Street Kid (12 page)

One day, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Mum came up to me whilst I was putting on my coat to go home.

‘Here, Judy,’ she said, ‘I want you to have this.’

She took hold of my wrist and fastened a watch around it. Although she was as brusque as usual, I could sense something, like a little tendril of affection, stretch out and touch me.

‘Happy Christmas, dear,’ she said and patted my shoulder.

I felt then, for the first time, that Mum
had
wanted to see me again. She wasn’t just being driven by the desire to be a thorn in my father’s side. But, whether because of Paddy’s bullying or her own feelings of guilt – or both – she hadn’t felt capable of doing anything about it. And once she did have me back, she hadn’t known quite what to do to make amends to the child who’d been torn from the family.

I wished then that I could have told my mother everything: how my dad and Freda had treated me, about the deckchair man, and how unhappy I’d been at home. But I knew I’d never dare. She’d only spill the beans to Dad, and then I’d get into the most terrible trouble. It was hard having secrets that I couldn’t share. I was afraid that too
much would come tumbling out if I did share them, and then I might get beaten to death for it.

When I got home that evening, I went up to my room and took the watch out of my pocket. It had fallen off on my way to the bus – it had a faulty clasp and was much too big for me. I realized it must have been an old one of Mum’s that she didn’t wear any more. I sat for a long time on my bed, looking at the watch in the palm of my hand. It felt such a precious thing, and I just wanted to hold it forever. As soon as I heard Freda’s footsteps on the stairs, though, I quickly stuffed it into a sock and hid it away. I knew that if she ever found out I treasured anything she’d do her best to destroy it, as she always had.

My dad and Freda didn’t celebrate Christmas like other families. We never had a tree, and there were no cards or decorations about the place. We didn’t sit down together for Christmas lunch or give each other presents either. It was just an ordinary day, the same as any other.

The previous Sunday, Miss Williams had asked if I’d like to come with her while she went round to the poorer folk’s houses – people who had lost someone in the war or who had undergone some other hardship – to give out hampers of food and toys. I loved being out on the dark streets beside her. She looked almost jaunty in her little pillbox hat, red nose peeping out over the folds of her scarf, as we walked along together in the smoggy night air, the bitter smell of coal smoke tinged with burning rubber from the Dunlop tyre factory.

I gazed through the windows of those houses we passed where the curtains hadn’t yet been drawn to see strings of Christmas cards hanging on the walls and Christmas trees, twinkling all over, with presents piled up underneath. Whilst I thrilled to see them, I couldn’t help but
wish I had a home where there was a present under the tree waiting for me to open, a stocking bulging at the foot of my bed, and a family who loved me.

Chapter Twelve

O
ver the previous months, I’d noticed that my dad and Freda had been making more frequent visits to the Rippons, the wealthiest members of their Spiritualist circle. I sensed that my father was cooking something up but didn’t know what. He and Freda were always whispering and scheming on the days we visited and, before we left the house, Dad used to spend more time than usual picking imaginary specks off his cream suit and tying extra flourishes in his cravat with long, perfectly manicured fingers. You would never know from his pale, soft hands that he worked in a factory.

Alec Rippon was a white-collar worker, an engineer in Manchester, and he and his wife and daughter lived in a large Victorian house in the posh, leafy suburb of Prestwich. It seemed like a palace to me when I compared it with our two-up, two-down in Wood Street. Freda seemed a little cowed by its grandness but my father wasn’t one to act humbly, cap in hand, around the Rippons; and although the difference in social status between our families was huge, he always played his Christ Almighty role to the full.

Alec Rippon believed that he had the healing gift and had dreams of his own. Unlike my dad, he was a sincere
man who genuinely wanted to help other people. As was usual in the Spiritualist church, he’d been assigned to a master – my father – to help him develop his powers. At the end of his training, he’d have to take some exams set by the National Spiritualist Union. My father set out to dazzle his apprentice, sensing that here was a lamb worth fleecing.

The Rippons’ shiny, blue front door opened into a large porch as big as our front room. An umbrella stand stood next to the door, full of ivory topped canes. Freda, clearly both jealous and cowed by the grandness of it all, made me take my shoes off.

The porch opened onto a large carpeted hall. It was the first time I’d been in a house with fitted carpets – everyone I knew had lino on the floor. Against the wall next to the stairs stood a grandfather clock with a gleaming gold face, and on the walls hung big oil paintings of hunting scenes. I’d read about houses like this before in my Noel Streatfeild books, places where there were servants and nannies, and nurseries with rocking horses.

I was too young to be flustered by the grandness of the Rippons’ house, but Freda always seemed on edge when we visited. Her lipstick looked a bit too red next to Gladys Rippons’ powdered elegance. She used to rub it on her cheeks too, calling it rouge, and I saw now that her whole look seemed brash and common compared to Gladys.

The Rippons had turned one of the many rooms downstairs into a healing surgery where my father could receive patients. Alec stood by as Dad’s assistant and Freda would act as nurse.

When patients arrived, they’d be ushered into a separate waiting room before Gladys showed them into the surgery. My father sat at the desk, a row of files on the
shelf behind him, and, in his best doctor’s voice, would ask the person to sit down while he questioned them about their problem. He would then show Alec how to use his hands correctly and cradle their head in the right way.

Whilst the surgery or evening seances were going on, I’d be sent off to play in the nursery with Cathleen, the Rippons’ daughter, who was three years younger than me. She was an only child, and very spoilt. I don’t think she liked me coming over, and if I picked up anything in her doll’s house she’d stick out her lower lip in a pet and say, ‘That’s mine!’ She certainly wasn’t the kind of person I could play Tommies and Jerries with.

One evening, Cathleen showed me a board mounted on the wall in the kitchen. On it was a row of little bells and next to each was inscribed the name of a room in the house. She explained it was so that the servants knew where to go to when they were called to put coals on the fire or bring in a cup of tea.

‘We don’t have any servants, though, except for Mandy, who’s our daily,’ Cathleen said. ‘So we don’t use the bells at all.’

I thought of my mum, who’d been a maid at the house of a wealthy Spiritualist before she met Dad, and wondered if she’d had to wear a uniform and listen out for the bell ringing.

‘How about we play at being mistress and maid,’ I asked Cathleen. ‘You can be my maid, if you like.’

I liked pretending to be mistress of the house, grandly ordering Cathleen around.

‘Ah, Kitty, there you are,’ I said, waving an imperious hand from the sofa. ‘Go and fill the coal scuttle. I think I’ve got a chill coming on.’

‘What do I do next?’ Cathleen asked, not finding it as easy as me to slip into role play.

‘Curtsy, like this,’ I showed her how to bob. ‘And say, “Yes’m”. Then pretend to scoop coal out of the scuttle and put it on the fire.’

We started again and Cathleen managed her bob. After she pretended to put the coal on the fire, I showed her how to bring in the tea and pour it, picking imaginary sugar lumps from a bowl with tongs. At first, she sulked a bit, whining that she wanted to be the lady of the house, but she soon got into the game. I was getting an enormous kick out of our exchange of positions. In real life, Cathleen had the lovely home and the pretty manners, while I was the one who had to lug coal buckets in from the yard with raw hands every morning.

Things went on pretty much the same through the spring and summer of 1956, and then everything started to change. It was as if an earthquake was causing the foundations of my life to crack and its walls to fall in around me.

One day, my father called me downstairs and told me to sit down at the table.

‘You’re going to write a letter to your mother,’ he told me, pushing paper and pencil at me. ‘Do it now.’

He then started to dictate what he wanted me to write. ‘Dear Mother,’ he said. I wrote the words.

‘I’ve decided that I want to live with my father permanently from now on,’ he went on.

My hand stopped what it was doing and my pencil fell to the table. I couldn’t go on.

Dad picked up the pencil, eyes snapping with anger, and forced it into my hand. ‘Write it!’ he shouted. ‘Just do what I say!’

I still mutely refused, but my hand had started to tremble. Dad took my ear and twisted it viciously. ‘Go on, do it. Now!’

He repeated the words and I started to write. The letters were shaky as I couldn’t quite still my hand from its trembling.

‘And I don’t want to visit you or my sisters any more,’ he went on. I wrote the words, tears trickling down my face.

‘My school work is taking up so much time that I would rather be at home on Sundays to do it.’ Dad let go of my ear once I’d finished that sentence. ‘Just sign your name at the bottom,’ he said, ‘and then it’s done.’

I signed my name, and it felt like I was signing my death warrant. And as my father sealed and addressed the envelope, I knew that the letter would indeed be a death blow to my dreams of getting to know my sisters and of finding an escape from my intolerable life with him and Freda.

After this, we didn’t hear any more from my mother. Whether she was gearing up to fight for her right of access through her solicitor at that point, I don’t know. All I thought then was that she must have believed what my letter said and had given up on me.

In September I went to a new school. North Hulme was closer to home and bigger than Duke Street Primary, and it felt like another huge change. Like any child moving up to senior school, I strained to keep up in that first few weeks. I now had lots of different teachers and had to find my way to a whole new set of classrooms; but I was used to looking after myself and managed to get along better than some.

I soon realized that finding my way around and keeping up with the work weren’t going to be the only challenges
I had to face. In the playground at breaktime there were some tough, older kids who loved to pick on the first years and who were quick to single out any oddballs or loners. It was in my second week that the trouble began.

We were playing rounders one afternoon, and when it came to my turn I hit the ball hard and one of the ‘deeps’ went running after it. I flew from base to base; but as I was about to get a rounder, the girl who was standing by third base put her foot out and sent me flying. I had just enough time to get up and stand by her base before the ball was thrown to her by one of her team.

After the girl had thrown the ball back to the bowler, she turned to me with a smirk. I was furious and before I could prevent myself I hissed at her, ‘I’ll get you after school for this.’

She looked me up and down with a sneer. ‘Okay then, be at the Croft after school and I’ll show you how sorry you’ll be you ever said that.’

When I got back to my team, the girl next to me in the line whispered, ‘What did you say to her?’

I told her what I’d said and she looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘She’s really tough. Blimey, I don’t know how you dared.’

As the afternoon wore on, I realized from the flurry of whispering that I’d challenged one of the toughest bullies in the school. I knew all the other girls thought I was mad, bad, or both; but I also knew that if I backed out now I’d lose every chance I had of their respect. But I had one thing in my favour that no one realized: I was used to being bashed to a pulp, so I wasn’t really frightened of being hurt. My fear was more about putting myself in the spotlight.

On my way back home from school, I went to the Croft and stood on that bombed out piece of wasteland, waiting
for the girl to come. As soon as she arrived, with a gang of three or four of her friends, she pitched straight into me and I fell backwards onto the ground. I was up in a moment though and went for her, slapping, punching and pulling hair. We fought and scratched like wildcats until her nose started bleeding and she managed to pull out a chunk of my hair by the roots.

After a few minutes, it was clear to the girl that I wasn’t going to give in, and so she backed off towards her group of friends. I stood there alone on the Croft, feeling bruised, but one hell of a lot better than after I’d had a hiding from my dad.

As I was turning to go, the girl tried to claw back some of her power, but it was half-hearted now. ‘You watch it. You just watch it, girl, or I’m going to get you.’ I didn’t turn back to face her. I knew I’d won.

Aching all over, and covered in bruises and scratches, I went back home. I was shaking now with the stress of the fight and had to go and sit upstairs for a while, with my arms around Gyp, before I was ready to start my afternoon chores.

I thought that would be the end of it. What I hadn’t bargained on was someone reporting the fight to the headmistress. Once again I found the unwelcome glare of the spotlight upon me in assembly the next morning.

The headmistress spoke sternly. ‘Last night there were two girls fighting on the Croft. You all know perfectly well that this is totally unacceptable behaviour.’ She glared round the hall at the five hundred-odd pupils.

‘Would those two girls stand up, please. You know who you are.’

For some reason, I didn’t at once click that the head was referring to our fight – to me. I looked around the room
for a moment. Then I saw the girl I’d been fighting stand up and the penny dropped.