Authors: Kim Noble
Little did I know …
I was born on 21 November 1960 at the Mayday Hospital in Croydon, south London – a place I would come to know all too well later on. Because my sister had been delivered via caesarean section, the doctors thought it best to bring me out the same way. Two weeks later I was diagnosed with double pneumonia, rushed back into hospital and pumped full of antibiotics. The outlook was so bleak a priest was summoned to perform an emergency christening and the Last Rites. In the end, the pneumonia would have less of a lasting impact than the drugs.
Although nowhere near as dangerous, I also suffered from jaundice for a while. No one looks good with yellow skin, but when your hair is as red as mine it’s quite a clash of colours. If ever the family wanted a laugh at my expense, they always brought that up.
But, as I learnt just a few years ago, a touch of jaundice was the least of my worries. I was actually lucky to be born at all.
When Mum discovered she was pregnant again, she didn’t exactly jump for joy. In fact, she couldn’t think of anything worse. You didn’t have the options that women have today. Abortion wasn’t legal in the UK until 1967. So Mum did what a lot of scared women were doing at the time. She bought some tablets on the black market and washed them down with a bottle of spirits.
I found this out a few years after Mum died in 1994. One of my godmothers, bless her, decided the time was right for me to know the truth. I wish she’d kept her mouth shut. There are absolutely no positives to take from the news that your mother risked her own life to try to end yours. I cried for days.
You blame yourself, which is stupid, because I hadn’t even been born. But you can’t stop thinking,
Why didn’t she want me? What had I done wrong?
Did she ever love me?
And of course by then it was too late to ask.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. That could be the story of my life …
If you’re a superstitious sort of person – and I’m absolutely not – you would have me down as born under a bad sign right from the start. Think about it: unwanted, abortion-survivor, wrong gender, named by a stranger, and born the colour of a matchstick.
It didn’t bode well, did it?
When I was born we lived in Shirley, on the new Shrublands council estate. Then when my grandfather died, Mum and Dad bought his house and we all moved in to live with my grandmother about a mile away. It was only a three-bedroom house so I shared the main room with my grandmother, which I really loved. I probably saw more of Nan in those early years than anyone. She was always around the house, cleaning or cooking or standing on the step smoking her Embassy cigarettes, watching us play. As a rule, Mum would do Sunday lunch but Nan would cook dinner the other days because Mum was working. Afterwards she’d usually pop round to her brother’s house – two doors down – but always be back for hot chocolate and a book in bed by about ten.
Lorraine had the box room and my parents took the middle one. Nearly half a century later I’m still living in the same house.
Families stuck together more in those days. Over the road was an uncle, two doors down was another one, and various other relatives were dotted around the vicinity. We were very close-knit. It was a nice neighbourhood, actually. Very community-spirited.
Like half the local population, Mum and Dad worked at the ICL factory on the A23. That’s where they met, both dressed in their company-issue white coats, like doctors. Dad actually worked on some of the first computers. He used to come home with these punch cards for us to play with. We had loads of them around the house. When the factory shut down the whole area took a bit of a kicking.
I think we must have come across as being such a perfect family. My mum and dad seemed very happy. And then they had us two. It must have seemed a very rosy picture.
But behind closed doors …
We weren’t an open family. When I was seven my dad had an affair and left us to set up home with his other woman. Nobody told me, even though they knew the woman’s son was in my class at West Thornton Primary. I could tell that Mum was upset about something and there had been a lot of arguments recently. The first real clue I got was this lad coming up to me one day with, ‘Your dad taught me how to spell your name.’
‘Oh,’ I replied. What else did he want me to say?
Then it was ‘Your dad bought me a football’ or ‘Your dad took me to the beach’. Random sentences, really, which I just ignored. When he began having a go at my mum I cut him off completely. I didn’t know what his problem was but I couldn’t be bothered giving him the time of day. I thought,
If he’s trying to bully me he’s not very good at it.
It just made no sense.
Gradually, though, I began to put two and two together. I didn’t exactly get four straight off. I got as far as realising Dad wasn’t around any more and that was it. It didn’t occur to me to think he’d found another family. It was as though he’d just ceased to exist. Vanished off the face of the Earth. But I don’t remember being worried. No one mentioned him at home. Not Lorraine, not Nan and not even Mum. I guess from that I knew he hadn’t died. That was good. I was sure of that. But any more information wasn’t forthcoming and I didn’t push it. It just didn’t seem important. I had my own life to get on with.
All was revealed a couple of months later. Not by Mum or Dad, of course. We were at home. I was watching TV while Lorraine was on the phone in the hall. Then she came in and spoke to Mum and Nan in the kitchen. I heard their voices getting louder but I tried to blank them out. As long as I wasn’t involved I didn’t care.
But I was involved. We all were.
‘Dad’s coming home,’ Lorraine announced. ‘He’s just asked me. And I said yes.’
You said yes?
‘Why didn’t he ask Mum?’
Lorraine shrugged.
I don’t know why Dad had asked her or what gave her the right to make a decision for Mum. But it had to be for the best, didn’t it? Families need fathers. We needed ours, anyway.
Judging from the pans being crashed in the kitchen, though, I don’t think Mum agreed.
It was arranged that Dad would come round the next day. That was the plan anyway. But about an hour after the phone call, when I was getting ready for bed, I heard a key in the front door. I tiptoed out onto the landing and saw the familiar figure of my dad stepping in. He had a big old battered army suitcase which he put down in the hall. It was dark but even from my vantage point he didn’t look great. His right eye appeared bruised and there was a cut on his cheek.
I ran back to my room before he saw me. A few minutes later Nan and Lorraine joined me.
‘Your dad’s back,’ Nan said.
I nodded.
‘I think it’s best they have some space to themselves. I’ve spoken to your Aunty Peg. You can stay there tonight.’
Aunty Peg was Mum’s sister. She only lived around the corner so it didn’t take us long to walk there. On the way Lorraine filled me in on a few more details. My mouth fell open at some of it. That was the first I’d heard of Dad’s affair. Lorraine seemed amazed I hadn’t known. Why should I have? It wasn’t on my radar. I was seven. People didn’t have other families in my world. I didn’t know where Dad had gone but I hadn’t let it worry me. Half the time I had enough trouble working out where I was.
I might not have cared what he was up to but Mum’s reaction had been suitably explosive. In hindsight, I didn’t know how I’d missed it.
Dad, Lorraine explained, had been carrying on with another woman for a while. When Mum found out she’d exploded – as had Dad’s sister, Ivy. Apparently they’d both gone round to see this ‘other woman’ but they’d done more than see her. I don’t know who did what but Dad’s girlfriend got one hell of a beating. Ivy, apparently, had to be stopped from strangling her. Dad had apologised, said it was over, but Mum wouldn’t let it lie so eventually he and the woman had run off together.
I listened to Lorraine, stunned. It all seemed a bit unreal. Then I remembered the kid in my class and it brought the situation home. That’s why he’d started saying those things about my mother. He wasn’t a bully. He was just really upset. If anything he’d been looking for a friend who could sympathise with the mess his home life was in.
And I didn’t have a clue anything was even wrong. Again, my ignorance was actually protecting me.
I guess the boy’s family equalled the score. I still don’t know what drove Dad back home initially but Lorraine filled me in on why he was a day earlier than he’d promised.
‘The woman’s husband tracked them down. He gave Dad a right going over.’
So it
was
a black eye.
Poor Dad.
Physical wounds heal of course and, within a couple of days, Dad’s eye was right as rain. Mum’s injuries were of the mental kind – she was mortified that the world suddenly knew our family’s business – and I don’t think she ever recovered. I remember her often telling me not to say ‘I hate’ about anyone. ‘You can dislike someone but you can never hate them,’ she used to say.
But Mum hated that ‘other’ woman for ruining the façade of her happy marriage.
Dad’s problems didn’t stay with me long. Nothing did, really. I always seemed to be rushing from one thought to another. A large proportion of my days were spent on things like just trying to keep up with a conversation. So often it seemed as though I’d walked in on something halfway when, judging from what was being said, I must have been there since the beginning. Lorraine knowing so much more about Mum and Dad’s set-up didn’t surprise me. Only knowing half the story was par for the course for me, whether it was at home, with friends – or at school.
Schooldays passed in a blur. There were fun times, of course, and I had plenty of friends. They’re not what really stick in my memory, though. More often than not I just recall being punished for something I hadn’t done. The paint episode with Mrs Baldwin certainly wasn’t a one-off. She was always chasing me for something. And I lost count of the times I heard the head say, ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, Kim.’
‘Kim’. Always Kim.
I didn’t understand and I didn’t question. That’s just how it was.
There were plenty of things I didn’t understand or query. Like why Mrs Baldwin never called my name from the register. Everyone else in the class heard their name and said, ‘Here, Miss.’ She never called mine. I used to worry she was marking me down as absent.
Mum won’t believe me when I say I was here,
I thought. I was in trouble so often why should she?
But I never asked why.
Tests were a problem for me as well. I never did very well. But who could blame me? Half the questions seemed to be about things I’d never been taught. I don’t know how the other kids managed to answer some of those things.
They must be getting extra tuition at home,
I thought.
Or they’re cheating.
There was no other explanation. I hadn’t missed a day at school all year. My attendance record was exemplary. But I swear I hadn’t heard of half the things they put in the exams. Or if I had, I certainly couldn’t remember them. My memory was bad, I was beginning to realise that. But not that bad, surely?
Then there was the trouble. I couldn’t avoid it. Sometimes it just seemed like I was being set up. As if the whole class was in on a joke and I’d just walked in at the last second. Even my various form teachers during my time at West Thornton seemed to be in on it. On another occasion, after I’d left Mrs Baldwin’s class, I was staring at the blackboard, trying to work out what was on it. I could see words although a second ago there had been numbers. Before I could ponder further, I heard the teacher’s raised voice.
‘Right, you’ve had enough warnings.’
I was concentrating so hard on the blackboard it barely registered.
Who’s for it this time?
I wondered without looking up.
The teacher grabbed a wooden ruler from his desk and stormed across the room. He stopped between me and another girl, Irene. She looked terrified.
‘Hand out,’ he snapped.
Wonder what she’s done?
Then the teacher glared at me.
‘Both of you!’
What?
‘But …’
‘Hand!’ As he spoke he grabbed my wrist and delivered a stinging crack across the knuckles with the ruler.
Instinctively I put my knuckles in my mouth to try to soothe them. It had the opposite effect. It felt like my hand was on fire.
‘Don’t suck them, Irene,’ I said to my friend as her knuckles got the same treatment. ‘It makes it worse.’
That was wrong as well.
The teacher spun back round. ‘Still talking?’ Then he took my other hand and whacked me again.
‘Anyone else got something to say?’ he demanded, scanning the room. Not a peep. The only noise you could hear was Irene sobbing quietly. My hands felt like they might burst but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making me cry. But, God, I thought I was going to be sick from the throbbing pain that jolted through me, like waves, every few seconds.
With two hands out of action I couldn’t pick up a pen, so that was the rest of the lesson wasted. I just sat there stewing, sore and humiliated. And, as usual, utterly, utterly mystified. What was his problem? I hadn’t said a word to Irene. In fact, I couldn’t remember speaking to anyone at all that day.