T
here were times when I was also included in the outings with the man next door’s children, but there is only one occasion that has stayed in my memory.
It was when he took my elder brother and me with them to the seaside, leaving Dora and my mother ensconced together in his house.
It was one of those still hot days when the sun hung low in the sky and not even the slightest breeze stirred the air. A perfect day to go to the seaside, he had said.
The inside of the car was warm, the little boys fidgety, and I felt completely wretched. He had told us to bring our swimsuits, but mine was old and too small for my developing body. It clung to my tiny breasts and I did not want people to see the outline of my nipples when it got wet. Hair had started growing on my body and I was scared it would poke out of the elasticized bottom and that someone would notice. Added to those worries was the fact that I had been treated as though I was no longer of importance to the man next door.
That day it was his daughter, not me, who sat in the front seat. I had been made to climb into the back with the two little boys.
What was it that I had done, I asked myself, to make him change towards me? I watched as his hand stroked the four-year-old’s head, heard the childish treble of her voice, the low rumblings of his calling her his ‘little princess’ and felt a peculiar prickling feeling on the back of my neck.
Once he had made me feel special, told me to sit next to him, listened to my girlhood chatter, run his fingers gently through my hair and called me his little lady, but now it was his daughter who sat where I had sat and received all his attention.
I squirmed in sullen misery and, looking up, caught the reflection of his eyes in the driving mirror; they were looking mockingly into mine and I knew that every thought and worry of mine, that I tried to keep tucked from sight, was laid bare before him.
I looked away and for the rest of that hour-long journey rested my flushed face against the coolness of the window and feigned an intent interest in the passing scenery. I knew he was laughing silently at me. I just did not know why.
The little boys grabbed at my arm with excitement when the sea came into view and, as soon as his car drew to a halt, they were clambering out.
We all took our shoes off, walked in the sand and paddled in the clear sparkling water. For a while I forgot those nagging little worries as I felt the warmth under my feet and then the splashing of tiny waves against my legs.
There were donkeys on the beach and a sign announced that it was sixpence a ride. The man next door took a florin out of his pocket and we climbed up on their backs.
He bought us huge ice-cream cones that smeared faces and trickled through small fingers as the sun melted them.
It was then that I saw the organ grinder squeezing that portable musical instrument which, supported by a heavy leather strap, hung around his neck. He was belting out a popular tune that filled the air with jolly melodic sounds.
I felt the man’s next door’s hand on my elbow. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the little monkey on the musician’s shoulder. Around us a small crowd gathered, drawn by both the music and the sight of the little whiskered creature that, by rattling a tin cup at the audience, was collecting coins for his owner.
The little animal was dressed in a red and yellow suit. Such happy colours for such a sad little prisoner, I thought.
Its eyes met mine and in their depths I saw a mixture of hopelessness and defeat.
People who did not see what I did pointed their fingers at him, dropped coins in the mug and laughed. I knew no one else asked why – why if he was so happy did he need the chain around his neck that bound him firmly to his master?
The man next door’s fingers tightened on my elbow, his thumb gently rubbing the soft inner side of my arm.
‘What’s wrong, little lady?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I relied, knowing that he knew the answer even if I did not.
‘You’d better ride in the front with me when we go back,’ he said. ‘That will make you feel better.’
The sad thing was that he was right.
The years went past with very little changing in my life.
Jack was still only a few months old when my father informed us that Dave had left the area. ‘Got a new job up north somewhere,’ was all he said, and that was the last time I ever heard Dave’s name mentioned in our home. Jack was now fully accepted as part of our family and I heard my father proudly say ‘my sons’.
My father’s drinking bouts lessened, making my mother seem happier, but I remained wary of him for there were still those times when the attraction of the pub lured him back. Then I would hear again his bellows of rage and my mother’s cries and whimpers that usually followed his drunken outbursts.
But when I told my mother how frightened and angry he made me with his temper and bitterness, she, to my surprise, tried to justify it.
‘Oh, don’t be so hard on him, Marianne,’ she had said. ‘His childhood was bad enough to sour anyone.’
‘What?’ I said disbelievingly. ‘His sisters seem nice enough and my grandmother acts as though he can’t do anything wrong, even though she looks down on us.’
My mother sighed at my remarks and told me that things had not always been as I thought they were. It was then that she explained to me the details my father’s childhood and what his early years had been like.
‘That mother of his, your kind old granny, so full of all those put-on airs and graces, was not always as she is now,’ she said. ‘There was a time, Marianne, when she was the talk of the town. That was when she was a mere slip of a girl and had a baby, your father, bold as you like, with not a hint of a husband in sight. Didn’t even leave the town, like respectable girls did in those time when they got caught expecting. Not her – she just walked around with her belly sticking out, bold as brass.’
My eyes widened as I heard this piece of family gossip for the very first time. My mother was wont to still treat me like a little girl, not one who you could tell scandalous things to, but on this rare occasion she seemed more prepared to talk to me as a grown-up.
‘What happened then, Mum?’ I asked, trying hard to hide my excitement at such scandalous revelations.
‘Nothing much, but to everyone’s surprise her mother let the baby stay. There was talk that it was some rich man’s child and that money passed hands, but to this day even your dad doesn’t know the truth of it. Anyhow, once your grandmother dropped the baby, she took off, and it was his grandmother who looked after him then. It was her who always gave him a hard time. Took out on him what she saw as her disgrace. She certainly believed in that saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” – she beat him black and blue, often for naught reason.’
My mother paused then and I knew that the image of my father, when he was just a small child and cowering from his grandmother’s wrath, was sharp in her mind as she continued. ‘Anyhow he stayed with that vicious old woman until his mother finally married. But the damage was already done. He never forgave his mother for letting it happen, either. But I’ll say one thing for your father: he married me when I fell for you. His mother didn’t like it, but he stood by me then.’
But however much my mother wanted me to find an excuse for my father’s tempers and his violence, I couldn’t. Those pictures of my mother lying on the floor, her face swollen and her mouth bleeding, were not ones that I had ever been able to erase from my mind. I thought then that if he knew what it was like to be made scared and unhappy he should know better than to inflict the same feelings on another person.
Although that conversation failed to make me see my father in a more favourable light, it did confirm the one thing that I had always suspected – I had never been a wanted child.
Maybe when my mother first found out that she was pregnant and my father agreed to marry her she had been pleased, but that happiness would have been short lived once she found herself married to a man who blamed both her and then me for trapping him in a marriage that was not really of his choosing.
I understood then that once my mother realized that the pub had a stronger hold on him than she did, she in turn blamed me for her loneliness and his resentment of her.
After those revelations I tried to look at my father differently. I attempted to imagine a small, frightened little boy being blamed for his mother’s bad behaviour, but all I ever saw was the middle-aged man who ruled his own home with fear.
That conversation might not have made me look at my father in a more favourable light but it did serve another purpose – it told me that what the man next door and I did was wrong. Hadn’t my grandmother nearly been thrown out of the town when it was found out that she had slept with a man before she was married? And even with changing attitudes about these things nearly forty years later, if my mother was anything to go on, it was still talked about in a conspiratorial way by those who knew, and always in hushed whispers.
It was then that I tried to tell him that I did not want to do it any more.
He laughed, took my face in his hand and made me look at him.
‘Now, Marianne, do you really want me to find someone else?’ he asked me mockingly. ‘Because you know what that would mean, don’t you?’
I did; it meant being lonely.
Too many years had gone by for me to really imagine what freedom from him might mean.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, knowing that he had won but wanting to reinforce the message of exactly who was in control, ‘I don’t think you were a virgin that first time, were you? A proper one bleeds a lot if they have never done it before, but you didn’t, did you?’
Not really knowing the meaning of the word ‘virgin’ but knowing from the tone of his voice that it was important that I had been one, I dropped my eyes away from his gaze and muttered that I had bled a little.
‘No, Marianne, I think you had already been messing around with boys before me.’
Tears filled my eyes as I fervently shook my head in denial.
He told me that he believed me, wiped my tears away and then put his arm around me. Once again I felt the warm glow that feeling cared for gave me, a glow that stayed with me for the rest of that day, for he did not make me do any of those things I did not like, but simply drove me home.
The next time I tried to refuse him there was no teasing voice cajoling me into submission. Instead the smile left his eyes and the cold tone of the words he spoke to me conveyed his exasperation.
‘Don’t be a silly little girl,’ he said.
My fists clenched as I summoned up my courage. ‘I’ll tell on you,’ I retorted.
Anger flared in his eyes, his mouth tightened, his hands caught hold of my shoulders, this time not to stroke but to shake them as he topped my threat.
‘Have you forgotten that pretty woman I showed you? Forgotten what happened to her?’ he hissed. ‘That was the sort of thing that got her hung. How many times do I have to tell you that you’re safe with me. I’d never let anything happen to you, and now this is the way you repay me.’
The fact that it was him who had initiated those acts was not something that I was able to think about, far less express. Instead, rendered mute by a combination of despair and helplessness, I pressed myself against the car door, turned my head to the glass and leant against it. His arms went round me but that time there were no gentle words, no comforting strokes, just his harsh whispered instructions. Then there was me on his lap, my childish tears dampening his shoulder and my fists clenched by my side, as he pushed himself inside of me.
Not wanting my knickers stained or his smell on my body, he watched me try to wipe myself clean. ‘Marianne,’ he said ‘that’s what men do to girls they like, and they do it whenever they want. You wouldn’t want me to stop liking you, stop being your friend, would you?’
‘No,’ I whispered, for I was both scared of losing his protection and of a world where yet another person saw me as worthless and unworthy of love.
On school days I would hear his car draw up and his voice calling me. There were no more sweets for me in his glove compartment; just him and me parked in the woods. His hand would push down on my head, forcing it into his lap as he made me commit another act that repelled me. At other times I would be on the long back car seat, my legs, cased in their school shoes and white socks, on either side of him as he pushed his way into me.
The summer holidays arrived again but the picnics by the pond had lost their magic. I had not collected frogspawn earlier that year so I no longer looked for my own little frogs, nor was my head full of stories of small adorable furry creatures. What warm sunny days had come to mean was me lying on my back while he, with a furtive look to ensure that there were no eyes watching, pushed up my dress, spat on his hands to moisten me, then, while the children played only a few yards away, entered me both quickly and roughly.
On days were the sun hid behind clouds he would ask my mother for my help in his workshop ‘to pass him the spanners’.
‘Don’t you want me to help you? I could!’ she would joke each time she gave her smiling consent. But she always said I was only free to go for a while as though she was issuing a threat.
Once in his workshop, where the smell of grease crawled into my nostrils and made me feel nauseous, he would pin me against the wall and enter me – ‘knee tremblers’, he called what we did then.
The months passed. In my sleep I saw his face, heard his voice and then woke to the memory of what he made me do. I wanted my life to change, wanted it to stop, but the feeling of powerlessness made my limbs heavy and my mind sluggish.
My schoolwork suffered; those disturbing images were not only content with haunting my dreams, but also invaded my waking hours, making me unable to concentrate on my lessons. Misery made my attention wander, and the teachers, seeing that, grew more and more infuriated with me.