I would be left thinking, What is a whore and how does she know I look just like her? But it was impossible to ask anything further, because an answer was a swipe across the face, a punch, a push, a whack with the back of the hand or the rolled-up newspaper, plus: ‘I’ll send you back if you don’t shut up!’
But if Barbara didn’t like me, she absolutely hated William. She would shout at him, punch him, kick him, snarl at him, all the time: ‘C’mere, you little ginger bastard, I’ll show you what for.’ When I was about five years old, and William was seven, I would regularly watch him being pulled by his ear or yanked by his arm and dragged across the lawn, kicking and screaming, to be locked in the garden shed for hours on end. My heart would thud in my chest whenever I watched this happen. I was treated to ‘shed time’, too, many times, and I knew that feeling of loneliness and fear inside, holding my knees and licking them for comfort, while counting and wondering if she would forget me altogether or if I would die of starvation.
Later I would creep around the shed when Barbara wasn’t looking and peek through the window. There would be William, huddled in a corner, his head on his knees, his arms round his legs. I knew he would be crying. The only compensation was that the birdseed was in there, and I hoped he’d have some. He was usually bruised and bleeding and often had big cuts across his arms and legs from sticks she would use on him. But if I was brave, and Barbara wasn’t around, I’d knock on the window and we’d look at each other. I knew I had to be careful, so I’d slip round the shed and down into the orchard, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sean, who always made my heart lift.
If he was there, smoking on his step, I knew I’d get a friendly ‘There she is,’ and a little plastic cup of milk or orange squash, a chunk of nutty bread or a biscuit. I would sit next to him on the step and quietly listen to him whittling his wood or humming an Irish tune. I just loved being next to him, and even loved smelling his smoke and watching the light twinkling through the apple trees. For once I felt safe. But I knew I couldn’t stay there long, as Barbara would notice my absence and there’d be hell to pay.
Apart from helping with the household chores, I also had to feed the chickens. When I was little we had only three, and I gave them names: there was Percy the cockerel and two others, Lucy and Sophie. Percy was a Rhode Island Red and had a wonderful red comb and big red and brown feathers. He was magnificent. The girls were black and white with red combs. Later we acquired some Peking Bantams, with lovely fluffy bottoms. I liked being with the chickens and I would often go and sit in their coop and talk to them. Sometimes their mites fell on me and I would be crawling with them. I had to brush them off quickly, fearful of what Barbara would say. I also had to collect the chicken eggs three times a day, come rain or shine. Some days there would be three eggs, or five, and other times none or just one.
One breakfast time I came down to the kitchen dressed in the old blue nylon dressing gown Barbara had given me, and I sensed something was wrong. Barbara was red in the face and I couldn’t see William anywhere.
‘What’s the matter with you, sour puss?’ Barbara snapped at me. I said nothing and went and sat on the dog’s chair. Barbara always had dogs – but not for long. She liked poodles, and she had one after the other. They seemed to have very short lives, though. She would be very hard on them, just like she was on us. She would kick and hit them, smack them across the nose and use a choke collar that she would yank all the time when we were out walking them. At that time she had Topsy the Poodle, and the
blue fabric kitchen chair was Topsy’s. I often sat in it, as it was small. That morning Kevin was heartily tucking into fried eggs, bacon and toast, and Barbara was pouring him orange juice. They smiled at each other, conspiratorially.
‘He’s been naughty,’ Barbara said suddenly, catching my thought.
‘William’s in the shed, where he belongs,’ Kevin spluttered, nearly spitting out his juice. Barbara smirked along with him. I didn’t like it. I knew how horrible the shed was. I got up and went to the back door and looked down the garden, thinking about poor William. It was raining hard.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I’ll get the eggs,’ I said, ‘but I’ll get dressed first.’ I wanted to get my shoes and clothes on because of the weather. Barbara’s face turned sharp. ‘No, you’ll get them now. But I don’t want a speck of dirt on that dressing gown – if there is, I will kill you.’
I wanted to put on my shoes and clothes, but I knew I couldn’t go against her. With that, I opened the door and stepped barefoot into the freezing wet garden. I heard her say to Kevin, ‘Do you want a couple of sausages with that?’ as I closed the door.
I held my dressing gown out of the muddy pools of water and tiptoed down the garden to the left, towards the chickens. This took me near the shed and, hovering at the window, I could hear whimpering. I peeked in and I could see William in his pyjamas, his head curled onto his knees, his arms round his legs. The padlock was closed outside, so I guessed she had locked him in. I turned to look back and could see her watching me out of the kitchen window, so I had to walk on up the muddy grass path to the chicken run at the end of the garden. I looked back at the house and I could see them both watching me now, and laughing.
I would never usually go out in the rain barefoot. The nylon dressing gown was already wet and I could feel the mud squishing between my toes. Splashes of mud were visible on the bottom of my dressing gown. Fear gripped my heart as I reached the chicken run, opened the wire gate and looked for a flat rock to stand on. But everything was muddy and wet. There were stepping-stones from the gate to the coop, and I put a timid toe on each one, hoping I wouldn’t slip off into the sea of mud and chicken poo at either side. All the chickens were inside and I finally got to the boxes where they laid their eggs. Chicken poo was squeezing between my toes and I was already a sodden mess. There was only one egg; it was still warm and had two pale feathers stuck to it. I carefully put it in my pocket and then began my slippery trip back up the garden path.
I didn’t dare look into the shed again. It was still raining and I was now crying. My dressing gown and feet were splattered with mud and poo and I had only one egg. It was also freezing and my feet and hands were blue with cold. I sploshed them under the garden hose for a minute in a desperate attempt to rinse off the mud, at least from my feet. I knew I’d be for it. I hadn’t wanted to go in my dressing gown and bare feet – it wasn’t fair. It was then that I saw all the chicken poo stuck to the bottom of my dressing gown hem.
By now I was on the backdoor step and Barbara marched up to it, yanked it open and looked fiercely at me down her pointy nose. I was soaking wet all over, a real sight. I put my hand in my pocket and held out the one egg. She took it with her left hand and whacked me round the face with her right: ‘You stupid, filthy little bitch.’ She put the egg down on the side and came back, yanking the dressing gown off me. I had a thin nightie on underneath, also wet.
‘Get in here!’ With that she pulled me roughly by the arm to the larder – my precious place – but there was also a tall blue vinyl stool in there that she used for punishing us.
She bent me over the stool, face down, my stomach pressed on the top, my head dangling one side, my legs the other. I was shivering with cold and fear. Whack! There was a rolled-up newspaper across my rear.
‘You never think, do you? You just make more work for me.’ Thwack! The pressure on my stomach made me feel sick. I could feel bile coming up to my throat, and I wanted to spew. Whack! Whack! Whack! On my legs, back, head, arms, bottom. Suddenly I was sick – a mixture of fear and whatever was left in my stomach.
‘You filthy little bitch. Eat it up.’
I was forced to get down and lick the vomit off the floor. This made me even sicker. I was then pushed back over the stool and left hanging there with the top of it pressing into my stomach with agony, until she was ready to let me go. This seemed a long, long time later, even hours. I was wet, freezing, in pain and as miserable as I could be. My only way out – I started counting: one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. I then thought of poor William in the shed; at least it wasn’t just me she hated. I wondered what small thing he had done to anger her this time.
William took most of the heat from Barbara’s hatred. She seemed to loathe him more than me and, sadly, he got the worst of her treatment (and Kevin’s). He was my partner in crime, though, and we had little ways of surviving that we developed between us, for relief and fun. These ways stayed with me for a long time, and I learnt to build up a repertoire of survival tactics.
Neither Barbara nor Ian was very sociable, and they never had friends to the house apart from Kevin’s father or local women for coffee sometimes. Ian worked for a small company, and at Christmas he would be given bottles of alcohol by customers. He would bring the bottles home and put them in the wooden G-Plan sideboard in the best living room – the room William and I weren’t allowed to go into. We had both learnt to scavenge food, but we now had a new game: scavenging alcohol.
For some reason one day William and I decided to tiptoe in, pull out the cork from one bottle and have a swig. It was called cherry brandy and it tasted wonderful. We took two slugs each and then put the cork back in. I felt a wonderful hot feeling go down the back of my throat and into my tummy. The taste was weird and strong but I liked it. We spluttered the first time we tried it. We knew neither Barbara nor Ian drank at home, so we didn’t think it would be missed. The best part was that it took away the gnawing in our tummies and left us glowing. We topped the bottle up with water if it got too low. The trick was to never take too much. To not be greedy. And to not get caught.
Over time, we also took slugs out of different bottles in turn: sherry, port, whisky, wine. We were always very careful. We cleared up any drops spilt and also put the bottles back exactly where they’d been in the first place. I had learnt, with the larder and also with the birdseed, that things always had to look exactly the same, no giveaway traces, as Barbara had hawk-like eyes that would pick up any clues. Then we would find, also in the cupboard, ‘Good Boy Choc Drops’ that would be the Christmas treat for the dog. We helped ourselves to these and felt like a prince and princess at the most wonderful party. We would grin as we scoffed a handful of dry chocs. We would do all this very quietly, very secretively, hardly breathing. We would be in and out of the living room, past the red velvet curtains and the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and window ledge, as soon as we could. We always knew that time was of the essence – we had to go as quick as lightning, but not make any mistakes. It would never do to drop anything. William was clumsier than me, so I had to keep him in check, even though he was older. But we knew that the reward of having a warm, full tummy and a lovely taste in our mouths was worth it. We would also go to bed feeling quite woozy and happy.
We wouldn’t give anything away, and we had to be very controlled in everything we did. Plus we would then have our green sweeties and medicine at bedtime, so we had to not give the game away. But it was war. Every day was war, and we had to do whatever we could to stay alive. It was our little secret and something that made us feel better just for a while. However, worse treatment was always just around the corner.
It was a wonderful relief to start going out of the house to school a few times a week when I was around five. From the start Barbara never let me go every day; it was maybe two or three times a week, while William attended the local primary school. We walked with Topsy the poodle, and Barbara would whack us and push us all the way. She strode along very quickly in her brown duffle coat and we trotted after her. She would push and kick the poor dog, yanking and shoving it in all directions, swearing all the time, which made me upset.
But I absolutely loved school right from the start. There were bright colours and things to play with. The teachers didn’t shout or hit us and every day I got a small bottle of milk, which was rich and creamy and wonderful. There was lunch, too: little carrot sticks and celery, bread and cheese. Also biscuits, fruit and cake – even orange squash. I thought I had gone to heaven. Most of all I loved colouring in. I sat next to a girl who had big teeth and brown plaits, and we coloured in together. I liked colouring outside the lines, which she thought was funny. We laughed. I didn’t usually laugh, and I began to get a new, odd, feeling: I was happy.
I had a lovely teacher, Miss Nickerson, who would give me a big piece of paper and set me up with paints and a jam jar of water and brushes. She had blonde curls and a warm smile and would put an old shirt on me, buttoned at the back, and roll up the sleeves. She would clip my hair back and say, warmly, ‘Paint, Louise. Go on.’ And I would take my brush and dip it in the most fantastic colours: red, blue, green, yellow.