John Fenton - Please Don’t Make Me Go - How One Boy’s Courage Overcame A Brutal Childhood

It seemed to me that things couldn’t get worse at home, but on a January day in 1958 I found out that they could. Dad and Gran had joint tenancy of the house we lived in. He hated her living with us, even though she only inhabited the front room and rarely came out of it. She hated him for the way he treated her daughter. They rarely spoke to each other and, when they were forced to, the conversation was always strained with underlying venom.

On that day Gran had come into the scullery to fill her kettle with water and my father was shaving in the mirror over the sink. She reached across to turn on the tap and accidentally jogged his arm, causing him to nick his face with his razor. He screamed out, ‘You clumsy old bitch. Get back in your own room.’ She retorted, ‘It’s a pity you didn’t cut your throat.’ That was it. Sixteen years of pent-up fury was unleashed. He grabbed her by her scrawny throat and started to strangle her, making no allowance for the fact that she was an old woman, nearly deaf and half blind. My mother jumped on his back to pull him away and his anger was then diverted onto her. He started to beat her unmercifully and the sound of her screams brought me running into the room. I found my Gran on the floor, clutching her throat and gasping for air, and my mother getting beaten to a pulp over the cooker. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand – a three-inch, sharp vegetable knife.

‘Leave her alone, you bastard!’ I screamed.

My father turned to me. I knew it was my turn to face his fury and gripped the knife tightly. His face blanched noticeably when he spotted it and he said quietly, ‘What are you going to do with that?’

‘If you don’t leave them alone, I’ll kill you.’ My voice was trembling with emotion but my eyes showed that I wasn’t bluffing. I knew that this could be my moment of destiny and I welcomed it. I made a move towards him and couldn’t believe it when he ran from the room.

‘Give me the knife, John.’ My mother gently took it out of my hand. ‘Help me with Gran.’

We lifted Gran off the floor and sat her down in the kitchen. She was in shock and her whole body was shaking as if she had been out in the cold for days. My mother wrapped her in a coat and made her a cup of hot, sweet tea. It must have been at least two hours before she was fit enough to return to her room and, even then, she was still whimpering. We didn’t see my father for the next two days.

Life slowly returned to normal, but in my heart I knew that it was only a matter of time until my father had his revenge on me. What was he going to do? Would he kill me? These thoughts troubled my mind and kept me awake at night worrying.

The bright, early-morning sun shining through my threadbare bedroom curtains woke me from a troubled sleep. Momentarily, I struggled with drowsiness and reached down to adjust the coats that I had piled on top of my blanket to keep me warm. Suddenly, I became alert. Why was the sun shining? It was a school day. It was always dark when I got up for school in winter. I jumped out of bed and shivered as I placed my feet onto the cold, lino-covered floor. The book I had been reading the night before, The Count of Monte Cristo, was lying on the floor so I picked it up and put it back on the mantelpiece. I hurried downstairs to see why Mum hadn’t called me. I found her sitting in the kitchen weeping silently. My father was sitting on his stool by the coke boiler, tracing patterns in the air with the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘Why didn’t you call me, Mum?’ I asked.

‘You’re coming out with me for the day,’ my Dad said as he looked up at me. ‘Get yourself dressed.’ I noticed that he was wearing his Sunday best clothes.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Are we going to see Uncle John?’ I liked my father’s brother. He was nothing like my father and was always full of fun and mischief.

‘Maybe we will and maybe we won’t. You’ll just have to wait and see.’

I hurried back upstairs and quickly got dressed in my own Sunday clothes – basically my school clothes, but with a nice blue jumper that my mother had knitted for me. I looked at myself in the mirror: with my dark hair in the typical short, back and sides of the day, dark eyes and scrawny features, I didn’t think I was anything special.

When I came back downstairs there was a steaming bowl of porridge waiting on the table. I sprinkled it liberally with sugar and wolfed it down. I was eager to be on my way – treats in my life were rare and a day at my uncle’s was definitely a treat.

My father looked at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said ‘it’s time for us to go.’ My mother followed us to the front door. I turned to kiss her goodbye and she wrapped me tightly in her arms. She whispered, ‘Take care of yourself, John. Remember how much I love you.’

I was puzzled by her remarks and looked deeply into her tear-filled eyes. ‘I’ll be fine mum, don’t worry. I love you too.’

I was surprised when my father led the way towards West Ealing. I thought we would have gone to Ealing Broadway to catch an underground train to Paddington. I walked by his side, not speaking, but curious as to where we were headed.

We went over Jacob’s Ladder and I could see the Uxbridge Road in front of us. It suddenly occurred to me that we could get to Paddington by bus. I had never been by bus to my uncle’s and I wondered which way Paddington was. Just before the Uxbridge Road, my father led me down a side street and up some wide flagstone steps to a large red-bricked building. Above the door was a printed sign: ‘Ealing Juvenile Court.’

I stared at the sign. My heart started to race with fear. I said, ‘Why are we here?’

My father took hold of my arm firmly and led me through the door. ‘You’ll see when you get there. Don’t give me any trouble as,’ he pointed to a policeman standing in the entrance hall, ‘he’ll deal with you if you do.’

He pushed me towards the large room the policeman was standing in front of and said, ‘It’s nearly time for your hearing.’

I looked appealingly up at him. I begged, ‘Please don’t make me go. I promise to be good.’

He shoved me forward again and I walked into the juvenile court with my head bowed and feeling an overwhelming urge to pee.

Chapter 2

24 January 1958

I was led into a courtroom and made to stand in front of a purple-draped table, above which two fluorescent lights hung from a discoloured yellow ceiling. My foot tapped uncontrollably on the highly polished slats of the floor and my eyes flitted nervously round the room. There were policemen standing under every window and two especially burly ones guarding the entrance. I wondered why they thought such precautions were necessary when faced with a scrawny thirteen-year-old. What did they think I was going to do?

Behind me and slightly to the right sat my father, his cold blue eyes staring unblinkingly through gold-rimmed glasses. He was in deep conversation with a woman sitting next to him. I noticed how often she nodded her head sympathetically then glanced in my direction with a distaste that wrinkled her thin mouth into a crooked line of red lipstick that appeared to be underlining her bulbous nose.

‘Everybody rise.’

A man in a black pin-striped suit who had been sitting at a side table now stood up and looked around the room. Everyone stopped talking and rose to their feet.

A small anteroom door swung open and three people came in – one woman and two men. They walked purposefully to the draped table and, with the briefest glance at the assembled onlookers, sat in the three seats behind the table, the woman in the middle.

The men could have been twins they looked so alike. Both were wearing grey, pinstriped suits, white starch-collared shirts, military striped ties and black brogues. They both had slicked-back black hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. The woman was dressed extremely elegantly in a light-coloured tweed skirt and mohair sweater with a string of pearls round her neck. She had lovely twinkly grey eyes, and these calmed me a little. She seemed nice, I thought.