Daddy's Little Earner (2 page)

Not that the two of them weren’t enjoying themselves
for a lot of the time in the early days of their marriage,
despite their money problems and Dad’s violent temper.
They both liked going out drinking together and Terry
and I would be left at home or would have to sit outside the
pubs with Cokes and crisps and wait for them to roll back
out. Sometimes we would be sitting there for hours on end
before they finally emerged, weaving around and slurring
their words. I’m told that when I was about three they
came out of The Lamb in Norwich and found I’d gone
from wherever they had told me to sit. Suddenly frantic for
their lost child, they got the police involved and they found
me at the bus station with a woman who was about to
board a bus with me. I wonder sometimes what would
have happened to me if the police had got there a few minutes
later. Could my life with this stranger have been any
worse than it was soon to become anyway? I’ll never know.

They were already developing a habit of spending
every penny they had on drink. I’m pretty sure Dad wasn’t
working at that time because Mum’s parents used to come
round to our house every week with groceries and Mum
had been in trouble with the law for breaking into the
electric meters and things like that; so money must always
have been pretty tight.

Apart from regularly announcing that he was going
to make me a prostitute as soon as he could, Dad made
plenty of other declarations that showed how little he
took his role as my father seriously. Mum told me that
when I was three he asked her to go down to the bookies
to put a bet on for him. She didn’t leap up immediately
and he grew impatient. Dad liked to get instant obedience
from all of us. Grabbing hold of me he pulled my
dress up and yanked my knickers down.

‘If you don’t hurry up,’ he shouted at her, ‘I’m going
to have her by the time you get back.’

I guess he was joking, but not many fathers would
make any sort of joke about raping their three-year-old
daughter and it was just one more comment that sowed
a seed of concern in Mum’s mind. She could never be sure
what he was capable of or where he would draw the line
of acceptable behaviour. Dad saw life differently to most
decent people.

Occasionally Dad would come into a lump sum of
money, mainly when he’d had a win on the horses, but
also later when he bullied Mum into going on the game,
and then he would really flash it around. No one could
ever have accused him of being mean – quite the opposite.
Even though he couldn’t drive he bought himself a
Mark 10 Jaguar one time and hired a friend called Eric to
be our chauffeur. He took particular pleasure in being
driven to the dole office to sign on each week, smartly suited and smoking a big cigar, thinking he was the
cleverest man in the world because he was getting the better
of the system. I don’t know how he got away with it
except that he was always so plausible people tended to
believe whatever he told them.

His friends in the pubs loved him for these sorts of
shows of bravado, and so did I. To me he was a hero. I
remember sometimes when he was in the money he
would actually light his cigars from the fire with ten or
twenty pound notes. I thought that was the most brilliant
thing imaginable, to have a father who was actually willing
to burn money. How many little girls like me ever got
to see such a shockingly extravagant sight?

Dad kept ferrets and he liked to put them into the
inside pocket of his suit jacket when he went out to drink.
It was like his little party piece in the pub to get them out
and make all the women scream.

‘Oh, Terry, Terry! You are a one!’

They all thought he was such a card. He always managed
to collect a little mob of admirers around him wherever
he drank; he was a born crowd puller.

Whether they had money or not Dad was always
immaculately turned out with smart suits and ties and a
clean shirt every day, even though he only ever went
drinking in scruffy city pubs or into the bookies, never to
anywhere where he needed to be dressed up. He would
polish his shoes every night till he could see his face in them, wash his hair and shave every morning, preparing
to put on another show for his public.

When he had cash he was always happy to spend it on
things for the family, as long as they were things that
would impress other people as well. We were the first
people in our road to have a colour television and an automatic
washing machine, for instance. Despite these flamboyant
displays during the boom times, most of the time,
of course, we didn’t even have any food in the house or a
change of clothes for either Terry or me. There was actually
no spare money at all.

Dad loved his dogs and mostly had corgis, just to be
unusual I think and because it meant he could boast that
he had the same dogs as the Queen. Her Majesty is the
only other person I’ve ever heard of who likes the breed
so Dad could be fairly sure he wouldn’t bump into anyone
else with one down the pub. When I was little we had
a standard poodle called Gina and a St Bernard, both far
too big for our house but perfect props for Dad as he
swaggered around town or welcomed friends into his little
kingdom to drink, play cards and whatever else they
got up to.

When he was a teenager, Dad’s nickname had been
Pussy because he used to wear a long pointed pair of
winkle-picker boots and everyone started calling him
‘Puss in Boots’, so he called the first corgi Pussy too,
making it an extension of his own ego. That dog used to follow him everywhere he went in the city, waddling
along on its short little legs, panting eagerly, never wearing
a collar or lead. Dad would have loved the idea that
the dog was so fond of him and so well controlled it
would never wander off; having it on a lead would have
created completely the wrong image for him. Whenever
Dad ended a day out by getting arrested for being drunk
or for causing a fight, which was quite often, Pussy the
corgi would be sent home on his own in a police car or a
taxi. Everyone knew who he belonged to and it all added
to the image Dad cultivated for himself of being a lovable
local rogue and ‘a bit of a character’.

Even when he had no money to feed or clothe his children,
Dad thought it was perfectly normal for a man to
go out drinking from the moment the pubs opened at ten
thirty in the morning. As far as he was concerned it was
his right to do whatever he wanted in life and he wouldn’t
tolerate anyone telling him any different.

One of the rights he insisted on was to do as he pleased
with his children, and part of this meant beating us whenever
the urge took him. We were as much his property as
Pussy the corgi or his well-shone boots. We trotted eagerly
around behind him on our short little legs just like the
dog, desperate to please him and avoid punishments.

Maybe it was the help they got from their parents that
meant they were able to cope with looking after Terry
and me when we were babies, or maybe it was just the energy and enthusiasm of youth that carried them
through. But by the time my little brothers Christian and
Glen came along Mum and Dad were no longer coping
as parents. For some reason Dad just couldn’t bear having
them around. Chris annoyed him so much that once
he crammed him into the washing machine and threatened
to switch it on while Mum was screaming hysterically
at him to let him out. Not surprisingly Chris was
absolutely terrified of Dad, cringing and shaking like a
puppy expecting a beating whenever Dad was around,
and clinging on to Mum’s skirts for protection.

Mum’s solution was to keep Chris and Glen locked in
their bedroom together whenever Dad was in the house.
I hardly remember seeing them at all, even though I was
four when Glen was born. Mum would bring them
downstairs to feed and bath them when Dad was safely
out of the way but the rest of the time they were locked
up. Normal babies would shout and scream for attention
but they didn’t. It was probably fear that kept them so
quiet, making it easier for our parents to gradually forget
that their two youngest children existed at all. Chris
wouldn’t have wanted to cry out for fear of attracting
Dad’s wrath and Glen probably started by following his
brother’s example and then eventually didn’t have the
strength to cry anyway. I suppose they must have given
up hope of anyone responding to their needs and just fallen
into a hopeless, fatalistic silence.

Chris and Glen’s silent room really frightened Terry
and me. We hated the terrible smells that it emitted, of
faeces and stale urine, and we didn’t dare to open the door
or go in on our own, never knowing if we went in there
whether we would find them dead or alive. I can still
remember those smells and I will never forget the
squalor of the room on the few occasions when I did go
in there with a grown-up, but I don’t remember ever
hearing either of them cry.

I wish I could have done something to help them but I
was only tiny myself. Besides, by this stage everyone in the
house knew better than to defy Dad and risk his temper
igniting. I was desperate to please him and to be in his
good books, but more and more I seemed to get things
wrong. One day when I was about four, we had been
playing Ludo as a family and I must have got overexcited
and rolled too violently, accidentally losing the dice.

‘Find it immediately,’ Dad ordered, his voice steely,
but I just couldn’t; however hard I searched through the
carpet and under the furniture it remained stubbornly
gone. Looking back now, I wonder if perhaps he secretly
slipped it into his pocket to ensure that its discovery
wouldn’t spoil his fun. Once he had set his heart on beating
one of us nothing was allowed to get in the way of
his gratification.

Mum says he went out into the garden that day and cut
a stick from a bush, choosing a particularly strong and bendy specimen. While the rest of us continued searching
frantically for the dice he took a knife and methodically
cut away all the leaves and twigs, leaving himself with a
vicious-looking weapon which he swished through the air
menacingly as if testing its suppleness. Mum knew what
he was planning to do with it and pleaded with him not to
but he took no notice. Dad never allowed anyone to talk
him out of doing anything he had decided on.

When he was finally ready he ordered me to take
down my knickers and laid me across his lap, holding me
tightly and whipping me until I bled. I screamed with
utter shock, completely devastated that my adored Dad
could turn against me like this. The emotional betrayal
was worse than the pain, although that was excruciating.
I couldn’t sit down for a week afterwards. That was the
first time he ever beat me, but from then on the stick
stayed on display in the sitting room, ready to be used
whenever he lost his temper.

The blows themselves hurt badly enough, but it was
the expectation of them that became the real torture. He
would always tell us in advance that he was going to beat
us, leaving the stick standing by the fireplace, just glancing
at it now and again, reminding us what was coming,
prolonging the dread and making me cry before he had
even struck a single blow. He would tease us with it. ‘Do
you want some of this?’ he would ask as he tested it
against his own palm.

He didn’t always use the stick – sometimes he would
use a slipper – and he didn’t need to be drunk in order to
decide to grab hold of one of us, wrench down our pants
and put us over his knee. Sometimes he was stone cold
sober, feeling pissed off with life and wanting to take it
out on someone smaller than himself.

‘It’s about time you had ten of these,’ he would announce
and we would know there was no getting out of it.

One day I remember in particular Dad issued one of
his usual orders for me to go over to him to take a beating
with his slipper. ‘Take your knickers down,’ he commanded
and I was so frightened I stayed rooted to the
spot and started to cry and plead with him even though I
knew it was hopeless.

‘Stop crying,’ he ordered, ‘or you’ll get twenty hits
instead of ten.’

The short walk across the sitting room towards him
seemed impossible and I stayed rooted to the spot, out of
his reach. I knew what would happen if I defied him but
my legs just wouldn’t move, like in a nightmare.

‘Get here now!’ he bellowed, furious at being disobeyed,
and I jerked into life, lurching forward.

The nearer I got to him the more he smiled and for a
split second I thought he had changed his mind, that he
was just teasing me, having a bit of fun. Although my
whole body was trembling with fear I forced my mouth
to smile back at him, trying to make him love me enough not to want to hurt me. The moment I was within reach
he grabbed me and threw me across his long legs. As he
raised the slipper in the air I let out an almighty scream,
which made him laugh.

‘I haven’t even touched you yet!’

I couldn’t stop the crying and it made him angrier still
so he doubled the number of hits to teach me a lesson, to
teach me to be brave and strong, to teach me to obey his
orders the moment they were issued. His lessons worked
because I soon learnt to stifle my screams and take my punishments
in silence. I always concentrated hard on counting
each stroke to try to distract my mind from the pain
and to keep myself from crying and angering him more.

Once he had finished he would throw me to the floor
and I would scrabble to pull up my knickers, the tears
silently streaking my cheeks, a wave of relief sweeping
through me at the thought that it was over and that I had
survived an ordeal that I had thought a few minutes earlier
was going to kill me. Why had I made such a fuss? I
would ask myself. It wasn’t so bad. I was still alive even if
my bottom did hurt. Maybe Dad was right and I was
making a fuss about nothing. I would then crawl into a
chair and try to sit down, but it would hurt too much and
I would have to lean on my side. My punishment was
over, but however hard I tried I wouldn’t always be able
to stop the tears. I would try to sniff them back up before
he saw them.