One Chance (9 page)

I never responded, physically or verbally. For me,
nothing
was happening. I didn't get “excited” and I didn't enjoy it. I tried to avoid getting myself into situations where we were alone, but he seemed not to be under any suspicion. I would be sent to the uniform store or to another part of the unit, and there he would touch me. I never objected and never stopped him; I just accepted it.

Why did I allow someone to touch me like this? I didn't want him to touch me at all. It made me feel guilty and dirty. I wanted to scream and shout, but no matter how hard I tried, no noise
came out. I constantly beat myself up about it, asking myself how I could allow someone to do what he had done. But I did and said nothing, never telling him that his behaviour was inappropriate. I could have reported him, but I didn't. I didn't know whether I would be believed, and I thought that because I had never objected to him or told him to stop, it would be seen as my fault.

The touching and kissing went on sporadically for more than a year. I couldn't deal directly with what was happening. The way I dealt with it was to not show up to parades, and the longer time went on, the more I avoided going. Finally, it came to the attention of the commanding officer that I hadn't been for a few weeks. Here was my opportunity to come clean. I could tell him everything and explain why I hadn't been.

Did I do that? No. I made a lame excuse saying that we had moved to Filton as part of my father's work, and therefore it was difficult for us to get to the unit (he had become head caretaker at Filton High School at this time, and living on the premises was obligatory). Instead, I blamed myself for what I now understand was abuse. I felt that I had allowed him to do it. I was unclean. I was
nothing
. Therefore what happened didn't matter. Why? Because
I
didn't matter.

At the time all this was happening, the physical and mental abuse at school was at its worst. Being
told
I was worthless was one thing. Having over a hundred boys screaming obscenities at me, calling me names, and telling me I would be dead before the end of term was hard enough to take. Actions, though, speak louder than words. Wherever I went, people would touch me inappropriately, grab me or kick me between the legs, throw
things at me, and throw
me
at things. I was something to ridicule, something to spit at. I wasn't a person at all.

I told no one about what was happening at Sea Cadets. There were many reasons for this. I didn't know whether anyone would actually believe me; it would have been my word against someone who had just been made an officer in a cadet force. There was also the fact that I had said and done nothing to oppose it. Most important, however, was the fact that the moment I told anyone, I was demonstrating not just to them but also to myself that I was nothing; even less than nothing.

Everything I was going through demonstrated that to me. All I could do was sit back and let it happen—I didn't have to enjoy it or take part in it. I did neither. From age fifteen to seventeen, what I wanted, what I didn't want, and what I felt seemed completely irrelevant. I was nothing more than a plaything for anyone who wanted to use me.

What happened to me at this time affected my future relationships. I always felt like a fraud when someone cared for me; it made me insecure and made me hold on too hard to those I cared about. I wanted to be loved. I wanted someone to care. But I felt that sooner or later, anyone who cared for me would find out that I was really nothing, and walk away.

Years later, when I met Julz for the first time, I crossed my fingers for luck and told her everything I'd gone through. I feared she would walk away. Instead, she held my hand and told me we would get through it together. I cannot express how lucky I am to have found her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Singing through the Pain

T
HUD
!

It had been a long morning at school when my concentration was interrupted by a loud thump to the right of me. Landing on the neighbouring desk was a board eraser, thrown with pinpoint accuracy. The eraser wasn't meant to hit my classmate Chris, but to bounce just in front of him, giving off a spectacular splash of chalk dust. I looked across at his blazer, which had gone from black to white, a telltale sign he hadn't been paying attention.

“Sorry, Chris, was I disturbing you?” said the teacher, Mr. Weaver, as he walked over to reclaim his eraser.

Mr. Weaver, or Phil as we were allowed to call him outside school, was my favourite teacher at Redcliffe. Not only was he a mean shot with a board rubber, he was also head of music.

“Sorry, sir,” Chris said. “It won't happen again.”

“Don't make me keep you behind. Not when there's choir practice later on.” He looked at me with a friendly wink.

The school choir was the one steadfast thing amongst the chaos and heartache I went through. At times, it was the only thing that kept me going. Mr. Weaver worked us hard, and we had practice twice a week: Wednesday at lunchtime and Friday after school.

We had a varied repertoire and a packed diary of performances. Our main responsibility was to be the choir at the end and start of term services, house eucharists (“Eucharist” was the name for communion, which the school gave as a religious service at the start of every term), and special occasions like Ascension Day and the Colston Day service.

The latter was named after the Bristol benefactor Edward Colston, who cofounded the school in 1709. Colston Day was a celebration of the founding of Temple Colston School, which subsequently merged with the even older St. Mary Redcliffe School that went as far back as 1571. It was quite a privilege for us to be in the choir, because seats for the Colston service were allocated to three per tutor group across the school.

The Colston Day service had many advantages, and getting out of afternoon school and going home early was just one of them. There were two very traditional elements to the service. Each pupil was given a ten-pence piece and a Colston bun, which was a sticky bun with currants and sugar streusel pieces; the tradition went back to much earlier times when the gift was two shillings and a bun. The pastries were very popular, and there was an active trade amongst those who wanted an extra bun in exchange for the ten-pence piece.

The choir's busiest period was the approach to Christmas. We visited local elderly people's clubs and hospitals, singing
carols and Christmas songs, and these events were always well received. I got to sing many more of the descants—higher melodies that acted as counterpoint to the main melody—that I had so loved performing at Christ Church. So much so that when I eventually started singing tenor in the choir towards the end of my school days, I carried on singing the descants, much to the consternation of the sopranos in front of me, who were used to taking that role themselves.

Singing liberated me. It didn't just make me feel happy; it made me feel complete. Whatever happened around me, at school or elsewhere, my singing made me feel like I made a difference. It seemed to make people smile. At special services and performances, the whole of my family would come to watch. This helped me feel important at a time when I felt irrelevant.

In the run-up to Christmas, we also performed at Temple Meads, the entrance of the main railway station in Bristol. We raised money for local charities, amongst them St. Peter's Hospice and the homeless shelters. Here we received a more mixed response, ranging from generosity to rudeness: some commuters complained that we were “a bloody nuisance” standing in the way, and that they were going to miss their train.

The choir also performed at weddings and the occasional funeral. In my second year at Redcliffe, I was summoned to the headmaster's office. Thinking I was in trouble, I was worried as I was stood outside waiting for the light to turn green to enter. Instead, Mr. Eachus wanted to speak to me about an unusual proposition. He had been approached by an African group living in Bristol to find someone to sing at its prince's funeral. I was delighted and flattered that Mr. Eachus had thought of me. It
was at a church in the Bedminster district of Bristol, and I was to sing the Samuel Sebastian Wesley anthem “Lead Me, Lord.” It was a short service, and I got paid £20 for doing it. I put the money in with my savings from the paper round towards spending money for our next holiday.

As well as the Christmas bookings, one of the other main features of being in the choir was that we went on a number of special trips. Over my time at the school, I travelled with the choir all round mainland Britain.

In my first year we travelled by train to Winchester in Hampshire, where we were the guest choir at Winchester Cathedral. We left fairly early in the day and went straight to the cathedral for rehearsal. We were told that rehearsal would be finished by one in the afternoon, and that our parents should wait for us. It was here that I learned to take schedules with a pinch of salt. Musicians can be perfectionists, and Mr. Weaver kept us until nearly two o'clock. There was barely enough time for us to have lunch before we were due back to sing evening prayer, let alone have a wander round the city.

The medieval cathedral was a beautiful venue to sing in, and you could hear our voices reverberating round the church, which made me feel very proud. It was a grand building in keeping with Winchester's status as the capital of England in Saxon times. It had huge windows and a very long nave; in fact, we were informed by the verger that it was the largest nave in any cathedral in Europe. Yet I couldn't help feeling that we just didn't have enough time to see the sights and explore the city. After that, Mr. Weaver made a decision that we would no longer do a
day trip for performances. In future, we would go away for a week to perform at cathedrals and local churches, as well as see quite a bit of the surrounding area. He felt that much of the day was wasted in travelling, and it would limit where we could perform if that had to be close by.

Our first tour took us to the pretty town of Skipton, in the scenic Yorkshire Dales, a four hours' drive north of Bristol. In order to go, I had to save up money from my paper round to pay for the trip, and Mum and Dad helped top it up. I was looking forward to the opportunity to sing in different venues and large cathedrals, and also to see the country.

Of course, on these tours there were no hotels. In fact, there weren't even beds! As well as a rucksack or suitcase, each choir member brought his own sleeping bag, and we slept on church floors. Many of the choir would also bring airbeds, and the sounds of snoring and the movement on rubber mattresses punctuated the night. My own sleeping bag went directly on the hard church floor.

We would travel together as a group on the train from Temple Meads, and Mr. Weaver had an ingenious way of keeping the cost of the trips down. He asked parents who had rail cards (cards that gave a 33 percent discount to adults, and up to four children free per adult) to give them to us, which greatly reduced our rail fare. We sat together and sang through our whole repertoire on the train, usually getting a lot of appreciation from the travelling public.

Most of our meals were eaten in the church we were staying in, but sometimes we would be given £1 for supper, and we'd take this to the local fish and chip shop get some chips, a drink,
and perhaps a sausage. A pound went much further in 1984 than it does now! Everything we did, we did together; the washing up was done in turns by groups of students, and rotas were devised for sandwich-making duties. There were endless choices of sandwiches, from corned beef to tuna mayo, egg, or cheese.

There was a strong sense of community in the choir, which was a world apart from what I experienced outside it. In it, and especially on tour, I felt like I could
be
someone, rather than just some
thing
to ridicule. It was the perfect respite from the playground and all the horrors it held for me.

That first choir tour was an absolute revelation. I forged many friendships, several of which endure today. At one point, two friends, Ilena Bailey and Ruth Mould, sneaked into the boys' area in one of the halls to see two of the choirboys. In fact, Ruth is now married to the boy she sneaked in to see—one of my colleagues at Christ Church, Tim Day. Some of my longest-running friendships started on that tour.

It was a fun week, and we performed in Skipton Parish Church and also led evening prayer at beautiful York Minster. A few months after we had performed there, the south transept was struck by lightning and a huge fire destroyed the roof, including the many beautiful bosses, or wooden protrusions. We had been in that very transept waiting for our procession into the choir stalls only three months prior. Mr. Weaver took us on several day trips: one to Scarborough, and on another day, we also had a full day's walk in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. We also got a ride on the Settle and Carlisle steam train.

The following year, the choir tour took us to Margate, where I developed my first proper crush on a girl, Ilena Bailey, one of
the girls who had snuck in to see the boys as I described earlier. Slim but not skinny, with long blonde hair, to me Ilena was the perfect girl. This made it all the more difficult for me to do anything about it. I was hopeless in situations like this, as I had no experience, and I always assumed that any girl I asked out would just say no. My shyness got in the way. Ilena made various comments that were very strong hints that I didn't act on. I fancied Ilena all the way through my time at Redcliffe, but never did anything about it. We were great friends throughout our school careers, however, so all was not lost.