re gonna make sure you tell Win what you’re doing and take him with you, and when she calls for the Old Bill, you’re gonna dump the bag on Win.’

‘How am I gonna get him to come with me? He knows I wouldn’t go and do something like that off my own bat. And won’t he go down for it?’

‘Exactly.’ Jaggers smiled, a thin satisfied jeer. ‘It’ll be easy to get him to go with you. Just tell him I’m gonna take the cash off you when you’ve done it ’cos I’ve threatened you. He’ll be there like a shot – you see. Unless you don’t want to help me, and then ...’

The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Once was enough to make my insides knot and my lungs become a vacuum. I gasped out my agreement, and our fates were sealed. I’ve since understood how the criminal mind works, and the mentality that cannot be bettered by a rival. Jaggers had already worked it out – the fact that regardless of how risky it might be, the twin lures of me in trouble and Jaggers getting one over on him would be sufficient to get Win on the scene and as vulnerable as I had been with the bag round my head. It was a catch-22 for me. Without Win I was at Jaggers’ whim, with Win around I was always going to be under pressure to be used and abused in order to get rid of Win. If I declined to get involved altogether I set up the rest of my time at the children’s home to be one long nightmare of abuse. Overall, being in Jaggers’ gang was the less daunting because my smattering of practical psychology by then had already also told me that once I was no longer of use as a lever, Jaggers would probably lose interest in me and then life would be considerably quieter and safer. I sacrificed Win for safety as the town of Maycomb sacrificed Tom Robinson to racial inequality. What I didn’t know – and maybe it would have made no difference even if I had because the dilemma I was in wouldn’t have changed – was that Jaggers always planned to be there and taking an active part. It wasn’t merely a rob-and-run, and then dump the goods on Win to take the rap. It was to make sure Win not only went down, but that he went down for a very long time.

Jaggers appeared out of nowhere and beat the old woman to a pulp whilst Win and I looked on aghast. The die was cast. She fell to the ground moaning and I was shocked in the way I’d been when I’d seen Mrs Fenner’s cat dead. The bloody straw-coloured fluid running from her nose and dripping onto the pavement was like the brown gunge – just no maggots. My fertile mind added them later as she lay cold and dead on a mortuary slab. The bobby’s whistle sounded like a miniature klaxon as Jaggers grabbed the bloodied bag from me and shoved it into Win’s hands. Win was rooted to the spot, but instinctive reaction opened his hands to accept the bag whilst I gawped.

‘You set me up!’

I shut my eyes to Win’s face but it didn’t stop me imagining it later – like the maggots. He accused me, not Jaggers, but I knew who’d alerted the bobby. When I opened them Win was struggling to get up from where Jaggers had pushed him on top of the old woman, clothes covered in her blood.

‘Yeah, clever little brother you got, sucker!’ Jaggers grabbed my arm and pulled me away with him. I stumbled and almost fell but he half carried and half dragged me until we were out of sight round the corner of the road. Our running footsteps had drowned out anything else until then but standing behind the rickety fence bounding the terrace yards and struggling to stifle our panting I could hear the shindig surrounding Win and his victim. More whistle blowing and more feet, and Win’s voice stridently denying attacking her. Ambulance sirens followed, and then police sirens. I listened, dazed, until eventually Jaggers shook me and shoved me hard in the back to make me move.

‘C’mon. Stayed here long enough. Your brother’s doing his party piece now and we’ve got to scarper. Good job though,’ and he sniggered.

I’d never done anything until then that my conscience told me was absolutely and utterly wrong. That was one of the few times I have. I would not share that with Atticus. I’ve never shared it with anyone, yet Margaret had included it on her list. The woman’s name and the date. This mugging case was a replica. Was that why Margaret had been so intent on me taking it? Was it a sort of redemption, even though I would never obtain redemption from Win?

I didn’t see him again after that day. The police took him away in the panda car and someone from the children’s home had to sit in on the interview. He told the story as it had happened but no-one believed him. His quiet and studious little brother set him up? Highly unlikely, although of course, there was my name on the police record for ever and a day. Jaggers and I denied it, of course, and after a while Jaggers did leave me alone – once he’d found another use for me.

I got used to putting the guilt in a box and never lifting the lid to examine it after a while. I learnt how to store many things in there over my remaining time at the children’s home – self-respect, belief and the ability to love amongst them. I kept out of the box my instinct for self-preservation and the firm belief I’d never let myself be used by anyone ever again, unless the price was worth it. I would always find a pay-off for myself. Emotion, trust and reliance on anyone was a weakness that could lead to the most devastating vulnerability. Show nothing and share nothing. That way you stayed safe. That was my final lesson there – and what eventually got me out of the gutter I’d crawled into, although at that moment in time, as Win entered Borstal and I connived in sending him there, I still had a very long way to go before I did so.

‘I
t were when Nobby rang and Mum and Dad weren’t there so I had to talk to him ’cos I’m the oldest,’ he squared his shoulders importantly, ‘and he told me we weren’t to say nothing about where Dad was or how long he’d been away. Just to say he’d gone down the boozer and hadn’t come back yet. The little ones were grumbling about wanting something to eat and I don’t know how to cook stuff so we had toast. Sukie had one of them jumping beans and she was letting it jump all over the kitchen. I told her to leave it but she don’t listen to no-one and she set it off on the counter top and it jumped all over the place until it went in the toaster. She stuck her fingers in before I could stop her and the whole place went bang. Then the lights went out. It were like we were in a cave and it stunk – like a bonfire.’

‘When did this all happen, Danny?’

‘On Sun-day night. Mum said Dad was a prick ’cos he hadn’t come back yet and the tallyman would be back on Mon-day, but it weren’t going to be the usual one so she was in the shit and she’d have to do something about it. She dolled herself up in her gear and I knew she were going off down Brommy Street.’

‘The red light district?’ I queried of Miss Roumelia.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, stealing a glance at me and then looking carefully back down at her hands, clasped in front of her on her lap. A cursory assessment would have indicated they were relaxed but I could see how the thumbs pressed tensely into the fingers, making indentations of lighter flesh where they dug in. The naked pink of her palms peeped through the fretwork of darker fleshed fingers. In that moment she seemed more vulnerable than the boy. Unexpectedly I felt immensely sorry for her. The emotion was somewhere between the kind of protectiveness I imagined a father might feel for his daughter and a mentor might feel for his protégé. It didn’t sit well with the more lurid thoughts that had overwhelmed me earlier and left me feeling uneasy, like something was crawling around my chest cavity and making my innards twitch whenever they came into contact. I must have kept my eyes on her for a moment too long because the next glance she sneaked caught me out and the beast in my guts did a complete three-sixty degree turn. I turned my attention swiftly back to the boy.