A Cockney's Journey (33 page)

    I started to feel frustrated and angry, my patience wearing thin.
    “Why don’t you stay still? Do you want me to follow?” I cried.
    No response came from the direction of the swinging light. Then the eerie silence was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps behind me. I spun round to see yet another light swinging to and fro in the distance.
    
What the hell is going on? Shall I go forward or back?
    Unfortunately, standing in eternal darkness I didn’t know if I was going forward or backwards.
    “Follow your instincts; choose what path to follow,” the voice said calmly.
    “Who are you? Why are you stalking me?” I asked frantically. “What do you want from me?”
    “Nothing. Nothing you’ve got I want. Except him. He wants you to choose. Only you can choose. No one else can.”
    “OK, fine. I’ll go towards the first light,” I said confidently.
    “You didn’t give that decision much thought, did you?” the voice said “Are you sure that’s what you want? You’ve still got to find the oak tree,” the voice added.
    “Yes. I’m sure, so are you going to tell me who ‘he’ is?” I asked curiously.
    “No, you’ll soon find out for yourself,” the voice said quietly. “Anyway, my time with you is up. You must continue your search for the oak tree. Don’t forget once you’re near the tombstone, all will be revealed.”
    I still didn’t trust what the voice told me; my gut feeling told me it was lying, or at the very least setting me up. I continued with utmost caution towards the first swinging light. I glanced over my shoulder. The second light was gaining on me quicker than I did the first. The footsteps behind me grew louder and louder, forcing me to move faster towards the first light. This time I started to rapidly gain on the apparition swinging in the darkness. As I drew nearer, my eyes gazed in horror at the hideous creatures lurking in the shadows of the swinging light. I stopped and became rooted to the spot. My left leg felt something tug at it and my right was being dragged down as if into an invisible abyss. I started to feel wet up to my waist; these little green, bald-headed, fetid, reptile-like foetuses were now consuming me; their sharp talons ripping at my clothes. The swinging light vanished as I sunk deeper and deeper, into what, I didn’t know. My entire body felt as if I’d been sucked into a large vacuum of a thick jelly-like substance and my eyes could not see past the blackness. A horrendous stench filled my nostrils, making me heave. I was now being dragged deeper into the substance by the creatures; my breathing became impaired and my movement restricted by the liquid. Suddenly, my descent stopped and the dragging pressure on my legs ceased. I felt light-headed and dizzy. I had this sensational feeling of being suspended, my arms outstretched like I was nailed to a cross, but without any pain. I started to hear faint muffled voices echoing in my ears, yet I could not ascertain what was being said.
    All of a sudden I could see a faint glimmer of light gaining in strength as if being turned up like a dimmer switch. I then realised, to my horror, that I was being suspended, naked, in a clear thick liquid inside a large glass container, which was standing in a forest clearing. My eyes frantically scanned around me, noticing tubes attached to every part of my body. My attention was drawn to the large oak tree with a cross carved in its bark. Glancing right of the tree, I could see the tombstone. Behind the tombstone, covered in a creeping vine stood a huge, arch-shaped door. I tried to move but I was paralysed, only my eyes could move. The rest of my body just hung there, motionless.
    “You chose the wrong path. If you had chosen the second light, you would have entered the door and returned back,” the voice laughed menacingly. “Now you’ll pay the price and stay here for Eternity.”
    I looked about the jar and screamed in a blind, despairing panic.
    I jerked violently awake and jumped up, forgetting about my foot. I fell flat on my face, just missing the coffee table. Sue came running in with the boys, looking at me in disgust as I lay on the floor shaking my head in disbelief.
    “Sorry, just had a terrible dream,” I said, dragging myself back over to the sofa. Daniel and Stephen sat flanking me, giving me a cuddle and Sue stuck on a video while she carried on cooking dinner. The three of us sat watching
The Jungle Book
. It was Dan and Steve’s favourite film. My foot was throbbing where I fell on it and my mind drifted back to the glass container in my dream.
    I was incapacitated for several weeks and being under Sue’s feet all day every day didn’t do our relationship any good. We were constantly arguing and bickering about the most trivial of things. The day the plaster came off was a huge relief for both of us! It took a few days for my joints to work properly and my walking and running returned to near normal. I started work for a local builder who was based in Deptford; the firm had just won a contract with Greenwich Council, refurbishing all their void properties in the area. Over the coming weeks, my life settled down again and I got on with my job as provider for the family, working six days a week. Every Friday, I would give Sue my wage packet and she would give me my pocket money, as I used to call it, for the week. Unfortunately, my wages were not enough to cover my van’s expenses like tax, MOT and insurance, so consequently most of my life I drove about with either bent documents or none at all. Seeing as I was never legal on the road, I couldn’t see the sense in passing my driving test, so I never bothered. Mind you, most of my Escort vans were beyond repair or needed shitloads of dosh to get them roadworthy, and this was well out of my league, financially. So I did what I had to do; it was either take the chance or starve, and I chose the former. What I didn’t know at the time was that my actions over these matters would be used years down the line to hurt me, which unfortunately it did immensely.
    I vividly remember the day Sue got mugged outside our own flat. New Cross was being pumped full of undesirables by the local council and these two guys robbed Sue of her jewellery and thumped her in the face; all this in front of my Stephen, who sat in his buggy, screaming; the bastards. She gave the police descriptions of her attackers and, after a lot of grief from other people in the manor, followed by threats, they were finally nicked and sent down. The doctor prescribed Sue anti-depressant tablets; she took the attack really badly and was a long time to getting over it. So we decided to move out of the area. Within weeks we were moved out to Kidbrooke, near Eltham, although we’d jumped out of the frying pan into the bloody fire.
    The Ferrier estate was rife with drugs and violent crimes; cars were nicked on a regular basis, shops robbed and set alight - absolutely mental. One morning, when I left for work, I saw a car embedded half in and out of the local supermarket. It was then that I decided to get out of the estate. The only way out was to either rent privately or buy our own house; private renting was out of our league so we started to look for a property local to the boys’ school. This took years.
    Even though we lived on the Ferrier for three years, we never stopped looking for somewhere else to live. It was during this time that an angel was born; our third edition to the family, my beloved son, Edward. As I mentioned earlier in the book, God blessed me with three fantastic sons and for that I will always be grateful. I watched all three of my sons being born, but only Edward’s birth alarmed and shocked me. Being six-to-eight weeks early, he resembled a drowned rat! He was so small and fragile that I was petrified to touch him in case he broke. Edward spent weeks in an incubator and it was touch and go if he would survive. If you look at him now, it’s hard to believe he didn’t even fill the palms of my hands. Amazing. Sue spent several weeks in Greenwich Hospital with Edward, and I looked after Dan and Steve, until they both came home from hospital. I must admit, regardless of how things have turned out now, I am somewhat proud of Sue’s achievements in the motherhood department!
    My job in Greenwich was no longer mine, having been sacked for taking too much time off work to look after the boys. When everything settled down and Edward started to fill out rapidly, I started work in Forest Hill, for an estate agent called Ron, refurbishing empty houses and flats for rent. I actually stayed with Ron for over two years. I even took Daniel and Stephen to work for him, doing external painting in the summer months. I recall their first job; Stephen got more paint on himself than he did on the wall. I just couldn’t stop laughing at the state of him. Bloody good days, they were.
    It was during a very bitterly cold March evening in 1985 that I got a phone call that devastated me; the news of my nan’s death knocked the stuffing out of me. I sat in the kitchen and cried for hours. She was gone and I couldn’t do anything about it. I tried to find out about funeral arrangements from my mother. She told me that she had no money to bury her and that the State would take care of it. I went absolutely ballistic, calling her all the names under the sun. How could she let her mother be cremated without anyone attending her funeral? Fucking bitch! I was powerless do anything so my lovely nan was cremated like a pauper in Ramsgate. To this day, I haven’t got a clue where Nan’s ashes ended up.
    I left Ron’s employment under somewhat of a cloud. This was due to the fact that I had started to get bored with the same old routine. Unfortunately, Ron had high hopes of me and when I left he was bitterly disappointed and extremely angry. I decided to try my luck at building my own business; putting adverts in all the local rags and even the
Yellow Pages
. Whatever savings I had were soon swallowed up by my advertising campaign. I spent three months running around pricing potential work and sending out estimates, all to no avail. Then it happened. Feeling very despondent and dejected, fate dealt me yet another hammer blow; I was sitting in the living room with Sue and the boys when the front door bell rang. Three firemen stood at the door, asking if I owned the blue Ford Escort van parked out the front. When I confirmed that the van was mine, they told me they’d just put it out. Apparently, the van caught fire and a passer-by phoned the fire brigade. Well, you can imagine, the van was a write-off and all my tools had perished in the blaze. I was now technically fucked; no job, no transport and no bloody tools; my livelihood taken away in blink of an eye.
    It was during these dark days of no money and no self-esteem that a small spark appeared at the end of the tunnel; well that’s what I thought anyway. The council offered us a three bed-roomed house in Eltham. After viewing the property, we moved in three weeks later. The house was small, compared to our flat in Kidbrooke, but, having said that, there were numerous plusses, such as front and back gardens, leaded windows and three average-sized bedrooms. Most important of all, though, were the friendly neighbours. During the first few weeks in our new home, I actually managed to get a two hundred and fifty pound loan from the local Provident agent, which helped me buy a second hand Ford Granada and a bag of tools. The car was a wreck, with no MOT or tax; hence the hundred pound price tag. The remainder of the loan went on certain tools and two weeks’ shopping.
    It wasn’t long before I was back in work, starting for Mick Lovett. He subbed all his work from Kier London who, in turn, had a two year contract with Southwark Council. Driving from Eltham to Bermondsey and vice versa everyday was, to say the least, hair-raising; the Granada was a serious death trap and on many occasions it either over-heated or simply just stopped dead.
    If it’s any consolation, being illegal made me a very careful driver, and in my defence, I had no choice but to take the chance. In all the time I drove illegally on the road I never had an accident or harmed anyone. I wasn’t a yob; I just had to feed my family and pay the bills, which I did to the best of my ability. If any vehicle of mine needed hundreds of pounds spent on it to pass its MOT, which unfortunately most of them did, I would have no option but to acquire a bent one for fifty notes. The same could be said of car tax and insurance cover notes. Cover notes were only bought to get road tax or producing at the local nick, if I was unlucky enough to get a tug.
    Well, now I’ve got that off my chest, which I must add I’m not proud of, I’ll continue with my story.
    Working for Mick Lovett in Southwark was very interesting; the work varied from fitting kitchens, plastering, repairing and renewing garden fences and the most distressing, code 1 which was forcing entry and renewing locks during evictions. Unfortunately, I was the quickest and the best at getting into homes, even the homes that were like fortresses. So, on every eviction, I would tag along with Council officials, bailiffs and the local police and wait. I only got the nod when everything else failed, which was nearly every eviction.
    I remember one particular eviction, which took place two weeks before Christmas. It was a bitterly cold Thursday afternoon. By 3 p.m., the temperature had plummeted to minus 2 degrees. If I’d known what was on the other side of the front door, I would have refused to do my job, however like most of the evictions, I didn’t see the occupants until the bailiffs dragged them out and started dumping their belongings in the street. It took a matter of moments before I had the front door open and what confronted me sent a shiver down my spine. Right before my eyes, huddled up on the floor was a woman with her two children; all three of them were screaming and crying hysterically. I noticed that they were trying to keep warm by cuddling each other under a blanket. In front of them were six or seven burning candles. My heart sank so deep I lost control of my senses; my eyes started to well up and I was very angry with myself.
    The bailiffs advanced to the front door and I instinctively barred their entry with my arm, and stood in the doorway with my hammer in one hand waving at them to retreat, which thankfully they did. The woman’s kids were only four or five years old, I just couldn’t stand by and do nothing, even if it meant getting the sack, I just couldn’t. So what followed next was a complete and heart-warming surprise. Standing with the council officials looking distraught at the events unfolding before her eyes, stood a smartly dressed lady called Ms. Jennings, who just happened to be the local social worker! After a lengthy debate with officials, she managed to get the authorities to back off until after Christmas, informing them that the social fund would help this particular case, which was music to my ears. Mind you, I did receive a verbal warning from the manager of Kier. Mick Lovell, though, to his credit, stood up for me saying that if the boot was on the other foot he would have acted in exactly the same way, which I thought was really decent of him.