It was as though after the experience with Uncle Douglas I had passed some sort of test and shown myself to be ready for the market. They were all strong and I soon gave up trying to resist them or fight them off. It was pointless because I was an undernourished nine-year-old and they were all grown men. Every protest I made just earned me a beating each time, which merely delayed the inevitable and meant that I would eventually be left in more pain than I would have to endure if I simply gave in and co-operated. It was better to let them get on with whatever it was they wanted to do to me so it would be over as quickly as possible and they would go away and leave me alone sooner. Amani kept telling me that everything that happened in my cell or inside the house had to remain a closely guarded secret. He pretended that it was for my own good that no one else found out.
‘If anyone ever finds out about this,’ he told me, ‘they will go to the police and they will put you in jail.’
I believed him because one of the men who came to the cell had told me he was a policeman and I had never had any reason to doubt the truth of that statement. The visiting policeman made sure I knew that he had locked up lots of little boys like me in the past, and he was always using his steel handcuffs on me in the cell. They seemed to be part of the thrill for him.
‘If you ever go to any of my friends at the police station and tell them what goes on here,’ he warned me, ‘I will get to hear about it and then I’ll come back here and kill you. Do you understand?’
I would always nod and keep my eyes averted, never wanting to look as though I was challenging them or being insolent. I had no cause to doubt that all these men would be willing to kill me if they felt they had to in order to protect themselves. Maybe they would even enjoy doing it. But it never occurred to me to tell anyone else anyway. Their secrets were safe with me. After all the things that had happened to me in the previous few years I had no reason to think that anyone would believe me or help me or make my life more bearable in any way. If even policemen were doing this sort of thing to children, who was there left for me to turn to? Since I still couldn’t speak or write I couldn’t imagine how they thought I was going to tell anyone anything. My situation was completely hopeless. I was entirely cut off from the rest of the world in my silence.
I suppose it was at this stage that Mum realized she could earn some money from the services I was being forced to provide to Amani’s friends. She started gloating to me during my beatings that she was going to make money off me, and lots of it, but at the time I couldn’t understand what she meant. I thought perhaps it was something to do with the nuts and the cuckoo that Wally had told me were in her head; maybe they were making her imagine stuff. How could a little boy like me make her lots of money, particularly if I never left the house apart from going to school? It gradually dawned on me that the visitors to the house, such as Uncle Douglas, must be paying her for the privilege of doing things to me. Since I had always been made to do these sorts of things with family members for free anyway I wondered if this might turn out to be a good thing, despite the fact that it hurt and I hated doing it. Perhaps Mummy would love me more if I managed to earn her some money? If I was very successful at it, I reasoned, maybe she would even let me have regular food and a warm room, wanting to keep me fit and healthy so I could keep on working for her for longer.
‘Uncle Douglas is going to be taking you for a day out,’ she told me a couple of weeks after I first met him. She then shouted at me a lot, wanting to be sure I understood how badly she would hurt me if I didn’t do exactly as I was told when I was with him.
‘You won’t be hurt any more if you do what Mummy says,’ Amani told me when he came to my cell to get me on the day of the planned outing. I nodded to show I understood, carefully avoiding looking up at him. ‘But if this ever gets out,’ he went on, ‘I’ll cut your fucking eyes out. Come with me.’
I obediently followed him upstairs to the bathroom with no idea what lay in store for me. He ordered me into the shower and scrubbed me down roughly in the water. I suppose he wanted to get rid of all the smells on my flesh, including the recent stink of his own urine.
‘Are you ready for this, boy?’ he laughed. ‘You’re up for sale.’
I remembered Wally telling me that no one else should be allowed to touch my private parts. He was the only person I’d ever met who seemed to believe that so I supposed he must have been mistaken. He wasn’t like any of the others in the family so maybe he was the strange one, not them. He had gone now anyway, so maybe Amani and Mum and Larry and Barry and Uncle Douglas were all right and I just had to put up with whatever they wanted to do to me. Everything in my life hurt, both physically and mentally, and the years I had spent coping with it had left me numb, as well as angry and miserable. I was tired of even thinking about it because it never made any difference.
When Uncle Douglas came to collect me that day money openly changed hands in the hallway, but I don’t know how much because I didn’t dare to look up from the floor. If Mum caught me looking at transactions like that I would get a real beating. Uncle Douglas was as charming with Mum as she was with him; anyone would have thought it was her he had called for as they flirted away with one another. While he waited in the passageway she hauled me into the kitchen for what she called ‘a prep talk’.
‘Right, you no good little bastard,’ she hissed. ‘Make sure you do whatever Uncle Douglas says. He’s my best customer and if I find out you haven’t done what he tells you I will fucking kill you when you get back.’
She grabbed me by the throat and stared into my eyes.
‘Do we understand each other?’
I nodded and she transferred her iron grip to my wrist, leading me back out to where Douglas was waiting. He gripped my wrist even harder than her, frightened, I suppose, that I would do a runner the moment I was outside the front door.
‘What time do you want him home?’ he asked her.
‘About eightish?’ she suggested. ‘Enjoy yourselves. Be good, Joe.’
Anyone overhearing them would have thought she was seeing me off for an afternoon at the zoo with my favourite uncle. Douglas smiled down at me as he led me out to his dark blue Ford car, opening the back door so I could climb in, as if he really was my uncle and we really were going for a nice day out together.
‘That’s a good boy,’ he said cheerily. ‘In you get. Put your belt on.’
The moment he slammed the door and walked round to the driver’s side I panicked and tried to make a bid for freedom. I wrenched at the handle, intending to make a run for it. I don’t know where I thought I could have run to; I just knew I didn’t want to go with him. A horrible feeling of dread gripped my stomach as the handle moved but the door stayed firmly locked. It was like being in a nightmare where I had no control over my surroundings or anything that was happening to me. He must have been able to hear exactly what I was trying to do, but he stayed calm as he climbed into his seat, looking back over his shoulder at me and smiling again. He knew full well there was no way I could get out of that car; as we set off I noticed that the winding mechanisms for the rear windows had been removed. It was as though I was travelling as a prisoner in the back of a police van, being transported between jail cells.
Once I realized there was no way of escaping I didn’t want to make a fuss and risk getting a beating from him, or from Mum when I got home, so I stayed still and waited to see what would happen next. I knew from experience that if I gave him any cheeky looks or struggled at all I would get punched.
I noticed he had a bible in the front with him. In the coming months I discovered he always seemed to have one around him somewhere. It’s hard to understand how he could reconcile the things he read in those pages with the things he did in his own life, but he never seemed to be a man who was troubled by his conscience. Maybe he had managed to convince himself that he was doing God’s work in some way. Whenever he was waiting for someone and had a few minutes to spare he would open the good book and read a few pag
es. He was often mumbling to himself in those quiet moments, like some old nutter in the park. Maybe he hoped he was securing himself a place in Heaven. Some hope.
The journey lasted about an hour and Douglas talked most of the way, his voice pleasant one moment and aggressive the next, telling me all the things he liked to do to little boys like me, and to little girls as well. I didn’t want to listen to him but I wasn’t particularly shocked by anything he said because I’d heard Amani and Larry and Barry talking in the same way many times, as well as the other visitors Amani had brought to my cell. I thought I knew pretty much all the things that people like Uncle Douglas liked to do to children.
When we got close to our destination he pulled the car into a secluded lay-by and started shouting at me, just as Mum had, telling me over and over again that if I made a noise or acted up he would kill me. He produced a knife from the glove compartment and waved it in the air. Knowing how violent he had been at the house I didn’t doubt that he would be willing to use it. He was just as frightening as Mum and Amani. Once he thought he had intimidated me enough he drove off again and a few minutes later he turned into the car park of a rural hotel. He tucked the car round a corner out of sight of the building. He switched off the engine, turned round and gave me a final warning not to cross him, then he showed me a gun he had in his pocket. I’m not sure if it was real or just a toy one, but it was enough to terrify me anyway. I was even more scared of that gun than I was of the knife in the glove compartment.
‘If you try to run,’ he told me, ‘I will shoot you and cut your body up into tiny pieces.’
I was so frightened I nearly wet myself.
He climbed out and slammed the door behind him. He went to the back of the car, opened the boot and then opened the door nearest to me. He pulled me out of my seat and round to the back, lifted me up and dropped me into the open boot as if I was an old suitcase.
‘Stay calm and keep quiet,’ he ordered. ‘If you make a sound I will kill you.’
He slammed the lid shut, leaving me shivering in the dark, listening to his disappearing footsteps. I wondered how much air there was; was I going to suffocate before he got back? What if something happened to him and no one knew I was there? How long would it be before someone found my body? I felt as though I was already lying in my coffin.
Uncle Douglas must have gone into the hotel to check in and get a key. A few minutes later I heard a woman’s voice outside. For a split second I considered shouting out for help and banging on the roof, but then I thought better of it, remembering how convincing he had been when he talked about killing me, and realizing that this woman might be a friend of his, just like Mum. The voices faded away again. A few minutes later there were more footsteps.
‘It’s only me,’ Uncle Douglas whispered. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’
He opened the boot and helped me out. I was shaking but he was obviously nervous too, darting furtive looks around him all the time. ‘Be a good boy and you won’t get hurt,’ he said. ‘You know the rules.’
He had a gold key in his hand attached to a large number on a plastic key ring. He hurried me through some bushes to the door of a chalet-style hotel room slightly separated from the rest of the hotel. He held onto me with one hand as he used the key to open the door with the other. Inside was a large double bedroom. He shut and locked the door behind us. He pulled the curtains and immediately led me through into the ensuite bathroom. Then he told me to undress and get into the shower with him.
Once we were both standing under the water he touched my private parts, telling me how nice it all was and then suddenly lifted me up by the armpits so that my face was level with his. It was as if he had suddenly gone into a frenzy. He was kissing, licking and biting me, sinking his vile yellow old teeth into my chest and neck. His breath stank so badly it made me want to be sick. The assault seemed to go on forever and when he finally let me go and I dropped in a heap at his feet I thought he must have finished, but he hadn’t. Grabbing my hair and pulling it till I whimpered with the pain, he forced my face onto his private parts and continued to live out his fantasy, calling me a dirty little pig and a stream of other names. He ordered me to swallow his semen or he would beat me and I knew I had no choice, almost choking as I tried to get it down.
When he had eventually finished he gave me a hard slap round the head.
‘You’re a good boy,’ he said. ‘Show me how much you’ve enjoyed yourself. Go on, smile. Lick your lips.’
I did as I was told, trying to look happy and to hold back the tears, then he went back to insulting me and telling me I was filthy and how I loved his cock. It was as if he was angry with me for what had happened, as if it showed I was a filthy piece of dirt because I wanted to do stuff like that. Then he seemed to decide he wanted a break.
‘Stay in here until I’m ready for you again,’ he ordered and went through into the bedroom, leaving me lying in a heap in the corner of the shower, my chest heaving with sobs, the water still pouring down over me as I curled up into a ball, my arms wrapped around my legs. About fifteen minutes must have passed before he came back in, still naked, sipping a cup of tea he’d made himself. To my horror I saw that he was stiff again as he told me what game he wanted to play next.
‘You’ve got to learn how to play these games,’ he told me, placing his teacup carefully down on a shelf. ‘If you make any mistakes next time I will be causing you severe pain.’
He was playing with himself again, apparently taking pleasure in watching me crying and seeing the fear in my eyes. As he dragged me by the hair into the bedroom I clung onto his wrists, trying to lessen the pain. He hurled me onto the bed, ordering me to lie on my stomach before tying my wrists and ankles to the bed frames and smacking me really violently with his hands. The more I struggled the more he enjoyed it, pleasuring himself over and over again and then eventually lying down on top of me, almost suffocating me in his layers of smelly, sweaty, flabby flesh, squeezing my neck hard, forcing my body to allow him to penetrate me.
‘What a good boy you are,’ he would tell me every time he finished, but then he would start on some new, violent humiliation.
When he eventually needed a rest he tied me to the radiator in the bathroom and went off, locking the doors behind him, telling me not to make a sound till he got back. I was left squatting naked on the cold tiles, feeling sick with disgust at everything that had been done to me, as well as terrified about what was still to come. My head was spinning and every part of me was in agony. I didn’t think I could survive any more pain.
When Uncle Douglas returned an hour or so later his breath smelled of drink so I imagine he must have been sitting in the hotel bar, gloating over his sexual adventures. He was carrying a glass of water and bent down to lift my floppy head so that I could take some sips from it. He untied me and told me to take another shower but as I stood up I fainted. I was probably only unconscious for a few minutes and when I came round he had lifted me into the shower and was washing me again. He then dried me off and carried me through to the bedroom and dressed me as if nothing had happened. He carried me out to the car and chucked my lifeless body onto the back seat, leaving the key inside the hotel room for the staff to find.
When I got home I was carried back down to the basement and left on my mattress to recover. Although I didn’t understand it at the time, my grooming had begun in earnest.
Chapter Eleven
The Movie Business
Initially I was a bit of a novelty for the other kids at school – the first mute boy any of them had ever met – but it wasn’t long before that novelty had worn off and I was just another easy target for teasing and bullying. I was used to being a victim; it was a part I had been playing for years and nothing any of the other kids said or did to me came close to the horrors that I had already experienced at home or with Uncle Douglas, but it still made me sad to feel excluded from everyone around me yet again. I would have loved to make some friends but no one wanted
to hang out with me because I was different and weird. A lot of them found it impossible to resist teasing me, knowing I couldn’t answer back. What was so wrong with me, I wondered, that everyone seemed to want to have a go at me all the time? Maybe I had inherited Dad’s genes and was just as horrible and wicked as Mum had always told me I was. Maybe it was all Dad’s fault that my life was the way it was, as Wally had said – but deep down I knew that Dad was still the only person who had ever really loved me.
The girls at school were even worse than the boys when it came to picking on someone who couldn’t answer back. They danced round me all the time, taunting me, calling me ‘Dumbty Dumbty’.
‘Do you want a sweetie?’ they’d ask, all fake smiles and fluttering eyes. ‘Was that a “no”? Or a “yes”? Must have been a “no” I guess!’ And then they would run off laughing, leaving me still struggling to get the right word out. I could think of so many things I wanted to say but they had to remain bottled up inside me, simmering up to the boil.
The worst time was lunchtime because I couldn’t sneak off and find a quiet corner somewhere. I had to go into the canteen with everyone else if I wanted to eat, and I was always starving. The dinner ladies were kind and did their best to protect me at times when there weren’t any teachers around, going mad at my tormentors when they caught them and sending them off to the headmaster. But the bullies just got more sly, digging me painfully in the ribs when the grown-ups were looking away or pinching me under the table, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t make a sound. I was an outcast, just a dummy and a punch bag. Thomas used to stick up for me whenever he was nearby, even though he was three years younger than me. He’d kick anyone he caught picking on me with all his growing strength, but he had friends of his own age and didn’t want to be standing guard over me every hour of the day.
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