Читать книгу Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. - Vanessa Steel - Страница 11

Chapter 7

There could not have been more of a contrast between Dad’s loving, kind parents and Mum’s parents, Charles and Elsie Pittam. From a very young age I would seize up with dread when we set out to visit them for the afternoon, a lump constricting my throat and a knot twisting my stomach. They lived in Yardley Wood, a bus ride away, and Mum would take us on our own. Dad never came along.

‘I see you’ve brought the brats,’ Grandma Pittam would say as she opened the front door and glared down at Nigel and me. She had tightly curled grey hair, an unsmiling face and wore smart, tidy clothes in shades of grey, brown and black. I remember her as formal, upright and colourless.

The house was gloomy and austere, situated up a slight embankment. As you walked in the front door there was a musty smell, like gas. Huge pieces of dark furniture seemed to tower over us oppressively. There was a grandfather clock in the hall that chimed every quarter of an hour and I can’t say why exactly but I was always scared of that clock. The face seemed to have eyes that followed you around, and I always imagined that when it chimed a hand was going to come out of the casing and grab hold of me. The walls were covered in photographs of very old people – more eyes to watch over us – and every surface seemed to be cluttered with ornaments of little old men with gnarled faces and wizened hands.

‘You know where to go. Sit down and be quiet,’ Grandma would tell Nigel and me, and we’d troop into the front room to sit on the big, scratchy horsehair sofa, our feet sticking outwards, careful not to let our shoes touch the seat. Here we could smell the strong scent of Grandpa’s pipe tobacco and it used to catch the back of my throat and make me cough.

There were no toys in that house. Nigel and I were supposed to sit quietly, waiting while Mum chatted to her mother. I overheard snippets of conversation that referred to us sometimes. One in particular stuck in my head, although it made no sense to me at all.

‘If God had wanted you to have children, he would have given them to you,’ Grandma said. It was very obvious she didn’t like us and didn’t want us to be there, but I didn’t know why.

Of course, Nigel and I were young and found it hard to sit still for long. We’d start to fidget and one of us would giggle and Grandma would come charging through to tell us off. Children should be seen and not heard in that house. At teatime, she always served salmon and cucumber sandwiches cut into triangles. The slightest infraction of table manners was punished by a sharp rap on the knuckles with a bread knife. We would be told off for running, bumping into furniture, dropping crumbs, or virtually everything that two lively young children got up to. She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head and always caught us for any minor misdemeanours, even if we’d thought she wasn’t watching.

Some days when we arrived, she wouldn’t even let us in the house. ‘I’m in no mood for you today,’ she’d say. ‘You’ll have to stay out in the garden.’

Other times, when we were getting on her nerves, she’d send us to wait in the garage. It was always cold there and the wind blew dead leaves under the door and into corners. There were strange, toxic smells from the old pots of paint and tins of creosote that lay around, and the shelves were stacked with tools and ladders. Ancient broken toys were scattered around the garage, presumably relics of Mum’s childhood. A painted metal rocking horse stood to one side – it makes me shudder to think of it. Its tail and mane were matted and rough to the touch. When I climbed on to it to ride, it made an awful squeaking noise, like a creaky old gate, that used to grate on the nerves and make my teeth feel funny. There seemed something evil about that rocking horse, a kind of malignant look in its eyes.

If we’d been sent out to the garage for being naughty we wouldn’t be allowed to have any tea, but Grandma would quite often come out and wave the plate of sandwiches and maybe even tiny cakes under our noses so we could see what we were missing.

‘These are only for good children,’ she’d say. ‘You’re too naughty to have any.’ Then she would take the plate away again, shutting the garage door behind her as she went up the step into the kitchen. Nigel and I called her ‘Nasty Nanny’ and talked about how we wished we could go and see Nan Casey instead.

Grandpa Pittam was a big man with white, slightly curly hair and a rugged face. He wore a monocle and scratchy, tweedy clothes. He was a watch-and clockmaker by profession and there was always a fob watch on a chain pinned to his waistcoat. I hated the way he used to bounce me on his knee and kiss me on the lips and I hated the smell of stale tobacco that lingered in a cloud around him. He had a loud, raspy voice and he’d pretend to be jovial with us, but his smile would never reach his eyes.

Grandpa Pittam had an aviary full of blue, green and yellow budgerigars in the back garden. Sometimes he’d take Nigel and me out to look at them but unlike the visits to Granddad Casey’s racing pigeons, we hated being on our own out there with him. He’d make me go inside the aviary where all the birds fluttered round my head, making me scream. I was frightened their claws would get caught in my hair, or that they’d peck me as they darted around twitching and blinking, but Grandpa just laughed at my distress.

I never felt comfortable when he lifted me on to his lap and bounced me up and down, but Mum said ‘Be nice to your grandfather. He loves you very much.’

I’d say, ‘But I want to sit on the floor’ and she’d say, ‘Do what your grandfather wants.’

She was very affectionate with him, often kissing his cheek and being flirtatious and giggly, the same way she was with Dad when he got home from work. He’d pat her bottom and tell her to behave herself, which just made her giggle more.

Grandpa’s eyes were deeply set in his head and he used to look at me in a strange sort of a way, as though he was seeing someone else and not me. Was it just my imagination? I got the impression sometimes that he was quite sad and lonely, but I didn’t feel sympathy. He was far too creepy for that.

On the whole, I tried to behave my very best when we visited Grandma and Grandpa Pittam but I hated going there. One day, when Mum was getting us ready to go over there, I said out loud: ‘I don’t want to go to Grandma Pittam’s. I want to go to Nan Casey’s.’

‘You’ll go where you’re told and like it. Now hold your tongue.’ She accompanied this with a hard smack round the head. A bitter little seed of rebellion was planted inside me.

As we travelled there on the bus, a voice whispered in my head that I should tell Grandma Pittam that I didn’t like her. She had to know. I could ask her why she was so nasty to me. Was it because she didn’t like little girls, or because I was sometimes naughty? Or was it because I wasn’t pretty? I was nervous but convinced myself that it was right for me to speak my mind.

We arrived at Yardley Wood and Mum pressed the front door chime. Grandma opened the door and gave Mum a kiss on the cheek, saying, ‘Hello, dear, I’ve just put the kettle on.’ Then she looked down at us. ‘I’m in no mood for children today so you two can play quietly in the garden. You’re not coming in.’

The bitter seed in me burst out and I told her: ‘I don’t like you. You’re not a nice lady. I hate coming to your house and I wish we were going to Nan Casey’s because she’s kind and she plays with us.’ Once I’d started the words just came tumbling out.

Grandma’s eyes widened and she looked at Mum in horror. Mum grabbed me by the hair and snapped, ‘You ungrateful brat! Apologize to your grandmother at once. Tell her you’re sorry for being unkind.’

‘I won’t,’ I said defiantly. ‘I meant it all.’ In my naive, four-year-old way, I’d somehow imagined that Grandma might be nicer to me if I told her how I felt. Now I understood that it would only make everything a lot worse.

‘We can’t let her get away with this, Muriel,’ Grandma said.

Nigel was sent to sit on the sofa; then Grandma dragged me into the hall, crying and pleading while Mum went to find something to beat me with. She came back with an old paint-covered stick from the garage and started to whip me with it. I struggled to avoid the blows that rained down on my arms, legs and body and Mum got more and more cross as the stick never seemed to land where she wanted it to. I screamed and screamed as each stroke stung my skin, begging her to stop.

‘P-p-please Mummy, no. I’m sorry. Please stop.’

And then, as usual, I wet myself in sheer fright and there was a telltale puddle on the hall carpet. As soon as it happened, I started to pray silently, ‘Please don’t let her notice’, but she soon did. She stopped beating me and yanked me up by the hair.

I looked pleadingly at the ugly expression on her face, too terrified to utter a word.

‘You’re a dirty, filthy child, still wetting yourself like a baby when you’re four years old. You disgust me. I’m ashamed to call you my daughter.’ She dropped the stick and started slapping me hard round the face – right, left, right, left – until my cheeks were on fire. ‘I’m not going to stop until you apologize to your Grandma for what you said, and for wetting her carpet.’

Despite the fact that I was petrified when Mum got into a frenzied attack like this, I stuck to my guns. ‘But it’s true that I don’t like her and I don’t want to come here.’

There was an almighty whack that made me see stars and I let out a deafening scream. I tried to look up into Mum’s eyes, begging for mercy, but saw only a cruel, cold glee.

A banging and crashing noise was coming from the kitchen and Mum dragged me down the hall to see what was going on. Grandma had pulled out an old corrugated tin tub that she kept under the sink and had filled it with cold water.

‘We need to clean up the little *****,’ she said to Mum, using a word I didn’t understand but that sounded ugly. ‘Get her clothes off.’

I didn’t struggle as their rough fingers stripped off my dress, then my vest, pants and socks. I was gulping back sobs, partially dazed by all the blows to my head, and I had no idea what was coming next. Mum lifted me up and lowered me down into the icy water. As soon as my feet touched the surface, I struggled to get away, so Grandma joined in and they both pushed me down until I was shuddering in ice-cold water that came up to waist height.

Grandma pulled out a brittle old scrubbing brush and a bar of antiseptic-smelling pink soap from under the sink. ‘This is what I use for cleaning the dirtiest laundry when it needs a really good scrub,’ she said. She rubbed the soap on the bristles to raise a lather and then she started to scrub the skin of my back, chest, legs and arms, rubbing with such vigour that I was soon red-raw and sore all over. She rubbed suds into my eyes, nose and mouth, and I just sobbed and sobbed without stopping, feeling completely without hope.

When she’d finished, she yanked me out, rubbed me down roughly with a towel and then marched me across to the door that led to the garage. I was pushed headlong, still stark naked, and the door slammed behind me. The rocking horse’s eyes looked at me mournfully.

I crouched down on the floor hugging myself and shivering, every inch of me stinging and sore. I started to rock back and forwards on my heels. There were whispering voices in my head but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I felt cold and scared and vulnerable and utterly, utterly alone. I now knew that I wasn’t safe in Grandma’s house and that I couldn’t risk rebelling again because she obviously hated me as much as Mum did.