‘Take a seat,’ he said gently. I stood still, a bit scared. ‘Go on,’ he said softly. ‘It’s all right.’
I crept past the cooker with pots and pans on top towards the place with the bed and table. It was nice and bright and jolly. There were lacy curtains at the window and funny little knickknacks everywhere: little donkeys, dogs and plastic flowers and a big silver cross with Jesus on the wall. Then I smelt the toast.
Sean appeared beside me with a plate with flowers round the edge. On it was hot toast with butter sinking in. He placed a glass of milk beside it. I picked up the toast and bit, and it melted in my mouth. I ate the toast and drank the milk in silence while Sean sat beside me, smoking his cigarette. I liked being there. It felt safe. I looked at a picture on the wall of green hills and sky and trees.
‘Ireland,’ Sean said simply. ‘County Cork.’ I kept chewing.
‘More?’
I nodded. Sean repeated the toast and I ate it all up. I felt calmer after the food and we sat for a bit.
‘Want to tell me?’ he said quietly. I looked at him. He had grey whiskers and a crinkly face. His eyes were kind. I wanted to tell him with all my heart – they’ve taken William! Help me! Please! Save me! But I couldn’t. I wanted to ask Sean if I could stay with him but I feared Barbara. I felt so alone and frightened with everyone in the house. More than anything I didn’t want anyone to hurt Sean. So I said nothing. I didn’t dare.
Sean let me look at his knick-knacks and talked to me about Ireland – the hills, his home and family. He loved horses, and talked about them. Also horse racing, his favourite pastime. He’d had a lovely wife who’d died long ago in childbirth. I liked imagining the green grass and the leafy trees, the country lanes and farmhouses and the big horses. When I left, after a very long time sitting quietly with him, he just said softly, ‘You can come again… whenever you like.’
I f
elt warm in my tummy, and full, as I tiptoed down the steps. I also felt naughty, but so much happier inside. Sean was my saviour, my only friend. My hero. His kind eyes and hot toast had saved my life. At least he was still there, along with the nice Polish people. One of the women was pegging out clothes on her line, which hung between her cream caravan and an apple tree. She waved and smiled. There was something to cling onto, after all. But how would I survive without my brother-in-torture?
7
Pulling My Hair Out
It’s morning. A school day. I’m sitting on my bed in my shabby grey uniform. I pull out my bedside drawer. It’s empty, except at the back there’s a matchbox with a picture of a black ship on it. I take it out and pull it open: there are six dead flies, all in a little row, lying on a bed of toilet paper. I look at them in detail and notice their wonderful, veined, see-through wings and little black feet curled up under them. They have big eyes, with lots of colours in them. I will remember them, so I can draw them. I close my eyes and squeeze them shut, as hard as I can, and suddenly I see lots of colours: orange, purple, blue, yellow, flashing lights and swirling colours. Like the flies’ eyes. There are stars and sparkles and whirls in the colours in my head, and I’m fascinated by them. The colours feel a relief from everything around me; I can watch a lightshow simply by closing my eyes and squeezing. Then I open them. Everything is orange and yellow for a moment, then white, and then I focus. I’m back in the tiny, dingy room and the flies are still lying dead in a row. I close the matchbox and put it carefully in the back of the drawer and push it shut.
Then I put my right hand up to my eyelashes and pull. Hard. There’s a twinge of pain and I do it again. And again. Ow! Ow! But it is somehow soothing to feel the pain. I soon have a little handful of eyelashes. I look at them – white at one end, right at the tip, and then running brown to black. They are long. I run my fingers along my eyelids and can feel some stubbly bits – I pull, it hurts, but it’s kind of satisfying. I feel along my eyebrows, all stubbly. I pull. Ow! Ow! Out they come. They’re thicker, but still black, with a little white tip at the end. Then my right hand goes up to my head and I twist my dipper finger round some strands of my hair and yank. Ow! That does hurt. Out it comes. I now have a handful of hair. It’s fine and shiny. I drop it on the carpet and keep going. I can feel a little bald patch growing on the top of my head where I pull the hair – yank, yank. I feel around with my fingers to find the next few hairs, and then the next. I can’t stop. Yank, yank, yank. They’re on the floor, lying in a shiny black pile. I feel a bit calmer now, and I know I have to go down and face ‘them’. I collect up the hair and put it carefully in the bin, putting a bit of paper over the top. I know I always have to hide things, to be careful, just in case. But I have one more thing to do on the way.
I creep out of my room, onto the landing, holding my breath. I stop and listen out – I can hear Barbara’s voice in the kitchen. She’s making breakfast for Kevin. Ian has gone already. I don’t always get breakfast now. There are days when I’m starved completely because I’ve been bad. I’m given a dose of bicarbonate of soda in a glass and told to drink it. I do, without a word. It tastes yuck and makes me feel sick. I’m hungry, but I’m used to it now. I try not to think about William any more. When he pops up, I push him to the back of my mind. There’s a numb place like a black hole in my head where he used to be. I can’t think about him. I’m not allowed to talk about him. It’s as if he was never here. In my tummy there is a stone. I carry this stone everywhere. A heavy weight. A dull pain. I get moments when I think I see him, when I’m walking to school, or if we ever go to the shops. Every time I walk down the road I automatically look to the right with a sad, heavy feeling and hope that I might see the top of a red head bobbing along the pavement. I look at all green cars – is he there? But he never is. I just cover the hole in my head with an imaginary stone and keep on walking.
I get to the toilet, which is next to the bathroom, and turn the doorknob as quietly as I can. The toilet is green with a black seat. I know the drill. I sit on the seat and feel a poo coming. I catch it carefully in the palm of my hand. It’s hot, soft and heavy. It feels comforting. I look at it a moment, wondering at the colour and texture. It has so many colours in it – not just brown. I place it carefully on the toilet paper and mould it into a flattish oblong. I pull up my knickers one-handed, pull the handle and tiptoe out of the toilet and along to the big bedroom. I listen carefully, but there are voices downstairs and I know Ian is out. I hold my breath and creep in, to the end of their double bed. There is a second single bed to one side of the room, stacked up with china dolls and fluffy toys that I’m not allowed to play with. I get down on my knees as fast as I can, on Barbara’s side of the bed, and squish my patty of poo right up into the corner of the bed frame, near the head end of the bed. Squish, squish, squish. It sticks. I look under. It looks dark and blends in with the wood. My right hand is dirty now, and I tiptoe out of the room as fast as possible, pulling the door to, leaving it as it was, with my left.
I go quickly into the bathroom to wash my hands with carbolic in the green sink. I put the toilet paper rolled up into the bin. I dry my hands and feel my heart racing. Job done.
School was as horrible as ever. It was nothing like Vernon Lane. There were rules and it was boring. I was also in the remedial class, as I still couldn’t read or write properly, even though I was now seven. I was laughed at for being so behind. One day we were all taken into a big classroom. Mrs Biggs, the Biology teacher, was in her smart blue suit. She had glasses on and dull mousey hair. She told us she was going to explain the ‘life cycle’ using chickens to show us. I was instantly interested, as I looked after the chickens at home. I never understood before that the eggs I collected, and which we ate, were also the same eggs that made a chick, which then grows into a big chicken. This seemed a fantastic thing. I learnt that it would take about twenty-one days for a chick to hatch from the egg, and that it had to be ‘fertilised’ to become a chicken. I didn’t really understand what ‘fertilised’ meant, but it sounded wonderful. The teacher said we could all take an egg home – or even more than one – to watch them hatch over Easter, and explained how to look after them, keep them warm and so on. We needed to ask our parents that night for permission.
All the way home I was wondering how I could ask Barbara if I could look after an egg. I’d never asked her for anything and I feared her answer would be the usual ‘No’. She was striding along, grim as ever, dragging Topsy and swearing, but I was desperate to have a chick. I tried to think. I knew she liked chickens herself and often drove miles to farms to get new hens. She was keen to get good layers and frequently tried out different breeds. With Barbara I learnt that I had to play being nice to her if I ever wanted to get something, anything. So I tried hard to be helpful and polite while finding ways of flattering her. I said things like, ‘Thank you for my nice tea,’ when in fact I was still starving hungry and bored with having the same old thing. Or, ‘That looks nice, Mummy,’ when she’d hacked the garden plants down in fury. I’d had to forget my heartbreak over William and put a smile on and be a perfect, helpful little girl, saying, ‘Yes, Mummy’ or ‘No, Mummy’ to anything she would ask me. It was the only way I could survive.
That evening I offered to style her grey wavy hair. She actually liked this. I hated it but it was part of my campaign. After my usual, tiny dolls’ tea, I wandered round the garden rehearsing what I’d say, while Ian, Kevin and Barbara ate their proper tea. I tried to blank out the meat and gravy smells, determined not to be upset. I imagined how I was going to ask her if I could have an egg or two to look after. Then, later, when I was combing her hair and rolling it with curlers, I worked up my courage and told her about the chicken and egg lesson at school. Usually she snapped at me, but she didn’t that night, so I carried on telling her, trying to sound casual, about how you can make a chick hatch at home. I finished her hair and she stood up and peered down her sharp nose at me.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘bring one home.’
Was this really Barbara? I was amazed. It worked. She’d never been nice, but I was so excited about the egg, and I’d planned my campaign so well, curling her hair and flattering her, that I’d somehow got her to let me have one.
I felt my heart lift the next day as I walked home with Barbara and Topsy with an egg-box in my hand, carefully guarding five brown speckled eggs. Mrs Bliss had explained that at least one out of the five would probably hatch, and we should take more than one, just in case. I think the idea of free eggs appealed to Barbara. In fact, she prided herself on her egg-hatching and often took a box of six to my headmaster to show off what a good mother she was.
That afternoon, once we were home, to my further amazement Barbara found a cardboard box and put straw in the bottom. Then we put it in the larder, on the lower shelf, and she got a grey angle-poise lamp and put it on, with the light bulb close over the eggs, wrapped in straw. Was this the same Barbara? She still had the same hard look on her face – she never smiled at me or hugged me – but she was letting me do something I really wanted. She had never, ever done anything like this before. I felt I was walking on eggshells myself.
From then on, all I could think about was my eggs – day and night. As soon as I woke up I jumped out of bed and rushed down to see if any of them had hatched. I knew it would take about three weeks, but I was impatient. It seemed like total magic. For once there was something to look forward to. It seemed to take ages and ages, as every morning there was nothing: the eggs sat there, brown, round and glowing in the straw. I couldn’t believe the chicks would ever hatch.
Then one morning Barbara called up the stairs: ‘The chicks are hatching.’ I rushed down the stairs, which were carpeted in swirling brown-and-orange patterned carpet, to the larder, and peeked into the box. I held my breath. There were the five eggs and, on one of the shells, a crack had appeared. As I watched, the crack got bigger and the egg started moving, and suddenly a little yellow beak appeared, chipping its way out of the brown shell. I was utterly amazed. I watched as a little creature pushed its way out of the round shell and fell onto the straw, all soggy and helpless. My heart went out to it. Then the next crack appeared in the next egg, and soon four out of five of the chicks had hatched, one by one. The last one was even more amazing, as the chick that came out had black feathers. I had never seen a totally black chicken, although some of our hens were black and white. The little black chick lay in a panting heap on the straw, its tiny red-rimmed eyes closed, looking soggy and pathetic. My heart leapt. It was the most astonishing sight I had ever seen.
Barbara appeared in the larder doorway. I looked up at her with saucer eyes, and said, ‘Mummy, you can have these three chicks, but could I keep the black one?’
/> She thought for a second and nodded. ‘Yes.’ I had to blink. She was saying yes. Was this really the same Barbara? I had to be careful not to show too much pleasure. So I said a polite, ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ like the good girl I was trying to be, but in my heart I was shrieking and yipping with joy at having my little black chick to myself. I decided to call him Lucky, as I felt sure he would bring me lots.
That day, going off to school, I made sure I did everything Barbara asked of me. I wanted to please her even more now she let me keep my Lucky. I tidied up my room, made my bed with hospital corners and helped clear up the kitchen, folding the tea towels exactly how she liked. I swept the floor and helped dry up. After school I rushed to the larder in wonder. Lucky was staggering to his feet, his eyes were opening, and he and the other chicks were beginning to go ‘peep, peep, peep’. It was joyful. I carefully picked up Lucky and held his tiny, shaky body, so fragile and tender. His feathers weren’t wet now, they were fluffing out into the softest, finest fur. He was beautiful. He had a little beady eye and a tiny yellow beak set against his black fluff, with a white patch on his chest. My heart swelled with pride. My Lucky. My own little chick.
I talked to him all the time. I walked round the kitchen with him cupped in my hands, held to my chest. He was so tiny I wanted to protect him. I had always talked to the chickens in the garden, and now I was telling Lucky about all sorts of things. I told him his name, and that he would have a good life. I told him I loved him, that we would be friends for ever and I would always look after him. After a while I could tell he was getting tired, so I put him back in the box with the other chicks and they all got into a little pile on top of each other and fell asleep. It was adorable. I stood and watched them sleeping, and bent the lamp down nearer, tucking the straw round to make sure they kept nice and warm and snug.