Читать книгу Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted - Toni Maguire - Страница 15

Chapter Eleven

By the time I reached seven I knew that it was not nice to be dirty. At school I was told to wash my neck, remove the dirt out from under my nails and brush my hair. I tried to scrub myself clean but the mirror that my father used for shaving was too high for me to see into. I knew my clothes were not washed often enough and that my hair was greasy. It was Dora who helped me then.

‘Your mother’s so busy with the little ones,’ was all she said when I complained that the tin bath rarely made an appearance and I was getting into trouble at school. ‘You can bath here.’

And once a week that is what I did. She gave me nice-smelling soap and talcum powder, and when I told her I hated changing for PE because my knickers were so grey she bought me new underwear.

‘It’s just a present,’ she told my mother when she protested. ‘She’s so good at helping with the children that I owe her something.’

I loved the feeling of being clean all over and liked the fact that my skin smelt of flowers. Dora showed me how to put my hair into rags.’ Just brush it out in the morning,’ she told me, ‘and you will look a different little girl.’

So each morning after that I went to school with curly hair, a face scrubbed clean and a hopeful smile that someone there would like me now. The teachers stopped complaining about my grubby appearance, but the children still saw my faded second-hand clothes and Wellington boots; they continued to ignore me.

The Easter holidays came and my sister was born, and once again I saw my parents showering another member of the family with love. This time my mother’s energy seemed sapped by the demands of a new baby. It seemed that nearly every time she spoke to me it was to ask me to do something for her.

There were rare occasions treasured by me when my mother seemed less tired, and then she would smile and run her fingers through my hair. ‘You’re a good girl, Marianne, aren’t you?’ and just that tiny slice of praise was enough to put a smile on my face.

But mostly after I helped as much as I could she barely paused in what she was doing to mutter thanks.

More and more it fell onto me to baby-sit my brother who had reached the age when fingers went in electrical sockets and the contents of unlocked cupboards were scattered onto the floor and put into his waiting mouth.

‘Bring him round to play with mine,’ Dora told me when she saw me watching the pram.

‘You’re such a little mother,’ Dora would tell me as I sat by the playpen watching my baby brother and her two playing happily together.

I would beam at her praise, drink the orange squash she gave me and eat the shop-bought biscuits, but all the time I listened for his footsteps, willing him to arrive before I left.

Suddenly the neighbours were the parents I would have liked to have. But for all Dora’s kindness to me it was he who in my imagination became the father figure I could turn to, and I became a daddy’s girl who followed him around like a small puppy that had only just found someone to give it attention.

It was he who always had time to answer my little girl questions.

‘Why are there no mice in the skirting boards? Where have they gone? Mum says they will be back soon enough.’

‘Well, little lady,’ he would answer patiently, ‘in winter when it’s very cold they can’t find food so they creep into our homes and hide. When we are in bed asleep they run around looking for crumbs. But before we wake up they hide themselves away again.’

‘In the skirting boards?’ and I imagined the families of mice peeping through the holes just waiting for us to go to bed so they could have their midnight feast.

‘Yes, in the skirting boards,’ he would reply, laughing at my inquisitiveness.

‘Why does my mum get angry when she sees them?’

‘Women don’t like them’ was his only answer to that.

Other times he would make shadow pictures of rabbits, dogs and even a horse on his walls. Then when I begged for more he took off his brightly coloured neckerchief which, apart from Sundays when it was exchanged for a tie, he always wore knotted around his neck. Once off he somehow twisted it so that it cast shadows of birds against the wall.

Peter and Paul, he called them, as they flew up and down the walls. And before they disappeared out of sight a wing would gently caress my cheek. Those days I smiled happily back at him as I felt a glow spread through me at his attentions.

From my bedroom window I could see the man next door’s workshop. Sometimes he had a car he was repairing sitting outside it. I would wait for him to appear, then clatter down the stairs.

‘Shall I take Stevie out, Mum?’ I would ask, pointing to my brother.

‘Yes, you do that, Marianne. Keep him from getting under my feet,’ was her standard reply, so grabbing the toddler’s podgy little hand I would take him into the garden and wait hopefully to be noticed.

I never had to wait long. As though he could sense my presence his head would turn in my direction and a wide smile would light up his face.

‘Marianne,’ he would call, ‘come and give me a hand with this car, will you?’ and, delighted to feel needed, I would drag my unprotesting brother along as I flew to his side where I would importantly hold a spanner, pass a tool or even help polish the chrome.

Luckily my little brother was a sunny-natured child whose good behaviour could be bought with a biscuit or sweet.

‘Give the back seat a good wipe, will you, Marianne?’ he would often ask and, intent on my task, I would obediently crawl over the front seat.

‘Good girl,’ he would breathe in my ear as his hand patted my bottom.

‘You’ve got a little marvel there,’ he told my mother each time she appeared to see what I was up to. Ignoring the fact that he had taken up time when I could have been helping her, she gave him an answering smile.

‘Yes, she’s always been a good child, has Marianne. Never given me any trouble.’ And her naive complicity in his attentions was what sealed my fate. Maybe a worldlier woman might have questioned his motives. But he was our neighbour, the one who had helped my father find his job, while Dora had given my mother something she had craved: friendship, and with it the end of lonely days. So if there were any beginnings of doubts my mother did as so many mothers have before her and will do in the future: she doused them firmly down.

And finally I had someone in my life who thought I was special. He told me I was pretty, gave me sweets and endlessly listened to my chatter, and that was all it took to capture my seven-year-old heart.