The Little Prisoner (8 page)

Although I didn’t mind looking after my little brothers, I was too young to be left in charge of them and it was inevitable that something terrible would happen. I was trying to get the three big ones ready for school one morning and changing Les’s nappy at the same time. I was making them toast under the grill, doing up their shoes, finding their clothes as they got dressed in front of the fire and getting myself ready, and I took my eye off little Les for just a second. He was one year old at the time, but big for his age. He had weighed a stone when he was born and had kept growing after that. Impatient to get his morning drink, he must have reached up and tugged the flex of the kettle while I was looking the other way, and he pulled the whole thing down on top of him. The boiling water made his skin bubble and blister, and the screaming was terrible. He was in hospital for three months and the scars on his arms never went, although his face healed eventually.

I was never allowed to forget that it was me who did that to him, scarring him for life.

‘Who burnt you, Les?’ Silly Git would ask him every so often.

‘Janey done it,’ he would reply dutifully. ‘Janey burnt me.’

I was twelve at the time.

Chapter Three

M
y favourite person was always my granddad, Mum’s dad. He wasn’t that old and everyone seemed to like him. He was dark-haired and skinned, like an Italian. I guess I got my colouring from him. When he was young he used to dress like a Teddy boy, with the DA haircut. He worked as a driver for someone very senior in business and had two huge American cars, an orange one and a white one, and two Yorkshire terriers. I thought of them as a little married couple, especially as the boy had what looked like a little beard. I used to love tying ribbons in their hair and dressing them up in dark glasses and anything else I could persuade them to wear, just as I had with my brothers when they were small. The dogs never complained; they were happy to have any sort of attention.

Knowing how much I liked dogs, Granddad brought us a black Labrador. The man he worked for had some connection with the royal family and this dog was from the same family as the Queen’s gun dogs. He was a lovely animal, but Silly Git found a black hair on his dinner plate one day and he had to go. He took him out into the country somewhere and tied him to a tree. Someone helpful brought him back, so he had to do it again.

This wasn’t the first dog we’d had, or the first to disappear. There had been a mongrel in the house when I was small. He used to knock on the door when he wanted to be let in and would go down the shops with me whenever I was sent on errands. But when I came home from school one day I was told he’d been run over and killed. Maybe he had. I never found out.

Granddad used to take me shopping at Tesco with him in his flash cars so we could pose. Everyone would stop and watch as we cruised past, him with his sunglasses on and me feeling like a princess, snuggled up beside him because there were no gear sticks or handbrakes in the way. Inside the shop he would do things that would make me laugh, like taking his false teeth out and putting them on the conveyor belt when we got to the tills, or climbing up one of the stepladders they used for filling the top shelves and singing a song to the assembled shoppers below. I would be cringing with embarrassment but loving it at the same time. If I asked to go shopping with Granddad, Richard and Mum would instruct me to tell him I needed a new coat or new plimsolls. I hated having to ask, but I think he knew I had to. He nearly always got me what I asked for, if he could.

At one stage he used to live next door to us with his youngest son, my uncle John, who was only four years older than me and more like a brother than an uncle. Granddad used to collect all sorts of things, including birds like quails and pigeons, which he used to keep in an aviary at the bottom of his garden, and fish, which lived in a huge pond with a bridge across it. If we were out in the garden we would call to him through the fence, ‘Granddad! Granddad! Can we have some chocolate, Granddad?’ and he’d haul himself out of the hammock where he had been lying and would push miniature Mars Bars through the holes in the chain-link fence.

I don’t remember my nan, but I do remember the wooden box she had left with all her jewellery in it. Granddad must have had some money at one time because there was a Rolex watch in there and an eighteen-carat gold charm bracelet. Each charm represented a significant event in Nan’s life. For instance, there was a tiny cathedral which you could open up, which he had given her when they got married, and there were also her engagement and eternity rings. The bracelet was a huge great thing, much too heavy to wear. Granddad gave the box to me, but inevitably Richard and Mum sold the watch to pay for something or other and pawned the bracelet. They promised me they would redeem it for me, but of course they never did. That was my nan’s whole life gone and I felt so sad.

When I got a bit older Granddad used to pay me to do his housework. He would write me out cheques for three pounds, which made me feel really rich. One day he asked me to make him a fresh cup of tea.

‘Oh, Granddad,’ I complained. ‘I just made you one.’

‘Go on,’ he cajoled, ‘and rinse this cup out well first.’

When I took the cup to the sink and poured away the dregs, a gold bracelet plopped out. I knew to keep this one secret.

Granddad had a big gold ring in the house too, which was studded with rubies. He knew I loved it.

‘You can’t have that,’ he said, ‘because your Mum will just sell it. But you can wear it while you do the housework if you like.’

He had a brother living in Australia and he was always planning to go and visit him, touring the world on the way there and back. He offered to take me with him. Silly Git refused, saying that it wasn’t fair on the boys.

‘I can’t take them all,’ Granddad protested, ‘and it will be a chance in a lifetime for her.’ But nothing was going to change my stepfather’s mind.

One year, though, Granddad was actually allowed to take me away on holiday. We went to Hastings in the tourer caravan that he kept on the drive and it was just him, me and the dogs. It was like heaven, feeling safe and happy all the time.

Granddad also had a static caravan in a holiday park at Southend. We sometimes went there as a family at weekends or during the holidays, and if Granddad was around it was harder for Richard to get at me. He still managed to, of course. In the evening he would tell the others to go out to Bingo, offering to stay in with me because I’d been naughty earlier in the day and had to be punished.

‘Oh, Janey,’ Mum would sigh, ‘what have you done now?’

‘We’ve been in a caravan together all day,’ I’d think. ‘You know everything I’ve done.’ But I never said anything in my own defence, knowing that would ignite Richard’s wrath, and Mum would be willing to accept that I needed to be punished. So they would all go off without me, leaving me alone with Richard for a few hours. I usually got to go out one evening in every holiday, but to earn that treat I would have to go out for a walk with him earlier in the day to find a quiet place where I could ‘do him a favour’.

One year he actually announced that he was going to go home for the day to collect a giro, because otherwise we wouldn’t have any cash. Needless to say I had to go with him. He would always use the same excuse: ‘I’ll take Jane with me in case my leg plays up. She can make me my tea and get me my fags.’ That was always the reason why I had to be with him wherever he went. This time I couldn’t believe that not only was I going to have to spend an uninterrupted night with him but I was going to be missing my holiday as well.

When we got home we had to go straight to his and Mum’s bed, where he spent hours abusing me. It was awful knowing that no one was going to be coming back and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Once it was all over he went to sleep cuddling me as if I was his wife and in the morning we had to do the whole thing all over again.

If ever Mum was away for the night, which was quite often when she got ill with her kidneys or when she was away giving birth, I would have to sleep in the bed with Richard as if we were a couple and one morning one of my brothers saw me coming out, even though I always tried to get back to my own bed before they woke up.

‘What you doing in there?’ he wanted to know. I made up some excuse about having gone in there to get something and he seemed to accept my explanation without question, but then why wouldn’t he? What child could have imagined what was going on between his father and his sister?

One of my uncles had a caravan, too, just in front of Granddad’s, and we would go there as well, but when it was just Granddad and me it was the best time imaginable, whether we were in the caravan or out shopping or in his house.

It couldn’t last, of course, because nothing good ever did. Richard took against Granddad and Uncle John, just as he took against everyone. He did everything he could to stop me going round to their house because he knew how much I enjoyed it and how kind Granddad was to me. I guess he was afraid I’d let something slip if I was there too much.

Once Richard had taken against someone his vindictiveness would be irrational and petty. One moment he would be attacking my uncle in the street, the next he would be sneaking around the back, cutting through their television aerial and telephone wires.

Because I knew my way around Granddad’s house Richard used to lift me over the fence when he was out and make me break in and take things that he and Mum wanted, like food or tobacco or something from the freezer. Sometimes it would just be money or a credit card that they were after because they wanted to go shopping. I hated doing it because it made me feel that I was betraying Granddad.

When Uncle John eventually married, Richard took against his poor wife and if he saw her in the street he would try to run her over.

Granddad also had a girlfriend he was planning to marry, but Mum and Richard took against her for no reason other than she wasn’t ‘family’. If we happened to come out of our house at the same time as Granddad, I was instructed to ignore him, and I would never have dared to disobey such a direct order. I was later told that that nearly broke his heart. They eventually beat him up and drove him and my uncle away. I think there was a final argument over some money they’d borrowed off him or something, but the reasons didn’t mean anything, they had just decided to drive him away. By that time Granddad had had a stroke and Mum and Richard were worried that he would die and they wouldn’t inherit a share of his house because he would leave it to his widow.

People sometimes used to complain to the police after they’d been attacked or intimidated by my stepdad, but they always withdrew the charges after receiving a warning visit from Richard or Mum. They all decided it was easier to get the council to move them to another estate than to face the intimidation and violence that went with trying to get justice. So there was no one to stop him doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. To me, as a child, he seemed invincible. There was no point trying to fight him or escape from his power, because he would always win in the end and the retribution would always be worse than whatever had come before. So whenever I was asked to do something, no matter how petty or obscene it might be, I knew I had to agree with a merry laugh if I didn’t want a beating or worse.

As I grew older he would make me do him different favours. Sometimes he would drop a favourite routine for a while and try something new, occasionally going back to an old practice for a change. I never knew when some new demand was going to be made.

One summer’s day we were all outside cleaning the car in front of the house and doing some gardening when Richard suddenly went inside with no explanation. I didn’t think anything of it until he leant out of the open bedroom window and called down to me to come up and help him out with something. My heart sank, but I told myself it couldn’t be anything too terrible because Mum and the boys were all around. I didn’t even bother to close the front door as I went in, thinking I would be going back out again in a few minutes.

When I got to the bedroom he was standing waiting for me.

‘Shut the door,’ he said.

I obeyed.

‘You’ve been bad,’ he went on.

My heart sank. I knew I was in trouble.

‘You’re in my little black book.’

I’d never heard of this little black book before.

‘You know what for, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I lied, knowing that if I protested my innocence or ignorance he’d hit me for being cheeky or for lying.

‘You’ll have to be punished for being in the black book.’

I nodded, having no idea what he was planning but certain it would be unpleasant.

He made me kneel down in front of him and unzipped his trousers. Even though I’d never done it before, I suddenly knew what was coming next.

‘Put it in your mouth,’ he said, ‘and suck it nicely.’

The window was still open, the net curtains blowing in the breeze, and I could hear Mum outside telling the boys to keep cleaning the car and not to go inside the house. Maybe it was because they were wet and would make a mess on the carpets, or maybe it was because she didn’t want them stumbling across something they shouldn’t see. I was terrified they would come in and find us and Richard would be sent into a rage and would attack Mum and it would all be my fault. It was making me feel sick and I started crying, which made him angry.