The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster(7)

Peter loves this time, when he feels included in something both ordinary and majestic. The adults stand around, chatting and drinking while they stare into the flames which burn themselves to death, leaving the ashes that will blow away over the coming days so that the next chair can break and be dragged down to start the pile anew.

Without regular nutritious food, Peter’s teeth start snapping off at the gums. In a few years, he will break several teeth at once by biting into a banana sandwich. All his teeth need to be removed by the time he is seventeen. None of his siblings have similar problems. The gully trap by the side of the house where he squats over the drain for a drink is also the only place he can wash. He is not bathed regularly nor taught how to clean himself. There is an outdoor toilet he can use but the bathtub is inside and he has no access to it. His pale skin becomes red and inflamed; he is uncomfortable and embarrassed in his bubbling body.

The hours spent alone grind by in stupendous boredom but of greater import is the unfulfilled human need to belong, to be loved: to feel sufficiently safe that energy can then be directed towards learning and growing and loving others. The door to Peter’s family shuts on him every day at 4:30 p.m. and therefore that door, along with so many others, never truly opens.

Though Peter does not like school, where he is regularly caned by the nuns and made to kneel in the corner for acting out, he enjoys the walk there each morning. Left on Blandford, then down an unmade road through the tip in order to bypass the house with the Alsatian, emerging onto Essex, past the house of the woman known only as the Witch and then straight down until Eleanor Street. He loves looking at the way the ladies do their gardens. He feels safe on the way to school, not because there are no dangers but because he knows clearly where they are and how to avoid them.

Forbidden to bring friends home, he starts visiting the nuns at St Joseph’s Convent after school. He spends all his spare time there doing work for the sisters, who are cold but predictable, and whose small house across from the school is a sanctuary. When he knocks at their door, they put him to work with odd jobs or errands and in this way he is made to feel useful and accepted. Being of service is its own reward; it distracts him, fills him with purpose and pride. Also they feed him afterwards: a cup of tea, a slice of toast.

At thirteen he gets a job after school sweeping up hair at the barber shop. Someone comes in asking for French letters and: ‘Do we sell French lettuce?’ Peter politely inquires of his boss. The men in the shop disintegrate into barking laughter and never stop giving him shit about it. He spends his pay on toys and new clothes for his little brothers. He buys Simon a chemistry set and carries it proudly back to Birchill Street, where Bill throws it out of the window in a drunken rage, smashing it to pieces.

Bill continues to regularly attack Peter, his hot breath smelling of booze and his caterpillar eyebrows meeting in dark concentration as he sets about beating his child with his fists or the copper laundry stick. When he is feeling particularly sadistic he will tie the boy to the clothesline for better purchase. And though everyone turns away, and his mother’s silence slices through him—still, Peter climbs in through the kitchen window every time he hears his father doing the same to her. But his parents always reconcile and then they both, somehow, just hate him more.

Peter avoids playing with other boys, prefers the company of the girls in his class, so Bill tries to toughen him up by forcing him to join the army cadets. Peter dreads the weekly session at the Drill Hall. To avoid going, he feigns ingrown toenails so painful he can’t walk. At school, forced to play football, he stands apart from the team, eyes lowered, hands jammed deep in his pockets. He tries to act casually invisible, hoping the ball never comes near him and hopping out of its way when it does. He endures the jeering and wrath of the other boys.

And then, one day, a change. The family is going on holiday; they will take the overnight ferry to Tasmania and drive around the countryside for a week. Peter is not invited. Bill tells him to paint the house while they’re gone; Ailsa says if he does a good job they’ll bring him back something special, something he really wants. His siblings chatter excitedly in the back seat until his mother slams the door shut on their voices and he watches the car drive away.

After he finishes painting each day, Peter carefully rubs the white flecks off his skin with turpentine before walking down the road to the quarry next to the YMCA, where he picks through rocks and trash under the darkening sky. He selects the cleanest bricks and hauls as many as he can back home. Kneeling at the edge of the lawn, he arranges them with great care into a neat, scalloped border. The process of imposing beauty on the backyard is calming and his heart skips a little when he imagines the surprise, the appreciation on his parents’ faces. He would do all this for them, happily, in the hope that it might be his key inside, but his mind does also wander to the gift his mother promised.

The house is freshly painted and the garden is perfect when the car pulls up a few days later and Peter runs out to greet them. Ailsa herds the younger children inside, Bill silently unloads the luggage and carries it in. And then Peter is just standing there, alone again in a tidy yard. His sister leans out of the screen door and shoves the small package at him: a pair of plastic cuff links in the shape of Tasmania.

Sandra’s voice gets tight with the memory of that day. ‘They said to me that they would bring back something I really, really wanted, and all I really, really wanted was a transistor radio, so I could have some company.’ She gets up from her large green sofa and walks into her kitchen where she reaches over the sink and grabs something off the window ledge: a small radio. ‘I didn’t get it off them, but I have this one now as a constant reminder.’