Sarah Jones - Call Me Evil, Let Me Go

Bearing in mind that we weren’t allowed to go out without permission and I had no idea if Kath would be on my side, I was taking a big risk. I certainly hadn’t thought it through. It was as if something more powerful than myself was pushing me forward. Part of me was in a complete panic, but there was also a quiet but firm voice in my brain telling me that Kath always seemed to keep her own counsel and I should trust my instinct. We got into my car and I drove into the centre of town as if my life depended on it, which indeed I felt it did. I was convinced that at any second God would strike me dead because I wasn’t doing His will. There could be no greater sin than deliberately disobeying orders and going to a bookshop run by people who would surely go to Hell. Sooner or later that would be my destination too, I thought, even if I were lucky enough to be spared for the next half-hour. My dicing with fate seemed more dangerous than leaping off Mount Everest blindfolded on a dark, freezing night. Utter madness. My choice of destination would also inevitably mean I would lose my children to the secular world – something I’d repeatedly been told was a fate worse than death. It didn’t occur to me to question what type of God could be so capricious as to strike you down for going to a bookshop without permission.

I was shaking like a leaf by the time I arrived in town and parked by the bookshop. I looked around, half expecting to see a celestial firing squad lined up on the pavement waiting for me. There was nothing. I was equally relieved to see no one I knew nearby. As we walked into the bookshop I took a deep breath. My heart was beating incredibly fast. I wanted to get out as soon as possible and try to save my life. I looked desperately along the shelves, at first too scared to focus or read any of the titles. Then suddenly my eyes lighted on a slim white book entitled When a Church Becomes a Cult, by Stephen Wookey. I looked quickly around for Kath, pulled her over, pointed at the book and with shaking hands took two copies off the shelves. I gave her one and we each paid for our own copy. Then I drove back to Tadford as fast as I could, feeling a strange mixture of terror and exhilaration as I quickly prayed for my life to be spared.

I dared not go home in case someone spotted me, reported me to Black and I was hauled into his office and asked why I wasn’t working. So I suggested to Kath that we go back to the recording room. She agreed and as soon as we were safely inside we locked the door. It was something I did when I had a lot to do and didn’t want to be disturbed, so in itself that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. If someone should knock on the door and want to speak to either of us for whatever reason, I decided, I would sit on the book. Kath and I then sat at adjacent desks and began reading our books. I took a green highlighter and marked the sentences that meant something to me. There were so many I nearly ran out of ink. I also began crying so much I could hardly breathe. I have never read anything so fast, but it was vital to dash through it before anyone disturbed us. At the same time I couldn’t skip a single word. The contents mesmerized me and I recognized an enormous amount of similarity between what was being described in the book and my life at Tadford. As I turned each page I realized more and more clearly what sort of place I was in. It felt as if I were being given a powerful electric shock that was reawakening the real me that had been crushed for so many years. My reaction was that everything about my life at Tadford was completely shattered and that I had been part of one big lie. I saw with rare clarity that I had to get out. The only question was: how?

I was born Sarah Alice Weston, the third child and second daughter of Pamela and John Weston. My father worked as an electrician in the Merchant Navy, my mother was a florist. Home was a spacious three-storey, semi-detached, five-bedroom house with a large garden in a market town in the Pennines.

Apart from me, my family consisted of Kerry, who was 11 when I was born, and Roy, 12. My sister was easy-going and well behaved, but there was something not quite right about my brother. I couldn’t have known then that he was to affect my life profoundly.

Roy was by all accounts an adorable baby and grew into a bright, intelligent little boy much praised for his all-round ability by his teachers at his local school. My doting parents took great pride in his success, and not too much notice when his teachers added that he was a bit of a loner and didn’t mix well. He was, after all, the first child in our family and Mum didn’t know what to expect. She assumed he was taking after her and she was not one to go out with a crowd of girls. She didn’t even worry that he kept himself to himself at home too, putting it down to the fact that he was behaving like any boy with two younger sisters.

Certainly Roy didn’t take much notice of me when I arrived, but Kerry was delighted to have a little sister. Roy’s life and that of my family changed dramatically almost overnight one day when I was just a sweet, bubbly toddler. Many parents worry about their child turning into Kevin, the iconic teenager created by comedian Harry Enfield, when they reach their teens, but Roy’s transformation was far more extreme. He stopped being the loving lad who was good at so many things, and turned into an impossible rebel with an explosive temper who screamed and shouted at the least thing.

He used to be immaculate and tidy, but became extremely scruffy and left his bedroom in a terrible mess. Worst of all he no longer wanted to go to school and began playing truant. It was shortly after his birthday that we had the first clear sign that something was seriously wrong. He was playing rock music so loudly in his bedroom that the house started to reverberate. Dad went in and asked him to turn the volume down. To his horror, instead of replying Roy jumped up and down on his bed with his fingers in his ears, screaming. Now, when most children of that age start screaming in a tantrum they stop pretty quickly afterwards, but Roy scream lasted for over ten minutes. It was then that my parents knew for certain that their son’s behaviour had gone beyond that of even the most difficult teenager.

Mental health was very poorly handled in the sixties and seventies, with little diagnosis and even less support. When my parents took Roy to see our trusted family GP they believed everything he said implicitly and didn’t query his diagnosis that Roy was just a typical adolescent. He said that, of course, it was unusual behaviour, but ‘these things happen and they shouldn’t worry’. They did worry, of course, and felt very guilty about his obvious unhappiness, racking their brains to remember something they might have done that triggered this change in him. But they couldn’t come up with anything.

Roy was particularly awful when my widowed maternal grandma came to live with us that year. He started screaming at her so much her that my parents dared not leave her alone with him and, although we all wanted Grandma to stay with us permanently, after a few months Mum and Dad felt she had to leave for her own safety. Roy also insisted on eating his meals alone in his bedroom, which upset Mum and Dad greatly because we liked to eat together as a family.

Over time, Roy’s behaviour grew even worse and he spent ever longer periods alone in his room. Kerry, who is now an occupational therapist working in Canada, worried that he didn’t have any friends and lived in an imaginary world where he often put himself in charge of military battles. Although some days passed calmly, the unpredictability of his moods and his anti-social behaviour kept me on a knife edge of anxiety. I never knew when he was going to start screaming again and hated the stormy and tense atmosphere at home. It was like living with a time bomb. Kerry sometimes locked herself in her bedroom when she heard him shouting and we all felt increasingly scared.