Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (7 page)

One evening towards the end of August, Dad came for supper at Nan’s and he sat me down at the kitchen table for a little chat.

‘Lady Jane, I know you’ve been having a lovely time here but school starts again next week and I’m afraid you have to go back.’

Instinctively I looked down at my hands. ‘Where will I go to school?’ I asked, already scared of the answer.

‘Well, your old school of course.’ Dad seemed hesitant. ‘Mummy’s missing you very much. It’s time to come home.’

‘No!’ I yelled at the top of my voice. ‘I won’t! You can’t make me!’

Nan came hurrying into the room. I think she might have been listening outside the door.

‘You promised me, Nan,’ I screamed at her, stamping my feet. ‘You said I didn’t have to go back.’

‘Darling, I’m sorry but she is your mother. She wants you back and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘She doesn’t want me. Please don’t make me. I could go to Fifi’s school and stay here with you.’

I cried and pleaded for ages but could tell that the decision had already been made by the grown-ups. Nan had tears in her eyes that she kept wiping away with the back of her hand. She and Dad wouldn’t look at each other and I could sense there had been a big row between them. Granddad came and sat beside her and put his arm round her shoulders. There was nothing to be done. I was going home to Bentley Road, back to the lioness’s den.

W
hen I got back from Nan Casey’s, Mum ignored me at first. I started school at nine o’clock and came home at three and she put supper on the table and told us when it was bedtime. Nigel hovered protectively around me, trying his best never to leave me on my own in a room with her. Sometimes I caught her looking at me in a way that made me very nervous; it was as though she was just waiting for me to put a foot wrong. She knew I lived in mortal terror of her now and I think she got a sadistic enjoyment from that.

One Monday afternoon a few weeks later, Nigel was going to play with a friend of his after school so I walked home alone up the gully and through the back garden. Mum was testy from the moment I walked in the door.

‘We should really put you on a diet,’ she snarled. ‘You’ve got even fatter over the summer. But mind you, losing weight wouldn’t make you any less ugly. There’s not a lot we can do about that.’

‘Shall I get changed out of my school uniform?’ I asked, nervous about making any moves without her say-so. I knew the mood she was in. Her face was spiteful and the air crackled with vitriol.

She had been hand-washing some of her nylon stockings and they were lying damp in a basin, coiled snakes of American tan colour. ‘I’ve got a job for you first. I need these dried,’ she said. ‘You can stand and hold them in front of the fire in the family room.’

‘Why don’t you hang them on the line?’ I asked timidly.

‘Because I want you to do it. That’s why, Miss Smart Aleck.’

The fire was blazing away in the family room despite the fact that it was a mild October day outside. I was apprehensive: I’d never been asked to do this particular task before and I wondered if she was going to play some kind of trick. Mum stood me in front of the fire, facing towards it and pulled my arms out straight in front of me; then she draped a stocking over each hand.

‘Just stand like that,’ she said, ‘and when these are dry you can do the next pair.’

‘OK,’ I whispered.

She went back to the kitchen, leaving the basin of stockings on the rug beside me. My hands were beginning to smart as the heat irritated my old burns so I took a tiny step backwards. Even then I could feel my palms tightening up and I remembered what the doctor had said about not letting the skin dry out, but what could I do? I took another tiny step back.

When Mum returned she snapped at me, ‘They’ll never dry like that. You’re too far away.’

She grasped my shoulders and pushed me further towards the flames and at that moment the stocking in my right hand caught fire. It happened so quickly that I had no chance to drop it. There was a crackling sound as it shrivelled back and melted on to the back of my hand. Branded by scorching, molten nylon, I screamed in agony.

‘You stupid girl,’ Mum snapped. She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me to the kitchen to run cold water on the burn; then she wrapped my hand in a wet tea towel. I was howling with the pain.

‘For goodness sake, stop your snivelling. It’s your own fault for not being more careful. Don’t you dare try to blame me for this the way you did with the cooker. Not a word or you’ll regret it.’

I looked at her through my tears and saw a glint in her eye that terrified me. I’m not sure whether she had meant me to get burned but I suspect she did. I just felt utterly hopeless.

When Dad got home, Mum cornered him first and told him that I had been playing with one of her stockings in the family room and I had gone too close to the fire.

He unwrapped the tea towel to have a look at my hand. ‘Lady Jane, what happened?’

‘It was my own fault, Daddy,’ I said in a dull voice, and caught a triumphant look in Mum’s eye. ‘I stood too close to the fire.’

Dad gave me a worried look but didn’t question the story. He put a fresh dressing on my hand but this time the wound didn’t heal quite so cleanly. There’s a patch of scar tissue on my right hand that still shows up as a purply, discoloured area fifty years on from the stocking incident.

As the second year of primary school began, I was even more of a loner, too scared to raise my head above the parapet either at school or at home. When the teacher asked me a question I’d whisper the answer so that she’d end up having to ask me to repeat it several times. I felt under constant, self-imposed pressure to make my handwriting neater, to get all my sums right and to keep my desk tidy. At home, I tried as hard as I could to second-guess Mum’s thoughts and do what she wanted before she even asked. I cleaned my plate at every meal, folded my clothes neatly when I changed into my nightie at bedtime and played without making any sounds that might disturb her. Surely if I did nothing wrong, I would be safe?

But the fact that I hadn’t told on her after the stocking incident seemed to give Mum confidence that she could begin punishing me again. Before long, she was beating me with the bean cane or the washing tongs and inflicting other punishments when she felt like it (or when God told her to, which amounted to the same thing).

I could have endured any amount of beating and punishment if that is where it ended. But just before Christmas 1956, something terrible happened that was to inaugurate a whole new era of misery in my life.

L
iving at home again meant that I had to start going back to Grandma and Grandpa Pittam’s house. Every second Saturday, Mum, Nigel and I went to visit. While Grandma was as hostile as ever, Grandpa began to take more interest in me.

One day he asked if I would like to go upstairs with him to see his horology room. Grandpa had a workroom at home where he used to spend hours tinkering with old clock mechanisms.

‘Would you like to see it, Vanessa? It’s my very special place,’ Grandpa said.

‘Yes please,’ I replied. I didn’t know whether I wanted to see it or not, but Grandpa was being so nice to me that I felt I ought to say yes.

We went upstairs together. The room was filled with ticking, chiming, whirring, metallic wheels and cogs, every surface cluttered with disembowelled clock parts. The sounds were noisy and unsynchronized. Shafts of light pierced the window blinds and dust motes danced in the air. Grandpa showed me a pocket watch that he said was over a hundred years old, a big old clock with weighted
balls underneath that set off a chiming mechanism, and a Swiss cuckoo clock on the wall. I didn’t like that clock. I got a huge fright when the cuckoo popped out.

‘I wish you would be my friend, Vanessa,’ Grandpa said wistfully. ‘I get very lonely because no one really loves me.’

I was delighted to be asked. ‘I’ll be your friend,’ I assured him. I felt sorry for him because Grandma obviously wasn’t much fun to be around.

‘Does that mean you’ll play with me?’ he asked.

I was eager to please so I said, ‘Yes, what do you want to play?’

‘Come here and I’ll show you.’

I hesitated. No matter how nice he was being, I hated getting close to him because of the cloying scent of his pipe tobacco and the scratchiness of his bristles when he kissed me. He sat down on a wooden stool and beckoned me over towards him. I walked slowly across.

‘This game makes me very happy,’ he said. ‘You want to make me happy, don’t you?’

He lifted the hem of my dress and brusquely yanked down my pants with his roughened, calloused hands.

‘But I don’t need a wee-wee,’ I complained, pulling away from him, and I stamped my foot.

‘Do you know what men use to do wee-wees?’ he asked, and I saw that he had pulled out a brown, wrinkly piece of flesh from his trousers, just between his legs. ‘Here, touch it.’ He took my hand and placed it over the disgusting object. It was soft and squishy like a big fat slug and it twitched under my fingers.

I jerked away. ‘I don’t like doing that, Grandpa.’

‘Don’t you want to make me happy? I’ll take you to see the budgies after.’ His face was flushed and his eyes glassy.

Just then the workroom door opened and Grandma looked in. I jumped back guiltily, afraid she might be cross with me, but she didn’t even glance my way. She looked down at Grandpa’s thing hanging out of his trousers.

‘Not here, Charles,’ she said in a stony voice. ‘That goes on downstairs, not upstairs.’

She turned on her heels and walked out, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Grandpa zipped up his trousers, giving me a lewd wink. ‘We’d better follow orders. Pull up your pants. Let’s go and see the birds now.’

Nigel had been looking for me downstairs and when he heard we were going to the aviary he asked if he could come along – to my huge relief and to Grandpa’s evident annoyance. He was quite rough as he pushed me inside the aviary and flapped his hands to make the budgies flutter in panic around my head while I shrieked in fear.

On the way home that day, it was on the tip of my tongue to mention to Mum that Grandpa had pulled my pants down and got his thing out, but something stopped me. Had I done anything wrong? Or did all little girls do this with their granddads? I had no way of knowing. I hoped it had just been a one-off though. His thing was smelly, like old cheese, and it didn’t feel very nice. But Grandma had seen and not been cross, so I supposed it must be all right.

The next time we visited, Grandpa came in while Nigel and I were sitting on the scratchy horsehair sofa.

‘Hello, Vanessa,’ he said in a wheedling voice. ‘Are you going to be my friend today?’

I hesitated. I wanted to say no but it felt rude. Finally I mumbled, ‘OK.’

‘Would you like to come to the garage to play with me?’

‘Can Nigel come too?’

‘Not today. I just want you and me to be friends today but Nigel can come another time.’

‘I don’t want to come to the garage unless Nigel comes too,’ I said stubbornly, and folded my arms.

‘You’re not being a very nice girl today,’ he pouted childishly. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am … but …’

‘All right then,’ he agreed. ‘Nigel can come too and we’ll show him our special game.’

We got up warily and followed him to the garage, Nigel sensing my reluctance. Grandpa had brought down his wooden stool from the workroom upstairs and he sat on it, unzipped his trousers and pulled out his brown, wrinkly thing.

‘This is a big sausage, isn’t it?’ he addressed Nigel. ‘You’ll have one of these yourself one day.’

‘Eeuuwwh. It’s horrible,’ Nigel exclaimed, wrinkling his nose, and Grandpa laughed gruffly.

‘No, it’s not. It’s natural. Come here, Vanessa, come and make me happy.’

I walked hesitantly towards him with my hands firmly behind my back. He pulled one arm out and placed my hand squarely over his thing. ‘Nigel, this is what big boys do when they’re just a little bit older than you. We all do
it.’ His hand moved rhythmically on top of mine and the wrinkly thing got bigger.

I looked at Nigel and we caught eyes but he didn’t say anything. My face was hot and I felt like crying. Nigel went and got on the rocking horse and started to rock back and forwards, making that eerie creaking sound.

Grandpa’s breathing had gone funny now. I stared straight out the window at the fence at the end of the garden. A bird had landed on it and I tried to pretend I was that bird, about to fly away into the sky. Suddenly Grandpa’s brown thing jerked and something warm and sticky was all over my hand. I looked down and there was white stuff everywhere, like the tapioca we sometimes had at school dinners. I pulled my hand away.

‘Hang on, sweetheart,’ Grandpa said. ‘Let me wipe that for you.’ He pulled a big, crumpled hanky with oil stains on it from his trouser pocket and wiped my hand carefully, then he wiped the rest of the white stuff from between his legs. My hand still felt sticky and I could smell a funny, musty kind of smell.

‘Who wants to come and see the budgies now?’ he asked cheerfully.

I didn’t answer but Nigel said, ‘No thanks, Grandpa. Not today.’

‘Don’t you want to come, Vanessa?’

I shook my head, keeping my hand held out so that it didn’t touch my clothes.

After he’d gone, Nigel looked at me. ‘Are you OK, Nessa?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want to play kings and queens?’ he asked. ‘We could go out into the garden.’

We didn’t talk specifically about what had just happened that day. Neither of us knew words to describe it and I suppose we were embarrassed.

At teatime, I didn’t want to use my sticky hand. I picked up the salmon and cucumber sandwich with my left hand and chewed it slowly, feeling sick to my stomach. I could still smell that funny smell in my nostrils and it seemed to be coming from my hand now. Back home, in the bath, I scrubbed and scrubbed my hand with soap and the nailbrush until it smelled clean again.

Next time we visited, Nigel and I told Grandpa in unison that we didn’t want to play in the garage today, but Grandma overheard and told us we had to. ‘On you go. Get out from under my feet.’

We had no choice – we had to go with him.

Grandpa sat down on his stool and unzipped his trousers and this time he asked Nigel first. ‘Nigel, it’s your turn to play the sausage game. Come over here and put your hand on it. That’s all you have to do.’

Nigel said, ‘No, it’s dirty.’

Grandpa turned to me with a sickly smile. ‘Come on, Vanessa,’ he said. ‘You do it then. You’re my favourite. If you play these games with me, it will just make me love you more and more.’

Somehow he knew that was my Achilles heel. I wanted more than anything to be loved because of Mum constantly telling me I was unloveable. Maybe putting my hand on the thing between his legs wasn’t too high a price to pay.

I don’t know why Nigel seemed to have the strength to resist him but I didn’t, not then. Perhaps Grandpa was scared to force him in case he had a fit. There was one time Grandpa made Nigel kneel in front of him and put the brown, stale-smelling penis in his mouth but Nigel sank his teeth into it, causing him to yelp in pain. I didn’t. I let him move my head up and down, gagging and choking, a cheesy smell in my nostrils and a bitter taste in my mouth when the white liquid squirted out.

I began to hear the voices in my head when I was with Grandpa and I focused on them, straining to make out the words, concentrating hard, trying to take my mind away from what was physically happening to me.

‘Hello, Vanessa, we’re your friends,’ they were saying to me. ‘Don’t worry; you’re going to be fine.’ ‘We love you, Vanessa.’

Every second Saturday from then on, when we arrived at the Pittams’ house, Grandpa would be waiting eagerly to lead me straight to the garage.

‘That’ll put him in a good mood for the week,’ I heard Grandma saying to Mum once as he pulled me by the hand to the garage step.

So they must know about it – Mum too. I’d wondered about that. If they knew, it must mean this was a normal thing that little girls did with their grandfathers and I just had to put up with it.

The voices in my head gave conflicting advice. ‘Don’t go in the garage. Stay away from him,’ one said, but then another advised ‘It’s just one of those things. It happens to lots of little girls,’ and a third said, ‘You’re lucky it doesn’t really hurt.’ As usual, it was hard to know what to think.

Still, I hated the taste, the feel and the smell of it. It made me feel dirty and horrible, as though I was a disgusting person and it was all my own fault it was happening.

One of the saddest side-effects of this was that I began to avoid being alone with Granddad Casey when we were over at their house in Rugeley. I stopped going to band the pigeons with him or collect eggs for breakfast from the farm. I never asked him to spin the spinning top any more or play games with me and I avoided being alone in a room with him at all times. I have a clear memory of the hurt look in his eyes one time when he asked if I’d like to go for a walk and I said ‘No, thanks’ and ran to hide behind Nan.

He could have had no idea why I was behaving in that way after the close, jokey relationship we’d had before. I feel bad about it now. I just knew in my six-year-old head that it would break my heart if Granddad Casey asked me to stroke or suck the thing between his legs and I decided never to put myself in a position where that might conceivably happen.