Helpless (9 page)

‘Did you like that?’ he asked. ‘It means you are no longer a little girl.’

But I had no words for him.

Seeing my face with the tears of a lost childhood sliding down it, he put his arms around me.

‘It’s what men do,’ he whispered then. ‘What they do to girls who are special to them.’

He called the children away from the rabbit hole, scooped out the promised ice cream from a white Tupperware container, placed it on melamine plates and gave it to them. It had melted but the children did not mind. His arm went round my shoulders again – it felt heavy but I did not have the courage to shrug it off.

My back was stroked, he called me his little lady and spooned the runny ice cream into my mouth. ‘Eat,’ he told me. My mouth opened and I swallowed, but afterwards I could not remember what it was I had eaten. Later, when we returned home, the little ones asleep in the pram and him pushing, I walked behind them and with each step I took I felt the place between my legs hurt.

‘Well, did you have a nice picnic?’ asked my mother, ignoring my lack of enthusiasm in telling her about the day’s outing.

‘Yes,’ I replied, then went out of the back door to the lavatory.

I took my knickers off, dipped them in the lavatory bowl, then used them to rub and rub at that part he had hurt. Then I washed the bit of my knickers that went between my legs, rinsed out the traces of blood and that white stuff, squeezed them between my hands to get them as dry as I could, before putting put them back on.

That night as I lay in bed with my eyes shut, I saw the image of a woman with a rope around her neck swinging back and forwards. But she did not have blonde hair and a pretty face; instead her hair was mousy brown and her face was the same one that I saw each day reflected in the mirror.

Why could my mother not guess? I asked myself. With that thought anger mixed with fear ran through my body. I sat up, crossed my arms and rocked backwards and forwards, hitting my head on the wall, and as I did so my fingers involuntarily nipped and nipped at the soft underside of my upper arms. The fleeting pain of my own pinching dulled my anger – the anger that had made the landscape of my world become bleak, and the people in it hateful. And as I pinched and nipped I did not care that in the morning my arms would show tiny bruises that matched my fingertips.

I
have often wondered how different things might have been if Dave had not come into our lives. But he did, and from the moment my mother met him the atmosphere in our house changed. My mother became distracted, showing even less interest in me than normal. Her moods and my father’s unpredictable temper started flaring up for, in my mind, little reason.

Before Dave’s appearance life had been fairly peaceful for several months. Extra money was coming in, and having a friend next door had seemed to make my mother more content and, even though she did little housework, tasty hot meals had become a more regular occurrence. My parents, although giving little thought to the buying of new furniture or even bedding, had purchased the largest black and white television on the market. Standing near the fireplace and usually tuned in to a sports programme, it seemed to have blunted the lure of the pub for my father.

Maybe without realizing, the man next door had timed the taking of his final step well. The effect, however, was the same as though he had carefully orchestrated it.

That particular interlude of peace was coming to an end.

It was my father’s simmering rage that I first became aware of.

Since the age of three I had become accustomed to his bursts of temper. They came with very little provocation as though fuelled by something dark that was out of his control. But as the weeks went by with little sign of them, I had grown accustomed to his lack of his outbursts.

Then, without me understanding why, they returned even worse than before and, with them, my fear of him returned.

There was pent-up anger in the way he hunched his shoulders, the way he walked and even the way he ate. His expression was truculent, the tone of his voice always vicious. More and more I tried to avoid him, and that became easier as once again my father spent his evenings in the pub. At night when I lay huddled up in bed, I could hear his unsteady steps on the gravel, the slamming of a door, his roars of rage, the sound of a blow, the creak of the stairs and then finally the rumbling sound of his snores.

But at that time I wanted my mother to see my own depression, ask me what was wrong, but she, having other things on her mind, failed to notice my need and I was left to carry my weighty burden alone.

I tried as much as I could to avoid being alone with the man next door. I made excuses that I had to get home quickly to help my mother with the children, but every time I wriggled out of one situation another one came up.

I pleaded with my mother not to go shopping with Dora on Saturdays, for the man next door did not work on those afternoons. But my pleas fell on deaf ears.

‘Oh, don’t be so selfish,’ my mother said impatiently when I protested at having to stay behind with all the children, for Dora would leave her two with me as well. ‘You know it’s the only day we can go and you only have Dora’s children until her husband comes over to fetch them.’

I knew that, and that was what I did not like.

No matter what the weather was on those Saturdays, I tried to keep the children inside the house. I wanted their presence to protect me, but of course it never did. No sooner had the women caught the bus to town than the back door would open and he would be in the room with me.

‘Got off work early,’ he would say with a triumphant grin.

The children, seeing the open door, shot through it and rushed to the swing next door. Once again I knew I would hear the word ‘fuck’.

‘You are to stay out in the garden,’ he would call out sternly to the children before locking the front door.

Down on the floor behind the sagging settee was his favourite place. ‘Out of sight from the windows’ was the reason he gave as I lay back on the cold hard lino. But I think that my very discomfort added to his enjoyment.

My mother had always told me that I could not hide anything from her, that one look at my face told her everything she wanted to know. So somehow I thought her increasing lack of time for me was my fault. I deduced that she already knew that I was doing something very bad.

But I still wanted my mother to acknowledge that something was wrong in my life. Did she not see my depression, how my laughter never rang out and my face seldom stretched into a smile?

I wanted her to ask me what it was I did when I walked in the fields or went down to the pond. Did she not see him following me; did she not notice the times he called me into his workshop?

‘Mum …,’ I would start.

‘Not now, Marianne,’ she would reply, and that tiny seed of courage that may have made me speak out withered and died.

Each time the man next door met me in the fields or waited for me to leave school and I was made to do something I did not want to do, my guilt increased and my continued silence was assured. If I did not feel that I was to blame as much as him, why, the man next door said, when tears had threatened to choke me and I had tried to push his hand away, had I not gone running to my mother the first time it happened? ‘You know, Marianne,’ he added, ‘that people will blame you. Remember what happened to that pretty woman Ruth Ellis.’

Each time he said those words my gasp of fear turned into a lump in my throat the size of my small fist, which halted any words and made my body tremble; a lump that stifled my speech and made even my whimpers soundless. Then his arm would go round my shoulders; his hands would stroke my hair and soothe me whilst his voice murmured endearments and lulled me into eventual calmness. But at night, when the lights were off and I lay awake in the darkness, memories of what he had done clawed their way back into my mind, leaving me feeling frightening and alone. Later, when tiredness forced my eyes to shut, my sleep was invaded by vivid nightmares: of broken dolls, their necks bent to one side, swinging backwards and forwards from a rope; of huge mouths that threatened to smother me; and of being told by men in red robes that I was bad and must die.

Shame kept my mouth closed but I reasoned that if my mother asked me what was wrong it was because she wanted to know and I thought of a silent way of telling her. I cut pictures of women out of magazines, circled their breasts and that part below their waist with brightly coloured crayons, then placed them in places I thought she was bound to notice. In the lavatory I mixed them in with the squares of black and white newspaper, making sure that their colours of shiny paper were easy to see. I did not think about what would happen if my father or Dora, when she was visiting, saw them. I just wanted them to tell someone what was happening to me.

But nobody asked.

It was then my boundaries blurred. My mother had no time for me, the children at my school did not like me and my father’s temper scared me. The man next door was the only friend I thought I had.

At that time I did not notice the real reason my mother had less time for me – that it was caused not by anything I had done, but by another person entering her life. At that time I was too wrapped up in my own blanket of black despair to notice what was happening around me.

When I first met Dave I had no idea of the havoc his presence was going to bring to our home. He was one of the managers at the farm where my father worked. In his late thirties, he was a tall, red-haired man with wide shoulders and good manners. His green eyes twinkled, his mouth turned up in a constant smile and he radiated a quiet air of authority that was appealing to women. Certainly it was to my mother, who was married to a man who paid her scant attention.

The day he came into our house I did not give him another thought; he was just another grown-up who asked me how I was doing then showed little interest in my reply. He had given my father a lift home from work and been invited in for a cup of tea. What I really noticed was that he spoke differently from anyone I knew. Without seeming to raise his voice it seemed louder and more assured than my father’s. It seemed to fill the room when he thanked my mother for her hospitality, praised her homemade cake and then shook my father’s hand before leaving.

‘Good bloke, that,’ said my father once Dave had departed. ‘No airs and graces about him, not like some of those stuck-up boyos from some bloody agricultural college who think they know better than anyone else about farming.’

‘Yes, he seemed very nice,’ was all that my mother said then.

As the weeks past I saw more and more of Dave. Sitting quietly in a corner, my head down as I knitted small pieces of clothing for my dolls, I eavesdropped on the adults’ conversation and gradually learnt a little more about him. He had recently moved into the area, he was married with two little girls who attended my school. I knew which two his children were, not that they ever spoke to me, but occasionally I saw him with a pretty dark-haired woman, waiting for them at the school gates.

He started drinking in the pub where my father went and, with the bicycle tied on the back of his car, would give him a lift home.

Then I noticed that he started putting in an appearance when he knew my father was out, but wrapped up as I was with my own problems I did not think straight away that there was anything strange about it.

I did not even take any notice of the extra care that my mother started taking over her appearance. Make-up was carefully applied, hair was washed and brushed, and she even started cleaning and tidying up our living room. Not that putting away a few pots and pans made much inroad into the mess that we lived in. But at least the worktops became clean again and there were no longer any dirty nappies left piled in a bucket by the sink.

As his visits increased, I decided that I did not like Dave. I did not like the way my mother changed around him, tossing her hair and giggling. I did not like the way he looked at her; it was as though every word she uttered was of huge importance to him, and, without understanding why, I blamed him for my father’s frequent outbursts of temper.

Why did he come when my father was out and spoil my time with my mother? I asked myself when he started arriving on Saturday evenings, the night that my father always went to the dog races. Before Dave had started visiting I had enjoyed those times, for once the two younger children had gone to sleep, my mother and I would sit, side by side on the settee, in companionable silence, watching an old film on television.

Dave’s presence in our lives changed that. As soon as my father had left, she would disappear upstairs to return half an hour later wearing a different dress, with her hair, which she normally tied back, hanging loose and make-up on her face. I would watch her peering out of the window, and when I saw a smile transform her face into that of a younger, less careworn woman, I would know that he had arrived.

‘Time for you to go to bed, Marianne,’ she would say brightly, without any explanation of why I had to go at least an hour before my usual bedtime. Seething with resentment, I would glare at his smiling face, before stumping mutinously off to my room.

I gradually became aware that it was not just me who resented Dave’s presence. My father’s early good opinion of him had changed into a violent dislike.

‘Was that Dave round here?’ my father started asking me and, not wanting to be caught out in a lie, but understanding somehow that if I said yes it would get my mother into trouble, I just mumbled that he had not been in the house before I was asleep so I did not know. This was a reply that earned me a disbelieving look. Once I saw him inspecting the gravel outside the front of our house to see if there were any oil marks left by Dave’s car.

‘If I catch that bastard sneaking round here again I’m going to kill him,’ I heard him shout at my mother on more than one occasion.

I hoped my father would catch Dave, not that I believed the threats, but I thought that he might make Dave disappear from our lives, and that is what I wanted.

But to my dismay, when Dave appeared on an evening when my father was at home, instead of the row that I expected, my father, with a friendly smile on his face, just offered him a cup of tea. I did not know the words ‘coward’ and ‘bully’ then.