Daddy's Little Earner (11 page)

One time when he sent Terry and me out to steal
whisky on our own we decided we would pinch some
sweets instead, since we were hungry as usual, and that was the one time we were caught. I guess shopkeepers
watch more carefully when kids are hovering around the
sweets counter than around the off licence shelves.
Although I was terrified of what was going to happen to
us when the police were called, there was a part of me that
was relieved because I thought that now we had been
caught Dad would realize he shouldn’t send us out any
more, that it was too risky. When the police took us home
and told him what had happened he put on a great act of
being the outraged parent, assuring them that he would
be giving us both a hiding and would be making sure we
never did such a terrible thing again, calling us ‘the little
sods’. I hated it when he behaved like that, all his bravado
gone, just craven and cowardly and lying to save his own
skin.

Once the police had gone he was even more furious
with us, not because of the dishonesty, obviously, and not
because we had got ourselves caught, although he saw
that as more evidence of how useless we were, but
because we had disobeyed him and gone for the sweets
rather than the whisky. He sent us straight back out again
to make good our mistake.

‘Don’t come back until you’ve each got a bottle for
me,’ he ordered.

Terry was in floods of tears by then, certain that he just
couldn’t go back out there after everything we had
already been through that day, so I had to do it for both of us. I never minded doing things for Terry because he was
always kind to me when he had a chance. We were in this
together.

Dad would hide the bottles we brought home under
the settee, delighted yet again at the idea of getting something
for nothing, bringing them out when his friends
arrived so they could spend the nights drinking and playing
cards. The fact that they had come free added to the
pleasure he took in them. His aversion to paying for anything
meant that he didn’t even like buying toilet paper,
preferring to go into public toilets in little villages and
nicking the giant rolls they provided. He would happily
boast to everyone who would listen that he hadn’t bought
toilet paper for years, as if he believed that anyone who
did so was a fool. Although he did buy the Jaguar at one
stage, most of the time he didn’t have a car and he would
get friends to drive him around. He loved to go out
poaching, shooting rabbits or pheasants or whatever,
because it meant free food and at the same time it fed his
illusion that he was above the normal petty rules that
everyone else lived by. He liked guns too, owning little
rifles that he would fire out the kitchen window at passing
birds. He often hit them because he was a good shot
and he taught me how to do it too. I loved it when he
taught me how to do relatively normal things, like a real
parent should, rather than teaching me how to steal and
cheat and eventually sell myself on the streets.

He may have rejected society’s rules but he did have
his own code of morality. He would never pinch money
out of someone’s purse, for instance; that would have
seemed dishonest to him, although he had always been
happy to take every penny Mum earned on the streets
straight out of her hands, seeing it as his as much as hers.

Sometimes when he had company in the evenings Dad
would send Terry and me upstairs to bed, but at others he
liked us to stay up and be with the party till one or two in
the morning, especially me. He would force me to drink
whisky, watered down with orange, even though the sour
taste made me gag to start with until my system grew
used to it. Terry and I always preferred to be sent to bed so
we could get some sleep because we wanted to go to
school the following day, but there was no point arguing
with him once he’d made up his mind he wanted us
downstairs with him.

On other nights the exact opposite would happen and
he would want to be rid of us as early as possible. If he had
banished us to bed for some reason then we weren’t
allowed downstairs under any conditions at all and sometimes
that could happen as early as four in the afternoon.
As the only toilet was downstairs out the back we nearly
always needed to relieve ourselves at some stage during
the evening. Since the idea of defying him was unthinkable,
we just had to find a way to do it upstairs, but we never had the nerve to pee out the window like him.
Terry was OK since he could stand up and pee into the
water tank in Dad’s bedroom – although I dread to think
where that water ended up; I suppose we were probably
drinking it downstairs or washing in it. I couldn’t reach
the tank so I would have to pull back the carpet and
relieve myself on the floorboards underneath. In the general
filth and stench of our bedrooms Dad never noticed
what we were being forced to do.

We didn’t know what was going on downstairs once
we were exiled to the bedroom, but we would hear some
pretty funny noises and we knew he kept his private stash
of pornographic magazines under the cushion of his
chair. Since most of his friends were either alcoholics or
prostitutes it isn’t hard to guess what was happening.

I really liked most of the prostitutes he had as friends,
because they were nearly always nice to me and Dad
would behave better towards me when they were around.
Maybe they could instinctively understand what lay in
store for me because similar things probably happened to
them when they were young.

There was one black prostitute called Gail who I
thought was lovely and who was one of the few people
able to really terrify Dad. Gail was great and used to get
me to babysit for her when she was out working, sometimes
bringing the punters back to her house while I was
there. It didn’t seem that unusual to me; it was the sort of thing I saw happening all the time around me. I suppose
on some level I knew she was doing the same things Dad
made me do with him, but I tried not to think about it too
much.

Gail was hard as nails. She was sex mad and really
wanted Dad. Although he loved sex and would boast that
he could never resist fucking everything in sight, Gail
made him uneasy. He liked to be the one in control, the
one doing the seducing or the raping. He and Gail would
go upstairs together at all times of the day and Terry and
I would be able to hear them fighting or fucking or whatever
else they were doing through the floor. I admired her
for not just giving in to him like most people did. She
once smacked him over the head with a pool cue in one
of the pubs on the block. She was great. I admired people
who had the courage to fight back, who didn’t let someone
like Dad bully them, and I wished I could be more
like that myself.

Another of Dad’s best friends was a prostitute called
Lucy. I loved Lucy; she was a real little firecracker of a
woman who had something of the gypsy about her. Dad
always used to nag her like mad for being too skinny but
she never took any offence at anything he said. I don’t
think there was ever anything sexual between them; they
were just really good mates and she was another of the
handful of women who were willing to stand up to him
and argue back about things.

‘Men don’t like skinny women,’ he’d tease her, but she
wouldn’t let him undermine her confidence or get to her
like he got to everyone else.

She was always turning up at the house in the middle
of the night covered in bruises after being beaten up by
one or other of her pimps, all of whom called themselves
her boyfriends. Each time it happened Dad would take
her in and clean her up and Terry and I would find her
asleep on the settee in the morning when we came downstairs.
There was no doubting what she did for a living
because she always dressed for the part in revealing tops,
tight little mini skirts and high heels. She would be out
on the game every night but she never seemed to have any
money in her purse. I guess she just drank it and gave it
away. A lot of prostitutes are like that: because the money
doesn’t seem respectable you end up frittering it away in
ways you would never dream of doing if you’d earned it
in a shop or a factory or any other decent profession – easy
come, easy go. It always felt like ‘dirty money’ rather than
something to be saved and looked after.

When Lucy was there she would constantly be sending
me out to the shops to buy her a new pair of tights or
hairspray or a comb or something. I loved running
errands for her because she would always tell me to get
myself some sweets while I was there, and I wanted
to please her anyway. Even when I was too young to really
understand what the word meant I knew she was a prostitute but I didn’t care because I loved her for who she
was. One day when I was nine I came back from the
shops with some new tights she’d sent me for.

‘Let Ria try those tights on,’ Dad said and Lucy handed
them over to me without really thinking.

Like any little girl I was eager to dress up like a
grown-up and pulled them on happily, wanting to look
as glamorous as Lucy always seemed to me.

‘Try Lucy’s shoes on,’ Dad said once I’d got the tights
on. I did what he told me, strutting awkwardly round the
room about six inches taller than usual.

‘Try Lucy’s skirt on,’ he said.

Lucy was obviously beginning to feel uncomfortable
because she said she didn’t want to play that game any
more and tried to distract Dad, but I thought she was
being a right spoilsport. Dad and I both begged her until
she gave in and reluctantly handed over the skirt. I wriggled
myself into it, pleased to see how grown-up my legs
looked stretching out below it in tights and stilettos.

‘She’s got legs just like her mum,’ Dad said approvingly
as he watched my vampish little performance. That
seemed to me to be a huge compliment because he was
always going on about Mum’s legs and what a fantastic
figure she had.

‘When she’s old enough,’ he told Lucy, ‘I’m going to
put her on the game. She’s going to make a fortune.’

I’m sure Lucy knew all about his plans anyway because he never made any secret of them, but she didn’t
like him flaunting it like that in front of me.

‘She’s too young for you to be dressing her up like
that,’ she protested.

‘Put some make-up on her, then,’ Dad said, ignoring
her.

As I was begging her to make me look grown up too,
she gave in. With a grim face she painted some eye make-up
and lipstick on me and when I saw the results in the
mirror I felt like the prettiest girl in the world.

‘She looks silly,’ Lucy said when she’d finished and I
felt as though my balloon had been punctured. I thought
I looked beautiful and it seemed to me that Dad did too,
but I respected Lucy and I didn’t want to seem silly in her
eyes, so I went off quickly to change back into my normal
clothes and wash my face. As I wiped off the make-up I
remember thinking that although I had enjoyed dressing
up I didn’t want to be a prostitute, whatever it might
involve, not even to please Dad.

‘Lucy’s going upstairs to do the business,’ Dad used
to say when she brought a punter back to our place, and I
knew that was what prostitutes did. The business. That
was how they earned money. More than that, I didn’t
want to think about. But I knew for certain at the age of
nine that it wasn’t what I wanted to do when I grew up.

A
lthough Mum’s family lived in the same town as us,
Terry and I never saw any of them after Mum left,
not even our grandparents. It was as though the whole
family had washed their hands of us, as if they were
ashamed of what had happened and didn’t want anything
to do with us. None of them ever wrote to us or
rang us or came round to see if we were OK. There were
never any birthday or Christmas cards or presents. I’m
sure Dad made it difficult for them, but I will never
understand why they didn’t at least try to help us. I guess
it was easier for them all just to pretend that we had never
existed.

In later years my mum’s younger sister has tried to
make up for it by inviting us to family events, but so many
years have passed that Terry and I are complete outsiders
in the family. Dad and Nanny were the only family we really knew through those years of our childhood apart
from the cousins (Dad’s sister’s kids) who we sometimes
played with at Nanny’s. It was impossible for me not to
love Dad when he was all I had, when he was the only
person in the world who seemed to have stuck by us.

There were times, of course, when Dad would be in
prison and Terry and I would be put into children’s
homes and those would have been the times when other
members of our family could have come forward to help
without fear of having to deal with Dad – but they never
did, not even at Christmas. It seemed we were an inconvenience
to everyone, always in the way, a burden on
those who had to care for us. We couldn’t understand;
why didn’t our nanny want us, or one of our uncles or
aunts? It was as though we had vanished off the face of
the earth as far as they were all concerned, and that hurt
almost as much as Mum going in the first place. If everyone
had deserted us, I reasoned, we really must be horrible
children and Dad must be some sort of saint for
putting up with us and sticking by us as much as he did.

‘I’m the only person you can trust,’ he kept saying,
and I could see that he was right. ‘I’m the only person
who will ever love you.’

Sometimes he taught us things that he truly did
believe were for our own good, even if he might have
been doing it for the wrong reasons. Because he couldn’t
bear to see us cry he would teach Terry and me to fight back at every opportunity against everyone except him. If
we came in from playing with other kids in the street or at
school, snivelling because we’d been hit or picked on in
some way, he would shout at us that we had to hit back
and must never let the others see us cry. He drummed it
into us that we had to be hard if we didn’t want to be
walked over by the rest of the world. I’d seen him put his
own philosophy into practice often enough and although
I didn’t like his violence I could see that it gained him
respect. No one ever dared to bully our dad.