Читать книгу Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted - Toni Maguire - Страница 17

Chapter Thirteen

When I heard the children at school talking about their weekends, their bicycles, their games and even the books they had started reading, I knew I could not share what I liked doing the most. Nor could I write an essay on it when the teacher asked us to write down what we had done in our free time.

So I never told them that, when I managed to escape from watching my brother or helping my mother with the chores, my feet would take me through the gate and down the country lane into the fields where treasures lay hidden from the casual eye, but not from me.

Once there I carefully searched the hedges hoping to see a nest of tiny speckled eggs or even another one filled with tiny fledglings. And when I found them I would be as quiet as I could so as not to scare off the mother bird from returning. I knew never to touch them, for if I did the nest would be abandoned and the chicks would starve to death.

At school I heard the boys boasting about the birds’ eggs they had collected. I wanted to tell them that they were killing baby birds but I knew that if I did they would laugh at me or even worse pull my hair and call me stinky. So I never told them that either.

On warm days when nothing disturbed the drowsy peace of the countryside I would pick handfuls of tiny wild strawberries that grew under the hedgerows. I would lie on my back eating them as I sleepily watched brilliantly coloured butterflies and bees searching for pollen. Once I forgot the minutes slipping by as I watched the activity in an anthill. I marvelled at the business of the thousands of ants living in that colony and wondered how anything so minute could build, compared to their size, such a vast home. But my favourite place was the pond.

It was the man next door who, a few days after we had moved in, showed me how to make a net from a piece of muslin and a twig. He then showed me how to scoop up some of the frogspawn and gave me a bowl to put it in. He explained that I could then watch it turn into tadpoles that in turn would, after a few weeks, become frogs.

‘You can keep it in my shed,’ he had said, thus forming an alliance that added to the gulf between my parents and me. ‘Watch the tadpoles grow until they are a decent size and then we’ll release them.’

I added pond plants and small stones to the bowl and over the next three weeks watched as the tiny black dots lengthened and became recognizable shapes.

It took until after the end of the Easter holidays for the miniature eel-like things to become tadpoles, complete with wriggling tails. Wanting them to feel at home and have room to grow, I exchanged their small bowl for a larger one and placed more plants from the pond in it.

When we thought they were big enough to be safe from the fish we took them back to the pond. Over the warm days of early summer I saw them change again from black wriggly tadpoles into browny-green froglets that jumped, swam and lay basking in the sunshine on the stones or hidden by the long grass around the pool. As I watched them, I wondered which were the ones that we had helped turn into those little creatures.

At first, after the kittens had been drowned, I had not been able to bring myself to go there. I could picture them all too clearly in their watery grave, but after the man next door told me about cat heaven and said that the kittens would not want me to be sad any more I felt better about it.

And that was another thing I never told my teacher: about the times he would be waiting for me there.

When the summer holidays finally arrived and I knew there was no school for six weeks, all I could think of was the days I could spend with our neighbours.

As though reading my mind, my father quickly let me know that, whereas I might not have to go to school, I need not look upon those six weeks as holiday time.

‘You are to help your mother,’ he told me sternly the moment he saw me move to the door on my first morning of what up to then I had believed was freedom. ‘You’re in charge of your brother. You’re old enough.’

When I told the man next door, he simply ruffled my hair and said we would take his two and my brother with us to the pond. ‘We’ll have a picnic. It will get the children out of my wife and your mother’s way.’

A pushchair and his shoulders were enough to transport the three children, while I, bringing up the rear, would carry a bag filled with soft drinks, slices of cake and biscuits.

There were days when we would sit and he would put his head lightly on my shoulder and tell me he was tired.

‘You must be all-in too, Marianne, having to help your mother like you do. Lie down and put your head in my lap.’ And happily I did. Those early days as I listened to the sound of the summer countryside, the hum of insects, the chirping of birds, the small splashes of water and the rustle of leaves and grass, I wriggled with pleasure at the soothing movements of his hands. They stroked my back, traced each vertebra of my spine, stroked my neck, ran lightly through my hair and gently caressed my cheeks.

Nearby the three toddlers, with their faces crammed with sweets and their leading reins holding them securely and safe from the water, gurgled contentedly as I curled my body up even tighter against him, blissfully content to feel safe and cared for at last.