Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters
lunchtime to get his tools. He always had his own special set of tools that he guarded with his life and wouldn’t let anyone else touch, not even his mates at the garage.
‘I’ve told Graeme I’ll get a court order to keep her away from the garage,’ he said. ‘But he thinks that if Joe doesn’t come to the garage for a bit that will mean she’ll stay away too.’
I was standing listening to them as he collected up his tools and went towards the door. He glanced back at me.
‘Do you want to come to work with your dad?’ he asked with a wink.
‘No,’ Marie interrupted. ‘What would Graeme say if he found out?’
‘Graeme’s not there this afternoon,’ he wheedled. ‘He’s all right. Just one more time. It won’t hurt him.’
‘I’m not happy about this, William,’ Marie protested. ‘You don’t want to risk losing your job.’
‘It’ll never come to that,’ Dad insisted, so Marie gave in and let me go.
That was an afternoon I’ll never forget as long as I live, the afternoon my life changed for ever. I can remember every single detail of every little thing that happened that day, because the details are etched on my brain and thirty years on I still relive them in my nightmares. As I slipped my hand inside Dad’s big fingers and walked out to the car that lunchtime, I had no idea that life as I knew it was about to come to a brutal end.
It was a cold, windy day in February. Dad and I had just driven up to the garage and parked on the grass verge when one of the other mechanics, a good friend of Dad’s called Derek, waved him over to a car that was up on one of the ramps.
‘Can you smell petrol, William?’ Derek asked. ‘I’ve looked all over but I can’t find where it’s coming from.’
‘You get back in the car,’ Dad said to me. ‘This’ll only take a minute.’
I would rather have helped him with his job, but I didn’t bother to ask because I knew he would say no, and I knew he would come back for me as soon as he had sorted out the problem. He’d explained to me lots of times how car engines were dangerous things and he couldn’t risk having me messing around with them unless he was able to watch me all the time. There weren’t many things Dad insisted on when he was with me, but that was one of them.
He turned the key in the lock of the Ford Capri and I watched through the windscreen as he went over with Derek to examine the damaged engine. I didn’t mind waiting. I loved being at the garage with Dad, even though he had told me this might be the last time we could do it for a while because of all the trouble Mum had been causing for him.
I sat behind the steering wheel in his driving seat and rattled the gear stick around, imitating the movements I’d seen him make when he was driving. I idolized him and wanted to be like him in every way possible. I wasn’t worried about the locked car doors because I knew perfectly well how to open them if I wanted to. Dad had explained it to me very carefully after that time I let the handbrake off. But I wouldn’t have disobeyed him because I respected him completely. If he said I was to stay there then that was what I would do. He had never had to raise his hand to me in my whole life because I never gave him cause to. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth and never questioned a single thing he told me to do.
Through the windscreen I watched Dad lying down on the greasy garage floor in his overalls like I’d seen him do a hundred times before and sliding under the car to see if he could spot where the petrol was leaking from.
It was just another normal day at work for all of them. I heard the phone in the office ringing, the giant bell in the workshop going off like a fire alarm to make sure that it could always be heard above the revving of engines and the clanking of tools. Derek went into the office to answer it.
‘Dad,’ I shouted out through the crack in the window, knowing exactly what his answer would be even before I asked the question, ‘can I come under the car with you?’
‘No,’ he shouted back, as I knew he would. ‘You stay there. I won’t be a minute.’
As I went back to playing with the gear stick and steering wheel I saw a customer coming out of the waiting room with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He had the collar of his jacket turned up against the cold. I didn’t really know what petrol was; it had always looked just like water to me whenever I’d seen it – water with a funny smell. So I didn’t think anything of it as I watched the man casually flick his fag end towards the main door of the garage, where the wind picked it up and bounced it back across the floor, making the still-burning tip glow fiercely.
One minute there was nothing happening, everything continuing as normal, and the next there were huge orange-red flames roaring up around the car that Dad was lying under. I could see his silhouette in the middle of the inferno wriggling its way out and rising through the flames and I started to scream for him, my little boy’s voice trapped inside the car just yards away while the fire roared around him outside.
‘Dad! Dad!’
An explosion lifted the car he had been under into the air and flipped it onto its side, like a special effect from some action film or television programme, making the Ford Capri rock from the blast and knocking me over onto the seat. Dad had managed to get to his feet but his whole body was on fire as he ran around the garage, screaming with a mixture of pain and terror, unable to escape the flames that clung to him, his movement making them burn fiercer. The other men, including Derek, all came running out of the office and stared in horror. It was as though time had frozen as they all stood there in shock, watching Dad. Every second seemed like an hour as the flames grew more ferocious, fanned by the wind, which returned through the doors once the blast had died away and took a firmer hold on their victim. As I struggled with the locks of the Capri door, desperate to get to him, all I could see was him running around and his screams filled my ears. I thought no one was doing anything to help him but I found out later that Derek had been struggling with a fire extinguisher, unable to get it to work.
A neighbour from across the road, who had heard the explosion, came running in through the entrance, grabbed Dad and threw him onto the floor, trying to beat the flames out. I finally managed to get out of the Capri and ran across to where Dad was lying. By the time I got there the flames were out and everything was black and charred. His whole body was shaking and convulsing and going into shock. Derek grabbed me and covered my eyes with his hand before I could see Dad’s incinerated face close up. I remember the smell, though – a sickly smell of burned flesh and choking smoke. I could hear the sound of sirens coming closer and people running around as I struggled to get free, kicking and biting, frantic to get to my dad. Derek kept holding me tight so that I didn’t get in the way of the rescuers, protecting me from the full impact of the sight.
The ambulance men lifted Dad onto a stretcher and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.
‘Let me come with you. Dad, tell them to let me come!’ I cried, tears streaming down my face, but the ambulance men said no, they couldn’t have a child on board.
Derek phoned my Aunt Melissa and she rushed over within a few minutes. She tried to comfort me as best she could but she was too worried about her brother to think clearly about anything. To me at that moment it felt like the whole world had ended in that explosion of horror. I was just five years old. I wanted my dad back.
The ambulance carried Dad off at full speed, all sirens blaring. I watched it go and then Aunt Melissa led me up the road to her house and phoned Marie to let her know what had happened. When Marie arrived, I remember lots of hushed whispers and glances that I wasn’t meant to see. Melissa’s husband Amani, a big Nigerian guy, kept staring at me and I remember