This is the true story told of the author’s own childhood. All the horrors of a nightmare childhood almost too terrible to tell, memories almost too dreadful to recall, written here in all the gritty details by the author herself. Memories so horrible in fact, it took an immensely courageous and painful nine years to write it.
Why did her mother hate her so much?
Why did her uncle love her so much?
She was left certain on only one thing.
Only a mother can destroy every ounce of hope in you.
*****
To the outside world, the everyday life at number 17 Ladymere Avenue was as pleasant as the day was long. A seemingly perfectly normal, happily married couple, with three wonderfully behaved; if somewhat subdued, children, lived in what appeared to be perfect harmony. However, things are not always what they seem, so the age old saying goes! Behind those perfectly painted, handsomely furnished, closed doors, lay hidden, a world of cruelty, lies and almost unbelievable punishment; that belied the upstanding respectability that my parents and especially my Father represented. Especially with him being a local councillor, a most devout Roman Catholic and a staunch pillar of the parish Church. This epitome of a perfectly ordinary life was my family home.
Therefore it is not surprising that it has proved to be an arduous and often very disturbing task to find the right words to express myself. Being brought up as I was, with all thoughts of voicing my own opinions and feelings in any sort of clear way, being immediately and violently repressed; at least as far as my mother was concerned, thinking wasn’t a luxury often afforded to me. No subjects of any importance, no matter how serious or how small, were ever talked about with the children. No words or expressions of love were ever given or spoken; no signs or tokens of affection were even thought about.
Never once did either mum or Dad give us a kiss, or a hug, or even the least little bit of praise, even when we’d done something particularly good or praiseworthy. If one of us had achieved something especially good at school; school was where it stayed, it was merely put to one side, no comment given.
They never even showed any affection for each other either; not a hug, not even a stolen kiss snatched in the private contours of our home. But I suppose that was because any public displays of such kind were frowned upon at the time. Most of all, no matter how much we longed for just the smallest hint of a kind word or even a fond glance in our direction, we were never quite sure whether we were loved or not, because we were just never told or shown even the merest of expressions of it.
Consequently, I have never before admitted, either to myself or to anyone else and that includes my loving husband and family, that during my childhood and early teens, I was systematically physically and mentally abused by my perfectly turned out and especially presentable mother.
But the most horrific and frightening thing of all to come to terms with, was the harrowing realisation that I was regularly sexually used and abused by a close relative.
All of this stayed shrouded in denial; locked away somewhere in the hidden and shadowy recesses of my mind until one particular rainy mid-summer’s day, when having decided against doing any of the normal ‘housewifely’ things that were crying out to be given attention to, I became thoroughly bored with aimlessly wandering around the house and finished up in seated in front of my husband’s computer. As usual I began playing games and out of sheer reluctance to play any more of these mind numbingly, boring excuses for what passed as ‘games’ in those days, I decided to try my hand at writing. My initial thoughts were to write something about my medical history; it being quite a varied one. I’d undergone a fair bit of surgery, and even more since, but that’s another story in itself. More to the point though, for reasons unbeknown to me, or perhaps to memories rooted in my childhood, I just couldn’t think of anything else. However, as my fingers flew, or to be more accurate, arather laboriously fumbled their clumsy way over the keyboard, what actually came out was something quite different. It was my childhood! Graphic, truthful and for those that know my family and me - disturbing, shocking, often brutal, and quite harrowing in the extreme.
I have always believed, and to a large extent still do, that everything that happened to me in those days was done because I was essentially bad through and through and therefore it was simply all that I deserved, so in other words, my own fault. The words ‘you reap what you sow’ frequently quoted at me by mum, echoed consistently in my mind. Indeed I was never allowed to forget it. Not even once had it ever entered my head to question, or God forbid, disagree with anything my mother had ever said or done to me; the consequences would have been far too dire.
It was as if some unwritten and unacknowledged mutual agreement existed between us, for me never to mention what had occurred when I was a child and for her to do the same. How, you might ask, did this state all come about or even how did I allow it to continue? I don’t know. But this was the state of affairs until that is, my husband started to casually read what I considered to be, the diatribe that was not so rapidly appearing on the screen. Of course he’d known that my upbringing had left an awful lot to be desired, but his shocked and angry reaction to my written words led me to realize that perhaps my childhood hadn’t been quite as normal as I’d supposed. It is purely thanks to a humungous amount of encouragement from my nearest and dearest; namely my husband, that I made the life changing decision to continue.
So where shall I begin? All kinds of thoughts come hurtling through my head – each one of them struggling, clamouring and fighting for their right to be heard – that it makes it so hard to know where to start, especially my not being any kind of literary genius. Actually, in point of fact my talents had only ever reached as far as four or five sides of an A4 essay at school. So if I tell you that I’m just an ordinary person, with a very ordinary life, living in a most ordinary place, then perhaps you’ll forgive me if I do happen to start in the wrong place. For really, I’m just like the rest of you, but with perhaps an extraordinary true-life story to tell. I do still have a lot of trouble believing that everyone else didn’t grow up in the same way as the children in my family did and especially with the same amount of physical and mental abuse we endured throughout our childhood. It’s just that now, looking back, I feel a deep sense of sorrow, loneliness and regret; that my parents, my own mother in particular and maybe to a greater or lesser extent, my Dad, neither loved, wanted or cared about me in particular.
So perhaps I should start at the very beginning, being the logical sort of person that I like to think I am. But where is that? Is it at the start of what I now know to be untypical teenage years, where seemingly endless hours turned into days and days of what seemed like eternities? Or was it when I was a cute little toddler, (or so I’ve been told) topped by the brightest blonde hair you’ve ever seen? Or even before that, maybe telling you all about my parents and the sort of house and area we lived in?
Probably the most logical place to begin would be by me giving you some basic, but necessary, background information about the times and the house we lived in, where and how we lived, and what sort of people my parents were. So here we go.
We lived; my younger brother David, younger sister Elizabeth and myself, all together with mum and Dad, in a very respectable looking, well maintained, three bedroomed, bow window fronted, pre-war semi detached house, just a stone’s throw from the centre of town. It had a fairly small and neat front garden that appeared to be only just big enough for what seemed to be the obligatory giant hydrangeas, which every now and then popped their large and heavy heads of blue-hued flowers over the low red brick wall. If it had been raining, then they always seemed to force their heads the other way, and therefore drenched everyone with showers of water, whenever they opened the lime green painted, fancy wrought iron gate. Ladymere Avenue, the avenue on which it was situated, was un-adopted by the local council, which in reality simply meant that it was and would remain, totally unpaved. As a result in winter, what seemed to be never ending puddles of water, and often smaller stretches of mud, both of which extended as far as the eye could see, all converged together into what appeared to be one huge, and to a child, inviting, lake. Conversely, in the summer, clouds of dust could be seen flying everywhere, with a sort of dirty grit covering all in its random path. Still despite all this, it was still considered to be the place to live. Whether it was summer or winter, it made little difference to the folks of Ladymere Avenue. In winter, they complained about the ‘lake’ and in summer, of course; the dust. But for me as a child, it mattered not as there always seemed to be countless places to play and that was far more important. Of course that was when or perhaps I should say if I was allowed to play out.
It was a safe and ideal place to play, for it was surrounded by small suburban fields, all the perimeters of which were bound by bushes, shrubs and trees of all kinds. Some bore blackberries and raspberries in the autumn others just had showy, sweet scented old fashioned roses. Some bore nothing at all, except for masses and masses of leaves, that looked as if they had been painted with glorious hues of varying shades of green, some all curled and twisted and others that appeared to be all feather like and floaty. Either way it was a fantastic place to play and due to the more than usual amount of bushes and trees that abounded, there were numerous places, where we could build dens in the vast foliage - our very own secret hiding places. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ is the often quoted saying, so as a result, as long as you weren’t rowdy and didn’t do any damage, adults never bothered, you could escape there for quite some time, playing and hiding.
No one could ever see the dens and as a result parents or adults never came in. On the very rare occasions I was allowed to play out, my favourite place of all, where I could hide away from the world, was in, what was to me my ‘dingly dell’. It was formed by the conjunction of three ‘smallish’ saplings with overlapping branches that almost completely obliterated the sky. In between and on all three sides, were wild privet bushes that were so huge it made it exclusively private. It was only reached by a tiny, narrow path that wound its way through to the head high – to a child that is - couch grass that abounded there, and once inside, the outside world was only a distant memory.
Because there were only about a dozen or so houses in the avenue, all the neighbours knew each other really well and knew each others business, perhaps not so well, though I’m sure it was not through the want of trying. The women folk of Ladymere Avenue appeared to get on particularly well together. They could often be seen, whatever the weather ‘fradging’ (gossiping) when the work of the day was done, standing arms akimbo, supporting armoured bosoms below the obligatory and all covering pinnies and exchanging the day’s gossip. That of the price of a loaf of bread having gone up by a halfpenny – ‘did Marjorie at the corner shop think they were made of money?’ Or they could be heard complaining about the pot holes in the avenue (always a favourite topic) needing to be filled in again. Then their faces would be set in grim determination as they tried to decide on who should be allotted the task of going to visit Mr. Bentley (my Dad), their local councillor, to ‘get something done about them’. Of course it didn’t occur to them that he might not sit on the relevant committee; they were wholly convinced that he could fix everything simply because he was a councillor, and after all he did live in Ladymere Avenue!
Even the rain didn’t stop them. If it was merely ‘spitting’; starting to rain, they stayed where they were, if it rained a little more heavily, they would simply retreat to their doorsteps and ‘memaw’ to each other. This expression means to lip read. Many of the housewives were used to the thunderous noise of the cotton weaving and spinning ‘sheds’ or factories, in which they had been, or still were, employed. The ear splitting din in these places was so loud that you couldn’t actually be heard above the noise of all the machinery, and so the advent of lip reading was deployed by the women of Lancashire and awarded the local title of ‘memawing’. Consequently they would happily continue memawing until ether it was time to go indoors, or the rain simply got to heavy and they were getting too wet. The last rarely happened!
In those days, before the advent of the ‘freedom for everybody and everything era – the swinging sixties’, it didn’t seem as important to know the whereabouts of your children for every minute of the day; they were out of sight and out of mind, and as a result, the avenue would often ring to the trill of children’s voices as they were playing out. As the mums went about their daily duties of cooking and washing and ironing, the children would be having the time of their lives outdoors. Some would be fearlessly climbing the knarled and twisted, old oak trees, perilously risking life and limb in an effort to be the one to reach the highest point, whilst others would be grubbing around in the dust, expectantly searching for the latest, ugliest creature known to man! But every one of them - both parents and children alike, blissfully unaware of the travesty taking place behind the beautifully manicured, front door of number 17.
To the outside world, everything must have seemed ‘hunky-dory’. Nice house, good area, father a pillar of the community, mother who worked part time yet still managed to bring up three children that were so well behaved, that you hardly ever saw or heard a peep from any of them! Yes indeed, life must have looked grand. But little did anyone realise what was actually happening all too frequently behind that glowing example of the faultless family. To this day; until now that is, not one soul in Ladymere Avenue ever had even the slightest inkling about how one of those little girls’ lives was being marred and ruined for ever, at the hands of the perfectly presentable - Mrs. Bentley.
So let’s move on to the family and I’ll start with Dad. He was brought up, the son of an immigrant Irishman, who despite the fact that he was one of the many thousands employed at the time, in the dangerous and dirty occupation of mining coal in Lancashire, was himself a very learned man. Self taught, he could often be found debating on any subject under the sun, with all the intelligence and integrity of a university educated philosopher. Probably because of Granddad’s lack of formal education, he and his wife Martha made it their duty to ensure that Dad got the very best in education and by them scrimping and scraping, they managed to scrape enough money together to send him to a public school back in Ireland. An achievement indeed and especially in those days! By all accounts he did extremely well there but unfortunately there came a time when his parents could no longer afford the fees and he had sadly had to leave college and return home to England. Due to family circumstances being not so fortunate, he had then to get a job immediately, to help support them. Of course Dad being Dad; the dutiful son, he did this willingly and with no ill feelings towards his parents whatsoever.
In fact he managed to get an extremely prestigious job as an accountant, working for a local firm of funeral directors and there he stayed for the rest of his working life. The only trouble with this being, that due to his unfinished college education, he didn’t have the last vital piece of paper that would have allowed his progression within any other company. And this was to be something that he always regretted. But given that he was the only accountant employed in that company at the time, I don’t think he suffered by it. Pride in his own sense of achievement was the only thing he lacked.
Dad was a gentleman and a gentle man. He was a tall, slim, hat- bearing, bespectacled man, who walked in a particularly straight and self respecting way whilst using a particularly long and upright umbrella as a walking stick. But it was never to be mistaken as one, oh no. The exaggerated manner that he adopted with it saw to that. Every time he lifted it from the floor, he gesticulated with it in such an embellished way that you would have sworn he was going to throw it away. He never did! Instead he took it with him every day come rain or shine, whether it was needed or not and wherever he was going. In fact Dad would always walk so straight and so tall that his posture alone commanded respect wherever he went. Indeed respect and admiration followed him around as if he was some part of a royal family. Everywhere he went he was always greeted as Mister Bentley - as if it was somehow disrespectful to call him by his Christian name. He was also referred to as a VIP and treated as such whenever he attended concerts and conferences. Dad was liked by everyone; no one ever had a bad word to say about him. And to say that he was always immaculately ‘turned out’ would be an understatement. Whenever he left the house, whether to go to work or just to go down the road to the local papershop, he would always dress in a shirt, tie and suit and when the weather turned colder, he would wear an overcoat over the suit, always topped off with a hat - varying ones for the varying temperatures. In fact Dad’s idea of casual, was not wearing a tie!
All of Dad’s working life was spent being an accountant and right from the start, he always had his own office. Something that I remember especially well! In fact, it might have only been last week that I was hastily walking past the other clerks doing their jobs and excitedly heading for the large, imposing wooden door leading to Dad’s domain! Once in there my gaze always went to the same thing first - his ludicrously large, leather and most importantly, ‘swivelly’ chair. I loved it! He would always let me spin around and around on it, whilst he talked to mum in another part of the building. I never knew why but neither was I bothered.
Whilst all this was taking place, some of the other clerks (unbeknown to mum and Dad I’m sure), would creep into his office and begin by making a huge fuss over me and then shortly after, out would come the sweets. Both two things so rarely experienced with mum and Dad, and yet two things that were absolutely relished.
At the time, I actually thought that Dad must have really liked his work, because he was never at home, most if not all of his waking hours was spent there; at the office. In the early days of our childhood, it was fair to say that we never saw him; his time was invariably spent at the office. In fact, I thought he was never at home at all. Even Christmas Day! A time that should have been so sparkling with specialness for every child; after our obligatory church attendance - he was at the office. Even on those what should have been wonderfully magical days, I can still remember that he went to the office. He was always at the office!
Talking about Christmas, on this day and this day alone, we were allowed a very rare and special treat.
In the afternoon, and only in the afternoon, Dad’s armchair was moved from its usual imposing position of being placed in front of the television cabinet, that at all times enclosed it, and we were actually allowed to watch the television! A rare treat indeed as we were never, ever allowed to watch it at any other time, and certainly not without mum supervising our viewing. But despite all the marvellous glitzy Christmas programmes and films that were there on our big screen for us to gaze at, I would still have given it all up just to have my Dad at home with us.
Even so, when it came to that part of the day I actually loved it; I could drift away in a fantasy of what I imagined a perfect Christmas to be. But all of this would only come about after we had eaten a breakfast, of a single piece of toast, I had washed and put away the dishes and then the exciting expectations of what Father Christmas might have brought us, was soon to be dashed to pieces.
Every year I would build up my expectations of what I imagined was going to be a wonderful Christmas Day; the fabulous presents, an abundance of marvellous food, sweets, chocolates and the joy and laughter of a happy caring family. Instead, all I can remember is the fluttering feeling of disappointment in the pit of my empty rumbling stomach as we were allowed to enter the front room, and I hastily cast my eyes over my chair! My brother, sister and myself were each allowed a very small wooden kitchen chair. However many presents could be fitted onto the seat of each of them, sparingly spaced, were our presents. Each year I secretly and expectantly wished for more, but each year was invariably the same as the last. All I ever received was an orange or an apple, some horrible looking nuts in their shells, that mum always ended up eating, along with some dates that followed in the same direction and on some odd occasions, a very few sweets, that I cherished, carefully eking them out to make them last as long as I could. Incredible though it may seem, I can’t ever remember getting any toys, or games; or indeed any of the things that I had so painstakingly thought about and written so carefully on my letter to Father Christmas. Taking special care not to ask for too much! But even as I got older, things requested so politely, never seemed to appear. My parents weren’t poor, far from it; the presents they bought each other proved that; enormous boxes of chocolates, (that I was only ever allowed to smell the empty wrappers of), beautiful clothes, some of the finest sparkling jewellery – need I go on - but the children of the family, the very ones that such a magical time of year is for, it proved to be just another day, with a treat of an afternoons television. And, with any luck on my part, mercifully fewer beatings.
As ever, Christmas day was always a huge disappointment for me until I left home, started meeting people and eventually and unexpectedly, got married. I say unexpectedly, because it was consistently drummed into me right from the earliest age that I was far too ugly for anyone to look twice at, let alone marry.
Nevertheless, it was only from that time onwards that I made pretty damn sure that things would never be the same again. All Christmas times from the day my children were born, would be fun and happy and filled to bursting with love and laughter, but most of all they would certainly be something worth looking forward to. A practice that I keep to this very day! I still make up a Christmas stocking for each of my two grown up daughters, for goodness sake. Carefully selecting and considering every item that goes into them, tailoring each one, to each daughter. With a precision that Her Majesty’s Horse Guards would be proud of.
Whenever there were Bank holidays, or even most of Dad’s annual holidays for that matter, it was always known that he would be at work. And so, as a child growing up with it, it was never questioned. But on reflection he didn’t seem to do it for the extra money either; he didn’t get paid overtime. I could only presume that he enjoyed it a great deal. Now did he merely enjoy his work so much that he simply couldn’t bear to be parted from it? Or looking back now with older eyes, could it have been to simply avoid spending time with mum? I really don’t know is the answer to that one.
They certainly never seemed to argue, or at least not within our earshot, in fact they hardly seemed to communicate with each other at all. Conversation always seemed to be kept to a bare minimum. However on the rare occasion that Dad would dare to disagree with mum, he was immediately shot down in flames and therefore simply removed himself from her company by going into the forbidden ‘front room’. A practice that annoyed her even further! But it made little real difference; he could never win and to my knowledge never did.
That covered the daytime. But come to think of it Dad was never there in the evenings either, he was always at some committee meeting or other. He was a local councillor and a magistrate, as well as a school governor for five of the local schools and that didn’t include being a foundation member of a boy’s Grammar school that was going through the unenviable process of being morphed into a sixth form college at the time. However as soon as this was successfully achieved he then continued his support by becoming a governor. As if this wasn’t enough he was the chairman of various local organisations too, like for example being the chairman of the local Competitive Festival Committee. Every year this involved the exceptionally talented and the not so talented people from the local area and beyond, all expectantly converging together in a battle to become the best in their field. Be it singing, dancing, public speaking and a whole host of other activities too numerous to mention here. All this was done with the sole purpose of having being judged the best in their class and therefore rewarded with the accolade of winning medals, cups and cash. The whole thing ran over a number of days; usually Friday to Sunday and despite the fact that Dad was in his absolute element organizing and coordinating every moving object; be it people or paper, it meant that he was away from home even more - if that was possible. Even all this activity outside his normal working hours still wasn’t enough for Dad. He was also the chairman of the Council for Voluntary Service, which involved quite a bit of whatever time he had left, in the admirable occupation of helping the older or more disadvantaged people in our town.
Could there possibly be any time left you might ask yourself at this juncture? Well for my Dad the answer was yes. He became involved in a musical society, and of course, you might have guessed it by now, ended up as the chairman of that. This was a group of predominantly middle aged people that came together regularly on a Friday night for the mutual appreciation of music of all kinds. Opera, orchestral pieces, jazz and blues, big band, brass band, on occasion even pop, all could be heard sending their exquisitely enticing sounds drifting on the night air if you happened to walk past the doors of the public rooms of the local Library at the right time. To say that he loved this particular use of his spare time would have been an understatement. He loved and treasured it! Something I was to learn in my later teenage years, as we would both head off together for the meeting. Delight would be written all over his face in anticipation of the musical treats ahead. Usually classical, opera or jazz were his favourites and mum detested these with as much vigour and passion as he loved it!
Surely no man could have done more, you may again be thinking at this point. Well yes they could! My Dad did! Not only was he a member of the Arch Diocesan Committee that covered all Church matters but he was the chairman of the Ashfield-in-Makerton Diabetic Association, chairman of the Ashfield-in-Makerton Old People’s Welfare Committee and the Grand Provincial whatever it’s called, of a group of Roman Catholic charitable money raisers. This even involved both Dad and mum, as they quite often attended marvellous formal dinner dances that were always held in some particularly lavish hotel. How he found the time to do all this, or indeed why he did so much seems impossible to fathom. Was he unhappy at home with mum, or did he simply and genuinely like to spend whatever time he had available, helping others? I will never know. Yet even this wasn’t the end of the road with him, as he voluntarily kept all the account books for the local Parish Church, of St. Marys. A huge task in itself! Secretly I think the Parish Priest must have thought that all his blessings must have come at once when he got to know Dad and realized that in him he had actually found someone to do all the boring, even though vitally important work, like figures!
Our family was strictly Roman Catholic you see, so Dad, like the rest of the congregation, just couldn’t have even entertained the notion of saying ‘no’ to Father Rafferty. To him it would have been tantamount to blasphemy, as though he was tempting the devil himself into visiting him in his own very private world of worship that was so sacred and pure and meant so very much to him. No, no, I don’t think he dared say no and this was further reflected by the fact that every one of us had to attend mass every Sunday and every Saints day, no matter what, fair weather or fine, no matter even if we were ill and almost dying on our feet.
A good example of this perhaps was the accepted norm that Dad and I went to the early mass at 8.00am every Sunday morning. From being probably about 6 years old until I was 11; this became the customary practice for me, whilst mum, my brother and later my sister attended the later mass at 9.30 am, after their breakfast. Countless were the times when on being at the early mass, as it was known, I would have to be un-ceremoniously carted from the Church because I had fainted. Not surprising really though when you consider that in those times no-one was allowed to eat or drink anything for at least an hour before attending mass and in my case my thin, frail little body just couldn’t take it. But still I was made to go and severely admonished for missing mass when I was taken out.
Every week I tried so hard to stay in Church, to not feel ill, even to the extent of distracting myself by counting all the stone bricks in the three enormous arches that so mightily and impressively towered above the altar, then reaching all the way to the splendid ceiling. But it didn’t work. So I then tried to count all the bricks that I could see in front of me, of which there were considerably more, in an effort to take my mind off feeling ill. I can still to this day remember getting way into the hundreds, whilst at the same time fighting furiously with myself to be O K. But that didn’t work either. In fact, nothing I did seemed to make any difference. Once that strange feeling began to take over, I was powerless to do anything but go with it. First the strange wobbly feeling crept up on me, when everything in the Church seemed to be swaying, worryingly even the walls and the ceiling. But as I looked quickly around, no-body else seemed to have noticed. This was always followed sharply by feeling so hot that I thought I might melt, at the same time me gripping tightly onto the pew in front of me for all I was worth. My prayer book had long gone, landing somewhere on the floor probably. Time stood still but at the same it lasted for ever! Where was I? What was happening to me? And then, oh my God, nightmare of all nightmares for me because I hated it with a passion - I was going to be sick! I was going to be sick! I was going to be sick now! I was falling into a twirling tunnel of darkness that had no end. I was shaking so much, that I was rapidly loosing my grip on the steadying pew in front of me. I felt ghastly! Then a merciful nothing!
My face was being slapped, my name was being called but from somewhere far away. Water was failing miserably to be put into my mouth. A hand was behind me, forcing my head down onto my knees. I was outside sitting on the floor and I was cold but ever so slowly I was coming back to life. But where was Dad? Where was he? I was with total strangers that were already starting to frighten me. Who were they? Again I felt alone, despite being with these kind but still frightening people that were seemingly trying to do their best to make me feel better and for that I was truly grateful. I really was. But all I wanted was my Dad, expecting to see him, any moment now coming striding through the big heavy, wooden Church doors. But he was where he always was at those times – in Church. He hadn’t followed me out! He hadn’t even come out to see how I was. He never did! Church was far too important. So I stayed outside, on my own leaning up against one of the ancient stone walls of the Church, until Mass ended. The helping hands having disappeared as soon as I felt better.
And so it continued. Both of us being deeply embarrassed but neither of us wanting to mention a word about it.
The first time this happened, I had no idea what was happening to me, I just knew that I was frightened to death. However as time went on I began to recognise the first signs of it and would just about be able to drag myself out of Church before the inevitable would happen. The Church goers having to minister their kindness to me each time, until one day they just never appeared and from that day on, they never did again. I presumed they thought that I could manage on my own. With difficulty and occasionally sustaining the odd bang or bruise on my head, or arm or whatever part of me hit either the wall as I was going down, or got me as I landed on the floor, I managed. Always as I came out of Church, I would desperately try to make it round the corner, so that I was out of sight of anyone who might happen to leave mass early; so ashamed was I of myself. The drink of water previously offered by the kindly Church goers, I always missed greatly especially if I had actually been sick. It at least removed the vile taste that such an action repeatedly left. Urghh! Even now the thought fills me with disgust at myself.
Interestingly it was only ever me that was made to go to this un-earthly time of a mass, though I never found out why.
So you can see, between his work and his ‘extras’ there wasn’t any time left for us. In fact, it’s fair to say that we three children, sadly never ever saw much of our Father. When we were getting ready for school, he would have already left to catch the morning bus to work. At around 5.40pm he would arrive home and his routine was then so predictable, you could have set your watch by it. Before I even set eyes on him, he would have washed, performed his diabetic injection and be seated at the table by precisely 5.50pm, whereupon his tea would be instantly put in front of him. As he would begin to tuck into a hearty meal of meat or fish, accompanied by potatoes and vegetables, I would sometimes be allowed to talk to him but only if I’d been good and only for two minutes. Usually it was mum and Dad who talked sporadically and ate together, mum sharing, of course, the same food as Dad and them both finishing off with cake and biscuits; most of which we never the saw the likes of for us at home. But Dad ate well because he had to. Being a diabetic and having to have three injections a day, meant that he always had to eat a balanced diet and actually, everything also had to be weighed. Everything had to be so precise. I always felt a bit sorry for him when he was ill, or even just under the weather because even then he had to eat the same amount, whether he felt like it or not and even by today’s standards, it was still quite a lot. Four slices of bread or ten ounces of carbohydrate, isn’t a small portion by anyone’s standard! And he could never leave any of it either, otherwise the levels of insulin in his body would be irregular and he could and did have hyperglycaemic attacks.
When these happened it was horrible. Dad became like a creature from the planet of Mr. Strong. He had the strength of ten men and on occasions, I can remember mum tying him down to the chair with the washing line, so that he wouldn’t do himself or anything else any harm. Sometimes even she (not forgetting that this was the woman that lifted and re-laid all the three foot by two foot concrete flagstones in our back garden) wasn’t strong enough to control him and she would have to go to a neighbour for help. Dad was an extremely clever man but at these times it would appear that his brain had taken flight. He would act extremely stupid; like leaping around the living room, or climbing on the furniture; something that he would be horrified at the very thought of, not to mention the act of doing, had he known. If he was asked to do anything at these times like for example, to just sit down and calm down, he would take on the look of a wounded animal and just look straight through you; as if there was nothing between his eyes and the back of your head. Often when Dad was really bad like this, we were sent upstairs, out of the way, but as I got older, I was expected to help. I didn’t like doing it but I didn’t mind really, after all, he was my Dad. When the ‘dos’ were over and Dad’s brain landed again, he could never remember anything at all about his behaviour and so it was left that way. No-body ever mentioned it and I felt that I’d just better not because of the thunderous looks coming from mum, that were often thrown my way if I so much as hinted about what he’d done.
So, I think you can see from that, the justification for Dad always having to eat so well and eat so much. The poor man could be on his death bed, seriously ill and looking for all the world as though he was about to ‘pop his clogs’ but he would still have to force-feed his body with exactly the same huge amount of food.
Sometimes though, just sometimes, I would wish that I could become a diabetic, just so that I could feel like a Queen, being able to feast on so much food, so that never again would I have to feel those gnawing pangs of hunger that played tricks in my tummy and made me feel awful. Many’s the time when I’d been sent straight to bed after coming home from school, with nothing to eat, or drink, at all. At those times, even our usual meal of a small saucer-full of cockles, or a segmented orange on a plate, would have been welcome. But I wasn’t a diabetic and as such was privy only to the food that mum either prepared or dictated to me to prepare. Or not, as the case would often be because she said I was such a difficult and naughty girl and therefore didn’t deserve anything. Such was life.
Another thing Dad didn’t do, was involve himself in any form of punishment. He never issued orders, like Mr. Thompson, Ray’s Dad, next door. You could hear him barking orders to his wife and his son, at all times of the day. Not that he was an ogre or anything, in fact the reverse, he was quite an agreeable sort of a chap and always nice to me, but you always knew that he was in charge. My Dad however was different, it was as if he had done his Catholic duty by siring his offspring, but then left the upbringing and all of the discipline to his wife. He simply didn’t concern himself with his three children at all, as if he couldn’t be bothered, but there still remained something surrounding Dad, a certain vague kindliness, that was completely missing with mum. Maybe it was something to do with the way he treated me when I was ill, maybe that was it, but perhaps he just had more of a kinder, gentle soul somehow.
In fact, come to think of it, I was very often ill, especially during the night until I must have been about the age of about nine or ten years old, because I regularly suffered from a particular horrid form of bronchitis. That produced the most appalling sounding cough, that all too often shook my little bony body with such choking spasms, that I thought they’d never stop. I was sure, on some occasions that I could actually hear my bones rattling together, but on reflection, that must have been a slight exaggeration of the truth. However during the night was another thing entirely. It was then that it would turn into something especially frightening because the nights seemed to be lost forever in this cycle of coughing and waking. Moreover, night was all too often my only escape from the relentless toil and punishment that had previously dished out by mum. It was the only time she posed no threat to me – because she was asleep! So to be forever awake, tossing and turning endlessly and making such a racket, would often seem to threaten me with more serious consequences. That of awakening her! But not to worry, she never woke – it was always Dad that was awake and he was always the one to come, like the proverbial knight in shining armour, to my rescue. It was always Dad that would have to haul himself out of bed, even during those fiercely cold winter nights, to come to me – we didn’t have central heating then; that came considerably later.
It would be pitch black outside; being usually the middle of the night, but as my bedroom door silently opened, a tall shadowy figure would always emerge from the darkness and I knew instinctively that it was my Dad, come to try to stop this infernal coughing, and with him he had brought the ultimate - his cough toffees. I can remember them as clear as day; they came in a small oval tin, beige in colour, with a maroon strip running all around the edge of it and they were called Bronskells. No one was ever allowed to have any of these toffees except Dad, so it was an immense privilege to be given one and especially in the middle of the night. It felt so right, so nice – as though, for once someone actually cared about me. Cherished me, maybe?
But how I longed for just that little bit more!
A kiss, just a little one even, planted on the top of my head would do, but Dad didn’t do that sort of thing. On the one hand he seemed far too aloof to care but yet on the other he’d proved to me that he did by these actions. Surely they weren’t the actions of someone who didn’t give a jot! In a whisper, he urged me to ‘be quiet now and go back to sleep’. Come to think of it, mum never, ever appeared during the night - only Dad. So maybe it’s not too hard to understand, why for me, my Dad is high on a pedestal from which nothing and no one can remove him and in my memory; he is my sanctuary! Maybe it was mum who made him come to quieten me, so that she could get some sleep. Who knows! I just know that I prefer my way of thinking.
*
Well that just about sums Dad up. Now for the hard part – mum! She was a short, stocky, well built, sort of poe -faced woman, with nut brown hair. She wore spectacles that were blood red, horn rimmed affairs; that swept in an upward fashion all across the top half of her face; considered very fashionable, I’m sure for the time (1960’s). And she always wore the brightest red lipstick you could find, that incidentally proved a good match with the spectacles. She preferred to live in a world of her own, where happy endings never happened. All thoughts and deeds would be trapped in her mind, waiting for it to twist them into a deadly false reality. To this day, I have never come across anyone who could twist facts into fantasy by creating such poisonous lies, in the same seamless way that she could, and still can do and with such effortless ease. She never seemed to be happy either unless she was assassinating someone’s character, whilst at the same time, singing her own praises, as if she was the only infallible creature stalking the earth. No one could actually say she was the sharpest knife in the box but she had a kind of canniness and shrewd coldness about her that turned her into a formidable force. Feelings and mum just didn’t go together either, kind emotions were alien to her and I think the part of her brain where her emotions should of been, had been replaced by a thundering great piece of cold rock. I never once saw her kiss any of us, hug any of us, or even whisper that she loved any of us! She was just an empty chasm of cruelty and coldness and had a presence about her which gave you the feeling you get when biting on tinfoil. Whereas Dad held the respect of a myriad of friends, with mum, they all actively seemed to keep her at an arms length. At no time did I ever see or hear anyone visit the house to see just her; she just didn’t have any friends. If anyone spoke to her whilst on the rare occasions that we were out shopping together, it was because they knew Dad, not out of friendship with mum. This was borne out by the fact that the conversation always focused on Dad, his work, the charities he worked so tirelessly for, or his position as a Town Councillor. Mum and her, what precious few activities she had, were never so much as even thought about never mind mentioned, or so it appeared.
She worked part time as a dinner lady at one of the local schools, but unusually perhaps, she never referred to any of the women she worked with as a ‘friend’. Quite the reverse actually, mum always seemed to have nothing good, but always something bad to say about each and every one of them. In fact, after I was married, I was later to discover from my mother-in-law, who also by sheer coincidence also happened to be a dinner lady, that indeed she was regarded as a ‘poisonous and dangerous woman’ and someone ‘not to cross’. Not surprising then that I was in such awe and fear of her.
But perhaps most poignant were the occasions when mum and Dad had been invited to dinner dances and other such lavish affairs as council receptions and suchlike. At these times she really did demonstrate her cruel streak by flaunting in front of me just some of the finery that she possessed and had chosen to wear as she left the house to enjoy herself. This was in marked contrast to the second hand clothes that we were made to wear.
The most memorable for me being when I was in the fifth year at my secondary school and my usual bedraggled coat became so small that I simply couldn’t, no matter which way I tried, fit into it. Just to make matters worse, I actually still liked that coat. It was a bright red nylon affair, that must sound horrendous, but it was at least it was semi respectable and it was the only ‘decentish’ one I had owned since starting secondary school. Nonetheless no matter how much I fiddled and mauled with it, it just would not go on anymore. It refused to fit! So for a time I simply didn’t wear any, I just carried it over my arm. At least it looked like I’d got a coat. At the same time I fooled myself into thinking that other people would think that I was simply choosing not to wear it, despite it being probably around December. Plus I thought (rather stupidly) that maybe I’d get a new one for Christmas; it being the only time we ever got anything really.
Why I thought this remains a mystery – it must have been purely wishful thinking in the extreme, on my part. And so I convinced myself, Christmas it would be. With the vain hope of Christmas firmly planted in my mind, I was quite content to be cold. I don’t think I really felt it much. If you walk quickly, you soon get warm and I was more than used to the cold anyway.
But nothing could have possibly prepared me for what she was about to do next - yes she got me a coat! One that didn’t cost her any money at all and it wasn’t a hand-me-down from Auntie Jennie, or whoever else they usually came from. Oh no! This time it was to be something completely different and something that I could never have imagined even in my wildest dreams that she would suggest, let alone do, no matter how little she thought of me.
It was a hand-me-down from her. Indeed, it was her old maternity coat that she had worn when she was carrying me!
I was 15, I was doing my level best to try and fit in, at last, in school, and I was being made to wear a 1950s style old maternity coat! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I simply couldn’t believe that she meant it. It was enormous, the most horrid shade of bright purple ever imaginable, it fastened with 3 massive buttons at the top and the rest of it swung around my slight frame like the Silcock Brothers circus tent. It was a forgone conclusion; now it would never be possible, I would never be one of the crowd at school, I would never fit in, I would never be one of ‘them’. Situation normal; I would be the class joke.
That first day and every day that followed, being made to wear this frightful representation of a 15 year old’s coat, filled me with the most acute humiliating and shameful feelings that it’s hard to put it into words. So much so that all I wanted to do every morning going to school and every evening coming home, was to crawl away in a corner and die. Or at the very least slink away from the cloakroom un-noticed and then make the biggest dash for it you’ve ever seen in the hope that at least sometimes, I could get away from everybody without being seen. Inevitably, it never worked and the expected gibes and jeers followed me until I was almost home. How I hated it! But all I could do was long for the summer to come when I didn’t need to wear a coat at all.
Until that time mum made it her business to make sure that the coat was worn every single day – no amount of protestations or pleas made any difference, I was not allowed to leave the house without wearing the coat. I wasn’t even allowed to carry it over my arm. Sometimes I thought that maybe, just maybe, all of this was a sign that she was changing in her feelings towards me and that it was all done because she actually cared for me now – by making sure I wore the coat ensured that I was warm – so maybe this was a sign that her affections were actually changing. Could it be proof that she cared? Hopefully! It was certainly preferable for me to think that way anyway.
Still we’ve strayed from the story a tad here, so let’s get back to those often very fine dinner dances that she went to with Dad; of course there was nothing second hand about the way she looked. If I recall correctly, she looked perfectly beautiful in every way. Long dresses were the order of the day and when she wore them, she looked like a queen; slim (she was back then), lovely and with a charming elegance that enveloped her whole being. Her jewellery, that always consisted of matching earrings, necklace and bracelet; glittered and sparkled so brightly that it dazzled, with little fairy-like lines dancing all around her like a halo, as if they were already at their own private little ball. Moreover, the myriads of colours always matched supremely with whatever she was wearing. Sometimes it would be the richest deep purple velvet dress that fell in luxurious folds all the way down to her feet. Where it was then met with the most delicate, shimmering gold or silver shoes, which seemed to twinkle in the soft light of the bedroom. Or on other occasions it would be pale peach silk, or rainbow coloured chiffon that shimmered and shone with every slight movement her body made. There wouldn’t be a hair out of place and her make-up - flawless. She was immaculate and on those evenings I thought of her as my very own fairy queen! The hardship of what she put me through was forgotten – she was my mum and I was so proud of her.
But it didn’t take very long for reality to soon bite back. On those nights it was my job to make sure that David and I were both in bed by the time she told me, usually 6.30pm. She issued further instructions that we were never ‘to move as much as an inch’ whilst she was out, otherwise there would be ‘hell to pay’ on her return. ‘Hell to pay’ you’ll know more about in little while, suffice to say that it was wretchedness, misery and suffering all rolled into one deplorable mess. She didn’t ever seem to have made any arrangements for anybody to come to the house to look after us either, because no one ever came. It was just taken for granted that it would be me in charge because I was the eldest, despite my being only little. My first memory of this being when I must have been about six and before Elizabeth, my sister, was born. No sooner had mum and Dad both left the house than it was time for David and I to go to bed. Despite there being no-one there to check on whether or not we had actually gone to bed at the correct time, instinctively and obediently we just obeyed her command; we always did. Somehow I always thought mum had some kind of super powers that would enable her to be able to tell if we had done what we were told or not. Besides which there was old Mrs. Blackwell next door and even though I liked her, I thought a similar thing of her. I’m sure she could hear through walls! What if she heard that we’d not gone to bed when we should? She might have heard the television; she might even have heard us talking. No, we were obedient to the letter; the last thing I wanted was to be responsible for bringing about any punishment of any kind myself. So at 6.30 prompt we went to bed for the night, not even getting up for a drink.