Wake Up, Mummy (8 page)

But it soon became clear that the prayer I’d made the first night wasn’t going to be answered: Carl’s grim,
cramped little flat was to be our new home, and all the happy days of living with our grandparents had come to an end.

My grandmother always used to tell me that you can’t judge a book by its cover. The first time she said it, I didn’t understand what she meant, and she’d explained that it was another way of saying that what people look like on the outside doesn’t necessarily tell you what they’re like on the inside. So you shouldn’t decide whether or not you like someone based on their appearance; you have to wait until you get to know them. I wanted to please my grandmother, so it was advice I always tried to follow. But there was something about Carl that made me think he looked the way he did
because
of what was inside him, which, whatever it was, wasn’t something nice.

To other people, Carl presented himself as a hardworking, loving partner and stepfather. But when the front door closed, he was something else entirely. The real Carl was a drunken, disgusting human being, devoid of any empathy or compassion, who made me fear him and then used my fear to enable him to abuse me, physically, emotionally and sexually. As long as my mother was able to drink, she was happy – and oblivious to what was going on around her. So all Carl had to do was make sure she was never without a constant supply of alcohol,
and then he was free to indulge whatever sick fantasy came into his mind.

Although my mother never mentioned my grandmother to us, other than to swear and complain about her, she must have made contact with her somehow. Because, after we’d been in the flat for a couple of days, she told us that in future she would take us to school on the train every morning and then my brother and I would walk to my grandparents’ house at teatime, and stay there until she and Carl came to collect us after they finished work.

It had quickly become apparent that Carl didn’t like my brother
or
me, and it must have been equally clear to Carl that I detested him. But even living with him and my mother in his horrible little flat might be bearable if I could see my grandmother every day. I was so excited at the prospect that I had to stop myself jumping up and down, because I knew better than to let my mother know how happy I was. I’d long ago learned not to tell her if something was important to me, because if I did, it meant that whenever she was in one of her moods or feeling mean, she could hurt me by taking away the one thing that might give me some pleasure. So I tried to appear indifferent, as though I didn’t really care about seeing my grandparents, and I hoped my mother couldn’t tell that my heart was doing cartwheels in my chest.

After lunch on the first day back at school, I hardly took my eyes off the large, oak-framed clock above the blackboard. The afternoon seemed to drag on for ever, but finally the last lesson of the day came to an end and I grabbed my little bag off the peg in the cloakroom and ran to the school gate. Then I stood there, kicking the wire netting that surrounded the playground, and waited impatiently until my brother almost flew out of the building, grasped my hand without a word and tried to keep up as I set off along the pavement as fast as my legs would carry me.

Rounding the corner of the street where my grandparents lived, we could see my grandmother waiting for us at the open front door. It had only been a few days since we’d last seen her – since the night when our mother had snatched us from the house – but it seemed like a lifetime. As we ran up the garden path, she squatted down and opened her arms and we almost knocked her over in our eagerness to feel them close around us.

Life soon settled into an uneasy but more or less regular pattern. I knew that, however miserable the days might be, for five out of seven of them every week I would spend at least a couple of hours with my grandparents, and sometimes with my aunts and uncles too. Saturdays and Sundays were the worst days. But we hadn’t been living with Carl for very long when my mother
started having an affair with another man she’d met at a pub. Almost every weekend after that, while Carl was out drinking with his mates, we’d trail after her reluctantly to her weekend-boyfriend’s house, where we’d sit alone in the living room for hours on end, watching television, while they went upstairs and shut the bedroom door.

Eventually, she’d come tearing down the stairs again, shouting at us, ‘Out! Out! Get moving for God’s sake,’ as though
we
had kept
her
waiting, rather than the other way round. Then she’d usher us out into the street, and we’d trot along behind her as she almost ran to my grandparents’ house, where Carl would soon be arriving to collect us. She swore us to secrecy, making us promise again and again that if Carl asked, we’d say we’d been at our grandparents’ house all day. We were used to keeping secrets, and we knew what would happen if we upset our mother. And although the weekends were almost unbearably boring, at least we hadn’t been left alone with Carl, and I felt a small sense of satisfaction because I knew something he didn’t.

One Saturday afternoon, when my grandparents were away for the weekend and Carl had arrived at their house to pick us up, he and my mother went into the living room to watch television and drink. They left the door slightly ajar, so that they could hear if Chris and I misbehaved in any way, and Carl told us to stay out of the
room. Then he dragged an armchair across the carpet, positioned it so that it blocked the doorway, and sat down with his can of beer.

I was furious. It was one thing for my mother to tell me what to do, but how dare Carl think he could order me around in
my
grandparents’ house?

Chris and I crept silently along the hallway and flattened ourselves against the wall beside the living-room door. Carl had already been drunk when he arrived at the house, and it wasn’t long before he fell asleep. Just the top of his head was visible above the back of the chair, and I could see that if the door were to be pushed hard enough, it would hit him.

I nudged my brother, pointed at Carl’s head and whispered, ‘Go on, I dare you.’ Then we both started to giggle, and almost fell over each other in our haste to get away from the open doorway before we burst into laughter.

When we were safely in the kitchen, I hissed at Chris again, ‘I dare you. Just push the door, once, really hard.’

‘No! I dare
you
,’ he answered, pushing me ahead of him back up the hallway towards the living room.

We stood together for a moment looking at Carl’s thin grey hair, and then, suddenly, I grabbed the door handle with both hands and rammed it as hard as I could against the back of his head. There was a loud crack and Carl
leapt out of his chair, clutching his head with both hands and swearing, as Chris and I ran back to the kitchen, frightened, but almost choking with laughter.

I know we must have paid for our prank, although I can’t remember how. Whatever the price, though, it was worth it for the fleeting sensation of knowing that, if only in a small way, I’d got my own back on the man who was responsible for ending my happy life with my grandparents and for making every single day of my new life so miserable.

I loved spending time with my grandparents. In contrast to the life I lived with Carl and my mother, everything in their house was clean, comfortable and well ordered, and every day spent with them followed a pattern I could understand and that made me feel secure, loved and accepted. Gradually, however, it began to feel as though something had changed. My grandmother and my aunts didn’t laugh any more, and on more than one occasion I’d been certain I’d heard my grandmother crying.

Then, one day, I was watching television in the living room at my grandparents’ house when I decided to go into the kitchen to ask my grandmother for a drink. As I walked towards the open kitchen door, I heard my aunt say, ‘She knows something’s wrong. It isn’t fair, Mum. She
needs
to be told the truth.’

I wondered what she was talking about and guessed it
was probably something to do with my mother – ‘wrong’ things usually were.

‘I don’t want her to know,’ my grandmother answered, her voice breaking as though she was suppressing a sob. ‘The poor child has enough problems to deal with.’

I realised at that point that they were talking about me, and I began to feel afraid. I’d already learned that there are some things in life that, once you know them, can’t ever be un-known and can change everything. And some sixth sense told me that this was one of those things.

‘Please, Mother.’ My aunt was almost begging.

For a moment, neither of them said anything, and I stood, frozen to the spot, as I tried to decide which I wanted more – to know or not to know what they were talking about.

Then my grandmother sighed a deep, unhappy sigh and said, ‘Well, you’ll have to tell her. I simply can’t do it.’

I heard the familiar creaking of wood as my aunt rose from one of the old kitchen chairs, which, as my grandmother constantly reminded my grandfather, needed to have their joints re-secured. I turned and fled back into the living room, where I threw myself on to the sofa. A few seconds later, my aunt came into the room and sat down beside me. I ran the damp palms of my hands along my skirt and looked up at her, as she put her arm around my shoulders and began to stroke my hair.

‘I’ve got something to tell you, Anna,’ my aunt said, in a hesitant, tired-sounding voice. ‘You’re going to have to be a big, brave girl. Can you do that for me, darling?’

I nodded, although what I really wanted to do was shout at her, ‘Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.’

‘Granddad is very ill,’ she continued, pausing for a moment and making a small noise as though she was clearing her throat. ‘He can’t go to work any more. So he and Grandma are going to have to sell this house and go and live somewhere they can be looked after.’

By the time the words had passed from my ears to my brain they seemed to have become all jumbled up, and I couldn’t really understand what she was saying. But the heavy, sick feeling in my stomach told me that something really bad was about to happen, something far worse than any of the many bad things that had happened so far in my life. I began to pray that my aunt would say something that I could understand, something that would make me realise everything was going to carry on as normal and be all right. But she just kept stroking my hair and holding me.

‘Does that mean Chris and me will have to live all the time with Mummy…?’ I swallowed, unwilling to add the words ‘and Carl’.

When I looked at my aunt, I could see the answer in her expression, and I burst into tears as my entire world
fell apart. The hours I spent with my grandparents were the only good times in my life. No one else loved me, and there was no one else I could turn to when everything became so horrible. I didn’t think I could bear it any longer. It was terrible that my grandfather was ill, and I think I could sense the fact that he might be going to die. But my grandfather’s death was something I couldn’t even begin to imagine, whereas living alone with my mother and Carl was something I could.

ALMOST EVERY NIGHT,
Carl would watch me while I got undressed. Then he’d hang around on the landing until Chris had gone to bed, before coming into my bedroom to abuse me.

He’d be holding a towel in one hand and a flannel rinsed out in hot water in the other, and he’d pull the covers back from my bed, lift up my nightdress, part my legs with his short, stumpy tattooed fingers and wash me. Then, as he dried me with the towel, he’d tell me how important it was for that part of my body to be washed particularly well, and I’d notice how his face grew older and uglier as he spoke. He’d ask me questions, too, about whether my friends ever discussed their fathers touching them. And when I told him they didn’t, he called me a liar, assuring me that all fathers did exactly the same thing to their daughters.

At that time, and for a long time afterwards, when Carl did things to me that I hated, I had no idea I had the right
to say ‘No’ – although perhaps that was just as well, because it would only have made him angry and violent towards me. I was too young and naive for it even to have crossed my mind that what he was doing might not be normal, and I used to wonder if my mother had asked him to wash me like that. It had never happened at my grandparents’ house, but I just accepted it, as I accepted so many other unacceptable things, including being attacked and screamed at by my own mother.

Another thing I came to dread was Carl giving us our nightly bath. First, he’d run scalding hot water into the bathtub and then he’d watch impassively while we squirmed and cried out in pain as we tried to do what he told us and ‘get into the fucking bath’. According to Carl, bathing in boiling hot water was the only way to make sure we were really clean, and once again I accepted what he said without question. I’ve never understood why he did it to us – whether it was just because he enjoyed feeling he had the power to make us do whatever he liked, or whether it was because he hated us so much he liked seeing us suffer. But whatever warped, perverted reasoning lay behind it, by the time we got out of the bath we’d feel sick and faint, and our skin would be so red and sore that Carl had to cover us in talcum powder so that our mother didn’t notice and realise what he’d done.

Sometimes, he’d fill the bath with hot rather than scalding water, and then he’d take off his clothes and climb in with us. He acted as though it was fun, but I hated it. I hated knowing that he was sitting behind me where I couldn’t see him, laughing at my brother over the top of my head and making fun of me. Sometimes, without any warning, he’d grab hold of me, wrap his arms tightly around my stomach and start trying to push his penis into my bottom. I’d be startled by the suddenness of his action and often by a searing flash of pain, and I’d be embarrassed because Chris was looking straight at me. I’d try to push Carl away with my elbows, but he’d just tighten his grip until I could hardly breathe, and then he’d let go of me abruptly, get to his feet and wrap a towel around his waist before leaving the bathroom.