Essex Boy: My Story (8 page)

We couldn’t even afford to get our hair cut very often, so I always had this stupid long hair that wasn’t in a proper style.
My fringe would be down to my eyebrows most of the time,
and Mum wouldn’t let me get it cut until it was right in my eyes and I could hardly see.

Until this time I hadn’t worried too much about not having the best of everything, or all the clothes or games that the other kids had.
But after starting secondary school these things do
matter a lot more.
You want to fit in, and have whatever is in fashion, or own something that everyone else is talking about.

I hate telling these stories, because it makes Mum sound bad, and I need to make it clear, she one hundred per cent wasn’t.
I knew she was trying her hardest, and fuck, man, she
wasn’t bringing us up badly – she was doing her absolute best.
When she could she would get us nice clothes, and she was always teaching us good manners and to keep clean, but at the
end of the day we still lived like scum.
So even though I would hear her cry herself to sleep every night, I couldn’t help asking her for money.
I feel bad about it, and I wasn’t
helping her, but I guess I was just being a typical kid of eleven, and then it would turn into a row.

I’d say, ‘Mum, have you got any money?
I want to go and buy something.’

‘No, Kirk, you know I’ve got no money!’
she’d shout, frustrated at me for asking again.

‘Oh, you won’t give your son any money.
What kind of mum are you?
You give me nothing!’
I’d kick off.

And she’d start crying, and that would cause a blazing row, and then my temper would be ridiculous and I’d start smashing things up.
I’d break stuff.

Some days I’d get really depressed.
I’d wake up and feel like I couldn’t face the day.
Sometimes it was just that I didn’t want to have to sit through more school work,
or other times it was because of what I didn’t have.
I know I wasn’t the only one in my position – it was the same for a lot of the kids in the area – but I felt so
embarrassed if I had to go to school in ankle-swinger trousers because we couldn’t afford a new pair.
Or things that sound daft now, like everyone wearing one type of shoes, like Rockports,
that we couldn’t afford.
And I’d be there without them, feeling left out.
So a lot of the time I would just bunk off.
The school would ring Mum, and sometimes people from the council
would come and see her, and she would tell me to go.
I would for a bit, to keep her happy, but then I’d get sick of it and stay home again.
I don’t think she really minded, as she knew
education wasn’t for me and that I was always in trouble anyway.
She accepted I wasn’t academic and that school was a bit of a waste of time for me.
I do feel strongly that school
isn’t for everyone, and there are different ways of getting on in life.
If you aren’t academic, it’s like torture being there – it’s embarrassing.

Instead, I would just be kicking around the park in front of the hostel, because that’s where all the kids hung out.
Or if it was too cold we’d break into a car and sit in it.
We
never stole anything, we just wanted somewhere warm to sit, and luckily we never got caught.
Until then, I’d never stolen anything in my life.
I remember the one time I tried, I took a pack
of bubblegum from this shop, walked out, then shit myself and went back in, said, ‘Oh, I forgot to pay for these,’ and handed over 24p!

I think that was something Mum taught us.
She used to say, ‘You start stealing anything, you are disowned,’ and that was enough to keep us in line.
She had her standards and she
wanted us to keep to them.

During this time, Mum got a job as a cashier in the supermarket Gateway – now called Somerfield.
In our situation that was a good job, and people thought she had done
well to get it.
If anyone got any job around our way it was seen as well done – there was no snobbery about the kind of work.
Especially with Mum’s kidney problems still surfacing at
times, it was even harder for her than for most.
She always made sure we knew how much she cared, and would tell us she loved us every day.
Mum also did her best to protect us from the rest of the
people in the block, but that wasn’t always easy, as there were some right characters .
.
.

On some levels there was a real communal feeling in the building, like we were all in the shit together, and we’d help each other out, especially among the people who shared our floor.
But
in another way, there were some proper rough heads that everyone knew as being the ones on drugs, or robbing houses at night.
I’d hear people passing the door at 4 a.m., discussing their
night’s work.

‘I got in the back window to that house down King’s Avenue.
Proper rich ol’ geezer lives there, so I done all right tonight!’

‘Nice one.
Well, if you need to sell any of it, let me know, I’ve got someone I can right trust at the minute.’

All that kind of chat.
And it wasn’t just kept to outside of the hostel, sadly.
Sometimes people would come back to find their own doors kicked in, and their stuff robbed.
Not that most of
us had anything worth taking.
But I never had a restful night in that place, as we never knew what might happen.

There were kids living in that hostel who were so naughty their parents hated them, and refused to let them live with them, so had kicked them out.
Like one guy called Wayne.
He was seventeen
but had the mental age of a twelve year old, and had been abandoned by his parents as a kid.
He was a biggish lad, but was obsessed with the Army, and was always sneaking around the corridors in
camouflage clothing, as though he was on a secret mission.
Wayne had been in trouble in the past with the police for stalking, and had been accused of rape, although he was never convicted.
He used
to fancy my mum and would lurk outside our room.

‘Your mum in, Kirk?’

‘No.’

‘Tell her I’m looking for her.
I fancy her.’

I never really understood the threat of it, and that it must have been scary for Mum.
I just accepted him as another slightly odd neighbour.

The one that freaked me out the most was this guy who, I kid you not, used to walk around in a nappy.
He was in his mid-thirties and couldn’t talk, and would wander around and just stand
in reception for hours on end, staring.
It got to me – I was genuinely scared of him.
I know it wasn’t his fault, as he must have been very ill, but he was like a giant baby –
although he never had any nurses with him, or people to look after him.
Whenever I was outside and coming in, I’d peer round the door first to see if he was there, and if he was, I’d
take a deep breath, psych myself up and – whoosh!
– sprint through the door and up the stairs as fast as I could to get past him.

All of this was horrible for Mum.
Obviously these weren’t the people she wanted to see her kids growing up around, but it was hard for her to stop that happening.
One thing she did do for
our safety was befriend some of the bad guys, so we would be protected.

There was this big muscly guy called Duncan, about twenty-five years old, who lived underneath us.
He was bad news really, a right thief who didn’t mind living in the hostel – the
way he saw it, he was lucky to be there and not in prison.
But Mum got friendly with him and he started looking out for us all.
It was like that – you needed people on your side, to make sure
things were all right for you.
When there are bad boys you want them with you rather than against you.
Duncan and his mates started taking over our room, just coming and hanging out there.
I loved
it, as I felt like I was at the centre of everything, but I could see Mum wasn’t happy.

‘Come on, lads, we need some sleep now, so do one, please!’
she’d try.
And they’d nod, but not move from their position, sprawled over her bed, for a few more hours.
But
this was a small price to pay for their protection.

As for Dad, our visits had dropped from every weekend to every other weekend.
Looking back, I think he wanted to spend time with his kids, but was torn between us and Stacie.
At the time, though, it seemed like Dad wasn’t really interested in us.
If we were lucky he took us to the park for a kick-about, or to the cinema, but a lot of the time we were just left to
entertain ourselves.

My relationship with Stacie had reached an all-time low.
I could just about make myself say ‘hello’ to her when we arrived, and that was it.
I felt as if she didn’t want us
there, and nor, it seemed, did Dad.
I saw the whole visit as a waste of time.

I also hated the pain it still caused Mum when we went to stay with Dad.
She’d try to hide it at first when we got back, sulking but not saying why.
Then it would come out in an outburst,
which could be caused by anything.
Like she’d say, ‘Come on, then, time for dinner.’

And without thinking, I’d reply, ‘No, we’re all right, we had a massive lunch at Dad’s, so I’m not hungry.’

‘Oh, you prefer to eat with your dad, do you?
Oh right, I get it.
And I suppose her, too.
Like your new mum, is she?
Love her now, do you?’

And it would go on and on.
It caused so much grief, I’d rather not have gone round to Dad’s in the first place.

Another time my brother was going on a school trip to some museum and he was so excited about it.
The day before we went round to Dad’s, and Stacie fancied herself as a bit of a
hairdresser, so she cut Daniel’s hair.
When we got home, Mum was so pissed off that he had let her do it, she said, ‘Look at the state of you, you let that cow cut your hair!
Right, sit
down here.
I’ll make it better!’
and she took chunks out of his hair with clippers.
He looked a right state and was crying his eyes out and had to go on this school trip the next day
looking like he’d had a fight with a lawnmower.

I didn’t blame Mum on one level – what Dad had put her through was horrible.
And I’m sure she sat there when we were away for the weekend imagining us all playing happy
families without her, even though that’s not how it was at all.
Dad did sometimes ask Daniel and me to go and live with him, but it was like he felt he had to say it, as we were his kids by
blood, rather than because he really wanted us to live there.
We didn’t want to anyway, and we’d never have done that to Mum.
I honestly believe if we had left her, she’d have
killed herself.

I still have never understood why Dad didn’t help Mum out more.
I’m sure he had his reasons, but after we said we were staying with Mum, I wish he had said, ‘Right, if
that’s the path you’re taking, I’ll buy your mum a house.’

If it was me in his position, I would work double the amount, I’d work my fingers to the bone for my family, to do whatever it took to get them out of a hostel.
But he didn’t, and I
do think that is sad.

I think he must have felt caught as he obviously had commitments to Stacie as well, so it wasn’t just up to him what he did.

Christmas was no better.
We’d spend it with Mum one year and with Dad the next, and Christmas 1999 it was Dad’s turn to have us.
Mum spent the whole lead-up through December crying
her eyes out every day.
She would say, ‘I can’t afford to get you presents.
What kind of a mum am I?’

And I’d tell her, ‘Mum, don’t worry, we don’t want presents!’

But of course I did.
What kid doesn’t?
And she saved up and got me a Michael Jackson cassette, and my brother a video.
I knew presents were where Dad could excel, though.
So even though
Christmas itself was rubbish, as Dad and Stacie rowed all day, the food was good, and Dad wasn’t bad for a Game Boy or new clothes.

I tried to hide them back at the hostel, and make out like Dad had hardly given us much, but when Mum did see the presents you could see the pain in her eyes, like it was killing her, and I
wished I’d never even been given anything at all.

One weekend in the spring of 2000, Dad told us, ‘I’m gonna be moving house, boys – not far, I’ll still be in Grays, but I’ve been saving my money
lately and me and Stacie are going to be in a nicer house.’

Well, it didn’t mean too much to us at first.
He was still in the area, and as we didn’t live there it just meant there was a different house to visit.
But then it got to the next
week and he gave us the address and we headed over to see him.
As we got closer, it dawned on us which house it was.
Only the huge white one by my primary school that I used to dream of living in,
the biggest bloody house in the town!
Daniel and I couldn’t believe it.
Had he won the Lottery or something?!