Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (14 page)

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘But what will Mummy say? I don’t want Mummy to smack me.’

‘Mummy won’t smack you, I promise. I’ll explain everything to her.’

‘Do I have to go back to the cottage?’ I pleaded. ‘Can’t I stay here with Nan? Or with Aunt Gilly?’

‘Nan’s too old to look after a little girl all the time. She’s got her own life to lead. And Gilly has enough on her plate dealing with Alison. Besides, Mum and I would be too lonely without you. We want our Lady Jane to live with us.’

‘Couldn’t I go and find my real mummy? I’d come back and visit you sometimes.’

‘It’s just not possible,’ Dad said, looking very troubled. ‘But everything will be fine now. You’ll see. Mummy won’t be cross with you.’

I looked down into my porridge feeling worried. I knew she was going to be cross; I was sure of it. But at
least I didn’t have to see Grandpa Pittam any more. I sensed that this was the end of the matter and it would not be mentioned again. No family would want this kind of thing to be known and talked about, so it would be kept private and dealt with behind closed doors. There was not even a whisper of the idea that the police should be brought in. Charles Pittam would escape punishment for his crimes.

We all went to church together that morning and Dad and I stayed for Sunday lunch then we drove back to Shernal Green. He chatted on the way about how well Nigel was doing and he asked me about school, but he didn’t say anything about what Grandpa Pittam had been doing to me. I think he was embarrassed.

When we arrived at the cottage, I went to find Janie and took her out to the garden to play. I saw Mum and Dad sitting at the kitchen table and Mum was smoking heavily, lighting one cigarette from the end of the last one, but I didn’t hear raised voices. Did she pretend to be surprised when he told her I’d been abused by her father? I expect she tried to claim it wasn’t true, that I was making it all up. But Dad stuck to the deal he’d agreed with Nan Casey, and Mum had no choice but to accept it.

Over supper that evening she gave me a few sharp looks but all she said was: ‘Your Dad and I have agreed that when I visit my mum and dad’s on Saturday afternoons, you’ll stay with him. Is that what you want?’ Her tone was cool and I could sense danger. For the first time, I became aware of a reddish glow around her, something I now refer to as an aura. The Clown spirit taught me that the colour of a person’s aura reflects their moods and true feelings as well as their basic character.

‘Yes,’ I said, staring down at my lap.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ she said. But I knew it wasn’t.

T
he next day I woke up to find it had snowed in the night. The garden was a sparkling wonderland of low sunlight twinkling on heavily laden branches. The canal had frozen over and the lawn was a pristine carpet, except for one set of footprints leading through the snow – probably that hungry old fox, I guessed.

I didn’t see Mum at breakfast time. I got myself wrapped up warmly, ate some cereal and headed off down the lane. Lots of children didn’t come into school that day because roads were blocked and the buses weren’t running. It was a fun day because the teachers played games with us; we did quizzes and colouring in and listened to stories instead of normal lessons. At four o’clock I tramped home along the darkening lanes, my feet dragging. This would be the first time I’d been on my own with Mum since I’d dropped my bombshell at the weekend. I wasn’t sure how she was going to react but I was very apprehensive.

I slipped in the front door as quietly as I could but she was listening for me in the kitchen and already had her revenge prepared.

‘Come in here,’ she ordered. ‘Take off your boots and tights.’

I obeyed. The red aura around her was strong and pulsating. She opened the back door and I saw the blue bucket in the middle of the lawn. It was filled with water and there was a film of ice over the top.

‘Go and stand in the bucket,’ she ordered.

‘Mum, I can’t. I’ll freeze.’

‘If you don’t go I’ll make you. Is that what you want?’

Still I cowered, so she grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out the back door on to the snowy ground. ‘Get in the bucket!’ She hit me across the head. ‘Now!’ She hit me again.

I raised one foot and shuddered with shock as I lowered it through the crackling ice into the freezing water.

‘And the other!’ Mum hit me again, so I put the other foot in and immediately started shivering violently.

‘How dare you accuse my father of all those things? You little bitch. You’re not fit to kiss the ground he walks on.’

‘But, Mum, he did them. You saw him,’ I said, and she hit me so hard I fell out of the bucket into the snow.

‘Get back in there.’ She hauled me up and forced me back into the icy water. ‘I’m going to make your life a bloody misery. Up to now it’s been a picnic. You mark my words.’

It seemed like ages that she made me stand in that bucket but it was probably only ten minutes or so. My toes quickly went completely numb, and I began shivering compulsively. Although it was only four-thirty, the moon and stars were out and the owl was hooting as if it was midnight. I had visions of losing my toes to frostbite, like a mountaineer I had read about at school.

When at last Mum allowed me back into the kitchen, my feet were a purply-red colour. She had filled a basin with warm water and told me to step into it, and I did so unthinkingly. The pain was agonizing as circulation returned to the damaged tissues and I jumped straight back out again.

‘Get in there now!’ Mum forced me back in.

I nearly fainted with the indescribable, raw pain. I developed chilblains on my toes that chafed against my shoes and made me limp on the walk to and from school all that week and the next. However, my punishments for telling on Grandpa Pittam were by no means over. I was beaten with a big stick, made to sleep in the pigsty despite the fact there was snow on the ground, and I frequently went without dinner in the next couple of weeks.

It was terrible and I suffered a great deal – but knowing I would never have to see my grandfather again made it bearable for me. It was over, at last.

Mum went to visit her parents alone the following Saturday afternoon – no one seemed to think it strange that she still wanted to visit the parent who had committed such horrors on her daughter, but she must have maintained the pretence that she didn’t believe me. Dad and I dropped her at the bus stop and picked her up on her return, and I could tell she was incensed when she got back, just itching to punish me. There were some clips round the ear and vicious pinches, but my real punishment had to wait till the Monday after school when Dad wasn’t around.

I crept home to find Mum cooking dinner. There was a big stick laid out on the table, ready to beat me with.

‘Come in here!’ she ordered. I stood, looking at the floor, trying not to think about the beating that was coming. ‘Grandpa told me on Saturday that you’ve broken his heart. How could you do that to an old man? He’s very ill, he’s got heart problems and it’s all because of you.’ She was shoogling sausages in the frying pan.

With Nan Casey and Aunt Gilly behind me, I felt more able to stand my ground. ‘How could he do these things to me? He shouldn’t have done them, Mum.’

‘You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You just make up lie after lie. He probably hasn’t got long to live and you spread these malicious rumours to poison his last years.’

‘But he’s evil. I hate him.’

Mum lifted the frying pan in temper and jabbed it at me. I tried to duck but it caught me across the left cheekbone and sent me flying to the ground. The sausages fell out. Mum picked up the stick and started whacking my legs with it. I curled up foetal style, clutching my cheek. I could feel that it was badly hurt but didn’t dare take my hand away to check.

Mum continued to hit me with the stick as hard as she could, screaming, ‘You bitch! You lying bitch.’ When she got into a frenzy like this there was no option but to let her work it out. I didn’t cry, although the blows stung my bottom and the backs of my thighs. I was more worried about the pain in my cheek and a dizziness and nausea I recognized from previous occasions when she’d hit me especially hard on the head.

When Mum had beaten me enough to work off her adrenaline, she dropped the stick and kicked me hard on
the bottom. ‘Get up now and clean yourself up. What a disgusting mess.’

She sat down at the kitchen table and I heard the click of her lighter and a sucking noise as she inhaled. I lifted my head slowly, and that’s when I realized my face was burned quite badly. The skin was tight and already blistering.

‘Wash your face,’ she instructed.

I staggered to the kitchen sink and rinsed my face and hands, but my cheekbone hurt badly where the pan had hit it.

‘Mum, I think the bone might be broken. It feels very bad.’

‘Of course it’s not broken. Don’t be ridiculous. Go out into the garden and don’t come in again until you’ve stopped being so rude about my father.’

I went to sit in the pigsty. I wanted to feel safe, in a place where there was only one entrance and no one could sneak up behind me. I also wanted to talk to the spirits.

‘Keep splashing it with water,’ my guardian angel said, appearing as a warm glow in the corner. ‘Try to be calm.’ ‘She’s going to have a scar,’ another voice commented. ‘And a black eye,’ said a third. ‘Look, it’s coming up already.’

My head was pounding so I lay down on one of the old sweaters I kept out there, pulled a coat on top of me and fell asleep for a while. When I woke it was pitch black. A single light was on in Mum’s bedroom but there was no sign of Dad’s car and I didn’t feel safe enough to go back into the cottage without him there so I decided to spend the night outside. It felt good to have a bit of self-determination instead of meekly obeying Mum’s orders all
the time. I ate a couple of biscuits, drank some juice then settled down to sleep for the night. Most of the nocturnal creatures were hibernating so I slept without interruption. Also, I was probably concussed, and that could have contributed to a deeper than normal sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I was stiff with cold and my cheek was throbbing, but my mind was working overtime. I needed to find somewhere else to live, because if I stayed at the cottage Mum would end up killing me. We seemed to be in a cycle where the violence was getting more extreme and I hated to think where it might end. It was time to find my real mother now but I didn’t know how to go about tracking her down. The only thing I could think was that maybe Nan Casey would be able to help.

Dad had recently started giving me pocket money of a shilling every Saturday. I’d been saving it up and had almost a pound now. I resolved to save more money then use it to run away from home. I’d find out about the buses first and make my way to Nan Casey’s and throw myself on her mercy. She’d believed me about Grandpa Pittam’s abuse, so surely I should be able to convince her about what Mum was doing to me?

When I saw the kitchen light come on, I got up and made my way shakily to the back door. I washed my face and hands at the water butt. The left side of my face felt oddly swollen and I couldn’t see properly through my left eye. When I opened the back door to ask for a towel, Mum was visibly shocked at my appearance.

‘Look at the state of you!’

‘Can I come in and get dressed for school?’

‘You’ll need a clean shirt and cardigan. You’ve got those all dirty.’

I went upstairs to change and when I looked in the bathroom mirror I saw what Mum had been shocked about. My left eye was swollen up like a golf ball, blackish red in colour, and there was a burn about two inches long just over my cheekbone, where the flesh was red and shiny. I looked like a hideous goblin from a picture book.

Mum had laid out some cereal for me. ‘If anyone asks, you were running across the kitchen when you tripped and your face hit the frying pan.’

I considered this and supposed it was a plausible story. ‘What about Dad? What will I tell him?’

‘He won’t be back till the weekend. We’ll see how it looks by then.’

‘Where is he?’ I asked, feeling brave. I had a hold of sorts over Mum while I was sporting such a dramatic injury. She knew I could easily blurt out the truth to a sympathetic teacher, if I chose – and who would Dad believe if I told him about it next weekend?

‘The usual place,’ Mum said. ‘Eat your breakfast and go to school.’

‘Where’s the usual place?’

‘Mind your own business.’

Was he with his other woman again? Or was there something else I was not being told about? I had no way of finding out.

After school that day I checked the bus stop and noted that buses left for Worcester every hour at ten past the hour. If I caught one of those buses then surely there would be another one in Worcester that would take me on to Birmingham then another that would take me north to Rugeley? It occurred to me that I had better try and find a note of Nan’s phone number so that I could call her and say I was coming. It would be terrible to arrive and find she wasn’t even there.

Mum had a tiny address book that she kept in her handbag. However, the bag was usually lying somewhere in the room where she was sitting so it wasn’t easy to get hold of. I bided my time and a few days later, when we were watching the news on television, Mum left the room to make herself a cup of tea. Fingers trembling, I unzipped the top of the bag and pulled out her little floral notebook. Nan’s number was under ‘C’ for Casey. I didn’t have a pencil handy to write it down, so I just memorized it: ‘764 823’. I slipped the book back into the bag and zipped up the top again, trying to position it at precisely the same angle as it had been before. My heart was beating loudly but Mum didn’t suspect a thing when she came back into the room. As soon as I got the chance, I slipped out to the hall and scribbled the number on a piece of paper, which I put in my blazer pocket.

Dad came home on the Friday night and was horrified to see the state of my eye. Mum got her story in first, as always.

‘It gave me the fright of my life,’ Mum told him before I could say anything. ‘Her hands were in her pockets as usual, and she tripped over just as I was moving the pan off the heat. She fell headfirst on to it. What a mess it all was.’

Dad was examining the mark. ‘You’re going to have a scar there, Lady Jane.’ He stroked my hair. ‘Still, I suppose scars add character. You do look a sight.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ I said gruffly. Mum smiled, triumphant that yet again I hadn’t told on her.

I couldn’t help wondering why Dad didn’t question my injuries more closely, especially as they appeared just after Grandpa’s abuse had been revealed. But I knew that he always refrained from challenging Mum about anything for fear she would blow up. These days they would no doubt have admitted their mistake and divorced, but it simply wasn’t an option at the time, so they lived almost separate lives and whenever Dad did come home, he’d escape again out to the pub straight after dinner.

Dad gave me my pocket money on the Saturday and I added it to my savings, which I kept in the hiding place under the wardrobe. I decided to run away on Monday, because Mondays had always been Mum’s cruellest days and I couldn’t face another scene like the frying pan one.

On Monday morning, I sneaked my money into my schoolbag, along with a spare sweater and pants and my toothbrush. I was worried that Mum might see it bulging as I left for school but she didn’t comment. I was only a hundred yards down the lane when I felt in my blazer pocket for Nan’s phone number and found it wasn’t there. I searched the other pocket, and the inside zipped one, but it had gone. Mum must have emptied my pockets over the weekend. Had she seen the number there? If so, I could be in huge trouble when I got home.

I considered just catching the bus after school anyway, but didn’t dare without Nan’s number. I racked my brains but could no longer remember it. All I needed was another evening when I could get access to Mum’s address book and I would run away the following day. However, when I got home that evening, Mum grabbed my bag from me as soon as I walked in the door and opened it.

‘Planning to escape, were you? You wouldn’t have got far with a toothbrush, a cardigan and a pair of pants.’

I kept quiet.

‘Were you thinking of going to your Nan’s?’ She had a nasty tone to her voice that made me wary. ‘Well, you’d have been out of luck because she’s in hospital. She’s got pneumonia.’

‘What’s pneumonia?’

‘It’s when your lungs fill up with fluid and you can’t breathe any more.’