“Robert Andrew Grayson, you are charged that on Wednesday 5 May 2004, you did incite a child to engage in sexual activities, contrary to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”
How does he plead? He pleads being fatherless, not a father dead or gone away, but a father denied. Mother never acknowledged him. The virgin birth had been renewed in Cotterton. Men were evil, gross and vile and her child was one of them. He would be shielded and cut off from the world that ‘they’ ruled. Mother would have registered him as Pauline but the registrar would have none of it. In the end he was named Robert, the registrar's own name, and Andrew because the registrar knew that this meant ‘man’, that would teach this silly woman intent on denying the little mite's manhood. The lad had names that meant ‘man of bright fame’. What more could he do?
The baby was dressed in pink with lace and flounces and Mother called him Pauline at home. It was quite a while before the neighbours had any clue that this quiet woman, who ran the corner shop but made little effort to be sociable, had a son and not a daughter. Robert saw little of the outside world. His world was home and Mother.
When he reached school age he was sent, unwillingly, to school. The ‘Board man’ made sure of that. Robert stood by the teacher's desk, his face thin, pale with eyes bordering on tears. Miss Hanks asked his name. He replied only as he knew. He gave the name that Mother always used. The class dissolved into uncontrolled mirth. Miss Hanks slammed her ruler on the desk top. That was the prelude to that ruler coming into sharp contact with someone's hand. It gave the class great satisfaction to see that it was the boy who was the victim. Robert was told his proper name; he learned it quickly in pain and shame.
He lived in the world during the day but escaped at night into the arms of Mother. The years passed and Robert became what Mother hated most, he became a man. He was, physically male, but his heart, his soul, his mind was Mother's. She sheltered him, kept him safe from a cruel world that despised him. He worked in the shop and time and the world passed him by.
When Mother died, suddenly, his world came to a crashing halt. He was fifty-five yet scarcely more than a child. After the ambulance took away his life, his purpose, he had wandered into the park, scarcely knowing where he was, and sat on a bench near the lake. A little girl wandered up to see why this grown man was crying. She had hair like his mother's, deep auburn that shone in the sun; her eyes were green. He had clung to her in pain and misery, nothing more.
“How do you plead?”
“Guilty.” He said the word quietly, but with little understanding. He would go to prison for a long time and prison was a world of men. He was a man. Robert Andrew, a man of bright fame?
