One day Barbara arrived to pick me up and I was still talking to Ayo. As he said, ‘Goodbye, see you tomorrow,’ he touched me on the arm. He often did that; it was friendly. Barbara saw him do it and, when I walked home with her that day, with Mimi choking on the lead, she spat out, ‘You’ll have a black baby, you dirty girl.’
Next day, Barbara went to the headteacher and Ayo was moved out of my class. ‘You will not speak to him again,’ she shouted at me that evening. ‘You are not to sit next to him in class.’
I felt terrible: he was a sweet, kind person, my only proper friend, and I had got him in trouble. I had got close to someone and Barbara had worked her usual magic and got him removed. I was back to being isolated, back to being shunned and laughed at. I would see Ayo across the playground after this and he would look at me with a sad, blank face. I couldn’t go and speak to him in case it was reported or Barbara saw. After all, he and his family had been embarrassed by Barbara and me, so I guessed he wouldn’t talk to me either. I wondered if he thought I had told on him to get him into trouble. It broke my heart.
At home, I had to be careful not to mention Ayo’s name again. Of course, Barbara never mentioned it, as she pretended that nothing had happened. However, the upshot was that I was now to be sent to a girls-only senior school. My heart sank. I wasn’t asked; I had no choice. I didn’t want to go there. Barbara filled in the forms and said, ‘Like it or lump it.’
It was a longer journey, there was a horrible grey uniform and it was strict. Strict was what Barbara liked. And the lack of boys was what she also loved. I dreaded what the future would hold.
Yet, despite not wanting me to go to a mixed school, or to talk to boys, Barbara kept dropping hints about me marrying Kevin. He was still refusing to visit his father and Barbara seemed fine with that – she wanted him for herself. I hated him. As I developed my breasts, he got more and more bold with me. He would still punch and kick me whenever he could, and we often wrestled and tussled. I got good at pushing him off, even though he was much bigger and taller than me. He was now seventeen, while I was nearly thirteen. He had a moped, and Barbara kept trying to get me to go on it with him. I didn’t want to, but I was forced to get on the back and put my arms around him while he roared off down the road. I hated every minute of it, and didn’t want to touch him. I loathed him. When we got back I ran up to my room and hid. I hated being near him. But Barbara had other plans on her mind. One day she came into my room and put a black ‘babydoll’ nightie on my pillow.
‘Put it on, Louise. Kevin would like to see you in it.’
I was horrified. I waited until she left, then I hid the outfit and hoped she would forget about it. Barbara would say things like, ‘You could do worse than Kevin. Then you could marry and look after me!’
Clearly she was already brewing a terrible idea for my future: marriage to Kevin. Kevin! The bully who had made my life hell. The boy who had held me down and tried to rip my clothes off. Barbara was aware he hadn’t had a proper girlfriend yet, and she saw me as a good training ground. He was constantly looking at me, brushing past me, touching me, leering at me, making comments. Barbara would laugh or turn her back. Ian was nowhere to be seen, as always.
One evening, before going up to the new school, I was in my room, lying on my tiny bed. I could hear the family having their tea downstairs. Kevin had his horrible friend Mark with him, as he sometimes came to tea. I avoided them both this evening and got out of the kitchen after my usual ‘baby’ tea, which had never changed. A smell of gravy, meat, potatoes and cabbage wafted up to me. I was thinking about how much I didn’t want to go to the high school. I was frightened. I was also still hungry and wondered if, later, I could sneak to the larder and get something. There might be some cold potatoes, or even just some Complan. Something, as my tummy was still rumbling.
I’m drifting off, daydreaming, when the door opens a crack. A head looks round. It’s Kevin. I sit up smartish. Before I can get up, he’s in the room, with Mark close behind him. Kevin puts his fat finger up to his lips and says, ‘Sshhh!’ forcefully. I go to get up off the bed, but Kevin is standing over me, pushing me down with his hand on my chest. I start kicking but Mark has my legs. Kevin sits down next to me on the bed, his back to me, his body lying across me, pinning me down, and Mark is at the end of the bed. Panicked, I start wriggling and kicking with all my might. I can feel Kevin’s iron grip across my chest, holding down my arms so I can’t move. He plays rugby, and it’s a tackle. Mark is pulling down my trousers, pulling down my pants, with one hand holding one ankle. I try and kick like a goat with the other ankle but they are two hulking boys. They’re not looking at me or talking to me. All this is done in whispers and silence. I can’t see Mark’s face or what they’re doing, but I can feel my body from the waist down is now naked.
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I am stripped bare, and they’re looking at my private parts. They’ve done this before a couple of times, the same kind of attack. They must dream these things up between them. I’ve seen Kevin with some magazines with naked women on the front. Ow! Then I feel it. I feel something hard and cold and sharp right up against where I wee. It’s hard and cold and pushing. Ow! Ow! Ouch! It’s sharp. Real pain. I really start trying to wriggle out from under them now. I’m panicking. What are they doing? Something is really hurting; it’s agony. ‘Ow!’ I shout.
Kevin turns around, red-faced, and spits at me, furious, ‘Shut the fuck up.’ Then turns back.
‘No! Stop! Don’t,’ I scream. I’m wrenching my head off the bed, straining to sit up, twisting my body, trying to see what they’re doing to me. Mark is bent over my legs and I can see his arm moving while the other still holds my ankles. I see a flash of what looks like an empty Coke bottle in Mark’s hand. A Coke bottle! What’s that for? I scream very loudly now. At that, they both jump up and run out the door, and I’m left on the bed, dishevelled, panting. I know Barbara won’t come, as she never does when I scream or shout when I’m with Kevin. Ian doesn’t ever come either.
My trousers are round my ankles, my T-shirt is under my armpits, my private parts are exposed completely. I put my hand down, touch, and bring it up to my eyes: bright red. Blood. I sit up and look down at the mess. There is blood dribbling down my legs on the inside and onto the bed cover. I feel again, more blood on my hands. I touch below where the wee comes out, and there is torn flesh. Whatever they were doing with the bottle, it has cut me – down there. The room starts swirling, and I feel sick.
I lie back and start counting wildly. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. I spend ages doing that, staring blankly at the ceiling, holding myself tight where it hurts. Following cracks, going along lines. Eventually I feel steady enough to pull my clothes off and put on my old pale-blue nylon dressing gown. I hobble down the landing to the toilet, feeling very vulnerable. I sit on the toilet and wee red water. It is not my time of the month. How will I explain the blood on the bed? How will I get it off? Barbara will not hear anything against Kevin. Or Mark for that matter. I hate Kevin – and Mark – more than I can possibly explain right now. I am bleeding, torn, in pain and feel scared. But I also know, sitting there, that there is absolutely no one I can turn to for help for something like this. So obviously it must be my fault. I desperately need a friend to confide in – someone who might help me get away from this place. I can’t tell Sean, as it’s too embarrassing. I pin all my hopes on finding a friend in my new school.
15
Fighting Back
I knew the minute I got to the high school that it was the wrong place for me. It was strict, gloomy and rigid. I was put into the bottom stream right from the start as I was thought of as ‘thick’. My grades were terrible, obviously, as I had missed so much school over the years. All I could do was draw and paint. My ‘remedial’ history was like a neon sign around my neck spelling ‘Dummy’. So I ended up in the cookery and needlework classes with the dead-end girls who were going nowhere. The school only paid attention to the clever girls in the top classes who were going to go to university. I was shoved in with the girls who were going to get pregnant as soon as blink. I couldn’t spell, my maths was terrible and my general knowledge was poor. I hadn’t been allowed to watch TV or the news, so I didn’t know what was going on in the world. I was a dunce, according to the school.
Right from the start we were at odds and it wasn’t going to get any better. It was a rigid, cold institution and I didn’t feel at home there. The headmistress ran everything with an iron rod – which was something I was used to, and sick of. She had a traffic light outside her office, and when you were summoned you had to sit and wait until it went green. It felt very humiliating somehow. I didn’t know how to learn. I couldn’t sit and pay attention in class because my mind was whirling with everything that was happening at home. I just couldn’t focus. When the teacher started talking I would drift off. Or I would panic, not understanding what I was supposed to be doing, as I’d been daydreaming too much. Everyone else would have their heads down, scribbling notes or writing an essay, and I’d be looking out the window at the trees. School hurt my head. I just couldn’t do it and I wasn’t interested any more. I couldn’t get engaged with it; I felt it was all too late.
I realised I’d been stupid to think I might find a friend among these girls in their neat little uniforms, who could have no idea about my sordid real life outside school. They all seemed to have nice mummies and daddies who took them on holiday or to the cinema, or bought them nice clothes and LPs, and took them out for meals. I was in a different world from all of them, or so it felt. I even seemed to be in a different world to the poorer girls from the council estates, all of whom seemed to have more than me. I had all these nasty secrets, this hideous way of life, this shameful background, and nobody knew about it. Or perhaps they might guess, as I was still wearing shapeless clothes and the wrong kind of shoes. I’m sure I still smelt fairly bad. Somehow I had the mark of the ‘loser’ on my forehead and everyone could see it. I’d been told all my life that I would amount to nothing, and I was now amounting to absolutely nothing. And I hated every minute of it.
However, despite everything, I gradually began to create a new Louise. Maybe the contrast between me and everyone else became too hard to bear and I had to do something to shape myself. It started with little things and then began to grow and grow. One Sunday morning, around this time, I went into Ian’s garage when he had unusually taken the van out to collect something. Increasingly I snuck into his garage. I didn’t hide my poo there any more, but I felt it was a bit of a hidey-hole from the house. I did sneak a bottle of cherry brandy in there (they never drank the bottles that Ian got from customers at Christmas; they sat there from one year end to the other). So I hid this bottle and slugged some brandy from time to time when things got tough, such as after the Cola bottle attack.
Kevin and I were now at war. If he came near me I blanked him or spat and fought like a rabid cat. I hated him and fought him at every turn. I wanted his father to come and take him away so he’d leave me alone. So sneaking into the garage was a wonderful break from it all. This morning, for some reason, Barbara was also out – probably walking the dog. Ian had a Roberts radio, and I went and turned the dial – something I would never usually have the nerve to do. I found Radio 1, and a fantastic, wild, loud music started. I suddenly burst into life and was jumping up and down on the spot, dancing crazily to the music. It was fantastic. It was angry – there was a male voice shouting stuff I didn’t really understand – and it was loud and gritty, and I jumped around, spun about, and felt absolutely marvellous. I felt free in those five fantastic minutes. Freer than I’d felt in all my life. Wild. Happy. Mad. Powerful. When the music stopped, the voice said it was the Clash singing ‘White Riot’. I didn’t really understand what or who that was. I’d heard about punk, which was all the rage at the time, and had seen people in town with weird and wonderful hairstyles in bright neon colours, wearing black clothes with safety pins and slashes. My pulse was racing, my heart was beating hard, but in a good way. I felt alive. I felt good. I turned the radio off and snuck out of the garage, making sure I left no trace. I had found punk – would I now find me?
Around this time I began to see more of the wider world outside of our horrible house. We had always been surrounded by neighbours but Barbara would frown on any contact, particularly because they had so often written to the council and reported her for cruelty (albeit nothing was ever done). We still had social workers dropping in but Barbara handled them like a fine art. She knew just how to play her cards right and deny everything.
Now I was bigger I was able to walk out of the house myself, and sometimes I met a couple of lads from down the road and we’d go to the park. They were at the local comprehensive, or ‘comp’ as we called it – the one I wanted to go to – while I was at the high school, which was supposed to be a cut above. However, what they didn’t know was I was in the thick stream and hated every minute of it. So I learnt to smoke with these lads. At first they taught me to smoke cigarettes, like Players No. 6 or Benson & Hedges, like breathing in a bonfire, which made me cough and retch. But I did get that nice light-headed feeling that I also got with Barbara’s green pills or with the cherry brandy. Then we would mooch down the ‘Rec’, the local park, which had swings and slides. I always liked being out of doors, as I loved nature, and one day they handed me a strange kind of cigarette that had tobacco but also a strong-smelling herb in it.
‘Wanna try it?’ said one of the boys. So I did. I had nothing to lose. I felt a nice warm glow. Then I began to feel nicely light-headed, and started giggling. I loved laughing. I had almost never laughed at home, as it had always been like a funeral parlour, and I was terrified most of the time. We stood by the benches, or by the trees and the swings, and smoked the joint and everything got swirly and pretty and light and funny. I felt good. I felt happy. I didn’t care any more. I felt free.
I had to keep my new friends and smoking a secret, however, as there would be hell to pay at home if Barbara got a whiff (literally). I was good at disguising myself, though, and was a master at keeping control after my years of being pleasant and polite to her, hiding everything and trying not to show her how I really felt inside.
The one subject I still loved with a passion was art. Somehow with art it didn’t matter whether you were academic or not. Everyone was all mixed up together. I began to copy the album covers of people I was beginning to hear about. I got hold of David
Bowie’s ‘Diamond Dogs’ from someone at school and sat in the art room copying the cover. When I brought home my pictures, Barbara was horrified. ‘That’s weird nasty stuff,’ she said. I thought it was wonderful, so I hid my drawings to save them from being torn up and put in the rubbish bin.