Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (18 page)

B
y second year at high school, I’d started hanging round with a crowd of kids outside the village hall after school, buying sweets or swapping magazines or just chatting. It was a way of avoiding going home, so that I had less time to pass in the cottage on my own with Mum. I hovered on the fringes of the group, and only set off for my walk home when the others had dispersed. Mum never worried if I was late. I don’t think she would have bothered to call the police or send out a search party if I hadn’t turned up at all. It would have suited her right down to the ground.

On 15 November 1963, after the others had headed for their own houses, I was walking home in the dark when all of a sudden a vivid picture appeared in front of me. There was an open-topped black car with flags waving from little flagpoles at the corners. There were two men in the front, and in the back there was a man and a very pretty lady. The picture became clearer and I could see that the flags had lines going across and some stars. The word ‘president’ came into my head. Suddenly there was a loud bang then another bang and lots of screaming and I saw the
man die. Part of his head was blown clean away. I wanted to stop the movie that was running in my head but I didn’t know how. It was very disturbing, like a vivid nightmare except that I was wide awake.

I ran the rest of the way home. It was a Friday so Dad was there.

‘Where have you been, Lady Jane? I was just coming out to look for you. I thought you’d got lost.’

I was breathless. ‘Dad, a man is going to be killed. I think he’s a president. What country has stars on their flag and lines across it?’

‘America, of course.’

‘Well, I think the president of America is going to get shot. I just saw it in a picture.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Dad said crossly. ‘Of course you didn’t. I thought we’d told you to ignore all the voices and visions and silly things you see in your head.’

It felt very important that I convinced him that day in case he could do something to prevent this terrible murder.

‘Dad, my voices and visions tell me the truth. For example, I can tell you something you didn’t know I knew. For your twenty-first birthday, Nan gave you a golf club and a blue and white tankard, and you accidentally dropped the tankard on the floor and smashed it.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Nan told me recently. Dad, she comes to visit me. I can see her and hear her just as clearly as I’m seeing and hearing you now.’

Dad sat down on a chair and clasped his head in his hands. ‘You can’t possibly be seeing Nan. She’s dead. She’s in Heaven. You might be seeing her in your imagination,
because you have a very strong imagination, but you mustn’t think that it’s her because it’s not.’

‘So how did I know about the tankard?’

‘She must have told you while she was alive and you’re just remembering it now.’

That definitely wasn’t the case. I couldn’t think how to get through to him, but I was very worried about the president I had seen being shot. I overheard him telling Mum about my premonition while I listened outside the door.

‘There she goes again. Do you have any idea how scary it is for me being trapped in the house with her all week when you’re not here? She’s a lunatic. I can’t believe the psychiatrist didn’t put her away. If only you were here, you’d see for yourself. She’s on her best behaviour for you at weekends.’

Dad gave a huge, heartfelt sigh. ‘Muriel, you know the deal. I thought it suited both of us.’

‘Things change, Derrick. I never thought it would go on for this long.’

‘It was your idea in the first place. Don’t tell me you’ve changed the way you feel?’

There was a pause and Mum said, ‘No, absolutely not.’

‘Well then,’ he replied, and she turned on her heel and walked away.

Once again, I began speculating about where Dad went during the week. I’d tried asking the spirits but they weren’t any help to me at all. On one of our Saturday walks, I plucked up the courage to ask Dad if he had another lady.

He laughed, gruffly, and looked away. ‘Where on earth did you get that idea from? Silly girl. Oh look! There’s a jenny wren. They’re my favourite bird. What’s yours?’

I persevered. ‘So when you’re not here in the week, where do you spend the night?’

‘Here and there. It depends on business. Why does it matter? I’m with you at weekends, aren’t I?’

‘What if I wanted to phone you in the week?’

‘You can always get me at the office during the day.’

So I never really got an answer to the lady friend question and after a while I gave up. He obviously didn’t want me to know.

The following Friday, 22 November, I got home late again. As I opened the front door, Dad called to me from the lounge.

‘Come in here.’ His tone was quite sharp.

Mum and Dad were sitting watching the television news. The newsreader announced that there was breaking news from America, that President Kennedy had been shot. No one knew how serious it was but he had been rushed to hospital where surgeons were operating.

‘He’s dead already,’ I said. ‘He died in the car.’

Mum and Dad looked at each other, and I could see fear in their expressions. It wasn’t the President dying they were afraid of. They were scared of me, especially next morning when the news bulletins confirmed that I was right.

A few weeks later some footage showing the assassination was released and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was exactly the picture I had seen while walking along the lanes. A big open-topped car with three men and a pretty lady and flags, and as we watched there was a loud bang, and another, and the man in the back seat collapsed. The woman tried to clamber over the back of the car to escape and a security man jumped on and grabbed hold of her as the car sped off. I watched mesmerized.

It shook me up to realize just how accurate my premonitions could be. It brought a whole new responsibility that I would have to work out how to deal with over the years.

O
ne day, very near the end of my second year at Pershore High School, I got home around six o’clock. I was hungry and hoping I wasn’t too late for some supper. I hung my blazer in the cloakroom and dropped my schoolbag and walked through to the kitchen – then I stopped dead. There was a tall, dark-haired youth standing by the back door. He had traces of facial hair, a Beatles-style haircut and long, lanky arms and legs.

‘Nigel!’ I cried and ran over to hug him. He seemed embarrassed but hugged me back in a stiff kind of manner. Mum sat at the kitchen table smoking and watching us intently.

‘Are you back to stay?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I’m fifteen so I’ve left school now.’ His voice was unrecognizable – much deeper, and his accent had changed somehow. It sounded posher to me.

‘Are you going to stay here?’

‘For now. I’m going to get a job.’

‘You look different.’ His hair, which had been dark blond when I last saw him, was now definitely brown, and his eyes were deeper set and smaller.

‘So do you. What happened to your hair?’

I’d had long hair with bunches when he went away and now I had the shaggy boy’s crop Mum had given me. I glanced at her before replying briefly, ‘I had it cut.’ I wanted to talk to him in private. ‘You coming out to the garden? Do you want to see my vegetable patch?’

‘Yeah.’ Nigel shrugged.

‘Be quick, now,’ Mum warned. ‘Supper will be on the table in five minutes.’

I felt unaccountably shy around my big brother after not seeing or hearing from him for six whole years, and I could tell he felt awkward with me as well. I showed him my vegetables and we walked round the rest of the garden not saying much at all, until I burst out: ‘Why didn’t you write to me? Didn’t you get my letters? I wrote to you every week.’

‘I did!’ He was surprised. ‘I wrote back. Not as much as you, but I certainly wrote. Didn’t you get any of them at all?’

He wasn’t lying, I knew that. Nigel was never a liar.

‘Mum!’ I exclaimed. ‘She must have taken them.’ She couldn’t bear our closeness. She had always been trying to pull us apart since we were young children.

‘Would she really have taken my letters though?’

‘Oh, yeah. She was the one who usually got to the post first. Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Is she still as mean to you as she used to be?’

We slipped down to the canal and sat by the waterside.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’ I told him about sleeping in the pigsty and showed him the scars from the frying pan in my face and the stiletto in my elbow. Then I told him about how the sexual abuse with Grandpa Pittam got
worse after he had gone and how Aunt Gilly finally found out when I was eleven. ‘You were lucky he didn’t do all those disgusting things to you,’ I said.

‘Oh, he did.’ Nigel stared off into the distance across the canal. ‘Just a few times, but he did.’ He pulled up a handful of grass and started shredding it in his hands.

‘But I thought you always fought him off?’

‘It happened three times when you weren’t in the garage. It was disgusting. He was a bastard. If he wasn’t dead already, I’d go round and kill him.’ Nigel threw his shredded handful of grass into the canal. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone what was going on with you?’

‘Sometimes I tried to, not often. They hardly ever believed me. Dad loves Mum, you know. He doesn’t see how cruel she is.’

‘They always seemed very jolly when they came to visit me. That kind of false jolliness you put on when visiting someone in hospital.’

‘What was it like there?’

‘OK, I guess. Nothing special. I made some good friends.’

‘What did you do all the time?’

‘Normal stuff. We had lessons and homework and sport. I’m not a bad spin bowler now. In the evenings we watched TV and stuff. It’s just a boarding school where they have medical staff to keep an eye on you. I don’t know why I had to stay over the school holidays as well though – most of the other boys went home, but I was kept in so it was kind of lonely. Mum and Dad always said that it was because I needed special care that they couldn’t give me – but lots of boys much sicker than me got to go home in the holidays. Maybe they just couldn’t be bothered.’

‘I really missed you. It was terrible without you.’

‘I missed you too, Nessa. I don’t know why I had to go there. I used to argue with Mum and Dad when they visited, begging them to bring me back, but they always said I was in the best place.’ He sighed.

We could hear Mum shouting in the distance, her voice carrying on the summer breeze, and we stood up to go back indoors. At that moment, I saw a vivid picture of Nigel rolling into the canal and floating face down, unconscious. It was horrible.

‘Nigel, you must be careful near the canal,’ I told him anxiously. ‘You might fall in one day and it’s very deep.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, in a sarcastic voice. ‘I learned to swim at school – I’m pretty good now – so you needn’t worry about me.’

The vision stayed with me, though, so later that evening I followed Mum into the kitchen and told her what I’d seen.

‘Do you remember how I saw a president being shot in a vision and then it really happened? Well, I’ve just had a vision that Nigel falls in the canal and is unconscious. I’m scared it’s going to happen, Mum. Will you keep an eye on him?’

Mum whirled around with a furious look on her face. ‘How many times do you have to be told? You’re a freak!’ She grabbed me by the hair. ‘I’ve tried and tried to beat this spirit nonsense out of you, but I can see I haven’t tried hard enough yet.’

She dragged me to a chair and forced me to bend over it, then lifted up my skirt. Seconds later I yelled as she hit me hard across the backs of my legs with the big stick she still kept inside the utility room. She hit me again.

‘What on earth are you doing? Stop it, Mum.’ Nigel charged into the kitchen and wrestled the stick from Mum’s grip.

‘Stay out of this. You’ve got no idea what she just said.’

‘Mum, she’s too old. You can’t beat her any more. I won’t let you.’

He managed to get the stick away from her. I stood up and pulled my skirt down timidly not daring to meet Mum’s eye.

‘This is my house and I’ll do what I like in it. You’ll mind your own business if you want to stay here.’ Mum blustered but I could tell that she was unnerved by Nigel’s disarming her so easily.

‘You beating my sister is my business,’ Nigel said. ‘If it happens again, I’ll tell Dad. Do you understand? Come on, Nessa.’ He grabbed my hand and led me out the back door. He marched in silence all the way down to the canal and hurled the stick into the water, where it floated off down stream.

‘Thanks,’ I whispered.

‘Things are going to get better now. You’ll see.’ He put his arm round me, and it felt just like the old Nigel. It was a wonderful moment.

I still worried about the vision I had seen of Nigel lying face down in the canal, and my fears were confirmed about five days later when I got home from school to find the doctor’s car there. Nigel was lying on the sofa, wrapped up in towels. Mum sat in her bathrobe smoking while the doctor examined him.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Mum had no choice but to answer me civilly with the doctor present. ‘Your brother had a fit while he was down by the canal fishing. He fell in the water, but fortunately I was nearby so I rushed down and pulled him out.’

‘It was very lucky you were there,’ the doctor said. ‘No long-term harm done, but I think he had better stay away from the canal bank in future.’

I caught eyes with Mum. She was staring at me very curiously, her eyes boring a hole in me as if trying to figure out who or what I was.

I kept quiet about my premonitions from then on. Not long afterwards I saw an image of Auntie Pat falling headfirst down a flight of stairs and landing at the bottom with her neck twisted at an odd angle. There was a gin bottle beside her on the floor. Three days later, Mum told me that Auntie Pat had died after falling down some stairs. I didn’t say anything, even though I was glad that Auntie Pat would not be coming here any longer. She had egged Mum on to some of her nastier moments and I wasn’t sorry she was gone.

A few months after Nigel got back, I had a very clear premonition that Mum went to waken him in the morning and he couldn’t be roused. He was stiff and cold and had died in the night. This was such a distressing vision that I ran crying out to the pigsty to ask the spirits about it. The Clown came to me.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Your brother will die young, but not yet. He will have a fit in his sleep. He won’t know anything about it.’

‘But when will it be? Can’t I do something to stop it?’

‘He will not live to see his twenty-fifth birthday. I’m afraid there is nothing you can do. You can never use your spiritual powers to affect the future, because it is set out already. You can’t cheat fate, no matter how many precautions you take.’

I broke my heart that afternoon, sobbing by myself in the pigsty and praying to God to spare him, but I didn’t tell anyone about Nigel dying young. I tucked the knowledge away deep inside me, hoping against hope that it wasn’t true, and tried to enjoy the time we had. At the first opportunity I took him up to the farm to meet the Howards. He was the same age as David and Stephen, who were twins, and they hit it off straight away, often disappearing into the woods together for hours at a time. Nigel would come to watch me riding the horses, although he wasn’t allowed to try it himself as it was judged too dangerous with his condition. He also started to come with Dad and me on our Saturday afternoon walks. Once Margery joined us and Nigel looked at her curiously, but I could tell he liked her easy, natural manner.

‘You’ve got sparkly blue eyes,’ he told her, ‘just like Nessa’s.’

‘Thank you,’ she smiled at him and then at me. ‘That’s a real compliment. Vanessa’s eyes are very pretty.’

Life at home with Mum got infinitely better with Nigel around. There were no beatings, no nights spent in the pigsty, just a few slaps and pinches and mean comments when he wasn’t in the room. She still had a need to punish
me, though. I could see it burning in her eyes. Sometimes she rubbed her hands together as if itching to beat me black and blue. The next punishment she chose was cleverly calculated to cause me the maximum distress.

I got home from school to find Mum in the kitchen playing with a little chihuahua.

‘This is Pancho,’ she told me gleefully. ‘Say hello.’

I bent down to stroke Pancho, who was a lovely glossy shade of caramel.

‘Look. I’ve bought him his own basket and food bowl and blanket.’ She pointed to some expensive-looking accessories over in the corner.

‘Where’s Janie?’ I asked, looking round the kitchen. ‘Have they met yet?’

‘Janie’s gone.’ Mum was watching my face carefully, her lips twisted with malicious delight. ‘She wasn’t well so I took her to the vet and had her put down.’

‘No!’ I shouted. ‘She was fine when I left her this morning. What have you done to her? Is this a trick?’

‘No trick. I had her put down. Now we’ve got Pancho instead.’

I sat down heavily, feeling devastated. ‘Janie was my dog. Dad bought her for me. You can’t just kill her like that.’

‘It’s done. She’s gone. Get over it.’ Mum was enjoying herself greatly. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry so I ran out to the pigsty to talk to the spirits.

‘Is Janie really dead?’ I asked them tearfully, but no one seemed to be able to give me a straight answer. She was a perfectly healthy dog of just six years old and should have had another ten years to live. I couldn’t believe that a vet
would really put down a healthy dog, and I hoped that she had been given away to be rehoused with another family – but I knew I would never find out the answer.

Nigel had been up at the farm all day so he hadn’t seen Mum taking Janie away. He was sweet and sympathetic, but he hadn’t known her well so he couldn’t share the huge sense of loss I felt. As soon as Dad got home the following Friday I told him about it, but Mum had already spoken to him it seemed.

‘I heard she had cancer,’ he explained. ‘The vet diagnosed it and said she was in pain, so your Mum did the best thing. Of course it would have been better if you could have been there, but you wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer, would you?’

I remember looking at him and marvelling at his gullibility. Mum could put on a pretty dress and high heels and a slick of lipstick and give him that girly look of hers, with the cute little voice, and his entire capacity for logical thought flew out the window. He and Mum may have had troubled years in their marriage, as I had witnessed, but she still had the kind of guile that had allowed her to steal him from his fiancée in the weeks after they first met. She’d always kept that ability to wind him round her little finger whenever she wanted to.

I missed Janie very badly but the loss just made me more determined to get out of the house as soon as possible and be accepted into a convent. I was still sure that this was the future I wanted, even though Mum no longer attacked me in the way she used to once Nigel was home. Without
his presence, the violence would probably have gone on much longer, because at the age of fifteen I was still only five feet two inches tall to Mum’s five foot eleven, so there’s no question she had the upper hand physically. She could have knocked me out cold with a well-placed punch any time she felt like it.

A religious existence, locked away from the world, still seemed like only kind of happiness I could hope for in life.