Can't Anyone Help Me? (6 page)

‘Well, Jackie,’ she would say, ‘I hope you’ve been good.’ Then, smiling at the other mothers, who were at least a decade younger than her, she would walk slowly away, with me at her side.

‘What did you learn today?’ was the one question she always asked as soon as my coat was hung up in the hall. I would show her the drawings I had done. ‘Very nice, dear,’ she would say, before she folded them neatly, then handed them to me to keep in my room.

After the first day I had stopped protesting that I didn’t want to go to school. Each morning, after washing and brushing my teeth, I dressed myself in the clean clothes my mother had laid out the night before. I took pride in the fact that, apart from plaiting my hair, I could get myself ready without help. Once breakfast was finished, it was time to leave the house. I would walk beside my mother until we reached the gates, where groups of mothers chatted as they watched their offspring walk into the playground.

But those days, when I knew my mother must have breathed a sigh of relief at my improved behaviour, were not destined to last long.

They dwindled away when my uncle introduced me to his next friend, who, for the first time, came to his house.

I never knew the name of my uncle’s friend, a chubby little man with twinkling eyes and an easy manner. When I met him, I wasn’t scared. Certainly there was nothing about him that would have alerted anyone to what lay behind the pleasant exterior.

‘Look, Jackie, I’ve brought you a present,’ he said, as soon as he sat down. His pale, podgy fingers, with a sparkling ring on the smallest one, disappeared inside his jacket pocket and came out holding a small parcel. Inside, there was another soft toy: a pink pig with a key protruding from its side. ‘You can add that to your collection,’ he said. At the time I didn’t question how he knew about the other furry animals my uncle had given me when we played ‘the game’.

He showed me how to wind it up and how, once I had placed it on the floor, it ran around in circles. Watching it, I was just a child enjoying a new toy, a child who clapped her hands together with delight. Wanting to share my enjoyment of the pig’s antics, I turned to the two adults with a wide smile that lit up my face.

‘Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ the chubby man said to my uncle, who murmured his agreement. I felt a mixture of shyness and pleasure, as small girls do when they hear a compliment that they know is for them.

I was given some lemonade and, forgetting about the time when I had been made to drink it, I swallowed it eagerly. Again, it was sweet and syrupy, and just a few sips made me giggle.

The chubby man produced a pack of cards from his pocket. Quickly he shuffled them and then, to my delight, showed me a couple of tricks before laying them down on the table. ‘Do you like playing games?’ he asked.

Not knowing what was expected of me, I looked at him with growing wariness.

It was then that my uncle mumbled a few words about having forgotten something my aunt had asked him to buy. ‘I’d better pop down to the shops quickly, won’t be long. You be good, Jackie,’ he said. ‘Look after my guest.’ He left me sitting with a man whose smile never left his face as he explained the game we were about to play.

And as he told me the rules, I clutched Paddington closer to me.

It was called Happy Families but, he explained, he wanted to make it more fun. So when I picked the right card a sweet would come my way. If he picked the right one a kiss would be his reward. But whenever either of us got a wrong card, a piece of clothing was to be removed.

The cards were dealt. Innocuous pictures of bakers, postmen and members of other families smiled up at me. He dealt me another card. It was the right one and, true to his word, he gave me a sweet. But when he dealt the next one to himself, he gave a small triumphant shout. This time he had won. He pulled me towards his seat. ‘Kiss,’ he said, offering his cheek, and dutifully I did as he asked. I didn’t like the feel of his face for he hadn’t shaved as closely as my uncle did and the stubble was prickly against my lips.

‘Now, Jackie, you must take something off.’

I shook my head – and that was when the twinkle left his eyes.

He grabbed me and undid the bow that tied my hair. ‘There now – there was no need to make a fuss, was there?’

I wriggled away from him and nervously sipped some more lemonade. The room swam, and I heard him say that I had chosen the wrong card again. It was my shoes that he told me to take off next and my fingers were clumsy as I fumbled with the buckles.

Within the next few minutes, he was down to his vest and underpants.

I stared at my cards to avoid looking at him. I didn’t want to see the greying hair that was growing on his chest or the thick blue veins on his white legs – and especially not the outline of something that appeared to be growing in his underpants.

It was when he dealt me another wrong card that he moved. ‘Your turn again, Jackie,’ he said, and pointed at my dress. ‘Put your hands up over your head and I’ll help you.’

Reluctantly I did so. It was as though I had no will to protest, no ability to resist. The dress was pulled over my head, leaving me standing in just my white knickers.

They went next, then his underpants – and all I could think of was, Where’s my uncle?

He picked me up, cradled me against him, then laid me down on the rug. He rubbed cold ointment of some kind into me before his finger went between my legs and inside my body. I lay there unable to move and it was then that I switched my mind off from my body until I was floating somewhere above it. From there I watched a little girl lying on the floor, her arms held stiffly at her sides and her skinny legs pushed wide apart. I could see her white face, her blue eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as a grey-haired man, with rolls of pale, flabby flesh hanging from his stomach, grunted and groaned with pleasure as he violated her.

It took him no longer to destroy the last shreds of her innocence than it would have done to boil a kettle or toast a slice of bread. To him she was insignificant, merely a vessel for his enjoyment. When he had finished he left her there, a broken doll with her child’s white knickers lying where he had thrown them.

The passage of time might have made his features grow faint in my memory, but I can still see his eyes that, once the twinkle had left them, were cold and indifferent, hear his rasping voice – even the smell of him lingers in my memory. I have often thought that if evil has an odour, it was Chubby’s. It crawled into my nose, mixed with my tears and left a permanent stain deep within my body’s memories. Even now just a tone of voice or a certain laugh brings it back and, once again, my mouth fills with the sour taste of my childhood. Nothing has ever erased it. Chubby is trapped for ever within the labyrinth of my bad memories.

That first time when my uncle returned and saw my pale, dry-eyed face – the shock had dried my tears before they had even fallen – he made the chubby man leave.

‘You shouldn’t have been so rough with her,’ I heard him say angrily.

‘She’ll be all right,’ said Chubby, dismissively. ‘They always are.’

My uncle picked me up, pushed a small tablet between my lips and held me as I dozed. As I slipped in and out of sleep, his voice kept murmuring how sorry he was. Later he bathed me, then dressed me again. I refused to put on the same clothes that the man had taken off me, so he took my pyjamas out of my overnight bag – the top was patterned with pretty little pink mice – and slipped them on to my torn body.

Why, after what happened that day, did I not talk? I often ask myself that question. But, then, even if I could have formed the words to explain, who would I have said them to? My uncle was the only person who told me he loved me and he already knew about it.

Why did my aunt not question why I was wearing my nightclothes in the late afternoon when she returned from work? And why did she not notice how sleepy I was and how pale? But if she did, she didn’t comment and just bustled around as always, making supper and talking about her day at work.

That evening we sat down to chicken and vegetables but the white meat looked dead and the vegetables slimy. I put small morsels into my mouth and forced myself to swallow them slowly, but before I had made any noticeable inroads, I pushed the plate aside. I knew I would vomit if I tried to eat any more.

‘What’s wrong with you, Jackie? Aren’t you hungry?’ my aunt asked.

‘Oh, leave her alone,’ my uncle said quickly, to prevent me replying. ‘She’ll eat when she’s ready.’ But I couldn’t eat anything else, even when she placed my favourite dessert of apple pie and cream in front of me.

I think we watched television later, because we always did, until it was time for me to go to bed. It was my uncle who tucked me in and placed Paddington in my arms. Clutching my bear, I fell asleep.

It was not long afterwards that my uncle, seeing I had survived the chubby man, told me he would show me what those acts would be like if they were done by someone who cared for me and loved me as much as he did.

Each time my uncle removed my clothes and ran his hands over my body, he whispered endearments before he molested me. I heard his groans of pleasure, followed by his apologies when he knew he had hurt me, and the reassurances that I was loved.

When I was given more of the sweet drinks, I gradually learnt they contained more than lemonade. I saw something from a smaller bottle being added to the fizzy liquid. Whatever was in it made me feel light-headed and woozy, but it took away the pain and the fear.

And every time it happened, the feeling grew that what was taking place was unreal. It took some time but gradually I perfected the process of detaching my mind from my body. Then I, like my uncle, became another observer. That made it seem as though what was happening was happening to someone else.

My nightmares told me otherwise. The disturbing dreams started to visit me more and more often. The images even appeared when I was awake, pictures of writhing adults taking part in grotesque acts, their faces featureless. I would hear a jumble of noises, as though an old cracked recording was playing in my head, issuing instructions. To begin with I couldn’t make out what the noises meant, but gradually they turned into voices telling me to run, urging me to escape.

There were times when, as soon as food was placed in front of me, I felt as though something was growing in my throat, restricting it and preventing me from swallowing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t dislodge it until I had retched and retched. That was when fear, then anger filled me and threatened to burst through my skin.

In the playground I got into fights with other children. I screamed and punched with little or no provocation. It was only when the teachers came running and pulled me away that I calmed down. At six I was still small enough to control so it was my own safety that concerned them, not their own or even the other children’s.

It was when my urge to run became too strong to resist that they became even more worried. Out of control, my arms swinging and my feet moving as fast as I could make them, I would take off like a sprinter until I reached the school wall, then hurl myself against it with full force. I had realized that physical pain was the only way to stop the inner torment that the nightmares caused. Screaming, I would throw myself against the rough bricks, and the pain of impact would at least stop my thoughts.

Time and again the teachers caught me and I, distraught with tears that streamed down my face, had no memory of who or where I was. As I was held tightly, a high desolate wailing, continuous and piercing, echoed in the school grounds.

More little snippets of memory come back to me.

The school strongly recommended, if not insisted, to my parents that I was taken to see a doctor because of my violent outbursts. He would probably refer me to a psychologist, the headmistress explained. There was another serious issue that she wanted to discuss with them: my excessive retching and vomiting. She explained to my mother that, when presented with food or after lunch, I would often be sick. There were no signs that it was self-induced – although I’m sure those adults did wonder. An urgent visit to a doctor was essential, she said. So they arranged to take me first to the local GP, who referred me to a consultant at a hospital in Manchester.

The waiting room was crowded with people – arms in slings, legs in plaster, wheezing and coughing. My mother and I were shown to another room.

‘You’ll have to get undressed, dear,’ the nurse said.

The lights were bright in the small room and I trembled. All I could think of was that somewhere in that room, tucked out of their sight, there was a hidden camera and, behind it, eyes that would watch me.

I shook my head.

She, thinking I was shy, tried to set my mind at rest. ‘There’s nothing for you to worry about, dear,’ she said kindly. ‘There,’ she said, opening a door, ‘is the changing room. I’ll be outside with your mummy so no one can see you.’ When she noticed that I was still looking at her with distrust, she pointed to something hanging on the inside of the door. ‘Look, Jackie, here’s a dressing-gown,’ she told me – it was a child-sized cotton garment with ties down the back. ‘You just slip that on once you’re undressed, then knock on the door to tell me you’re ready, all right?’