Helpless (2 page)

T
he rows between my parents escalated; cuffs came in my direction too until even the sound of my father’s raised voice made me quake with fear. In the mid-fifties there were a number of factories springing up in Essex. They produced a wide range of goods, from Yardley’s perfume to Ford cars and tractors, and every time a new plant opened my father’s moods would worsen. He bemoaned the way new housing estates had covered once green agricultural fields, putting farm labourers out of work. He sneered at the factory workers and grumbled at the amount of new shiny cars that splattered him with mud as he cycled down the country roads.

His visits to the pub seemed to fuel his anger and he returned back home wound up like a spring. He was a man whose temper simmered just below the surface, ready to boil over at the slightest provocation. Whether it was an imagined slight in the pub, my mother not being understanding enough, or me sitting in a place he wanted for himself, each was enough to send him into a towering rage. And when it did, the power of coherent speech appeared to desert him, leaving only bellows of rage and flailing fists as his means of communication. Flushed and belligerent, his eyes would sweep the room, searching for something to vent his anger on, and I nervously hoped his gaze would not fall on me.

But more often than not I would be curled in a corner trying to make myself as small and invisible as possible.

Although when I hid with my eyes tight shut or lay quaking with fear in my bed, I had heard the screams and shouts and recognized the sound of blows, it was not until I was four that I actually witnessed him hit my mother.

The evening meal had been ready for an hour and she had already put our two portions out when the door crashed open. My father, face flushed with anger, staggered into the kitchen. He leant over the table; his fingers splayed on it for support and the sour smell of his beery breath blasted into our faces as he spewed out his anger, anger that was fuelled by resentment of the better-paid factory workers who had begun to drink in his local pub.

‘Those bloody boyos! Who do they think they are? Think they are better than everyone else. They don’t know what an honest day’s work is. Still wet behind the ears, they are. Bleeding little sods, think they know everything. Do you know what they told me?’

I could sense my mother desperately searching for the right words to calm him down but, not being able to find anything appropriate, she stayed silent.

She just looked at him helplessly, as his angry words spouted from a mouth twisted with rage; words that I had very little understanding of, but I recognized the venom in them and quaked with terror.

‘They’ve put down their names for that new estate that’s being built. Going to buy their own houses now. Renting’s not good enough for them. Would have thought driving around in those flash cars was enough. They look down their noses at us – us who’ve worked hard on the farms when they were still at school. Mortgages they’re getting, is it? Well, I call it debt. It’ll ruin them, see if it don’t.’

All the time he ranted about the factory workers his frustration at his lack of achievements kept spilling out. He blamed my mother for trapping him into marriage, blamed me for being there. If, he said, he did not need a job that provided us with a home maybe he too would be driving a new car instead of riding his bicycle.

I pushed myself tighter against the back of the chair as I listened to my mother’s murmured conciliatory tones. His dinner was quickly put in front of him, fresh tea was made and poured, a slice of bread cut and buttered, but nothing was going to assuage his fury.

He glared at both of us before picking up his fork and shovelling food into his mouth.

‘For God’s sake, woman! Can you not cook anything else but this bloody awful stew,’ he exclaimed the moment he had tasted the first mouthful. For a moment I thought he was going to throw it onto the floor, something I had seen him do in the past, but some sense of self-preservation, or maybe the knowledge that there was little else to eat, prevented him. Instead he continued to eat, and between mouthfuls he cursed my mother. Then he went quiet.

Judging from the increased colour in his face his temper had not receded; he was just thinking of another reason to blame my mother for his overall dissatisfaction. I could feel both her apprehensive tension and his erupting anger. I felt a knot in my stomach that made me feel sick. I wanted to leave the table but I didn’t dare move. I knew better than to draw his attention to me.

He scraped the plate, using a crust of bread to gather up the last drop of gravy. Then with a clatter of cutlery he pushed it to one side and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. With a venomous look, his eyes raked up and down my mother’s body.

‘Jesus, what a bloody mess you are. It’s no wonder I don’t want to come home. You’re enough to make a man ashamed. This house’s a midden. Think we could ever ask anyone here? My old Ma was right about you: she said you were a dirty cow. She always kept a clean home, and she had four of us to take care of. But you, you lazy bitch, just don’t care.’

His face became even more flushed as the insults rained down. My mother cringed as though each word was a physical blow, but she made no attempt to offer a defence.

Suddenly my father’s chair was flung back as he rose from the table. My mother must have known what was going to happen next. She tried to retreat but he was too fast for her. She covered her face with her hands as his clenched fists rained blows on her shoulders and her arms. Tears oozed through her fingers, I could hear her soft moans of pain mixed with pleas for him to stop. Then as suddenly as he had started he stopped and his arms fell to his side.

‘Naw, bloody waste of time beating you; you never learn. Look at yourself, woman. Really gone to seed, haven’t you?’

His hand rose again this time to poke her in the chest with one meaty finger. ‘Look at your damn slip.’

As the derisive words left his mouth my gaze was drawn to my mother’s skirt and I saw that her underslip fell several inches lower than it.

A smile suddenly appeared on my father’s face, one that scared me as much as his scowl had. He stood so close to my mother that his body forced her to step backwards until her back touched the wall. Fear drained the colour from her face, leaving it a ghostly white. I heard her try and say his name, heard his harsh breathing, saw his hand snake into his pocket and withdraw a cigarette lighter. It only took a few seconds to flick it alight with his thumb. Before my mother had a chance to realize what he was going to do, to my horror he bent down and put the naked flame to the lace hem of her slip. His other hand was pushed against her stomach, stopping her moving.

‘Burt,’ she screamed, ‘please let me go.’ She tried to shove him away but he just laughed and held her in place. Panic made me leap from my chair and do what I had seen her do when a spark from the fire had landed on clothing drying in front of the stove. I picked up an old newspaper and, pushing in between them, started beating at the small flame that had taken hold. He sniggered at us and let her go. She rushed to the sink and drenched her skirt with water, and just for a moment I forgot how afraid of him I was.

‘You are bad. You are a bad, bad, mean daddy,’ I yelled, looking up into his surprised face.

‘Who do you think you’re shouting at?’ he roared back. ‘Don’t you be cheeking me, you little brat. Get up to your bed now, do you hear?’

His hand cracked against the back of my head and black spots floated in front of my eyes and I nearly fell with shock at the power of that blow. But some sense of dignity made me keep my balance and walk out of that room, up the stairs and into my room.

I kept my tears for when I was alone.

When the rows seemed to continue from one day to the next, my tiny bedroom became my haven.

There I could burrow under my bedding – a mixture of old coats and torn sheets – and pull them over my ears. With eyes tightly shut and my body trembling with fear, I tried to block out the noises that frightened me. Those shouts, screams and blows that I knew came from downstairs or my parents’ bedroom and not from my dreams.

But no matter how deep I wriggled under the bedding or how high I tried to pull it over my ears, the bellows of my father’s fury always reached me.

‘Bitch! Whore!’ he would shout, and although I did not understand the words, the ferocity of his rage always made me shudder.

My thumb would creep up into my mouth as my body shook with silent tears and my free hand clutched my rag doll with the painted face. Each time I would also hear my mother’s shrill pleas for him to stop followed by her heart-wrenching sobs.

Please make them stop
, was the chant that repeated over and over again in my head; but when they did, the thick silence terrified me even more.

But there were days when the blackness of my father’s temper lifted. His scowl turned into a smile and he spoke in gentler tones. The trips to the pub, he told my mother, were a thing of the past; he was going to stay in after dinner. She had heard it all before and knew deep down that the period of sobriety would not last, but that did not stop her hoping every time that they would.

On those days, the premature lines that worry had etched onto my mother’s face lightened and the basket full of the various materials that made up a rug-making kit would appear. The only sparse flashes of colour in our home came from those homemade rag rugs which, apart from the cold brown lino, provided covering for the floors.

My parents would sit in front of the blazing log fire with the tools, necessary to turn the most basic of material scraps into floor coverings, spread out in front of them. Assortments of threadbare clothing, thrown out for rags by the farmer’s wife, a pair of scissors and a pile of sacks were mainly all that was necessary. My mother cut the salvageable material into long strips and sorted it into different colours, then passed it to him to patiently weave into the sacking. Wanting to be useful as well, I silently picked up scraps that had fallen onto the floor and placed them in another bag.

My father would take a long thin piece of metal with a curved hook at one end and a sharp point at the other that resembled a huge crotchet hook, and laboriously thread it with the strips of fabric. His second step was to pull it through what had once been Hessian potato bags from the farm. Then, finally, each fabric strip was knotted into place. My father’s calloused hands shook from the absence of drink as he repeated that exercise time after time until colourful rugs of various sizes appeared.

‘There’s one for your bedroom, Marianne,’ he once said gruffly to me when he had finished working on a particularly colourful one. ‘Stop your feet freezing when you get out of bed,’ and he tossed the completed rug to me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, grateful not just for the rug but for the unexpected attention. I smiled tentatively at him and received an answering smile back.

That night when I went upstairs I proudly spread the rug beside my bed, and when I woke in the morning I simply gazed down at it, admiring its warm glow. All I wanted then was for his good temper to last, my mother’s face to continue smiling and for the angry noises never to start again.

For those were the parents I wanted them to be.

But time after time I was to be disappointed.

I
had heard mention of the word ‘school’ and knew that it meant I had to sit in a classroom with other children, listen to a teacher and learn how to read and do sums, but until I was told that I was due to start in a week’s time I had not paid any attention.

‘Marianne, you’re not a baby,’ my mother said impatiently when I said I wanted to stay home with her, ‘so please stop acting like one. Anyhow you’ll enjoy it once you get there. You’ll make some little friends and it will be good for you.’

But I did not see it that way. Apart from a few visits to my father’s relatives, I was not used to mixing with anyone other than my parents. The thought of being away from home made me follow my mother around the house trying to make her change her mind.

‘Stop your nonsense, you’re going and that is that,’ she said when I had repeated my protests for the umpteenth time.

My mother continued to grumble that I knew how busy she was and that I should be grateful that she was going to take and collect me every day, not just put me on a bus. She omitted to say that her reason for taking me on her bicycle was because buses cost money and I was too young to walk the two miles to school alone.

The day I was dreading, my first day at school, came all too quickly. Apart from having my face and hands washed after breakfast it began the same as any other. A dress I had worn several times was pulled over my head, my feet went into black Wellington boots and my hair was given a cursory brush. It was not until a satchel, bought from the second-hand shop, was placed on my back, and I was lifted onto the small seat behind the saddle of my mother’s bicycle and told to hang on tightly, that I fully accepted that I was on my way to school.

Feeling every bump of those country lanes, I clung to my mother tightly for that entire journey. Once we arrived at the school she leant her rusty bicycle against the wall and lifted me down. Ignoring the other mothers who stood chatting together in the playground, she walked up to a young woman who, standing with a large notebook in the centre of a group of young children and their mothers, was obviously the teacher in charge.

‘Bringing my daughter for her first day,’ my mother said abruptly. ‘Her name’s Marianne.’

‘You be good, Marianne – do what your teacher tells you. I’ll be here to collect you later,’ she said to me before turning and walking briskly to her bicycle. I stared after her, knowing her leaving me was the reason I was feeling completely bereft.

I felt my bottom lip tremble as I saw her peddling away and bit down on it, hoping that my tears would not start. I did not want to look foolish in front of the other children.

‘Marianne,’ I heard the teacher say, ‘come and say hello to Jean. It’s her first day too.’

But as I stood in that playground I was overcome with shyness, so instead of doing what the teacher, who I later found out was called Miss Evans, asked I just looked around the play area with the bewilderment of an isolated only child suddenly faced with a sea of other children for the first time.

In total there were around twenty children, all of them showing different emotions. Some had tears in their eyes, others stood in small groups clutching their satchels nervously, whilst their mothers, looking almost as tearful as their offspring, whispered final comforting and encouraging words before waving goodbye.

But although I saw the tears and the woebegone faces that reflected how I also felt, I was far more aware of how those children looked, and they all looked different from me.

There was not one child dressed as I was. I was very aware of my faded second-hand dress and the cardigan with darns in the elbow – these other children were so clean and shiny they positively gleamed.

Girls’ hair was held in place by pastel-coloured ribbons, pretty crisp cotton blouses were tucked into darker pleated skirts and shiny leather shoes covered white-socked feet. Even the boys, with their hair freshly cut in short styles, white shirts with the shop creases still evident, knotted ties, miniature blazers and knee-length short trousers, looked band-box fresh.

I looked down at my own skinny bare legs tucked into Wellington boots, raised a hand to my ribbon-free hair that my mother had cut and which hung jaggedly to just below my ears, and wanted to go home. I knew even as early as that first day that I was not going to like it there and because I was different that I was never going to make friends.

A bell rang loudly and the teacher showed us how to form something she called a crocodile but was really pairs of children forming a queue. We followed her into an airy classroom where we were seated at scaled-down desks. Miss Evans asked each of us in turn to say our names out loud. She told us that we would do that every morning so that she would know if anyone was missing, and as each name was said she ticked a large book that soon I learnt was called a register.

Surely she could tell that just by counting us, I thought, but said nothing.

Next we were each given coloured crayons and sheets of paper and told to draw whatever we wanted. I scribbled lots of wiggly lines, admiring the colours on my sheet.

Half-way through the morning we were given small bottles of milk and a white waxy straw to drink it through.

At dinnertime another crocodile was formed and we were walked to the canteen. As soon as the last mouthful was swallowed we were sent outside to play. That first day I stood on the edges of the playground watching the other children playing. I wanted just one of them to come up to me and ask me my name and invite me to join them; but no one did.

In the afternoon the teacher read us a story. To me it was just words without meaning about things I did not know about. There were no books in our house, just newspapers and the occasional women’s magazine, so ‘telling a story’ was not a concept I understood. Bored, my gaze kept wandering to the window. I saw some of my classmates’ mothers drifting into the playground and standing in small groups chattering to one another. My eyes focused on the road behind them – I was waiting for the familiar figure of my mother to appear.

The clamour of the bell announcing the end of the school day rang out and as it trailed into silence I saw my mother push her bicycle through the gates and, exactly as I had done that lunchtime, stand apart from the other mothers. They in turn, like their offspring had done to me, paid her no attention.

‘All right, Marianne?’ she said when I walked up to her.

‘Yes,’ I replied, for something told me to say no more.

‘That’s good, then,’ were the only words she spoke before placing me on my seat and peddling away.

She did not ask me any more questions.

Neither did my father.

Maybe they already knew what I was beginning to learn, that children who look different do not make friends.