Essex Boy: My Story (5 page)

But we were still struggling financially.
The outcome of the custody case was that it was made official how much Dad had to pay and every fortnight his cheque would arrive in the post.
Then Mum
would get child benefits as well, and any other benefits, depending on whether she was working or not.
Dad would sometimes buy things for Daniel and me if we needed them, like a new school uniform
or a pair of trainers, but he still wouldn’t give extra money directly to Mum, so she struggled to pay all the bills and buy food.
It was hard for me to know what was going on.
I picked up
the odd bit of information at the time, mainly from Mum, and have understood more as I’ve grown older, but there are always two sides to every story, and it is difficult for me to be sure of
the truth.
I like to think they were both doing their best, and doing what they thought was right by us – they just had different ideas of how to go about it.

But then all of a sudden, when I had just turned eight, we had to leave our home.
Mum would tell you Dad had us kicked out, as he had stopped paying the mortgage after the custody battle.
Dad
would tell you Mum stopped covering the bills that were hers to pay, and that was the cause.
Whatever the reason, the house was sold and we had to leave.
We had nowhere else to go.

The Anger Inside

Mum tried her best to protect us from the shock of losing our home.
She told us, ‘Boys, we have to move out of this house.
I don’t know where we are going to live
yet, but we will be together no matter what.
And that’s what counts, isn’t it?
That wherever we live, we are all there together.’

We didn’t really know what to think.
We were quite happy living where we were.
In fact the only thing that could have made it better would have been if Dad had come back and lived there
with us too.
But it was clear from what she was saying that staying wasn’t an option, so we just nodded.

It was only later on, when she was crying herself to sleep that night, that she told me, ‘Kirk, baby, there’s a chance we could end up living on the street.
We have no money for
anywhere else and your dad won’t help me.
Please don’t worry about it, but I just wanted to be honest with you.’

Inside I was raging at myself.
Hadn’t Dad told Daniel and me we should be the men of the house now?
So why weren’t we able to sort this out?
There had to be something we could do to
make it better.
But I couldn’t think of a magic answer and it just made me go all angry and sulky.

As moving day got nearer it really seemed like we were going to have to live on the street.
The council didn’t have anywhere for us, and Mum obviously didn’t have the money to pay
for a house.
But of course Nan and Granddad, Mum’s parents, were not going to let us live on the street.
Once they realized what kind of situation we were in, they told us to come and live
with them until we got ourselves sorted.
I think this was a relief to Mum for three reasons.
First, obviously, because we wouldn’t end up homeless, but also second, because she was struggling
so much emotionally with the divorce and being a single mum that it was good for her to have them around as support.
Looking back, I think she was probably still suffering from depression.

But the third reason was perhaps the biggest.
Mum was born with stones in her kidneys, and she’d had problems with them from the very start.
By the time she was eleven years old
she’d had most of one kidney removed, and the bit they left behind died.
So she has just one kidney, and even that one doesn’t always work perfectly.
She is prone to infections and even
kidney failure, and when that happens, which is about once a year, she can be out of action, in and out of hospital, and even bedridden for months.
On top of the pain, it stops her being able to
work, which makes her doubly stressed.
Throughout her life it always seems to have come at the worst times, and of course it kicked in as we were moving out of Borley Court.

I hate it when my mum has kidney problems.
I have always felt so helpless at those times, especially when I was young.
I could see she was in pain and I wanted to do something to make it stop,
but there wasn’t anything I could do.

At least at that time we had our grandparents.
They were the caretakers of a secondary school called St Chad’s in Tilbury, and their house was linked to the school.
It wasn’t exactly
the best area in the world, but it was friendly, and they had a nice house, even if it wasn’t that big.
Other than their own bedroom, they just had the one spare room, so the three of us,
Mum, Daniel and I, all had to fit in there.
I wasn’t bothered.
I was only eight, and was sleeping with Mum already anyway, so to all bundle into the same bed at night was more of an adventure
than a problem.
I wasn’t old enough to need my own space yet.
Daniel, who was eleven by then, was probably starting to find it a bit more difficult, although I don’t think it was ever
obvious.
And as for my mum – well, who knows how she was coping with it.

It worked fine for a while.
In fact I liked spending time with Nan and Granddad, so in a way it was like a long holiday.
My grandparents were really popular and because of
their jobs, everyone knew them.
They were like legends around Tilbury!
Everyone else called them Nan and Granddad too, and I just accepted that they were all those people’s grandparents as
well.
I’d be walking down the street with my nan, and another kid would pass by, saying, ‘All right, Nan Jean?’
They all did it.
It felt like I had a really big family I
didn’t know much about!

My grandparents were proper working class, as are the rest of Mum’s family.
There were no huge successes – it was all very run of the mill, normal day-to-day life.
But they were
happy like that, and they were always enjoying themselves.
Mum’s family will just drink, swear, have a laugh and generally enjoy themselves, and make no apology to anyone else for what they
get up to.
I like that way of living – I always feel comfortable with them, like I don’t have to pretend to be anything I’m not.

The area they lived in was very working class too, and a lot of people’s hobbies were those of a typical old-school English working man out in the country.
As well as things that my dad
had been into, like hare coursing and pigeon racing, people were really into horses.
There were horses everywhere.
People would think nothing of keeping them in their gardens, even if they were
living in little council houses, or they would leave them out in open fields and communal areas, just wandering around.
There were always horse-drawn carts going around the streets.
In most of
Britain that is a rare sight, but not in Tilbury, even today.
People are horse obsessed!
It fascinated me at the time to see them.

Nan was forever baking, and she was really good at it.
I loved to sit and watch her come up with some great invention, and after a while, I started joining in.
At first I would just be pouring
in a bit of flour, stirring, carrying a bowl for her, or whatever – or the best bit, licking the bowl!
But after a while I got pretty good at it, and I’d be doing half the work.
We
turned out some great baking, me and Nan.
A vanilla sponge cake is my favourite.
I am still a dab hand at making them today!

Other times she would take us into the garden to play tennis, or down to the swings in the park.
She might have been a grandmother, but because she had my mum young and then Mum had me young,
she can’t have been much older than most mums today.
So she was still really fit and active and good at looking after us.

As for Granddad, he was a really funny man, always playing tricks on Daniel and me, and teasing us.
He would do anything to keep us entertained, and he wanted to make the most of his job to let
us boys enjoy ourselves.
Of course he was able to do that best during the school holidays.
He would open up the school hall, set up all the equipment like the trampolines, the vault and the ropes
for us to use, and then invite our other cousins and aunts and uncles to come round too.
It was amazing – a whole adventure playground just for us.
Then afterwards we would have a barbecue or
party back at their house.
Those were great days!
So mostly, Daniel and I were really happy to be living there.
But we were kids, and only had to deal with the ups and downs of our day-to-day
existence – not with the harsh realities of adult life.

As for my mum, however, she was still lonely and sad, and felt bad about living off her parents.
Because of her kidneys she was on benefits, although she knew she would have to get a job as soon
as she got better.
So not only were we in my grandparents’ house, but they were also paying for our food and all our bills.
It really was the only way we could survive at the time.

Mum had applied for a council house for us, but it seemed like it was a long way off – we were far down some list somewhere.
She was getting upset about our living arrangement, so in the
end her brother Gary, my uncle whose birthday I share, said to her, ‘Why don’t you all come and live with us for a bit?’

Although he had a wife and two young kids of his own, Gary and his family fitted us into their home.
Mum didn’t want to impose too much, but they were lovely – they didn’t seem
to mind us being there at all, and were really helpful.
He was also a great emotional support to Mum, and I would see them sitting together late at night, talking things over, Uncle Gary making her
laugh.

Then finally, about a year after we had left our family home, the council offered us a house at 81 Hampden Road, in Grays.
It was a two-bedroom pebble-dashed house at the end of a terraced row,
and Daniel and I shared a room, which was fine by me – it was more space than we’d had living with our grandparents, and we had shared in Borley Court.
It wasn’t weird in our area
to have to share a room with your brother or sister, because most kids were in the same situation as us.
In fact there were a lot of troubled children and broken homes around there, so the life we
were living was normal.

Mum was working again by now, earning regular money for the first time in a while and paying the landlord each month.
She was so determined to make sure he got paid on time, that when he came to
collect the rent on a Saturday, if she was at work, she would make sure Nan had the money to cover it and collect the receipt for her.

By the time I was nine, I had started to become a bit of a naughty kid, both at home and at school.
I was still a real mummy’s boy, but I had this weird feeling that is
hard to explain, like I was on edge a lot more.
It felt like I could never stay still.
Even at dinner I couldn’t sit quietly at the table – I’d have to walk around the room
holding my plate, eating like that.
It was as though I had springs inside me that would go off the minute I tried to relax.

At night I would go up to bed and be unable to sleep.
I was full of nervous energy – it was like if I stayed in bed a moment more, I would explode.
So I would creep downstairs in the
middle of the night and do something, anything, that I thought would distract me for a bit, and maybe let me go to sleep later.
Most of the time it was just a matter of watching television,
something to keep my mind occupied, and after a while I would eventually get sleepy and head up to bed.

Sometimes Mum would hear me, no matter how quiet I tried to be, and would come downstairs to find me.
She would sit with me, giving me cuddles and stroking my head, trying to calm my mind down
and make me relax.

I’m ashamed to say I also became a lot more aggressive around this time.
I would lash out at people for the slightest thing, feeling a real anger growing inside me, then losing my temper
so badly I could hardly remember what I was doing, and if anyone got in my way – well, that was it, they would get it.

Mum would tell me off or say something I didn’t like, and I would hit her – only a kid’s thump, but it was completely out of order.
Or I’d hit the walls, or throw things
at them – there were holes all over our house because of me.
Even as a young kid I could put my fist through the plasterboard.
It was pretty shocking behaviour for a nine year old, I
admit.

It was only afterwards, when I had got all my anger out, that I would realize what I had done.
I’d cry, and say to Mum, ‘I’m sorry, I know I done wrong!
I didn’t mean it,
but I didn’t know what I was doing.
I can’t help it!’

And her heart went out to me, and at least it felt like she understood I hadn’t meant it.
We had such a good bond in that way.

I was a weird mix of contradictions.
Sometimes I would be as soft as anything, a real mummy’s boy who was polite and sweet.
Then other times my naughty side would come out, and I could be
anything from cheeky to violent, and have the biggest tantrum ever.

My nan had a way of dealing with it that makes me laugh looking back now.
She told me, ‘Kirk, I am sick of your tantrums.
Next time you want to have one, you go to your room and count to
ten.
If after that you can still remember why you were so angry, you probably have a good reason to be, so let them have it!
But otherwise, behave yourself.’

Sometimes that technique worked, but on the whole it didn’t calm me down.
And I didn’t just keep the bad behaviour at home; occasionally it would come out at school, too.

I still wasn’t enjoying school, and it felt like I was falling further and further behind.
I really struggled to follow the lessons, and to be honest, I hated being there.
I would sit in
class and get really angry and frustrated.
It was only later on, once I had left school, that I realized I must have dyslexia.
It makes so much sense when I think about everything I was struggling
with.
Plus Mum believes she has it, so that must increase my chances!
It is just annoying that no one picked up on it at the time, because it might have made my life in school a bit easier.