Can't Anyone Help Me? (8 page)

They accepted, as my mother had known they would. After all, what more could a six-year-old’s mother wish for than an afternoon to herself, knowing that her child was being well looked after?

The ban on presents was ignored and there were books, for colouring and to read, crayons, and sweets that I was told to share with my ‘friends’.

At that first party, while my mother and her close friends were happily sipping sherry and gossiping, we watched a magician do his tricks. Coins appeared from behind small ears, scarves emerged from pockets and, of course, the right card appeared seemingly out of thin air. The following year, to my mother’s delight, invitations appeared for me. At my next birthday party, there was a treasure hunt, and each child found something – but after that one there were no more parties.

By then I was no longer receiving invitations to other children’s homes. My increasingly bad behaviour had marked me out not only as a disturbed child but a destructive one as well. Parents warned their children not to play with me, not that they needed warning. By then too many of them had witnessed my bouts of violence and unpredictable behaviour.

‘Jackie, I think we should just have a quiet birthday this year,’ my mother said firmly. ‘Excitement isn’t good for you.’ So I spent my eighth birthday with her friends. That was the year my aunt and uncle put in an appearance, something they had not done before, preferring to give me their presents when I visited them.

They brought me a huge yellow bear. It was too big to wrap but a large ribbon around its neck made it look like a present.

‘Oh, how kind,’ my mother said, as usual. ‘What do you say, Jackie?’

I looked at the bear, which dwarfed my entire collection, with something approaching repugnance. It was made of nylon and too big, and I didn’t think it looked in the least bit friendly. As I gingerly picked it up and heard a growl deep inside it I remembered ‘the game’ and suddenly felt sick. I swallowed hard in an attempt to hide the fact that bile was rising in my throat. In her own way, my mother had gone to so much trouble that I didn’t want to spoil it for her. I knew throwing up on the carpet would certainly do that.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and pressed my lips to my aunt and uncle’s cheeks.

My uncle’s presence in my home always made me feel uneasy. I didn’t like him being there for, however indifferent my mother appeared to be towards me, it was still the place where I felt safe.

But when my mother invited my aunt and uncle to stay for Christmas, even that little bit of security was taken away from me. ‘You can’t risk the roadblocks, not if you want to have a few drinks,’ she said. On the main roads between the villages there had been a rising number of police enforcing the drink-driving laws. It was expected that, over the festive season, unmarked cars would be parked in the many lay-bys between my uncle’s village and ours, ready to pounce on every inebriated reveller. As drinking was something that my parents and their guests enjoyed, alternative arrangements had to be made.

Christmas was the other time I was dressed in my best clothes and told to thank everyone who brought gifts. In the corner of the sitting room there was a huge tree, the green of the branches nearly obscured by the weight of the glittering silver ornaments that my mother brought out each year. Piled high beneath it were the carefully wrapped presents. Some were for the immediate family and other, smaller, ones for friends, who had been invited to my parents’ annual drinks and mince-pies party on Boxing Day.

On Christmas Eve I was allowed to stay up later than usual. Just before bedtime my stocking was hung over the stone fireplace, ready to be filled with gifts by Father Christmas.

Family presents were handed out after breakfast; mine were immediately put into my bedroom to join the piles of toys already there.

The year my aunt and uncle came to stay was the one when I received my bicycle. My mother put on Handel’s
Messiah
. She played it every year at Christmas. ‘It’s conducted by Sir George Solti,’ she told me, as though the information might persuade me to share her musical taste.

But although I didn’t like the music, I liked Kiri Te Kanawa’s beautiful voice when it filled our house. But I only remember her because I thought she was pretty, unlike some of the other wobbly lady opera singers I had seen on television.

As soon as breakfast was finished I was told to go and fetch something from the sitting room. It was then I saw it, the dark blue and silver bicycle standing in the corner. Almost breathless with excitement I rushed back into the kitchen.

‘You can learn to ride it in here,’ my father said – the kitchen was so large that there was plenty of space to manoeuvre a bicycle. I would have liked to throw myself into his arms and tell him I’d wanted one more than anything else, but shyness stopped me and instead I just said, ‘Thank you.’

Apart from the bicycle, I can only remember little bits of that day. There were the usual mince pies, dishes of dates, nuts and tangerines, a big tin of Quality Street, and sugared almonds continuously being passed around. It was early afternoon before my aunt and uncle arrived, carrying more presents, bottles of wine and a huge bunch of flowers for my mother.

The usual ‘So kind’ and ‘You shouldn’t have’ were followed by air-kissing and hugs for me. I can’t remember what they brought me or even what other presents I received that year.

I can picture the dining table set for seven people. My parents had invited another couple to join us, a couple around their own age whose grown-up children, like my brother, were spending Christmas with college friends. When they arrived I recognized the long-haired blonde woman. She was the one I had seen in the bedroom with my father that night when they had stayed over. They were introduced to my aunt and uncle, and after drinks we sat down to the meal.

There was a huge turkey with all the trimmings, tiny sausages, mounds of vegetables mixed with chestnuts and piles of roast potatoes. Appreciative remarks from the guests rang out as the bird was brought in for my father to carve. A wing, normally my favourite part, was put on my plate. ‘Some breast as well for you, Jackie?’ my father said, as he placed a slice of white meat next to it.

It was then that my uncle caught my eye. He smiled the smile that was just for me. I looked hastily down at my plate with its slices of white meat. The pink of the cranberry sauce had started to stain it and suddenly I felt the lump that always stopped me swallowing.

I felt my mother looking at me and put a piece of the meat into my mouth. Please, I said silently to myself, please don’t let me be sick. With every scrap of effort I was capable of making, I swallowed it. I drank some juice after each mouthful and somehow managed to get through each course.

My mother scorned paper hats as common, but we pulled the very elaborate gold and red crackers she had ordered from the Harrods Christmas catalogue. The crackers contained only adult gifts – miniature bottles of liqueurs: if you got one you had to drink it, according to my mother. ‘I’ll have yours, Jackie. I don’t think you’ll like crème de menthe,’ laughed my father, when a bottle of green liquid dropped on to my plate.

‘Please can I go to my room?’ I asked, once the meal was finished and bottles of port were being opened and poured. I was told I could.

Upstairs I puked up every scrap I had consumed. Despite the warmth from the central heating, I was shivering, covered with gooseflesh. ‘Please,’ I said to Florence, ‘please let him leave me alone.’ That night, my Christmas wish was granted: he did.

It was the day after Boxing Day when, tired from two days of eating and drinking, my parents retired early to bed. He came into my room. Even in my sleep, I felt his presence and woke. Without opening my eyes I knew he was standing by my bed. I could hear him breathing, and as I lay completely still, pretending to be asleep, I felt his fingers lightly stroking my face. ‘Come on, Jackie, I know you’re awake,’ he said.

Clutching my duvet, I opened my eyes and looked up at him.

‘Miss me?’ he asked.

I started to gasp out a warning that someone might hear him, that it wasn’t safe, and he, thinking I was trying to protect him, hastened to reassure me. ‘Don’t worry, Jackie, we’re safe. Your parents are exhausted and quite drunk so they’ll never wake up. I’ve told your aunt I was slipping outside for a cigarette – you know what she thinks of me smoking.’

I knew what my mother thought of that as well, but said nothing. I just clutched the covers even tighter around me and wished hopelessly that he would go away.

He flicked off my bedside light but, dim as the room was, I could still see him. ‘Have to be quick, though,’ he said, and took hold of my head. His fingers buried themselves into my hair as he pulled me forwards while his other hand fumbled with the front of his trousers. The sound of him unzipping them rang in my ears.

He pressed my face against him and, although I tried not to breathe, I still inhaled that sweaty smell and felt hot flesh before he pulled back my bedding and climbed in.

And there in the darkness of my bedroom, where only my teddy bears could see us, he pushed my legs apart and held me tightly until he had finished.

It was after I was sure he had gone, and had heard his soft footsteps retreat as he crept along the corridor to the room he was sharing with my aunt, that I reached up and put my light back on. I avoided looking at my bears – I didn’t want to see their eyes, which I knew were watching me.

Instead, I called out to Florence, who crept in beside me, offering words of comfort.

My ghostly pallor the next morning was put down to my having eaten too much rich food over the previous days. ‘No more mince pies for you,’ someone said.

That Christmas I do remember.

Afterwards the one room that I had thought safe no longer was. The bears now knew my secret and I turned them to face the wall. I didn’t want to look into their faces and I no longer wanted to sleep in there. It was Florence, kind, patient Florence, who now comforted me at night. ‘Why have you done that with your bears?’ she asked, when we were curled up in bed together with her arms around me. And I told her that they had seen what my uncle and I had done.

My mother held out a pair of small dark blue knickers and pointed to a mark in the centre of the crotch. I cringed when I saw it, for I knew what it was: a tiny stain that must have escaped my uncle’s eagle eyes, for he washed and inspected my underwear whenever I stayed with him.

‘Jackie, what’s this?’ she asked, and behind the question, I heard a note of fear.

‘Don’t know,’ I lied, but my mother and I knew the stain was blood.

‘How did it get there?’ she asked.

Surely she knew, I thought. There was only one way it could have got there. My mind spun. I knew she was not going to be fobbed off and I searched desperately for something to tell her; something she would believe.

Why did I not tell her the truth? If I’d told her everything, I would have been safe. But that was not something that even entered my head. Just give her something, some half-truth, so she would leave me alone was all I could think of doing.

‘I was playing,’ I said slowly, trying to find a plausible excuse, ‘with one of the boys at school.’

I saw a look of something like relief cross her face but still her mouth was compressed as, grim-faced, she waited for me to continue.

‘Go on,’ she said, when I made no effort to tell her more.

‘You know, games,’ I said, into the wall of chilling silence. ‘He showed me his willie and I showed him mine.’

‘And? Looking doesn’t make a stain like this, does it?’

‘Well, he …’ I paused, dreading the consequences of my words ‘… he put his finger inside my pants.’

At those words my mother exploded and her angry words swamped me. I was a dirty little girl, a disgrace to the family; she was ashamed of me. On and on she went, and I stood there shaking. Eventually she told me to go to my room. ‘And stay there till I tell you to come out,’ she shouted.

I ran up the stairs before she could hurl any more words at me.

‘What would she have said if I had told her the truth?’ I asked Florence tearfully, but this time she had no answer for me. She just agreed that if I had, my uncle was right, we would be in very bad trouble.

That was the start of a new period of my life. In my parents’ eyes my behaviour significantly worsened. Now I no longer wanted to be in my room and tantrums occurred each time I was told to get ready for bed.

I fought off sleep, with its associated nightmares, for as long as possible.

And when eventually, unable to battle against my eyes closing, I entered the room where the little girl was, her fear became mine. My eyes would fly open and I would find that the air in my room was threatening to suffocate me.

That was when I started pulling my bedclothes off and, half asleep, I would take them on to the landing. There, I would curl into a tight ball and fall back to sleep.

It was my father who found me the first time. ‘Jackie, what are you doing?’ he asked, as he picked me up and carried me back to bed.

The first time he was not angry but when I was found there time and time again, both parents were. Was I sleepwalking, they asked, as they looked in despair at the child who was showing even more signs of disturbance.