Helpless (6 page)

W
hen I heard the children at school talking about their weekends, their bicycles, their games and even the books they had started reading, I knew I could not share what I liked doing the most. Nor could I write an essay on it when the teacher asked us to write down what we had done in our free time.

So I never told them that, when I managed to escape from watching my brother or helping my mother with the chores, my feet would take me through the gate and down the country lane into the fields where treasures lay hidden from the casual eye, but not from me.

Once there I carefully searched the hedges hoping to see a nest of tiny speckled eggs or even another one filled with tiny fledglings. And when I found them I would be as quiet as I could so as not to scare off the mother bird from returning. I knew never to touch them, for if I did the nest would be abandoned and the chicks would starve to death.

At school I heard the boys boasting about the birds’ eggs they had collected. I wanted to tell them that they were killing baby birds but I knew that if I did they would laugh at me or even worse pull my hair and call me stinky. So I never told them that either.

On warm days when nothing disturbed the drowsy peace of the countryside I would pick handfuls of tiny wild strawberries that grew under the hedgerows. I would lie on my back eating them as I sleepily watched brilliantly coloured butterflies and bees searching for pollen. Once I forgot the minutes slipping by as I watched the activity in an anthill. I marvelled at the business of the thousands of ants living in that colony and wondered how anything so minute could build, compared to their size, such a vast home. But my favourite place was the pond.

It was the man next door who, a few days after we had moved in, showed me how to make a net from a piece of muslin and a twig. He then showed me how to scoop up some of the frogspawn and gave me a bowl to put it in. He explained that I could then watch it turn into tadpoles that in turn would, after a few weeks, become frogs.

‘You can keep it in my shed,’ he had said, thus forming an alliance that added to the gulf between my parents and me. ‘Watch the tadpoles grow until they are a decent size and then we’ll release them.’

I added pond plants and small stones to the bowl and over the next three weeks watched as the tiny black dots lengthened and became recognizable shapes.

It took until after the end of the Easter holidays for the miniature eel-like things to become tadpoles, complete with wriggling tails. Wanting them to feel at home and have room to grow, I exchanged their small bowl for a larger one and placed more plants from the pond in it.

When we thought they were big enough to be safe from the fish we took them back to the pond. Over the warm days of early summer I saw them change again from black wriggly tadpoles into browny-green froglets that jumped, swam and lay basking in the sunshine on the stones or hidden by the long grass around the pool. As I watched them, I wondered which were the ones that we had helped turn into those little creatures.

At first, after the kittens had been drowned, I had not been able to bring myself to go there. I could picture them all too clearly in their watery grave, but after the man next door told me about cat heaven and said that the kittens would not want me to be sad any more I felt better about it.

And that was another thing I never told my teacher: about the times he would be waiting for me there.

When the summer holidays finally arrived and I knew there was no school for six weeks, all I could think of was the days I could spend with our neighbours.

As though reading my mind, my father quickly let me know that, whereas I might not have to go to school, I need not look upon those six weeks as holiday time.

‘You are to help your mother,’ he told me sternly the moment he saw me move to the door on my first morning of what up to then I had believed was freedom. ‘You’re in charge of your brother. You’re old enough.’

When I told the man next door, he simply ruffled my hair and said we would take his two and my brother with us to the pond. ‘We’ll have a picnic. It will get the children out of my wife and your mother’s way.’

A pushchair and his shoulders were enough to transport the three children, while I, bringing up the rear, would carry a bag filled with soft drinks, slices of cake and biscuits.

There were days when we would sit and he would put his head lightly on my shoulder and tell me he was tired.

‘You must be all-in too, Marianne, having to help your mother like you do. Lie down and put your head in my lap.’ And happily I did. Those early days as I listened to the sound of the summer countryside, the hum of insects, the chirping of birds, the small splashes of water and the rustle of leaves and grass, I wriggled with pleasure at the soothing movements of his hands. They stroked my back, traced each vertebra of my spine, stroked my neck, ran lightly through my hair and gently caressed my cheeks.

Nearby the three toddlers, with their faces crammed with sweets and their leading reins holding them securely and safe from the water, gurgled contentedly as I curled my body up even tighter against him, blissfully content to feel safe and cared for at last.

It was on one of those warm sunny days, when for once the two women had taken the toddlers into town, that he kissed me for the first time. I was sitting with my arms wrapped round my knees, my head down, as I peered into the murky water of the pond hoping to see something moving.

‘Marianne, do you know how fairies kiss?’ he asked.

I giggled, as little girls faced with an embarrassing question from an adult tend to do.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Close your eyes and I’ll show you.’

I felt the feathery strokes of eyelashes sweeping across my cheek and when I opened my eyes I saw a flash of white teeth as he smiled at me.

He placed his arm around my shoulders and gently drew me to him as he lay back on the grass.

‘Do you know how grown-ups kiss?’

I shook my head.

‘Shall I show you then?’ and his hand brushed my hair, then held my chin lightly.

I felt my eyes blink: as his face loomed closer and closer towards mine it got bigger and bigger. For a few seconds, as it hovered above mine, it blocked out the light and I no longer saw the face I knew so well, but that of a stranger – a stranger who frightened me.

His mouth, so much larger than mine, sucked at my lips, drawing them wetly in, while his hand tightened on my head and his fingers slid down my spine. They stroked my bottom, then rested heavily against it, holding me even firmer into place. He tipped me backwards, his weight pressing heavily against my small body. His tongue forced its way between my teeth and slid into my mouth and I felt salvia trickling down my chin. I was pinned under him, my breath left my body in small gasps and my legs tried to kick out as, panic-stricken, I struggled to be free.

And he, recognizing maybe not just my fear but the seeds of repugnance, abruptly released me, sat upright and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes and threatened to spill over and, seeing them, he softly wiped my face.

‘Didn’t you like that, Marianne?’ he asked. ‘It means that you are very special to me. You want to be special, don’t you?’

The gentleness of his hand stroking my head, his comforting warmth and the familiar tones of his voice all combined to calm me, and suddenly that was all that mattered.

‘Yes,’ I replied, but he and I both knew I had answered the second question not the first.

That day another little milestone was passed and the first step taken; a step that started changing his friendship into something darker. Lulled by the warmth of his hands, the sound of his voice soothing me and my desire to be cared for, I did not realize then how dark it was going to become.

W
ith a family that did not encourage reading or in fact have any books in the house, I found the written word difficult to decipher. But when, in my seventh year, our teacher showed the class the illustrations in Beatrix Potter’s
Peter Rabbit
before reading us extracts of his adventures, I was captivated. Those illustrations, which showed the magical world of furry, feathered and smooth creatures dressed in Victorian clothes, who inhabited a fantasy animal kingdom, cast a spell over me. For the first time I hung on to every word of a story and listened open mouthed to the escapades of Peter’s family. For once the words did not just float meaninglessly in the air above my head.

When more of those books were read to the class I saw pictures of dancing frogs, talking ducks, squirrels and birds; in fact every animal that I sought out in the fields was in the pages of Beatrix Potter’s books. Reading might have been difficult for me to master, but in the moments of peace that I got to myself I let my imagination run riot.

I made up my own tales of another furry family, the mice that, instead of living at the root of a very big fir tree as Peter’s had done, wintered behind our skirting boards and spent their summers in the golden cornfields.

I gave them names: as opposed to Mopsy, Flopsy, Cottontail and Peter they were Millie, Maisy, Squeaker and Jim. I painted pictures of them in my head and dressed them in modern clothes. I made up stories of their lives, sending the little ones to mice school, the father to work, and had the mother always baking cakes.

I tried to share my stories with my mother, only to hear words like ‘vermin’ and ‘traps’ so I decided to confide in my dolls instead.

I would sit my two rag dolls and Belinda down, pour their pretend tea into buttercup heads and give them imaginary cakes on tiny stones. My fingers would move in time with my mouth as, using a cotton reel and strands of wool, I knitted them rope scarves.

Until I grew to know the man next door I only had them to confide in, but it was not long before he was listening to my stories too, as we sat by the pond.

He heard them with seeming interest and praised them. He told me that when I was older I should write them down and, encouraged, I looked for more to interest my admiring audience of one.

At the farm where my father worked there was a dilapidated old single-storey cottage where farm equipment was stored and birds built nests in the rafters. Once, when the farm was just a smallholding, it had housed the family that had worked the land. I first asked questions of the farmer, my father and the man next door, and then started weaving stories about how life had been many years before I was born.

I volunteered to collect the eggs, and once I arrived at the farm I would first slip into the cottage’s dark interior and search there for clues to how the people had once lived.

There was a dark yellow stain streaked with grey and black, which started in the middle of the wall and rose all the way up to the rafters. I knew that was where the old log-fuelled cooking range had once stood. I liked to imagine the family cooking their meals on it and, once they had finished, opening the top to warm the room.

Each time I entered the house I wove more and more stories about them all, then placed them between the covers of the book in my imagination.

In my mind’s eye there was a dark-haired woman, two sons about my age and a man who was at home every night. I visualized them sitting happily together eating their evening meal while the warm glow of an oil lamp radiated through the room.

The man next door had told me that life was hard then and that working people only had the Sabbath and Christmas Day set aside for rest.

So knowing that, I made my make-believe family work hard six days a week but on Sundays they donned their best clothes and went to church in a horse-drawn buggy.

I never noticed the time slipping away as I lost myself in my dreams of another era until I returned home and my mother scolded me for my lateness.

The man next door was the only person I shared those stories with, but I was not to know how he stored them up in his memory ready to use.

It took until after the end of the holidays for him to put that information to good use. Over the months since we had moved he had worked at perfecting his role as the perfect neighbour.

‘Do you want anything fetching from the shops?’ was his question every time he went into the village on an errand for Dora. My mother always responded with a smile of thanks.

‘Such a kind man. His wife’s a lucky woman,’ she said repeatedly.

Whenever there was something she wanted he would invite me to go with him.

‘Bring Stevie for the ride,’ he would say. ‘Give your mum a bit of a break.’ And, of course, my mother never objected.

‘Let’s stop for a moment,’ was his frequent suggestion when we reached the wooded area. His arms would go round me and tiny kisses rained down on my cheeks.

‘Do you like that?’ he would ask as his hand stroked my back gently, and to begin with I did.

Gradually, just a little bit at a time, the nature of his kisses changed. There were no more fairy kisses of eyelashes brushing across my cheek; instead there were more of the ‘Let me show you how grown-ups kiss’, and I already knew that I did not like the way grown-ups did it.

When his tongue forced its way through my lips it felt so huge, so slimy, that I was scared. ‘What would happen if it slid deeper into my throat and made me choke?’ was the question I asked myself as I wondered if I would be able to breathe if that happened. I felt my body tense when his hand moved to my legs. I wanted them to stroke my back but they never did any more; instead they crept under my dress and slid up my skinny bare thighs. I would feel his fingers getting closer and closer to my knickers and clasped my legs together as tightly as possible, but his determined fingers always managed to creep under the elastic before he stopped.

‘Do you like that, Marianne?’ he would ask each time and I was too frightened of his displeasure to tell him ‘No’.

If I delayed in answering him correctly a look of disappointment would appear on his face and, wanting to please him, I would do as he asked, throw my arms round his neck and whisper ‘yes’, then kiss him on the cheek.

That was the second step taken.