Rosa's Child (4 page)

'Remember, Grace, that you are never to mention the word "adoption". There's no need to. It's a big, big secret that you must never tell anybody. You won't, will you? Promise me now. Because you are mine, and I want everybody to believe that you are mine.'

Having received the pledge that he desperately needed to hear - all the more so since both girls had once asked him whether he and his wife were their real parents - the Reverend was satisfied for a while. His secret, it seemed, was safe.

Edward Mann was rather clever with words. Many a student at Wightside, the evangelical Bible college on the edge of Manchester where he was now Principal, would have testified to that. What the Reverend Mann said, he meant. Therefore Grace could not fail to be aware that she was his personal property. And not only did Irene appear to accept her husband's proprietorial claim: she actively colluded in reinforcing it. For example, she would emphasize to anyone visiting the house that any invitation to Grace that would take her away from her home, however briefly, would first have to be vetted by her husband. The Reverend seldom deigned to grant her an exit visa. On the contrary, he enforced a regime so restrictive and severe that it began to make Clarendon, for all its tightly drawn rules and regulations, seem like a holiday camp.

At home during the school holidays, Grace found herself a prisoner in her father's study, for it was there she had to remain so as to be at his beck and call. Strictly forbidden to form friendships with children of her own age, indeed deprived of the chance to develop outside relationships of any kind, she was even discouraged from reading newspapers and magazines. And within that study, bursting with theological and Scriptural texts, Grace would have another of the Reverend Mann's cardinal rules drummed into her time after time: 'Don't talk to anybody else, Grace.' The common purpose of all these prohibitions was simple: he wanted Grace entirely for himself. Lines of demarcation had been drawn up in the Mann household: while Irene tended to the needs of Eunice, Edward was responsible for Grace's welfare. This duty he took seriously, and it is clear that many of his impulses towards her displayed genuine care and dedication.

But, as the years went by, the Reverend became more and more besotted, and eventually obsessed, with Grace. And since this was an arrangement which served his purposes very well, it became unthinkable to him even to contemplate setting her free. A complex man, proud and very emotional, he would repeatedly declare his love for his foster daughter. It was, however, a love that placed a heavy burden on the young girl. 'You mean so much to me,' he would tell her. 'I do love you so much. I don't ever want you to leave me. You won't ever leave me, will you, Grace?'

Part of Grace recoiled from such possessiveness. Suffocated by her father's demands, she always counted the days until her return to Clarendon. And yet another part of her responded more readily to his apparent devotion. Desperate for love and approval, and as a result constantly fearful of rejection, she realized that his repeated declarations had begun to touch her. She had found someone who cared. The fact is, Grace had learned to compartmentalize her life, being outgoing, sometimes provocatively so, at school, and yet regressing into submission to her father's will at home.

Yet the relationship was by no means all darkness and torment for Grace: there were positive aspects too. On occasion the Reverend would not hesitate to back his daughter in the event of a showdown between her and Irene; and every now and then he would hand her a half-crown to spend on herself. In addition, despite the severity of her father's regime and all it demanded of her, somehow she felt she was able to communicate rather well with him.

Fearful as she was of crossing her father, Grace nevertheless felt proud of him when he stood in the pulpit preaching to his congregation. His sermons were full of kindness and Christian compassion of a high order. But this message was not restricted to words, for he was a man of action too. Towards the end of the 1930s, in the period immediately after the twins had arrived safely from Germany, the Reverend had felt moved to carry out further work with refugees. He and Irene had helped to secure the release and resettlement in England and Wales of no fewer than ten other refugees from what he always referred to as 'Hitler's hell'. Six of these were children, two were doctors and one an architect of great distinction. The Manns' determined fight to uphold fundamental human rights put to shame many Jewish families living in Britain at that time.

For all this, for Grace a return to Clarendon was a return to tranquillity. The prisoner of her father's study was now free once more. Friendships, forbidden at home, could be enjoyed again. Grace was close to many girls of her own age and together they had a wonderful time, although Grace's rebelliousness often lead them all into trouble. Some of them knew of Eunice's existence and felt very sorry for their friend, realizing how difficult it must have been to have a twin who was desperately ill and yet out of reach most of the time. But not even Grace's closest confidante knew anything of her dark and hidden past. Keeping her promise to her father, she revealed nothing.

By contrast, the school authorities knew all about her. As they were well aware, the law dictated that foreign children could not be formally adopted until they had reached the age of eighteen. Thus the one word guaranteed to send the Reverend into a fit of anger - 'adoption' - should not have troubled him at all. If anything, it was fostering that should have been the unmentionable, for the twins had only ever been foster children. What was more, the names Grace Elizabeth and Eunice Mary had been given to them informally by the Manns and had no legal status whatsoever. The same was true of the girls' surname. On all relevant official documents, therefore, the names Susi and Lotte Bechhöfer lived on, as Grace was about to discover. This was the one remaining part of the twins' heritage that he had been unable to obliterate, much to his regret. Even the charismatic and influential preacher was powerless before the law.

It was the summer of 1954, and sixteen-year-old Grace entered the school hall to sit her GCE O-level examination in English Literature. She was apprehensive, like the dozens of other girls facing the same ordeal. Told to line up in alphabetical order, Grace took her place among the M's, but was immediately called to one side.

'Grace, today you're going to be with the B's,' said Miss Weston, a teacher Grace knew well, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Grace was puzzled. 'Why?' she asked.

'Susi Bechhöfer - well, that's your real name,' Miss Weston explained, pointing to the unfamiliar name on the piece of paper in her hand.

As she clutched the paper the teacher had given her, Grace's mind raced back to the time when, eight years earlier, her mother had explained why Grace and Eunice had left Germany and settled with her and their father. Then she remembered that nothing more had been said since then. The girls had asked no further questions, and no other information had been volunteered by the Manns.

As she filed slowly along the corridor leading to the examination room, now rubbing shoulders with Baker and Brown, Grace felt stunned and humiliated - and all the more because she was among her friends. Most people liked Manners very much indeed. But how on earth would she be able to explain her situation to her classmates? Surely her popularity could only suffer. And yet to launch into an explanation was unthinkable, for how many times had she been told that it was strictly forbidden to say anything at all about her past?

Every year, come examination time, the same words would crop up, as if for their annual airing. Perhaps it was a coincidence that most of the teachers at Clarendon used the same phrase: good passes in the GCEs were, they stressed, the girls' 'passports to the future'. Despite this pressure, for the ninety minutes of the English Literature exam Grace sat in a daze, staring out of the window, unable to write a single word except for the strange-sounding name she had copied from Miss Weston's piece of paper. She looked at it again and again: 'Susi Bechhöfer'. Had she not seen those two words somewhere before, tucked away in a drawer at home, on a ration book from the war years? And had she not seen those two funny dots over the 'o' once or twice? She was not sure. Yet they struck some dim and distant chord in her memory. At the same time the name Mann was buzzing around in her head. That was her name; it would just not do to dispense with it like that. It was as if Edward Mann was sitting beside Grace in the examination hall, for he could not have put it more succinctly himself.

As the minutes ticked by, her pen refusing to budge, Grace felt that she was completely different from the other girls, as if her clandestine, almost criminal past had finally caught up with her. Unlike all the others, she apparently possessed a dual identity. The skeleton in the cupboard, which her father had tried so hard to keep from her, had insisted on making an appearance after all. Not only was this sudden turn of events very distressing for Grace; it could not have come at a worse moment. Here was one girl who would not be receiving her passport to the future.

For the rest of the exam Grace dwelled on her past. One thing she was sure of: the identity of Susi Bechhöfer did not appeal to her in the least. In any case, everything was so much more straightforward as Grace Mann. Whoever she was and wherever she came from, Susi Bechhöfer surely had nothing to contribute. There was no room in Grace's life for this interloper whose sudden presence augured only trouble. The fact was that the very sound of the name sent painful memories flashing through Grace's mind - memories of being described by her school friends as looking 'foreign'; memories of learning as a child that she had been brought to Britain from a faraway place called Munich, in a frightening country called Germany. All in all, the sooner Susi was cast aside, the better. The Reverend Mann's great secret might have been laid bare, but for the present it had emerged unscathed. And it was Grace's refusal to acknowledge Susi's existence that he could thank for that.

Grace's past was not the only secret father and daughter shared. In other areas too the Reverend had sworn her to secrecy. He had good reason to demand her silence. As he knew full well, if the truth were to be discovered he would not only be stripped of his clerical collar, but would find himself behind bars. For ever since the diagnosis of Eunice's illness, the head of the Bible College had been had been unable or unwilling to restrain himself from seeing Grace in a different light. No longer just someone to whom he was closely attached, she had become for the Reverend a sexual being, and therefore a potential means of gratifying his own desires. Here was the real reason why he was so determined that Grace should not stray from his study when she was at home. For in that closed room she could be trained to tend to his needs. Nor would she dare refuse him.

Grace, remembering the rapport they had until recently enjoyed, tried to continue to be a normal daughter to him, but the Reverend had changed the rules. Constantly demanding more, he wanted her to play the role of his lover as well as his child.

'Grace, I can come into your bed tonight, can't I?' he would ask as a matter of course. It did not occur to Grace that this was a request which she might have been able to refuse. Nor indeed that she might appeal to someone for help. Not only was she completely terrified of her father - a look from him could send her scuttling up the stairs - but she was also barely nine years old when he first made such demands. Once in her bed, he cast aside all pretence of self-control.

Just as the Reverend's black moods would spring up from nowhere, so too would his sexual desire. Nor was the abuse confined to the night. In fact, it occurred more often during the daytime, in his study, although that was by no means the only place. In the early days Grace dutifully obeyed him, although she came to loathe him for it. But as she entered her teens, she did at least pluck up the courage to ask why she should have to perform such tasks. The Reverend's reasoning, grotesque and distorted though it was, served to convince her to carry on, for that was what mattered to him.

'Because if you do this to me, Grace,' he would explain, 'it makes me feel that you are my own child. You know that the greatest tragedy of my life has been that I haven't been able to have children of my own. So if you do this for me, it just makes me feel that much closer to you.'

The Reverend had developed a habit which he practised with great skill. Should any opportunity present itself for sexual contact with his daughter, he found himself both unable and unwilling to resist it, even if the setting was well removed from the relative security of his study. Perhaps a public setting made the abuse even more exciting. Or perhaps it served to illustrate all the more vividly to Grace how he was able to control and manipulate her at his whim. How else to explain a Baptist minister abusing his daughter in the shabby surroundings of the public swimming baths at Penarth, near Cardiff?

No wonder the Reverend looked forward to Grace's return during the school holidays; nor that she contemplated them with a heavy heart. Once she was back, he would lose little time in resuming his advances. On one occasion, having met Grace from her train, he drove straight to a nearby chemist's shop, mindful that contraception was in order now that Grace was reaching puberty.

No wonder, too, that the Reverend could never find anything positive to say about any teenage boy who expressed an interest in his daughter. Seldom did his refrain vary, no matter how impeccable the suitor's character and credentials.

'No, Grace, definitely not for you. Definitely not for you,' he would insist.

The reason for these repeated refusals was not difficult to detect. Even the idea of his daughter being wooed by another man made the minister of religion desperately jealous. He wanted her all to himself. Had he not made his terms clear many years earlier?

In order to buy Grace's loyalty, the Reverend relied on the powerful weapon of the implied threat: 'Because if you don't do as I say, Grace...' Of course he never went on to spell out what might befall her should she refuse. For Grace, the worst thing was not knowing what sanctions might follow. Ignorant of what reprisals might be in store, she was at the mercy of her fertile imagination, as the Reverend had intended. Was it not possible, the agonizing thought occurred to her, that Grace Mann, like Susi Bechhöfer before her, would be cast aside, consigned to the past?