I Won't Forgive What You Did (11 page)

We used to do this because Mr White was now terminally ill. He became ill shortly after we moved, and with his condition worsening all the time we lived there, he eventually asked my parents to help him run his business, with the promise they’d have first refusal to take it over and run it themselves when he died. More importantly, he also promised that they could move into his house, which was directly across the road from his lorry yard.

His death upset my father greatly. Despite their shouting and swearing, they were evidently close, playing the father–son roles for each other that neither man had in real life. After his death, however, it transpired, via his solicitor, that he’d sold the business to a Welsh couple called Mr and Mrs Wilson. The Wilsons knew nothing about livestock haulage, and were keen from the start to enlist my father’s help to show them how things should be done. My father couldn’t bear this. Livid about having been cheated out of what he’d thought would be his, he hated the Wilsons, and lost his temper frequently, shouting obscenities and ranting, and generally behaving unpleasantly and patronizingly towards them, even though he did the work and ran the business. Eventually Mr Wilson brought his son Simon into the company and put him through HGV training. In this way, my father became superfluous to the business, and in the summer of 1968 he was told by the Wilsons he was no longer needed and, as a consequence, would lose both job and house.

Furious, my parents decided to go to court – with the length of their tenancy they could be classed as sitting tenants – but the court ruled against them and ordered the family to vacate the house within three months. Naturally, the council were required to step in, as it would soon have an unemployed father and his homeless children on its hands. They offered us a small three-bedroomed end-of-terrace house on a council estate in the village, very close to where Nan lived.

I’d felt anxious about moving from the moment we were told – particularly about being so close now to Nan – and the move, when it came, was horrendous. All the animals – hundreds of them – had to be taken to market. The cat had died, so only the dog came with us. My mother seemed not in the least upset about losing her menagerie, however – and far too busy stressing about what was going to happen to all her rubbish.

Eventually we were finally installed or, rather, my mother’s junk, in its mind-boggling quantity, was installed, and we all had to move in around it.

My nan was horrified and very cross with my father for inflicting us on her. She made no secret of the fact that she wasn’t happy about having this unkempt rabble of children, relatives or otherwise, moving in so close to where she lived. She wasted no time in rushing around the village, making sure everyone was in possession of the facts: why we were all like we were (my mother’s input, obviously), what had happened with the business (her son was blameless, clearly) and how she did so much to help us out, and how it simply wasn’t right to squeeze such a big family into such a tiny house and how we’d have been much better off staying where we were (i.e. well away from
her
).

The house, which would be our last, and the one in which my father, now aged seventy-nine, still lives, did feel tiny after our last one. It was completely unmodernized and had just three tiny bedrooms, a small old-fashioned bathroom, and a small lounge with an open fire. The kitchen again was tiny, but at least it did have a small scullery tacked onto the back.

As it was the end of the terrace, it was situated on a corner – in this case, a chilly windswept one, lashed by the wind and rain. When we moved in the decor was startling. Everywhere had been painted in bright primary colours – the sort of colours that hadn’t been seen in either of our previous gloomy homes. Even so, it wasn’t cheerful – it looked horrible. This prompted my mother to make the decision to repaint the lounge ceiling and kitchen walls in gloss paint, in order to facilitate better cleaning. I was completely bemused by this idea. Her track record for cleaning was essentially non-existent. When exactly did she think this would happen?

We’d be lucky to see any walls anyway. My mother’s junk, which had already taken over the whole of our previous house, completely overwhelmed all these tiny new rooms. The garden too, which was narrow, but at least of a good length, was filled up with her overflow of rubbish straight away. Any space left was soon taken by my father’s mass of belongings: gates from his lorry, planks of wood to repair sections of the tailboard, and the large partitions he used inside it to separate the animals. In short we soon proved to be exactly the sort of household my nan had warned the neighbours about.

But suddenly we did
have
neighbours, not just the one or two we’d had in the past. My father seemed to take little time exploiting that fact. Always a womanizer, he had often not been where he was supposed to be when out moving livestock. But now he had many more women to choose from. My mother, who by now was having rows with him constantly, told me the binoculars he kept on their bedroom windowsill were so he could see into our female neighbours’ bedrooms. I was shocked. Even though she lived in a dream world I felt certain she was telling the truth.

For me, though, the move was a very big step. It felt like I’d suddenly been transported into the real world, with all its families and happenings and so much going on. Perhaps now that I wasn’t living in the middle of nowhere I’d feel less isolated and out of things. Perhaps I could pluck up the courage to make friends. Even put behind me all the horrible recollections I still had about what had happened with Colin.

But as it turned out I wasn’t prepared. It was more like suddenly being given access to unlimited ice cream and, having never experienced the sensation before, not recognizing the point where you should stop eating.

It would be a while before I learned that lesson, however. In the short term I felt the first stirrings of optimism that I’d ever felt. There was a youth club in the village hall my brother had started going to and you had to be thirteen to join. Being eligible, my plan was to walk down to the village hall, join, and try to make some friends.

I was standing looking out of the kitchen window that afternoon, aware of a rare and pleasing feeling of real excitement. Grandpops had called round for his usual visit, and he and my mother were out in the back garden. I could tell he was discussing with her what changes she could make (but probably wouldn’t ever) to the garden.

They came back indoors, my mother to make a pot of tea, and Grandpops to sit in his usual armchair, now stationed in our new sitting room. The chair was next to the sitting-room door, which opened to the staircase and hall. My mother had recently bought a second-hand bureau, in which to keep, among other things, all the paperwork and ledgers for the new rival haulage business she and my father had decided to set up. Opposite this there was the usual collection of her belongings, stacked in a big heap the other side of the doorway. So in order to go upstairs and start getting ready, I had to walk very close to Pops to get past.

I had, over the last couple of years, grown increasingly adept at keeping my distance from him, as he continued to grab me and ‘tickle’ me whenever he visited. Though the foul things he did were still a part of my life – a weekly torture – I’d no means of knowing what he did wasn’t normal. I thought it must be simply what grandads did to granddaughters everywhere, whether they liked it or not. As with boys, I didn’t know whether other girls liked it. All I did know, and I felt this more strongly all the time, was that I didn’t like it, didn’t want it, and would avoid him whenever possible, today being no exception.

Him lunging at me, laughing, as I tried to slip past him was therefore nothing I hadn’t expected. However, I was preoccupied today with going to the youth club, and thinking about what I’d wear that would make me look good. When he then grabbed me and pulled me tight against him, onto his lap, it now felt like a real invasion, in a way it never had before. It might have been to do with my hormones – by now I’d just entered puberty – or it might have been because it reminded me of what had happened with Colin.

I didn’t know; all I knew was I hated what he was doing and felt a huge surge of disgust. I had my back to him – unsurprisingly, he’d grabbed me from behind – and my hair immediately became tangled in the pocket watch in his breast pocket, snagging as I tried to move my head away. His arms were tight around mine – they were pinned to my sides now – and he immediately began making the familiar noise with his teeth. He moved one of his arms, securing me more tightly with the other, while he began moving his free hand very fast over my torso, seemingly intent on making contact with my breasts. He had my legs pinned, in exactly the same way he always did, with his own legs crossed tightly around them. He got his hands beneath my top, and then my thin cotton bra, and was now grabbing each breast in turn, clasping them both roughly and making a new sound as he did so – a sort of ‘wah’ sound he made in time with his groping – and pulling on each nipple, very hard.

It really hurt. But I couldn’t get away; he was too strong. I felt so embarrassed, so ashamed and so totally violated – aware something new and horrendous was going on, and it sickened me. I struggled and struggled, rendered speechless with shock, but also too busy fighting him off, and eventually, almost casually, he released his grip and let me go.

As I fled up the stairs, I could hear him laughing. Laughing, as if what he had just done to his own granddaughter was nothing but an amusing bit of horseplay. I threw myself on my bed, holding my breasts in my hands. They’d let me down – that’s what they’d done; they’d let me down. And I hated, really
hated
them for it. I started crying and couldn’t stop. What was
wrong
with me? And why didn’t somebody do something to help me? But who? What could anyone
do?

It would be a very long time before the scales fell from my eyes and I’d come to accept the foul ordeals I’d suffered at the hands of my own grandad for what they really were – sexual abuse. But this one encounter made a serious impression. On me, because I knew I’d never let him near me again, and on him, because it was soon clear he knew that. He had reached a stage or, more correctly, I’d reached an age, where his casual masturbation with me as a sex toy was becoming untenable. I don’t know whether he worried I’d tell someone (who?) or whether he just had a sixth sense he had to stop it – who knew? I even wondered if the real reason Grandpops stopped was because what he most enjoyed was the fear in a powerless little girl’s eyes, and I was little and powerless no longer. But whatever the reason, he never touched me again from that day. Not that he needed to, I remember reflecting later. He could now turn his attention to my young sister Karen.

I abandoned my plans to go to the youth club that evening. I curled up into a ball on my bed and went to sleep. At least that way I could blot out the shame and humiliation.

My new freedom from the attentions of Grandpops was a profound relief. But another big challenge was looming. I was due to go back to school almost as soon as we moved in. Doing so was getting more difficult with every year, and my growing insight into my problems made it worse. I’d run away from school nearly every day, either at the start of the day or at lunchtime.

When I was in school, my behaviour was by now being noticed. I started dressing inappropriately, rolling up my school skirt in a provocative manner, and accessorizing our rigorously enforced uniform with brightly coloured chiffon scarves, in an attempt to be rebellious and so have some chance of fitting in.

In reality, I began spending most of my time in a state of anxiety, and often hid in the domestic science store cupboard. I would also take the opportunity to steal food for my mother while I was in there, because she seemed to be so sad and hopeless, and I desperately wanted to make her better. It also relieved the feelings of guilt that racked me, for hating her so much at the same time. Also, perhaps if she felt better she’d clean the house, come to open days, care about my work, and become more like other girls’ mums.

Bunking off, too, presented opportunities for stealing. A lot of the time all I’d do was sit in a bus shelter, sad, cold and hungry, ducking if a car or a person came by that might ask what I was up to. But sometimes I’d get a bus into town. There I’d steal clothes for myself and my mother, mostly by walking into dress shops, choosing something, trying it on under my own clothes in the fitting room, then marching straight out.

I was absolutely terrified of getting caught. If I had been I knew I’d feel even worse, but then I’d go back and do it again anyway. There was a part of me that felt elated by the sensation and, just as would happen later when I would drink too much, each time I stole I craved that excitement again.

When I was still thirteen I found a job. My father had been ranting about keeping us ‘fucking kids’, and how it was time we all got ‘fucking jobs’, so I looked around and got a Saturday job, working in the local grocery store. This afforded yet more opportunities for stealing. I already spent most of my earnings on food for my mother, but stole a few extras too. I’d steal things like tins of processed peas and mince and sometimes – it being her favourite dessert – a treacle tart and a tin of cream.

I felt, and still feel, hugely guilty about this. My employers were an elderly couple, and while he used to send me up ladders, and then stand under them, she was caring and lovely and very motherly. Though the three women who also worked there were rather snobbish and often unkind (one even pointed out to me how she’d hate it if her daughter ‘grew up like’ me) the lady owner was always friendly. I could easily have gone home for lunch when I worked there, but she’d prepare me thinly sliced bread and butter, with a small pork pie, tomato and a freshly brewed pot of tea. This small act of kindness always made me feel special, as did the feeling of satisfaction – something I didn’t experience anywhere else – that I was good at what I did, both quick and efficient, and that I knew exactly what I was doing.