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Chapter 2

I was a very timid child, shy around strangers and prone to creeping into my favourite little hidey-holes behind the settee or round the corner of Dad’s shed in the garden. I’d take Scruffy, a yellow-furred teddy bear, or Rosie, my rag doll, with me and could sit still for hours on end hugging them, out of sight of any adults.

I’m told I was very slow to talk. At two I’d hardly uttered a word and even at three I couldn’t manage more than a few incoherent phrases, so that Mum and Dad were beginning to worry that I was retarded in some way. Toilet training was also very traumatic for me. The slightest upset or fear could cause me to have an accident, which always enraged Mum. I was supposed to ask her permission when I wanted to go to the bathroom but she didn’t always grant it straight away, saying she was trying to train me to have more control. Several times when I asked to go, she made me squat down in the kitchen, bladder bursting and cheeks getting hotter, tiny fists clenched with the effort of trying to hold it in – and then there’d be the warm release of urine soaking my pants, that ammonia smell and a little puddle on the linoleum floor. Afterwards there was always the anger and the shouting, and my own sense of bewilderment at how I made her so cross.

The love of my life was Nigel, my big brother, much braver than me and always the ringleader in our games. He was a sweet-natured, affectionate child who had a bit of a temper when pushed. He never took it out on me, but injustice of any kind could make him see red. He wasn’t scared of things I was scared of, like dogs and noisy motorbikes and tradesmen who came to the door. I’d cower behind Mum’s skirt in the face of strangers, trying to avoid being noticed, while Nigel would stand his ground and ask questions like ‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ The roots of extreme shyness lie in a feeling that you are not quite good enough and you’re scared that other people will find out; I had that in spades as a toddler.

Nigel and I were solitary children, dependent on each other for company. I remember there were twins about our age living just up the road, but we were never allowed to play with them. We liked make-believe games, such as pretending that we were a king and queen going round the garden ruling over our subjects – in my case Scruffy and Rosie, and in Nigel’s his collection of wooden soldiers. Indoors, we would build little villages with houses and cars out of Bayko – a system of blocks and connecting rods somewhat like Meccano.

We rarely argued or fell out about anything. I remember one time I pushed him off his tricycle because he wasn’t sharing it with me, but that was exceptional. We agreed that we were going to get married when we were grown up, and then we would live together in a house of our own and be happy forever and ever.

Nigel and I rarely saw Dad during the week. I suppose he got home late from work when we were already in bed – and some nights, I know he didn’t get home at all. At weekends he’d be off playing cricket or golf at least part of the time. When he was there, though, I was Daddy’s little girl. He called me Lady Jane (Nigel was Little Boy Blue) and he carried me round the garden on his shoulders. We weren’t allowed out the front of the house – Mum didn’t like it – but while he was gardening out the back we’d follow him up and down as he mowed the lawn and persuade him to play chase or hide and seek with us.

He was a master of silly voices and we had to guess who each one was supposed to be. It might be Mickey Mouse or Little Weed from Bill and Ben, or any one of a number of cartoon characters. He was good at doing the animal noises in his rendition of ‘Old Macdonald’, and he was also very talented at whistling; the favourite tune I remember was ‘Blue Danube’.

We lived at number 39 Bentley Road, a large, stone-built, semi-detached house with bay windows and a big garden in a leafy, middle-class suburb of Birmingham. While my father looked after the outside, indoors was Mum’s domain, and it was kept spotless at all times. She would catch the dust as it fell, carefully lifting all her ornaments of pretty ladies in fancy hats from shelves and tables to make sure the surfaces were spick and span underneath. At the front of the house there was the immaculate dining room, whose bay windows overlooked the street. Nigel and I were only allowed in there on very rare occasions, but I remember a fold-up table in the bay with a chair by either side and a big picture of Jesus surrounded by a glowing halo on the wall. I would come to fear this room and what went on in there when Mum locked herself in it.

Upstairs there were three bedrooms and the bathroom. My bedroom was in some respects a little girl’s dream, with curtains and a bedspread made from a beautiful fabric printed with tiny pink and red rosebuds, some open and some closed, surrounded by sweeps of green stalks and leaves. The detail was extraordinary; I can remember the pattern of whorls and curlicues to this day. There were pink flannelette sheets and a bedside table with a pink lamp, and the glass in the bay window was made up of little twinkling squares. Woe betide me if I ever got a fingerprint on that glass; I learned from a very early age that it was a huge mistake to touch it as I peered out to see what was going on in the road below.

An outside observer looking at the room might have mistaken it for a seldom-used guest bedroom rather than a little girl’s room because there were no dolls, toys, pictures, books or teddies in sight. I was never allowed to bring Scruffy or Rosie up to bed with me. Bedrooms were for sleeping not playing, according to Mum, and upstairs was out of bounds during the day, except for permitted trips to the bathroom.

At the rear of the ground floor was a family room with large patio windows looking out on to the garden and a marble-effect tiled open fireplace. There was regency-striped wallpaper, a patterned carpet and a brown leather Chesterfield settee and matching chairs – all considered very chic in the early 1950s. You would never see any toys in evidence in that room – or anywhere else in the house for that matter. Nigel and I had very few toys and they had to be kept tidily out of sight in the family-room toy box if we wanted to avoid them being confiscated.

* * *

In my pre-school years I idolized my beautiful, glamorous mother. I thought that she was the most gorgeous woman in the world, with her perfect hair, red lips, rouged cheeks, long varnished nails and stylish outfits, always surrounded by a cloud of lily-of-the-valley scent. I liked watching her straightening the seams of her stockings, or reapplying the lipstick that she wore constantly, even in the house when there was no one else there except us kids.

‘Mummy pretty’ was one of my first phrases, but I was always aware that it wasn’t true of me.

‘You’re a very ugly child,’ Mum would tell me, pinching my cheeks. ‘No amount of makeup would camouflage that ugly mug. There’s not a lot we can do about it.’

I became obsessed with wanting to be pretty because I thought this would make Mummy love me and stop her being cross with me all the time. I’d gaze in the mirror, willing a different face to look back at me, but it never did.

One day when I was three I found Mum’s pot of rouge lying out in the bathroom. I managed to prise off the lid and put a couple of spots of it on my cheeks. I looked in the mirror and liked the effect, so I ran downstairs in great excitement to show her.

‘Look, Mummy, I’m pretty!’

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted, pulling me to her and rubbing hard at my cheeks with a dishtowel. ‘How dare you touch my makeup!’

I stood, horrified. I had honestly thought Mummy would laugh and would be pleased with me. How could it have gone so badly wrong?

‘You’re going to have to learn not to meddle with things that aren’t yours.’

I shrieked as she grabbed my hair and pulled me down the hall to the cupboard under the stairs, where the vacuum cleaner and other cleaning materials were kept. It had a sloping ceiling and shelves on one wall that served as a kind of pantry with lots of jars and tins and bottles. There was a bolt on the outside of the door and no light inside.

‘There’s a spider’s web in the corner.’ Mum pointed out. ‘I’m going to lock you in here for a while to keep you out of mischief, but you’d better stay very, very quiet and very still or the spiders are going to get you.’

I was shoved inside and the door slammed and bolted. I could just make out a thin outline of the light round the door through the musty darkness. I gulped back my sobs, trembling with fear, and felt that familiar trickle between my legs as I wet myself. I didn’t dare sit down or reach out my hands to touch the wall or make any movement or noise. I could barely breathe. I genuinely thought the spiders were going to eat me. How could I know otherwise?

Soon I became hysterical, banging and kicking the door as hard as I could and screaming at the top of my voice. I heard Mum’s footsteps come clicking down the hall. She opened the door and I reached up my arms to be lifted, hoping for a comforting hug, but instead she hit me across the head with a sharp admonition to ‘shut up!’ Then she slammed and bolted the door again. I was shocked into silence. My legs trembled and an occasional sob escaped me but otherwise I stood quietly, alert for the feel of a spider’s creepy feet on my skin or a nibble from their fangs. More than the physical fear, though, I felt the terror of being abandoned by the person who was supposed to take care of me. I was only three and I was bereft of adult protection.

At last, after an interminable period, Mum opened the door and yanked me out again. ‘How many spiders did you count? Did they bite your toes?’ There was a malicious glint of pleasure in her eyes as I shivered with fear, longing in vain for a kind word.

This is the first real punishment I remember Mum inflicting on me. Far from being a one-off, confinement in the spider cupboard became an almost daily occurrence. Young children don’t have much of a sense of time but I know that sometimes it was broad daylight when I was thrown in there and dark when I came out. I frequently missed meals and had to push my fists into my stomach to combat the rumblings of hunger. If he was feeling brave, Nigel would come and whisper to me through the crack of the door: ‘It’s all right, Nessa, I’m here – don’t be scared.’ But as soon as Mum heard him he would be dragged away.

It was hard to predict the crimes for which I would be locked in the cupboard. Picking flowers, scribbling in my Noddy book, spilling a little talcum powder on the bathroom rug, squealing, asking for a drink, not finishing my supper – any of these could result in a period in captivity.

Nigel and I had the natural liveliness you’d expect of any toddlers and we could be naughty with the best of them. One day we shook the petals off the rose bushes and laid them out all over the garden path in wavy patterns. Mum went absolutely berserk when she saw them because, she said, we had ‘stolen’ Dad’s flowers.

Another time a painter had left a ladder leaning against the wall at the back of the house and Nigel and I decided to climb it to see how high we could get. He went first and had almost reached the bedroom window when he fell to the ground below and his screams brought Mum rushing out. I remember that I was the one who was punished for that escapade, despite the fact that he was older and had been the ringleader.

‘I’m going to give you away to the ragamuffin man next time he comes,’ she’d taunt, a prospect I found very scary, although I didn’t have a clue what a ragamuffin man was.

‘No, Mummy, please,’ I’d beg tearfully, but she would maintain that next time he came she was definitely going to hand me over.

* * *

There were some mornings when Mum woke up in a foul mood with the world and couldn’t stand the sight of me so I’d be locked in the cupboard from breakfast onwards. My only respite was at weekends when Dad was around, or on the two mornings a week when Mrs Plant, our cleaner, came over.

Mrs Plant was a lovely, dark-haired lady with a lively imagination. She would lift me up to sit beside the sink while she washed dishes or peeled potatoes and made up lots of stories to tell me. She couldn’t understand why I started crying when she told me about Little Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet. I was too young and too inarticulate to be able to put into words the chronic fear of spiders that had taken hold of me, so that even a mention of one in a nursery rhyme was distressing.

I wonder if she ever suspected what was going on in that household when she wasn’t around. Once, when she was cleaning the cupboard under the stairs, I said to her, ‘That’s my place for when I’m naughty.’

She looked aghast and turned to Mum, who had emerged from the kitchen.

‘What an imagination the child has!’ Mum smirked. ‘Have you ever heard the like?’

‘Mummy put me there,’ I protested.

She raised her eyebrows at Mrs Plant and winked. ‘Was that in one of your story-books, darling?’ she asked me.

Mrs Plant looked relieved and went back to work, obviously content with Mum’s explanation. I was to learn that this would always happen when I tried to tell other adults the truth about what went on in our house. Mum was the mistress of keeping up appearances and from the outside, we looked like a typical, middle-class family: two happily married, prosperous parents and their well-turned-out son and daughter. Neighbours in Bentley Road undoubtedly saw us as completely normal, if a little insular.

What they didn’t realize was that our father increasingly spent as much time as he could out of the house, leaving us at the mercy of a mother whose resentment of her two young children was growing, and with it, her desire to punish them.