‘Nobody will ever believe little bastards like you,’ she would spit at us, hitting us about the head and body with her newspaper roll. ‘Nobody wants you, nobody cares.’ We completely believed it was true.
Now I was alone with the travellers it was even trickier. Barbara knew I went down to the orchard and onto the common land beyond as often as I could. Sean would collect his paper from a box at the end of the lane every morning and I would go down to meet him and follow him back. I would tag along to his caravan and stay there as long as possible. I even stayed the night once or twice, with Sean making me up a little bed on the sofa, with coloured crocheted blankets, where I felt safe and sound and slept without horrible green pills and medicine.
Sean went and asked Barbara for her permission and, amazingly, she said all right. He knew he had to be careful with Barbara, as she was always striding about the garden, shouting and swearing. He saw the state I was in, as he always had food and comfort at the ready. But he needed to live in his caravan as a good neighbour, as did the Polish people, and he wanted to keep the peace, so he didn’t want to argue with Barbara as he knew she could make trouble and get him evicted if she wanted.
Every so often social workers would turn up at our house. Sometimes it was because the next-door neighbours had made a complaint about the way Barbara treated me (or William, when he was still there). There had been many complaints, nearly all of them ignored. Sometimes it was after something had happened at school and we were ‘investigated’. And sometimes it was just out of the blue – or so it seemed to me. Barbara always turned on some charm when they arrived and got out the tea and biscuits. (I would note the biscuits for a raid on the larder later, where I could filch one or two.)
The social workers always came with felt-tip pens in their bags. I would recognise the same packet from the previous visit, as the same pens were still dry or worn out. They would give me some paper and ask me to draw ‘my family’. I would draw Barbara and Ian, and sometimes Kevin and the dog. I would also draw Sean. I always put chickens in the picture. When it came to Sean, I put a lot of effort into drawing his tweed cap, and drew a big red love heart on his chest. The social worker asked me who he was, and I said, ‘He lives there,’ and pointed out the kitchen window, to the land beyond the garden and orchard.
Then the social workers, two women – one older, with dark hair in a suit, one younger, who was blonde and wore jeans – talked to Barbara, who was out in the garden watering plants. I watched as they all walked down to the orchard and looked over the hedge towards the caravans. My heart started racing. Had I done something wrong? Would they hurt Sean? Would they take him away? When they came back, one of the social workers came and sat next to me. I was still drawing but I now felt scared.
‘Has Sean ever touched you?’ the dark-haired older one asked. I thought for a while and said he touched my hand and showed them my hand. She sat and scribbled something in her notebook. Then she asked, ‘What do you do together?’
I said we played. It wasn’t true, as in fact I usually just drew while he drank tea out of a big mug or read a newspaper. I felt I shouldn’t say that I slept on his sofa sometimes but, just as I began to say something about learning to plant seeds with Sean, Barbara came over and said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ to the older woman. It was like she didn’t want me to say any more. I wondered if I was doing the wrong thing talking about Sean. Maybe it would get Barbara in trouble, and then I’d get it. Or worse, I’d get Sean sent away – and then I would surely die.
When they left, Barbara was furious.
‘You have to be bloody careful what you draw. That lot are bloody stupid idiots with their backsides hanging out of their jeans.’
I didn’t understand what their backsides or jeans had to do with anything. Barbara ranted on about them only knowing about life from books and ‘what was the use of that?’ She told me they didn’t understand people, not like her, anyway. However, a few days later the two women were back again. The dark one in the suit crouched down beside me by the chicken run where I’d been feeding the hens. I felt suspicious the minute she did that, as I knew something was coming that I wouldn’t like. She wanted me to look at her, and to trust her. Then she said, ‘Louise, you’re not to see Sean any more. It’s not right that a little girl spends so much time with a man.’
I burst into tears. Sean was my only friend. He was kind. He gave me food. I wanted to scream, ‘Nooooooo!’ at the top of my voice, but Barbara was a few feet away and I knew she was watching me like a hawk ready to swoop. Sean was my lifeline and he was being cut. What would I do?
The next days and weeks were endless. I kept going to the edge of the orchard and looking for Sean through the hedge. He would be out on his step, smoking, and would smile. I would poke my head through the hedge, wave and look at him longingly. He would wave back and give me a thumbs-up. The Polish people would also wave and I would wave back. They were kind people who saved me from starvation and boredom and I was banned from seeing them all. I was being punished yet again. All I had left now was the chickens to talk to. I cr
ied and cried and cried talking to the chickens.
I sat in the shed, head on my knees, talking to myself. Counting. I wondered where William was now. Why had he gone like that? Why didn’t he take me with him? I counted. Pulled out more hair. Ripped my eyelashes. Licked my knees. Tried to find somewhere in my head where it was peaceful. I drew pictures of the caravan and Sean, but they made me cry as I missed him so much.
It was an eternity until the social workers came again. They brought out the same old tired packet of pens, with the same dried-up ones and wonky ones. I sat at the table and they once again asked me to draw ‘my family’. I had learnt my lesson, so I drew a perfect picture of Barbara and Ian, with Kevin and me and the dog. A happy family. No Sean. I didn’t mention Sean, although in my heart he was all I could think about. He was the nice man who made me toast and milk and bought me Ruffles and Dairy Milk bars. The one who listened to me when things got really bad at home. He knew a little bit about how things were, although we were both very polite when we talked about Barbara. I didn’t want to make a problem and I was scared of telling the truth to anybody, even to Sean. Nobody knew how bad it really was.
The dark-haired social worker looked very pleased with my drawing. With no Sean in it, I think they thought everything was all right. Also, Barbara probably didn’t want to get into trouble, so she didn’t tell them I’d actually slept in the caravan sometimes. It was another of our family secrets, although this time in my favour.
After this visit, I was allowed to go back to visiting Sean. It had been about a month, but it felt like a year. The next time I wanted to hear ‘Hello, girlie’, I went racing out the kitchen door, down the garden and through the hedge and stuck to him like glue. I couldn’t get enough of him then, as I felt I had been severely punished for spending time with my one and only friend in the whole world: dear, kind Irish Sean. However, even he wouldn’t be able to save me from what was to happen next.
9
Under Attack
I was now eight going on nine. Kevin was thirteen going on fourteen and was getting more boisterous and threatening. As well as punching and kicking me, he started coming up close to me and leaning over me and putting his face right up to mine. I didn’t like it. I felt very scared. He smelt bad, for a start, of body odour. He was very pongy, and smelling him towering over me would make me want to be sick. I would retch. He smelt greasy, musky, like an old dog, and his breath was terrible. I avoided him as much as possible, but he took delight in cornering me in the kitchen or in the bathroom, or pushing past me on the stairs or in a corridor. He would try to lean his body against me and I wanted to scream, but I looked down and held my breath until he gave up and went away. I knew better than to make a fuss, as Barbara would always take his side and call me a rude name or two.
Then one day I was on the bed in my room – which still had the partition down the middle – when the door burst open and in came Kevin with his friend Mark behind him. They both looked funny. Their eyes were shining, and both had red cheeks. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I pulled my knees up to my chin, feeling frightened. I thought if I sat still and looked down, they would go away.
But they didn’t. Instead, Kevin strode up to the bed and shoved me down, hurting me. I was winded for a moment. Then both of his hands were on my shoulders and suddenly I was lying down with him pressing me hard into the bed. His red stinky face was close to mine. I was so horrified that I stopped breathing for a moment. Then I realised that Mark had hold of my ankles and was pulling my legs apart.
Kevin looked back at Mark over my body and then lifted up my gingham dress. I started struggling and wriggling as much as I could. I was quite strong but these boys were much older than me, and Kevin turned back to me and pushed me hard back on the bed with his hand flat on my chest. I wanted to scream, I needed to shout, but I didn’t. I certainly didn’t want Barbara to come up and see what was happening – I didn’t think she would rescue me; she’d be more likely to tell me off.
So I kept kicking my legs, but Mark had now caught them. Suddenly I felt my knickers being pulled down. I tried to kick and wriggle and twist my body sideways, but there was an iron grip around each ankle. I couldn’t see anything except the back of Kevin’s greasy head. He now had his full weight on top of my chest, and both boys were looking down at my bare private parts. I was horrified. I tried to move this way and that and attempted to sit up to bite Kevin’s back, but Mark had my legs and Kevin was still leaning his whole weight on me. Then, suddenly, as if on signal, they were gone. I lay on the bed, panting. My dress was up under my armpits and my knickers were round my ankles. I sat up slowly, feeling shocked and afraid. They had looked at my bare body, my private parts. I felt sick, my heart was racing, my mind was swimming and I wanted to cry. I didn’t know what had happened but I knew it was bad. But there was no one to tell – I couldn’t even tell Sean. I felt too ashamed. I just pulled my knickers up, smoothed down my dress and started counting in my head. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
Barbara was always talking about sex. And men. ‘Men will use you because they always use girls like you,’ she would say to me. Or, ‘Men just want what they can get.’ She often called me a whore and said I was ‘Like your mother, only fit for breeding.’ She told me, ‘You ruined people’s lives by being born – look what you did to your mother, look what you did to me!’ I was worthless, unloveable, ugly. I was born to be used. Plus I was a ‘stupid bitch’ and an ‘oily Jew’, so I wasn’t worth anything at all. She was hardly going to help me fight against Kevin and Mark, as I was ‘a wicked little girl’.
When I had been at my lovely first primary school, we had been taught some very basic things about mummies, daddies and babies, and the birds and the bees. They had begun to teach us where babies came from. Barbara had got wind of this and had gone ballistic.
‘Those teachers are perverted,’ she screamed. ‘They’ve got a stupid American attitude,’ she ranted. She had grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘When you’re older you’ll kiss a man and you’ll get feelings and then you’ll get pregnant – and you’ll be out on your ear, d’you hear?’ I heard, but I didn’t understand. What were these ‘feelings’ that would make me get thrown out?
Barbara often spoke about Ian in a horrible way that made me feel very uncomfortable. She would say he stank (which he did, of stale cheese and bonfires), although I never really got that close to him, as he never gave me a hug or a cuddle. She would say he stank of wee and didn’t wipe his bottom properly (I hated to think of this). She would put his stained white underpants in buckets of soda to soak. But I also had to wash and scrub them for her with green Fairy soap. Barbara would also say frequently that Ian ‘raped’ her. I didn’t know what ‘rape’ was or what the word meant. It sounded very bad. She spat the word ‘rape’ with total venom. She also called Ian a ‘filthy, cruel, disgusting man’ to his face and behind his back. She seemed to hate him. She seemed to hate all men.
But despite hating Ian, she liked to roll around on the carpet, wrestling with Kevin, which seemed very strange indeed. If I watched them wrestling she would look up at me and say, ‘I bet you’re jealous?’ which was the total opposite of what I was feeling – I was thinking I was so glad it wasn’t me being held down on the carpet by Kevin.