I bent closer over the bucket, and at the bottom, under the pink mouse corpses, was something else – a small black body, twisted, with its neck bent. I screamed and burst into tears. It was my darling Lucky.
8
Hatred and Help
After Lucky’s untimely death I was sadder than I could bear. I cried and cried and cried until I could cry no more. The whole world had gone completely dark. No William. No Lucky. I felt totally abandoned and alone. I sat in the shed, my head on my knees, licking them, empty and bereft. Counting, counting, counting. Pulling my eyelashes out in little clumps. Ripping out hair, bit by bit. Wherever I was – at home or at school – I seemed to be hated. I just didn’t understand why. Barbara and Ian were not talking and the atmosphere was very tense all the time.
Every so often Barbara did a lot of shouting and crashing of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Sometimes she would throw things out the back door in a raging fury. Ian would keep out of harm’s way and did a lot of hiding in the garage, pottering about or watching TV. Barbara would spit that Ian ‘wasn’t a real man’, whatever that meant. There was another upset about her underwear, which had gone missing off the washing line, and she was accusing Ian of taking it. Why, I had no idea. He had his own underwear – I ironed it. It was all very confusing.
It was a miserable house. Kevin spent his time being bossy, picking on me or eating what he wanted in front of me and generally ruling the roost. His real dad hadn’t visited for months now and he never talked about him – it was like he’d evaporated down the motorway somewhere. If I was in the kitchen, passing by, I’d get a slap, whack, kick, punch from Barbara or Kevin or both. If Ian was there he would turn away and busy himself, even if I was slapped in front of him; he pretended he didn’t see it. He never intervened.
One day Barbara was in a total rage. She had bought something for the house and Ian didn’t want it. He wanted her to take it back. She picked up pots and pans and started throwing them at Ian, and then out the back door and onto the grass and plants. I was standing in the garden near the chicken run, holding my breath, watching things fly out and about. When Barbara went off on a rant, it would go on and on for hours. Ian scuttled out of the house and into the garage, his safety zone. Then Barbara spied me watching. I tried to pretend I wasn’t listening.
‘I saw you,’ she shouted across the garden really loudly. ‘What do you bloody well want?’
I stared at the ground, not moving, hardly breathing. A statue.
‘Oh, stop looking like that; your sort are always all right, no wonder the Germans hated you.’ My blood froze. ‘You filthy little Jew,’ is what she spat at me then and slammed the back door.
My only place of safety in the whole world was Sean Brannon’s. I went there as often as I could. The Polish people who pitched next to him were very private, although they were kind enough to me and William, and knew we appreciated the occasional piece of cake or sandwich they gave us. Yet Barbara would tell me, ‘They’re Polish and filthy’ if she saw me looking at these caravans. She hated the travellers. ‘They’re Gypsies, and you need to keep away from them. Hitler tried to finish them off,’ she’d say with a sniff.
I didn’t know who this Hitler was, but from the way she said it he sounded like someone to be feared, but also respected as a master. She also called him a devil, so I was very confused. She was always talking about him too. I had ‘the Devil’s eyes’, so we must be related. So I must be as bad as Hitler.
I went round to see Sean. Unusually he was talking to the Polish people. I crept through the trees, not wanting to be seen, and hovered beside Sean. When the Polish people saw me, they smiled. ‘The robot’ was wearing a trilby hat and a long brown mac, and was very tall. ‘The witch’ was wearing what she always wore: a headscarf and dark clothes with a flowery pinny in front. Her face was very thin.
‘Why don’t the Germans like me?’ I whispered to Sean, wide-eyed. I’d never met a German person and didn’t understand what the problem was. What had I done?
The Polish man looked very surprised and said, ‘Vy you ask?’
I said my mother had called me a Jew. He looked pained. ‘What’s a Jew?’ I asked. Barbara had often thrown this word at me, and I didn’t really know what it all meant.
‘I’m Valdek,’ said the Robot. ‘Vis is Sofia.’ They both smiled and nodded at me. ‘Vee Jews too.’
The woman leant forward and stroked my hair, nodding warmly, then squeezed my arm in a kind way. She no longer looked like a witch, and he wasn’t a robot. Not at all. I felt tears prick my eyes.
Back in Sean’s caravan, over milk and bread and butter, he explained Hitler was a bad German man who had hurt a lot of people in the war. He had killed many Jews – millions of them – in a terrible way.
I couldn’t take in what he was saying. Why millions? Were Jews such bad people? Did it mean people would kill me? Maybe it explained why Barbara hated me so much. Did she like Hitler? But no, she didn’t, she was always saying Hitler was bad. If she didn’t like Hitler and she didn’t like Jews, who did she like? It didn’t make sense. Sean sat and smoked and ruffled my hair.
?
??Never mind, girlie,’ he said. ‘More milk?’
Next time I wandered to the orchard and onto the common land, as I did almost every day now, I heard the Polish people making a sound like they were calling birds. I tiptoed over, looking around to make sure Barbara or Kevin wasn’t spying. Sofia handed me a huge wedge of bread and jam and, on another day, a big piece of almond cake wrapped in greaseproof paper. I wolfed it down on the spot, crumbs flying. It was delicious. She smiled and squeezed my arm again. Another day they gave me sweets. Valdek and Sofia gave me a Toblerone and I hid it under an old plant pot in the orchard – a little stash for desperate times. It was near the back of the orchard, by the grass roller and the compost heap, and I didn’t think anyone would look under it. It looked all old and discarded.
When my birthday came around – which I had begun to realise was sometime in June, although it was never celebrated – Sean gave me a giant bar of Dairy Milk and the Polish people gave me a little plastic wicker basket of jellied fruits. All these went under leaves in a plastic bag, under the pot and out of sight, and I hoped they’d stay safe. I also hoped Kevin and Barbara would never think to look there – I took that risk. There was nowhere else to stash them, and they kept me going, sweet by sweet, chunk by chunk, for a very long time.
Now William and Lucky were gone I felt very lonely at school. I sneaked Tony the panda into my bag and carried him about with me. One lunchtime two older girls pulled me from the playground, where I’d been standing alone by the wall, holding onto Tony for dear life, and pushed me into the smelly playground toilets. I was terrified. They pressed me back against the sinks and towered over me.
‘Your mum is a witch – everyone knows that,’ one of the big girls snarled in my face. ‘Why does your mum beat you? Are you a dog?’ sneered the other, smaller girl, making an ugly face at me. They both laughed.
‘Your mum’s a man,’ said the first girl. ‘She starves you ’cos you’re a darkie.’
Tears streamed down my face and my fingers were digging into Tony, but I said nothing. I could feel the sink sticking into my back, but I bit my lip.
‘Tell your mum to go and get her broomstick,’ said the biggest girl – and with that they both left, laughing.
I stood shaking and realised I’d wet myself. My socks were wet and there was a puddle on the floor. I went into the toilet and cleaned myself up and told Tony we should never tell anyone. There wasn’t anyone to tell. I’d been in so many meetings at the school when William was still there, with Barbara, the teachers and the Head, and we had both learnt to keep our heads down and say nothing. We knew if we said anything to a teacher in front of Barbara that when we got home it would get even worse. All hell would break loose. We actually feared an outsider’s kindness as, although Barbara tried to pull the wool over the social workers’, neighbours’ and teachers’ eyes, when we got home we would have to pay for her being shown up.