Читать книгу Daddy’s Little Earner: A heartbreaking true story of a brave little girl's escape from violence - Maria Landon - Страница 8

Beneath the glamorous act that Mum and Dad put on for the world when they were out around the pubs, things must have been pretty grim for them. While Terry was a baby they lived in a bed-sitting room, and it was only after I was born that they were given their own council house. If Dad had a job in those days it would have been painting and decorating, but I never knew him to do much work when he was a grown man and I can’t imagine he was any different in his early twenties. He always says he worked in the early days when he and Mum were together, but she would say he didn’t do much.

As a some-time decorator, Dad was able to do the house up a bit himself, but he only bothered with the parts that he saw and wanted to show off to the people he brought home at night. Their bedroom was beautiful and so was the sitting room, but the kitchen and outside toilet were horrible and our rooms were all bare boards and disgusting old wallpapers left by previous occupants; we had no curtains or furniture or light bulbs. We were given a couple of blankets each and there was no heating. I used to get myself dressed under the blankets in the morning, unable to face stepping out into the freezing room until I had on as many layers as possible.

Mum was very glamorous in those days, good at making the most of herself with make-up and clothes, and she owned an array of wigs to change her look when she wanted to. She used to sing around the pubs and clubs she and Dad frequented and she was keen to do more with her talent, maybe even going professional. She had a terrific, soulful voice and got a chance to appear on Opportunity Knocks, which was like the X-Factor of the time, but Dad wouldn’t let her do it. I guess he was frightened he would lose control of her if she became successful, that he would be out of his depth amongst the sort of people she would meet and that she would leave him behind. Perhaps he was frightened she might meet someone else, someone who would treat her decently. It’s quite likely that the audition would have come to nothing, but then again it could have been her chance to get out of her life with him, make some money and get some independence, and he wasn’t about to let her do that. Everyone, even people who seem to have drawn all the short straws in life, gets a few chances to make something of their lives. If enough of those chances are missed, the options begin to shrink.

Not that the two of them weren’t enjoying themselves for a lot of the time in the early days of their marriage, despite their money problems and Dad’s violent temper. They both liked going out drinking together and Terry and I would be left at home or would have to sit outside the pubs with Cokes and crisps and wait for them to roll back out. Sometimes we would be sitting there for hours on end before they finally emerged, weaving around and slurring their words. I’m told that when I was about three they came out of The Lamb in Norwich and found I’d gone from wherever they had told me to sit. Suddenly frantic for their lost child, they got the police involved and they found me at the bus station with a woman who was about to board a bus with me. I wonder sometimes what would have happened to me if the police had got there a few minutes later. Could my life with this stranger have been any worse than it was soon to become anyway? I’ll never know.

They were already developing a habit of spending every penny they had on drink. I’m pretty sure Dad wasn’t working at that time because Mum’s parents used to come round to our house every week with groceries and Mum had been in trouble with the law for breaking into the electric meters and things like that; so money must always have been pretty tight.

Apart from regularly announcing that he was going to make me a prostitute as soon as he could, Dad made plenty of other declarations that showed how little he took his role as my father seriously. Mum told me that when I was three he asked her to go down to the bookies to put a bet on for him. She didn’t leap up immediately and he grew impatient. Dad liked to get instant obedience from all of us. Grabbing hold of me he pulled my dress up and yanked my knickers down.

‘If you don’t hurry up,’ he shouted at her, ‘I’m going to have her by the time you get back.’

I guess he was joking, but not many fathers would make any sort of joke about raping their three-year-old daughter and it was just one more comment that sowed a seed of concern in Mum’s mind. She could never be sure what he was capable of or where he would draw the line of acceptable behaviour. Dad saw life differently to most decent people.

Occasionally Dad would come into a lump sum of money, mainly when he’d had a win on the horses, but also later when he bullied Mum into going on the game, and then he would really flash it around. No one could ever have accused him of being mean – quite the opposite. Even though he couldn’t drive he bought himself a Mark 10 Jaguar one time and hired a friend called Eric to be our chauffeur. He took particular pleasure in being driven to the dole office to sign on each week, smartly suited and smoking a big cigar, thinking he was the cleverest man in the world because he was getting the better of the system. I don’t know how he got away with it except that he was always so plausible people tended to believe whatever he told them.

His friends in the pubs loved him for these sorts of shows of bravado, and so did I. To me he was a hero. I remember sometimes when he was in the money he would actually light his cigars from the fire with ten or twenty pound notes. I thought that was the most brilliant thing imaginable, to have a father who was actually willing to burn money. How many little girls like me ever got to see such a shockingly extravagant sight?

Dad kept ferrets and he liked to put them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket when he went out to drink. It was like his little party piece in the pub to get them out and make all the women scream.

‘Oh, Terry, Terry! You are a one!’

They all thought he was such a card. He always managed to collect a little mob of admirers around him wherever he drank; he was a born crowd puller.

Whether they had money or not Dad was always immaculately turned out with smart suits and ties and a clean shirt every day, even though he only ever went drinking in scruffy city pubs or into the bookies, never to anywhere where he needed to be dressed up. He would polish his shoes every night till he could see his face in them, wash his hair and shave every morning, preparing to put on another show for his public.

When he had cash he was always happy to spend it on things for the family, as long as they were things that would impress other people as well. We were the first people in our road to have a colour television and an automatic washing machine, for instance. Despite these flamboyant displays during the boom times, most of the time, of course, we didn’t even have any food in the house or a change of clothes for either Terry or me. There was actually no spare money at all.

Dad loved his dogs and mostly had corgis, just to be unusual I think and because it meant he could boast that he had the same dogs as the Queen. Her Majesty is the only other person I’ve ever heard of who likes the breed so Dad could be fairly sure he wouldn’t bump into anyone else with one down the pub. When I was little we had a standard poodle called Gina and a St Bernard, both far too big for our house but perfect props for Dad as he swaggered around town or welcomed friends into his little kingdom to drink, play cards and whatever else they got up to.

When he was a teenager, Dad’s nickname had been Pussy because he used to wear a long pointed pair of winkle-picker boots and everyone started calling him ‘Puss in Boots’, so he called the first corgi Pussy too, making it an extension of his own ego. That dog used to follow him everywhere he went in the city, waddling along on its short little legs, panting eagerly, never wearing a collar or lead. Dad would have loved the idea that the dog was so fond of him and so well controlled it would never wander off; having it on a lead would have created completely the wrong image for him. Whenever Dad ended a day out by getting arrested for being drunk or for causing a fight, which was quite often, Pussy the corgi would be sent home on his own in a police car or a taxi. Everyone knew who he belonged to and it all added to the image Dad cultivated for himself of being a lovable local rogue and ‘a bit of a character’.

Even when he had no money to feed or clothe his children, Dad thought it was perfectly normal for a man to go out drinking from the moment the pubs opened at ten thirty in the morning. As far as he was concerned it was his right to do whatever he wanted in life and he wouldn’t tolerate anyone telling him any different.

One of the rights he insisted on was to do as he pleased with his children, and part of this meant beating us whenever the urge took him. We were as much his property as Pussy the corgi or his well-shone boots. We trotted eagerly around behind him on our short little legs just like the dog, desperate to please him and avoid punishments.

Maybe it was the help they got from their parents that meant they were able to cope with looking after Terry and me when we were babies, or maybe it was just the energy and enthusiasm of youth that carried them through. But by the time my little brothers Christian and Glen came along Mum and Dad were no longer coping as parents. For some reason Dad just couldn’t bear having them around. Chris annoyed him so much that once he crammed him into the washing machine and threatened to switch it on while Mum was screaming hysterically at him to let him out. Not surprisingly Chris was absolutely terrified of Dad, cringing and shaking like a puppy expecting a beating whenever Dad was around, and clinging on to Mum’s skirts for protection.

Mum’s solution was to keep Chris and Glen locked in their bedroom together whenever Dad was in the house. I hardly remember seeing them at all, even though I was four when Glen was born. Mum would bring them downstairs to feed and bath them when Dad was safely out of the way but the rest of the time they were locked up. Normal babies would shout and scream for attention but they didn’t. It was probably fear that kept them so quiet, making it easier for our parents to gradually forget that their two youngest children existed at all. Chris wouldn’t have wanted to cry out for fear of attracting Dad’s wrath and Glen probably started by following his brother’s example and then eventually didn’t have the strength to cry anyway. I suppose they must have given up hope of anyone responding to their needs and just fallen into a hopeless, fatalistic silence.

Chris and Glen’s silent room really frightened Terry and me. We hated the terrible smells that it emitted, of faeces and stale urine, and we didn’t dare to open the door or go in on our own, never knowing if we went in there whether we would find them dead or alive. I can still remember those smells and I will never forget the squalor of the room on the few occasions when I did go in there with a grown-up, but I don’t remember ever hearing either of them cry.

I wish I could have done something to help them but I was only tiny myself. Besides, by this stage everyone in the house knew better than to defy Dad and risk his temper igniting. I was desperate to please him and to be in his good books, but more and more I seemed to get things wrong. One day when I was about four, we had been playing Ludo as a family and I must have got overexcited and rolled too violently, accidentally losing the dice.

‘Find it immediately,’ Dad ordered, his voice steely, but I just couldn’t; however hard I searched through the carpet and under the furniture it remained stubbornly gone. Looking back now, I wonder if perhaps he secretly slipped it into his pocket to ensure that its discovery wouldn’t spoil his fun. Once he had set his heart on beating one of us nothing was allowed to get in the way of his gratification.

Mum says he went out into the garden that day and cut a stick from a bush, choosing a particularly strong and bendy specimen. While the rest of us continued searching frantically for the dice he took a knife and methodically cut away all the leaves and twigs, leaving himself with a vicious-looking weapon which he swished through the air menacingly as if testing its suppleness. Mum knew what he was planning to do with it and pleaded with him not to but he took no notice. Dad never allowed anyone to talk him out of doing anything he had decided on.

When he was finally ready he ordered me to take down my knickers and laid me across his lap, holding me tightly and whipping me until I bled. I screamed with utter shock, completely devastated that my adored Dad could turn against me like this. The emotional betrayal was worse than the pain, although that was excruciating. I couldn’t sit down for a week afterwards. That was the first time he ever beat me, but from then on the stick stayed on display in the sitting room, ready to be used whenever he lost his temper.

The blows themselves hurt badly enough, but it was the expectation of them that became the real torture. He would always tell us in advance that he was going to beat us, leaving the stick standing by the fireplace, just glancing at it now and again, reminding us what was coming, prolonging the dread and making me cry before he had even struck a single blow. He would tease us with it. ‘Do you want some of this?’ he would ask as he tested it against his own palm.

He didn’t always use the stick – sometimes he would use a slipper – and he didn’t need to be drunk in order to decide to grab hold of one of us, wrench down our pants and put us over his knee. Sometimes he was stone cold sober, feeling pissed off with life and wanting to take it out on someone smaller than himself.

‘It’s about time you had ten of these,’ he would announce and we would know there was no getting out of it.

One day I remember in particular Dad issued one of his usual orders for me to go over to him to take a beating with his slipper. ‘Take your knickers down,’ he commanded and I was so frightened I stayed rooted to the spot and started to cry and plead with him even though I knew it was hopeless.

‘Stop crying,’ he ordered, ‘or you’ll get twenty hits instead of ten.’

The short walk across the sitting room towards him seemed impossible and I stayed rooted to the spot, out of his reach. I knew what would happen if I defied him but my legs just wouldn’t move, like in a nightmare.

‘Get here now!’ he bellowed, furious at being disobeyed, and I jerked into life, lurching forward.

The nearer I got to him the more he smiled and for a split second I thought he had changed his mind, that he was just teasing me, having a bit of fun. Although my whole body was trembling with fear I forced my mouth to smile back at him, trying to make him love me enough not to want to hurt me. The moment I was within reach he grabbed me and threw me across his long legs. As he raised the slipper in the air I let out an almighty scream, which made him laugh.

‘I haven’t even touched you yet!’

I couldn’t stop the crying and it made him angrier still so he doubled the number of hits to teach me a lesson, to teach me to be brave and strong, to teach me to obey his orders the moment they were issued. His lessons worked because I soon learnt to stifle my screams and take my punishments in silence. I always concentrated hard on counting each stroke to try to distract my mind from the pain and to keep myself from crying and angering him more.

Once he had finished he would throw me to the floor and I would scrabble to pull up my knickers, the tears silently streaking my cheeks, a wave of relief sweeping through me at the thought that it was over and that I had survived an ordeal that I had thought a few minutes earlier was going to kill me. Why had I made such a fuss? I would ask myself. It wasn’t so bad. I was still alive even if my bottom did hurt. Maybe Dad was right and I was making a fuss about nothing. I would then crawl into a chair and try to sit down, but it would hurt too much and I would have to lean on my side. My punishment was over, but however hard I tried I wouldn’t always be able to stop the tears. I would try to sniff them back up before he saw them.

‘Stop snivelling,’ he would bark, ‘or you’ll get another lot and this time it will be the stick!’

Him shouting would just make me want to cry more. I wanted to run over to him and tell him I was sorry for whatever I had done and that I still loved him. I wanted to ask him to hold me and cuddle me, but I knew better than to do that because such weakness would only aggravate him. So instead I would desperately fight to swallow my sobs and stop the tears from flowing.

I remember witnessing him beating up Terry really badly one day, punching him with his fists. I watched Terry sliding down the wall, the wallpaper behind him smeared with his blood. I couldn’t intervene because I would have received the same treatment for daring to go against him, so I just had to watch and wait for it to be over. If you tried to ask why he was angry or to argue with him you would merely make the ordeal last longer and give him an excuse to become more vicious.

Mum was useless at protecting us because by this stage she was utterly terrified of him as well. He wasn’t the kind of man that many people found the courage to resist. Gradually he undermined Mum’s confidence, telling her she was ugly and useless. He used to beat her about as well, kicking her in the mouth once and knocking out some of her teeth so she had to get false ones. She still has a prominent scar on her chin from that attack.

Things must have been volatile between her and Dad right from the moment they met but it was when she fell pregnant with Glen that she says it all started to go badly wrong. Dad was drinking a lot by then and when she was a few months pregnant they passed a Chinaman in the street on their way home from the pub. Maybe it started as a joke and then got out of hand, but Dad accused her of having an affair with him and then became convinced that Glen really was the Chinaman’s baby. The whole idea was patently ridiculous since Mum had never set eyes on the man either before or after that chance passing in the street but Dad seemed to have convinced himself until he became so incensed by her imagined treachery that he threw Mum down the stairs with Glen inside her, sending her into premature labour. She had to have an emergency caesarean and, as they prepared her for the operation, the doctors discovered that she was suffering from anaemia and malnutrition. She was kept in hospital for a while receiving treatment for all her ailments.

Dad’s theory about Glen having been fathered by a Chinaman was shown to be ridiculous once Glen was born because he looked more like Dad than any of us, but that didn’t stop him from continuing with his delusion. He started claiming that he couldn’t go out to work for fear that he would find Mum in bed with another man when he got back. I don’t believe this for a moment, but he repeated it time and time again over the years to get sympathy, and I’m sure his cronies in the pub took him at his word. Poor old Terry, with a wife he couldn’t trust.

When Mum was rushed into hospital for the caesarean, Terry Junior, Chris and I were placed with a foster family. I suppose Dad didn’t think he could cope with us on his own or maybe Mum had told social services that he couldn’t and that we needed to be protected from him. By that time I think the authorities were becoming aware of his violence. We must have been considered to be at risk.

One of the few memories I have of that period is of coming downstairs the first morning that I was in the foster home.

‘Good morning,’ one of the family said when they saw me appearing in the doorway and I froze, my face turning the colour of beetroot, totally unable to find the words to reply. The greeting must have taken me by surprise because people didn’t exchange those sorts of simple pleasantries in our house; they just grunted and shouted at one another if they needed to communicate. From then on the foster family all called me ‘dummy’. They may only have said it a few times, and they might just have been gently teasing me, but I was still mortified enough for the word to be burned indelibly into my memory. I knew it was my own fault for not speaking up as soon as I was spoken to, and it convinced me that I was inferior to the other children there, a worthless creature who had no right to be in their home at all but wasn’t wanted by anyone else, least of all her parents.

When Mum had recovered from her operation we were allowed to go home again. The doctors said it could be dangerous for her to have another pregnancy and prescribed her with the contraceptive Pill. Once there was no danger of her falling pregnant again, Dad decided the time was ripe to put her on the game. He’d talked about it before, apparently, never seeing anything wrong with the idea. In fact it was a bit of a mystery to him why all women didn’t do it.

‘Every woman’s sitting on a goldmine,’ he would say. ‘Pity I haven’t had four girls because then I could run a proper little brothel and I’d never have to work again.’

It might seem ironic that he beat Mum up because he suspected she’d been unfaithful to him yet he was prepared for her to be a prostitute, sleeping with any man who could pay the going rate – but that would be entirely consistent with his warped kind of logic.

‘If you’re going to do it, you should get paid for it instead of giving it away for free,’ he’d always say.