To distract myself further I decorated my room as well as I could using paper, paint, drawings, collage, pictures, anything to give it some colour and life. I picked up a couple of stray animals, a pretty little cat and a pup, who kept me company, but this was a horrible, lonely, terrible time in my life and my health began to suffer badly. All this time I’d had no real contact with Barbara. She was always venomous and vindictive the minute I got in touch with her while I was with Tim, so I tended to steer a wide berth.
I had, from time to time, over the two years I was with Tim, tried to explore something more with Julie. Part of me still hoped she would turn out to be a real mum to me. However, she inevitably disappointed. She didn’t turn up, or whatever we planned somehow went wrong. She always put herself first, and I was always forgiving her and then trying again, hoping desperately that she would change. I did find out some of her story, however, which was important for me to know.
I discovered that my father had been a Jewish taxi driver in his thirties who had formed a relationship with Julie when she was only a teenager, around fourteen. They had sex in the back of his taxi and, bingo, that’s how I came about. Julie herself wasn’t Jewish, so I wasn’t technically Jewish, as it follows the matrilineal line. However, I had my father’s dark hair and olive skin, which is why Barbara was always taunting me. This put me in a difficult position: I’d always been told I was Jewish, in a nasty way, and rejected by Gentiles (like Barbara), and yet I was now not Jewish, so I couldn’t belong to that community either. I was in a difficult place socially and culturally. What was I exactly? Where did I belong? Who wanted me? I didn’t have a proper pedigree; I was a real outcast, a mongrel, like some of Barbara’s poor dogs.
I also found out that when Julie got pregnant her parents gave her an ultimatum: give up the baby for adoption or never come home again. They were very religious people, but not at all compassionate. She had no choice and was forced to give me up in the strict nursing home where she gave birth, aged fifteen. She was also banned from seeing my father again. It turned out he was a married man, already with children, and that he completely ditched Julie once she’d got pregnant, although he had broken the law due to her being under age. She never saw him again and he didn’t contribute to my upbringing.
Julie’s own father was a bigamist, she discovered later, which caused her all sorts of emotional problems. She was a confused and rejected woman who had never really grown up emotionally. Her childlike behaviour meant she had husband after husband, but was never really
able or willing to be a mother to her own children (including me, who was an embarrassment). I was an uncomfortable reminder to her of that time in the back of the taxi with my wayward abandoning father.
I eventually found out his name and where he lived, and even got his phone number. One day I got up the courage to phone him and explain who I was. He sounded very surprised and uncomfortable, but we agreed to meet on a bench in the University Parks, one of my favourite places, but he never turned up. I suppose it was one step too far for him to take. I was devastated, as I was never to meet him before he died. I was incredibly sad and hurt about this, which all happened while I was living with Tim, and continued once I had left and was surviving the best I could in my grotty bedsit.
I was hell-bent on trying to keep myself afloat and get into college. I was used to no one wanting me; it seemed like my default position. I was getting thinner and thinner, and got far too interested in drink and drugs for my health and sanity. I was in such pain. I was so lonely, desperate and rejected, and trying to create a successful persona for the world to see, that I was abusing myself and the stress began to wear me into the ground.
By this time Tim was long gone, taking a gap year before beginning his MA elsewhere. We were no longer in touch. One day I was feeling very desperate. I had a packet of seeds and I went out to the scrubby patch of yard at the back of the flats. It was unkempt and untended, with old furniture and bricks strewn about. There was one corner that got a bit of sun, though, and it had a bit of earth. I cleared a patch with a kitchen fork, opened the packet and scattered the seeds on the ground. I thought to myself, If these seeds come up, I’ll go on, but if they don’t, that’s it. Finito. I felt my life was hanging by a thin thread, and something as simple as seeds not flowering would be a sign that the struggle to survive was too great for me to continue bothering with.
Deep down I was exhausted. I was drowning in pain and rejection and yet I was trying to keep afloat. I started pulling out hair again – eyelashes, clumps from my head. I counted as much as I could, when I could remember to. I watched those seeds avidly over the next weeks and months, willing them to come up. It felt a slow and difficult time waiting, as there didn’t seem much to see yet. Meanwhile, my health was failing and I began to get feverish. I got very sick and took to bed for days. In the end I was ulcerated and in agony all over my mouth, my face, my lips, my guts and my windpipe. Eventually I felt so bad I took myself to a local GP, who took one look at me and called an ambulance. I was whisked into the local hospital, where I was told I might have AIDS. I was put in isolation, as AIDS was a big deal at that time, called ‘the gay plague’, and everyone was terrified of it as a killer.
Word got back to my flat and the landlord burned my bedding, believing AIDS was infectious. After more blood tests the hospital worked out I had a rare viral infection called Stevens–Johnson Syndrome, which is an extremely serious stress-related breakdown of the immune system. I lay in bed for about three weeks then, sweating and shaking, in agony.
This is an illness you can die from, and a lot of the time I didn’t care if I lived or died. A couple of friends visited and I asked them to look after my rescue pets. I had to give Barbara’s number to the hospital as next of kin and, indeed, she did visit once. She stared at me down her pointy nose and didn’t touch me, didn’t comfort me at all, and then left.
Barbara must have told Julie, who turned up briefly, took one look at me and said, ‘Is it catching?’ and then left, holding her nose. The only help I got was from one of my friend’s mums, who would bring me bits of tasty food she had cooked – some quiche or fruit or jelly. She took pity on me, as she could see I was alone, suffering and fading away. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get better, if there was anything to live for any more. Life was too tough and I was weary of struggling.
Eventually, after a few weeks, I turned the corner and did recover, gradually. Julie popped in towards the end of my hospital stay and I gathered up the courage to ask her to lend me £10. I’d been in hospital for about six weeks and hadn’t been able to get any money from anywhere. She looked at me, really put out.
‘Oh no, I haven’t got it – I’m short this month,’ she said, examining her pink nails. ‘Didn’t Barbara give you anything?’
She was wearing new shoes, clothes and jewellery, as usual. I didn’t ask again. So when I eventually got home, thanks to a lift from my friend’s mum, there was nothing in the fridge and I had literally no money to buy anything. I was incredibly thin and pale, fragile and delicate. I lived on crackers and herb tea and whatever I could scavenge, or on the kindness of friends.
Soon after I came home there was a knock at the door and a policeman handed me a cat collar: my lovely puss had been run over. Could things have got any worse? I was dodging the advances of the landlord, who was straight round for his rent ‘payment’ in kind. It was clear I couldn’t deliver, as I was exhausted, and didn’t even have bedding, as he’d burned it. It was a horrendous, disastrous mess, and I had no idea how I was going to get out of it and get my life on track. I was at the lowest possible point and I had no idea how to raise myself up again. It would be a long, slow haul back to health, and I would have to do it alone. Would I survive a day longer?
A few days after I got home from hospital, I ventured out into the back yard, wrapped in loads of layers. There, in the corner, to my surprise, was a beautiful sight: an array of stunning flowers swaying in the breeze. They looked like magic; like they were sprinkled with sparkling fairy dust. I could pick out bright blue cornflowers and pretty pink and purple sweet peas; there were poppies, campion and forget-me-nots – my favourite little blue flowers with the black centres. My wild ‘mixed seeds’ from dear old Sean and Iris and John, who I used to visit with Ian and William as a child in Oxford. ‘Don’t forget-me-not,’ John had quipped. I hadn’t. Now they had finally bloomed. And saved my life.
At the lowest of my low points I had thought there was nothing to live for. I felt, as I swayed there with weak knees like Bambi, that the flowers were speaking to me: ‘Go on, Louise. Go on, you can do it. You can make it. Keep going.’ They had actually bloomed just for me. There was hope. Life went on. My life could go on. Spring did always follow winter, no matter how bleak. The flowers were a revelation to me. I drank in their beauty and stared at them, and thanked them for being there. They were a sign that in my darkest of dark hours I simply had to go on. They were a blooming beacon of the power of hope.
Every day from then on I watered the flowers and thinned them out and tended them. I remembered tending Sean’s little garden with him when I was a child. I would scatter the seeds and he would water them with his big silver watering can. Then he would show me how to thin them out and say, ‘Well done, girlie’ to me. He also had vegetables: carrots, cabbages, lettuces and onions. I thought it was magic then – seeds turning into beautiful, living things – and I still did now.
So, despite living in a total grot-hole, I cleared a little bit of garden, just like Sean had taught me, and I began to feel better and recover. I managed to get back to a couple of cleaning jobs, which kept the money coming in. I also succeeded in getting some benefits, so I could pay the landlord his rent and keep him at bay for a while. I was determined to get myself straight. And as I tended my beautiful corner of colourful flowers, I began to learn to tend to myself, too. I realised I needed to look after myself as, if I didn’t, I would simply die.
I cut down on the drink and drugs and gave myself herb tea and better food. I needed to move out of that place, and I soon did, to a better room with nicer people and no evil landlord. I also decided to focus on getting into art school again and, this time, despite my poor education, I managed it. It was a total turning point: I was going to go to Portsmouth School of Art and I was getting a grant to go there. I was completely over the moon. They were persuaded by my work and, despite not being able to spell properly or having any qualifications, I was able to present myself well at interview. My art – of which there was a lot by now – spoke for me, and luckily it was good enough to get me a place.
It was the beginning of my new life. A lifeline. I was on my way: wanted at last.
And Finally…
It took me a long time to get back on my feet but I was determined to succeed. I understood I had to work hard and save every penny. I was used to deprivation and could endure a huge amount of discomfort, and my eye was firmly on the goal of succeeding, no matter what. When I finally got my place on the Foundation course, I was ecstatic and worked incredibly hard. I wanted to go on to do fine art, but my lack of education and qualifications got in the way. It was before there were ‘Access’ courses, and they were simply not willing for me to proceed. Undeterred, I managed to get onto an HND in environmental design. I got scholarships to go to Berlin and New York. It was a great time.
After this course, I worked as an illustrator and got jobs in fashion, in magazines and window dressing, just about anything I could do that involved art. I painted all the time and continued to work on portraits. I was artist in residence with deprived children, I taught art in prison, and also got work at Portsmouth Art School as an art teacher, so I was in a creative, artistic environment for over twenty years.
I scrimped and scraped and decided very early on that I needed to save money to buy a property, and that is exactly what I did. A girl with absolutely nothing, and nothing behind her, had to get something and make something of herself – and that was me. It took a long time for me to earn enough, but I was able to get myself into all sorts of amazing jobs by sheer force of my personality and drive. I had a lot of energy and determination. I was short on paper qualifications (except for my HND), but I was driven to make things work. For this I needed inspiration to keep going, so I made any place I lived look as beautiful, artistic and wacky as a modern-day Blenheim Palace.
r /> I did go back to see Barbara once I was at college, and then when working, although I needed to distance myself at first. The bond I had with her from my side was strong, as she was the only mother I knew, albeit a damaging one. I could have walked away completely many times, but there was something about her that kept me in touch. I had seen her in pain: hugging her dolls and rocking back and forth on her bed, crying in the forest when she dumped me. The constant cry of ‘rape’ and her mask of misery made me feel that she was deeply unhappy, and it was hard for me to let go.
Ian died shortly after he retired, of cancer, at sixty-seven years old, but Barbara lived on until she was over eighty. She moved to a smaller property in Oxford but she didn’t look after herself well. I visited a few times a year, taking her nice food or helping her with things in her little house, and although she was never warm and I nearly always left in tears, due to something nasty she’d said, I couldn’t walk away.
Later in my life I looked after her, visiting regularly, helping her physically. She was never kind, she never said sorry, but I could sense she was pleased I was there. Barbara began to get dementia, and I could tell on one of my visits that she was struggling. Amazingly, Barbara fell out with Kevin, who started bullying her once I’d left home and Ian died. She became frightened of him. Then he married and moved away, ignoring her in her old age. She was very bitter about this.