I've Only Got One...

Chapter 6

I'll call him, Brian

My next strange encounter occurred when mum allowed me to stay at one of her friend's house for tea; I lapped up the opportunity to be free spending time playing with someone else's toys. I hardly knew the boy and was to stay the afternoon with him at his house, I think my mum knew his mum, a kind of mutual agreement to give them some much needed peace.

On arrival at the house mum dropped me off, gently kissed my cheek and set off down the path, reassuring me that she would pick me up in a few hours. For legal reasons I'll call this boy Brian. On entering his play room, Brian took it on himself to turn into Big Daddy, the famous wrestler of the time. “Do you want a wrestle?. I politely declined his offer. Too late……!He hadn't waited for my answer and within seconds my leg was up my back, my arm round the back of my head and my fingers were being bent in the opposite direction with which God intended. I lay on his bunk with his knee across my neck and my head hanging over the edge of his bed. “Submit…Submit” he wailed………Submit? What is this maniac on about? I could not reply as my tongue was being forced into my cheek through clenched teeth. As he demanded I submit, I lay there, my eyes forced to stare in the direction of the skirting board, silently praying for some strength or for mum to come and rescue me. By now he was bouncing on my back with all his weight with my head sandwiched between his knee and arm. On my release, I lay on the bed and was then cracked across the head with a tin tray, the one that had previously held our pop and crisps. On about the 8th bang of the tray, I flipped. Bollocks to my manners I thought, bollocks to wanting his mum to say to my mum what an adorable child I was and bollocks to this lunatic. I dragged the tray out of his hand, threw him onto the bed and began returning the compliment.

His head, his back and any part of him that happened to be in the way, got it. He lay there sobbing, holding his head, wailing for me to stop. On the last crash of the tray I felt a presence in the room and low and behold watching her lovely wrestling son getting a pasting was his mum. The look of disgust on her face haunts me to this day. What was this boy that looks like a girl doing to her beautiful son? I began to feel like a victim as she pointed her long finger inches from my face with a look that resembled my granddad straining on the loo. I felt the telling off I got was very harsh, considering my twenty minutes of torture at the hands of her delightful boy. I ate my fish fingers and chips in total silence as she glared at me throughout the meal. After tea she told us to go and play in the garden and instructed me not to pick on Brian again and said that there were names for people like me. I looked at her in wonder and said “Kean Turner.”

On entering the garden I saw another side to Brian, if I thought the wrestling was odd, the next thing he said to me, really set the alarm bells ringing! “Come on; let's watch our Sarah have a shit behind the garage”. Sarah was his younger sister. I must have had an ear infection I remember thinking, as I am sure he has just asked me to watch his sister have a shit. No…. my ears were fine, he was serious. Before I could summon a grown up to report him to, he was off, clambering through bushes at the back of the garden and in to a clearing behind his garage.

Sarah was already there and waiting for her audience. Was this really happening? “Ready when you are Sarah”, came Brian's encouraging words.

As she crouched down resembling a weight lifter ready to lift the bar and with Brian egging her on, I realised that my family although not entirely normal, were not remotely in the same league as this bunch. Sarah's concentration was to be admired, she stared ahead and I was transfixed with her facial expressions. She was trying with all her might to deliver for her audience. “Go on Sarah…..Push…Push” yelled Brian. I remember thinking what he must be like on Christmas day morning when he gets something that he really liked. Eventually she produced for Brian, she had delivered his prize, and Sarah stood up, straightened her clothing and vanished into the bushes, she seemed pleased with her afternoons work.

As I stood next to Brian, he looked into my eyes for a reaction; I stood there mesmerised by what I had just witnessed. “What about that little beauty?”, he piped up, as he prodded it with a stick. He crouched down and stared into it.

It crossed my mind to offer him the pile I had in my underpants that had arrived when his mum was pointing her finger in my face.

I suddenly had a great urge to go home and never to return. Mum came to collect me and on the way home asked what we had been doing. All her questions were greeted with silence, all evening I sat there staring into space. I heard her ask dad what they may have given me to eat as I looked vacant and in need of sunlight. I knew that if I told her I had bent a tray onto Brian's head, been told off by his mum and watched the delightful Sarah shit for England behind the garage, she'd take me straight to see a doctor…. I chose to remain silent.

I slept that evening like never before, I dreamt about the garage, the wrestle, the pile of shit and Sarah. On waking up I wondered why there wasn't any toilet roll hanging up behind the garage? How many times had Sarah done that? And why does Sarah do that there in the first place? And how come her brother's involved? I didn't have the answers, so I put it down to one of life's little mysteries.