Authors: Kim Noble
‘Of course I won’t. I swear.’
No sooner was the sound of Dad’s car out of range than there was a knock at the door – the first of many for the evening. Some of the faces I recognised, some I didn’t. They were all at least five years older than me, a lot of them skinheads like Bob. Most were a bit shocked at a kid like me being there.
Lorraine tried to get me to go to my room but I refused.
‘I’m telling Mum and Dad if you make me.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘Want to find out?’
I spent the rest of the night being given piggy-back rides up and down the garden by Lorraine’s boy friends. Anything to buy my silence.
My sister must have thought she’d been so clever, even if she did have to give in to my blackmail. The next morning the house was spick and span and by the time Mum and Dad returned you’d never have guessed what had gone on.
That was, until our next-door neighbour came round for a cup of tea and mentioned it to Mum. All hell broke loose then. Lorraine was grounded for a week and for once I got away scot-free – even though I’d spent the night at the party as well!
All Lorraine wanted was to get married and move out. That finally happened when she was eighteen. She looked beautiful but I don’t remember the ceremony, just the dancing afterwards. My brother-in-law had started his police training at Hendon but didn’t finish it and had become a fireman. Lorraine always had a thing for men in uniform. I was happy for her, of course, but even more so because once she moved out I got her room. It didn’t matter if it was the smallest room in the house. It was my own space.
With Lorraine gone, there was one person fewer to argue with. And now at least when Dad and Mum started their bickering I had a refuge. I remember leaving the table when they’d started shouting at each other.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mum demanded.
‘To my room.’
Not Nan’s room. Not my shared room.
My room.
You’ve no idea how good it felt to say that.
Speaking of the table, I don’t remember many mealtimes. I didn’t have much of an interest in food, really. Or so I thought. Yet when I saw some pictures of me as a ten-year-old recently I couldn’t believe my size. From the age of seven I’d just seemed to get steadily bigger and bigger. One minute I was a cute-as-a-button skinny kid. The next I was getting a round face, chubby cheeks and thick arms and legs.
I couldn’t believe these were really pictures of me.
It made no sense. That’s not my recollection of being ten, eleven, twelve at all. I wasn’t a fat child. I wasn’t skinny like I am now, but definitely not overweight. How could I have been so large? I never even ate anything. Usually I’d just sit down and pick.
But it explains why people sometimes called out ‘Fatty’ when I walked by. I just never thought they were talking to me.
The ICL factory closed when I was twelve. All my friends’ dads worked there so a dark cloud hung over the whole area for a while as people scrabbled for new jobs. We had it worse than most because Mum worked there as well. That was two incomes lost. Luckily Mum found another factory role and then took an office position working for the government. Dad went into social services as assistant manager at a day centre for the physically handicapped. As far as I could tell, they both worked hard. I assume that was true.Theywere certainly away from home a lot.
I liked Dad’s new job. One of his duties was taking the patients out on day trips. Sometimes they went to the beach, sometimes to a zoo or just to a park. Whenever there was space he invited me to tag along. I had lovely days swimming, going on trips to Hastings or watching Crystal Palace play football. Dad had his work cut out with the rest of them so I was mostly left on my own. But that was nothing new. I enjoyed my own company, anyway.
I think my parents’ work ethic in those early years must have rubbed off on me – although I didn’t have a clue how it came about.
I often found myself in odd situations I couldn’t explain. I assumed everyone did. That’s life. You deal with it, don’t you?
So when I realised I was in a huge kitchen, surrounded by strangers, and with my elbows deep in dirty washing-up water I just thought,
Okay … where am I now?
I honestly had no idea how I’d got there. Or where ‘there’ was. But my friend Clare was standing at the sink next to me. She was chatting about something. Boys, I think.
I nodded. I did a lot of nodding, I remember. Agreeing with people saves you saying anything. I learnt that at a very young age.
It didn’t take a genius to realise I was supposed to be washing the plates. That’s what Clare was doing, between telling me about this lad or that one, and I guess that’s why I had my hands in the water too. But why?
And where am I?
I pretty much followed Clare’s lead for the next few hours as I pieced my predicament together. We appeared to be in a restaurant or café kitchen because of the waiters bustling in and out, and our job consisted of nothing more complex than scrubbing every single plate and cup and knife and fork and bowl and tray and – you name it, they used it. And we washed it.
A guy who must have been in charge kept coming over to make sure we weren’t slacking. He picked up a spoon and held it to the light.
‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Now you just need to go a bit faster.’
God, it was tiring. The worst thing was not knowing when it would end. I thought it must be lunchtime judging by the food being ordered but I had no idea when I’d be allowed to leave.
And if I ask Clare she’ll think I’m thick.
So I kept quiet.
When we finally got the cue to dry our hands and pack up for the night I thought,
I’m glad that’s over.
Then just as we were about to step out, the boss man said, ‘Thanks, girls. Same time tomorrow.’
Oh no. What the hell have I got myself into here?
As soon as we got outside I recognised the place as being in Shirley. Not only that, but there was Dad waiting in his car.
What’s he doing here?
How he knew to pick me up when I honestly had no idea how I’d got the job or even found my way into work was beyond me. But Clare seemed to know and as we both climbed into Dad’s car I thought I’d better seem willing.
‘What time shall I see you tomorrow, Clare?’
‘Same time as today should be all right.’
That doesn’t exactly help me …
‘So, about ten then?’ I suggested.
‘Only if you want to be an hour late,’ Dad said.
‘Yes, let’s do half eight again, shall we?’ Clare added.
Why is everything such hard work?
I wondered. As I made my way home I stared at my poor, puckered hands and realised,
I don’t even know if I’m being paid for this.
Just another one of my typical scrapes.
School was equally confusing, more so in fact now that I was at Tavistock Secondary. Some of my friends spent a lot of time covering exercise books with their names. Signature after signature. I think they were practising autographs for when they were famous, like the Bay City Rollers, David Bowie or David Cassidy. That never appealed to me. Having ‘Patricia’ scrawled all over my English book seemed ridiculous. I don’t actually think I had my name on the front at all. It didn’t matter. I knew whose book it was.
More importantly, trouble and accusations still seemed to follow me around just as they had at West Thornton. Mostly I was punished for talking when I hadn’t been, missing lessons or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then there were other things along the lines of the black paint incident. The worst was being held back after school for trying to climb out of a window. They said my skirt had snagged and I got trapped, and that I was still swinging, head first, when I was found.
Rubbish. Just rubbish.
Someone had it in for me. That was the only explanation.
Meanwhile, it didn’t matter how long they made me sit there, I would never admit to something I just hadn’t done. I was prepared to wait all night. Unfortunately, so was the teacher by the look of the stack of books he had next to him ready to mark. For more than an hour he just ignored me, head down until he reached the end of the pile. Then he leant back in his chair and tutted.
‘Still denying it?’
‘Denying what?’
‘You were caught red-handed.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You had to be cut down from the window.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Look at your dress. It’s still got the hole where the window snared it.’
There
was
a rip. I had no idea how it had got there. Must have been a thorn playing on the field at lunchtime. Maybe my coat zip had got stuck. It didn’t matter. All I knew is it hadn’t been caused by a window.
Unsurprisingly, when it came to reports I feared the worst. If staff were prepared to lie to my face, who knew what they would come up with when they had a little time to prepare. I thought about hiding them from my parents but chickened out. In the end Mum and Dad weren’t annoyed by what they read – just mystified.
‘I don’t understand,’ Mum said after her second read. ‘How can they all have such different opinions?’
I shrugged.
She read some bits out to Nan.
‘“Lovely, good-natured”, this one says.’
‘That’s good.’ Nan smiled at me.
‘But then you’ve got “disruptive” from this one, “attentive” from another one and your math teacher says “needs to control her temper”. What are you doing there? It’s like they’re talking about different people.’
I couldn’t help. I was at as much of a loss to explain it as anyone. I’d never lost my temper during math, what was he on about? Mum was right. They must have got me muddled up with someone else. Or they had another agenda altogether.
At West Thornton Primary the worst that happened was a visit to the head or an occasional rap across the knuckles. At Tavistock they had a complicated disciplinary system – first you were put on report by your form tutor, then your year head, then the headmaster – but all of it entirely non-violent. Even if you’d exhausted all those steps, the final punishment was equally pacifistic compared to a clip round the ear – although the effects were so much worse.
I don’t know if there was a move in the 1970s to get away from corporal punishment or whether someone at the school had watched too many war films, but their approach to discipline was sensory deprivation.
I remember being in a school corridor. I couldn’t remember getting there but that was fine. Situation normal. There was no one around except a teacher walking a couple of yards ahead of me. I racked my brain to work out why I was there and where I was going. With no other kids around I didn’t have a clue. Then the teacher spun round.
‘Keep up!’ she snapped.
That was good. I knew I was meant to be following her. But why?
I realised we were near the head’s office. My immediate thought was,
What have I done now?
Then I realised we were walking
away
from his room. That was a good sign. Maybe I wasn’t in trouble at all.
From the way the teacher was hustling me along that didn’t seem likely. But I hadn’t done anything. Of that I had no doubt. There had to be another explanation.
Was I ill, then? Was she taking me to sick bay? I looked down and checked both hands and legs. There was no outward sign of injury. My stomach felt okay – a few butterflies, that was all. And my head was more confused than aching. No, I concluded,
I’m fine.
Was everything all right at home? Sometimes kids were summoned to the office to take a phone call. Only in emergencies, but it happened.
My head was still spinning with possibilities when the teacher stopped by a door I’d never noticed before. That wasn’t uncommon. There were plenty of unexplored parts of that large building. Most classrooms had glass in the door so other teachers could peer in. This one, I noticed, was entirely made of wood. It looked more like a cupboard entrance.
‘In here,’ she said, and flung the door open.
It wasn’t a cupboard but then it wasn’t much of a room, either. And it definitely wasn’t a sick bay. If anything it looked more like a jail cell. There was a solitary chair and table in the middle and that was it. No shelves, no bookcases, no cupboards. Absolutely nothing apart from those two pieces of furniture looming ever more ominously in the centre.
The teacher flicked on the light. Without it there was just a small, frosted window to allow any illumination. The reason I hadn’t noticed initially how dark the room was then became obvious. All four walls were painted bright orange. Hideous, Day-Glo tangerine, like a traffic light stuck on amber.
For the first time I had an uneasy feeling about it.
‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable,’ the teacher instructed and I duly obeyed. What choice did I have?
‘I’ll be back to check on you later. I suggest you use this time wisely to reflect on what you’ve done.’