Never a Hero to Me (17 page)

Sitting at that table, where he presumably ate breakfast with his wife and children, that horrible man unzipped his trousers and exposed himself. ‘You know what to do,’ he told me, ‘I know you do.’

I actually wasn’t sure what he meant but I knew it was one of only two options – he either wanted me to use my hand or my mouth and, after the experience with my dad, I knew I would gag if it was the latter. I hated myself for it, but in order to prevent him forcing me to use my mouth, I masturbated him. He touched me throughout but it thankfully didn’t last for long. As soon as it was over, he stroked me on the cheek and told me I was a good girl. ‘Can I go now?’ I asked. ‘Of course you can.’ I picked up my coat and went towards the door.

‘Tracy!’ he called. ‘You haven’t done the babysitting and I’m letting you off early, but take this anyway.’ He threw ten Deutschmarks at me in a gesture of generosity. How kind – I hadn’t looked after his kids but I had been a good girl and provided him with sexual release. Dad would be so proud. I took the money – I still wanted to go on the skiing trip – and left.

Dad wasn’t in when I got home, but the next night he came back from the pub and came into my room. ‘Good girl,’ he said, ‘well done.’ He left without another word.

This happened a few times and moved on to Billy Stoppard cuddling me before I masturbated him. He also started touching me between the legs just as Dad did. I was still getting abused at home during this time too – it never seemed to stop. ‘You’re a good girl,’ Dad would tell me after he or Billy had done what they wanted, ‘you’re my good girl. You’re Daddy’s girl and your mum will be all right now.’

But she wasn’t. Her health was heading downhill fast and she wasn’t getting any better, no matter how many awful things I did with horrible men. The next time I was at Billy’s house, he told me to take my dress off. There was something about that suggestion that worried me – I thought back to the photographs and magazines he had shown me and wondered whether he would be getting a camera out.

I refused.

It had been a while since I had done that and I think he was quite shocked. ‘Are you kidding?’ he asked. ‘Since when do you get to call the shots?’

‘I don’t want to, I just don’t want to.’

‘Tough. Get over here or I’ll tell your dad what an awkward little bitch you are.’

For once in my life, I had a stroke of luck. I heard the door open and Chrissie come in. Billy shot up to give her an excuse about mixing up his work times and I took the opportunity to leave. I never went back.

When I got home, Dad was waiting. ‘Where’s your babysitting money?’ he asked. This was code – he knew if I’d been paid by Billy, then I had allowed him to abuse me and my dad could hold his head high in the pub that week, secure in the knowledge that his little girl had done him proud.

‘There’s no money and I’m not going back,’ I told him defiantly.

‘Is that right?’

He stormed off – presumably to the pub to find out from Billy what had happened. When he came back, he came straight into my room and took my piggy bank. Without a word, he emptied out all of the money I’d saved. He left the room and shouted to my brother. ‘Gary! How do you fancy going on that skiing trip? Your sister isn’t keen any more.’ I heard Gary whoop with joy as my dad twisted the knife in further. ‘Here, take this for spending money.’ The Deutschmarks I had earned in such a horrific way were handed over just like that.

I couldn’t even cry any more. Maybe Dad was right; maybe I was a prostitute. I also started to believe again what he had always told me about my collusion determining Mum’s health because, after standing up to Billy Stoppard, she was taken into hospital in a state worse than she had been for many years. This time one of her ulcers had been awful. I could smell the paraffin oil that she used when things got bad and she was losing an awful amount of weight as she couldn’t keep anything down. The physical and sexual abuse got worse when she was in hospital and my dad must have known it was rape, because I spent every episode crying, struggling, and telling him I didn’t want it.

Dad was still going to the pub a lot, when he wasn’t drinking at home, and he was still getting me to meet him there some nights. The situation which had occurred with Billy Stoppard wasn’t the only time I was sent to places to ‘babysit’ with the sole purpose of putting me in the hands of men who wanted to abuse me. I was in no doubt I was being asked to come to the pub to be shown off to men who would be interested in doing the same. It was like some sort of perverted audition in front of a group of paedophiles.

There was one guy who was part of the group there who I had actually heard of in the base. He was notorious among the kids. He was called Norman Parker and had four kids of his own. He was a good bit older than my dad, maybe fifteen years older; I knew that because he was on his way out of the Army. He was higher up than my dad and in a different regiment – this in itself was telling, as usually the ranks stuck to being mates with people on the same level as them. The more I’ve thought about this while writing this book, the more I’ve realised that the group in the pub cut across all ages, backgrounds and ranks; but they were close. There was clearly something binding them, a common interest or mutual hobby.

On this one night when I had turned up to meet my dad at his request, I was standing by the side of his table as usual (I was never invited to sit and would have felt just as uncomfortable doing that anyway) when Norman Parker appeared from the toilets. There was a drink waiting for him at the table and as he approached, he shouted out, ‘Who do we have here then, Harry?’ The fact that he asked my dad, by name, again suggested to me that they had all been talking about me before I got there. Now they were seeing me in the flesh, so to speak.

‘I told you I had a daughter,’ Dad replied. ‘This is her. This is Tracy.’ They all knew he had a daughter anyway, they knew us from the base, but this didn’t sound like him giving out information, this sounded like him presenting me in a different way, as something for them to consider.

‘Oh,’ said Norman, ‘you’ll like it at my house. You can play with my kiddies. All the kiddies like it there.’

I knew exactly what he was talking about – he wasn’t referring to his own brood as they were all older than me, he was meaning the huge gang of children who always hung around his cellar. ‘You’ll have to come round, have some fun,’ he continued.

My response was immediate. ‘No thanks.’

He looked at me seriously, then at my dad. ‘Harry, I said she’ll have to come round, won’t she?’

‘Yes. Yes, she will,’ Dad confirmed.

‘That’s settled then,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll see you at the play den tomorrow.’ All of the men around the table laughed.

The next day, a weekend, Dad got me out of bed early. ‘Come on,’ he told me, ‘you’re going to Norman’s today.’

‘I am not,’ I replied.

‘You fucking are. I won’t be shown up again, so get out of your pit and get washed.’

There was no arguing but I had no intention of just doing whatever that horrible man wanted me to once I got to his ‘play den’.

The house was a tip. Mrs Parker was huge and spent all day eating if gossip was to believed. The kids weren’t wild exactly, but she didn’t give a toss about them. And Mr Parker? He spent all day in his cellar playing games with the local kids and reading. I had heard from others that you could always get porn there, and I had also heard that he liked to play particular games. The stories I had been told about Norman Parker had shocked me – no one knew more than me that men with unnatural interests in children existed, but I had never heard it spoken about so openly.

When I got there, he already had a lot of children in his garden. There were bikes and toys everywhere, and he left them out constantly – I could only think that was to lure kids in. What I couldn’t understand was, if there was all this talk about him, why did other parents let their children go there unsupervised? I knew why my dad allowed it, but surely not every child there had a pervert for a parent?

Norman was all over the kids. He would chase them and play hide and seek, he would tickle them and throw them up in the air. It was obvious to me what was happening, I recognised the signs and had a sense of it. I was terrified I would get drawn into it too – I also felt that, if Parker was accepted, then it would be even harder for me to get away as so many people seemed to let him get away with whatever he was doing.

On that first day, he didn’t touch me. He seemed content to just let me watch what went on and was keen to keep emphasising how much fun everyone had, how much all the local kids liked being there. I didn’t tell him what they said about him behind his back.

A few days later, Dad said I was to go back. He took me as he said he had a book to exchange with Norman. When we got there, the book was handed over and Dad left. ‘Come on,’ said Norman, ‘let me show you my play den.’ We went down to the cellar and, again, there were toys everywhere. He had lots of bookshelves lining the walls and bowls of sweets lying around. There were also lots of camp beds, lined up in an L-shape and covered in dirty sheets, with stains on them like shoe prints. In fact, the whole place was filthy.

I realised I was the only other person there – no one else was in the cellar or the garden. Other children had done these areas up as their spaces, but this was clearly his territory. Everything was laid out, as it was in the garden, to tempt children. Action Man dolls, tricycles, sledges, balls, dolls, teddies, board games – it was like an Aladdin’s cave. My alarm bells had been ringing since the first time I had met him – I was getting smarter and I had been abused enough to know the signs – but I had no idea who I could or would tell about this. Everyone seemed to be blind to him – or perhaps they just didn’t care. Why was no one asking why this man had all of this lying about when his own children were far too old for it?

As I looked around, he spoke. ‘Fancy a piggyback?’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Do you fancy a piggyback?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why would I?’

‘It might be fun – it would be fun,’ he replied. ‘You can have sweets. You can have as many sweets as you like.’

‘I don’t want sweets and I don’t want a piggyback. Actually, I want to go home.’

‘Well, you can’t. Your dad said you’ve to be a good girl.’

I was sick of this. I was sick of being passed from man to man like an insignificant little toy. He was suddenly distracted by the sound of some children coming downstairs and I went to sit on a garden chair in the sun. If I had to stay, I’d keep away from him.

He was easily distracted and I managed to spend the rest of the day without having to talk to him again. When I got home, Dad asked whether I had been good. The code again. I ignored him and went to my room. I had stood up to Billy Stoppard and I would do so to Norman Parker.

‘Your mum’s in hospital and we both know it’s because of you,’ Dad said, storming in. You’ll go to Norman’s again and you’ll do as you’re fucking told.’ He stood there waiting for a response. I think the fact that I wasn’t scared into making a commitment was probably a shock to him.

The next time I was taken there, I had been thinking about mum in hospital. The threat didn’t have the same power as it used to but I did still wonder whether there was anything I could do to make her better. It’s hard to break away from that sort of conditioning, even when, in retrospect, you can see how ridiculous it was.

Again, Norman offered me a piggyback ride, but this time when I refused he walked over to me and picked me up. I was kicking my legs, but the garden was full, which made me unwilling to create a scene but also had me wondering whether he would have the nerve to try anything with an audience around him. He did. His hands were holding on to my buttocks and his fingers were getting closer and closer to my knickers. I tried to kick him harder but it made no difference. He was laughing and running around the garden with me, and still trying to stick his fingers up inside me – he had clearly had a lot of practice. I dug my nails into the back of his neck, which must have surprised him as he gave a little yelp and dropped me onto the grass.

For the rest of the morning, Norman sat on a garden chair, smoking and watching everyone. He was a scruffy, slobbish man, unlike my dad, and he kept scratching himself as he sat there. His youngest boy was there that day, although he was older than me, and he was playing hide and seek with two girls. The girls went off to hide and Norman came over to me. ‘Right, we’re it – you’ll have to help.’

I pointed to his son. ‘No, he’s it and I don’t want to.’

The boy was watching his father and ran off immediately. Norman grabbed my hand and said, ‘Join in – it’ll be fun.’ He pulled me behind a hedge and started to grope me, but I wasn’t having any of it. His hands were all over me in seconds and I felt sick at the idea of having yet another monster pawing me. I ran for the gate as he shouted, ‘I’ll tell your dad!’ I didn’t care. I’d rather take the beating than what that horrible man had planned for me.

I went home and tried to work out what I’d say to Dad. When I got in, he was just putting the phone down. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, looking at the worry on his face.

‘It’s your mum,’ he replied. This is it, I thought. She’s dead, and it’s all because of me. ‘She’s worse – they need to move her.’

The doctors had decided to ship her back to the UK. They still didn’t know what was wrong with her but were getting very worried about the cumulative effects of the illness; her vital signs were down and even the intravenous drip wasn’t working as well as they’d hoped. Later that week, just as summer started, Dad announced with no warning that he couldn’t look after me and Gary any more. We were to be sent off to his family back in Scotland. Gary ranted and raved about this, but I was delighted. I didn’t know Dad’s folks very well, but anything was better than what I was living in.

Gary went to stay with one auntie, I went to another. Dad came with us for a few days and stayed with the sister who had Gary. When he travelled back to Germany, he didn’t even bother to come and say goodbye to me. I didn’t care. From the moment I arrived at my Auntie Dee’s, it was heaven. It was during the summer holidays so I had no school to worry about and it was such a relief to get away from home. That summer, 1973, in Scotland was my release. I got the chance to be a normal kid.