The Step Child (18 page)

Helen had a hierarchy of demands. At the lower end, she would want me to do fairly basic things for her. In a normal relationship, in a normal family, these activities wouldn’t be a problem, but nothing was free or meaningless when Helen was around. Sometimes I would only be sent to do the shopping, or ‘messages’ as we called it. This wasn’t particularly arduous, and neither was taking Andrew for a walk to get him to sleep. When she asked me to get some milk, or take the baby out for five minutes, there was such a bland normality to reconcile with what happened at other times that confusion threatened to overwhelm me.

As I did these mind-numbing, day-to-day tasks, I wanted to scream at people: ‘Look at me! Look at this little girl being sent out for a loaf of bread! Look at this child in your shop, walking past you, standing at your side in a queue!’ But no one ever really saw me. They didn’t see the emaciated frame, the bruises, the pain in my eyes. I was just another kid.

At other times, I would be sent out because a visit from the social workers was on the cards. Perhaps there were times when Helen herself felt I was a loose cannon. Some visits would have me present – from Easter Road onwards, I had been warned as to how I should behave when social workers, Barnardo’s representatives or nuns came round. Other times, she simply didn’t trust me to be there and I was sent out – I have wondered whether she was so sure of her complete power over me that she could guarantee I would never say anything to incriminate her. Perhaps she was less sure than I thought, and that was why I was sometimes sent on a tenuous errand and told to keep out of the
way for the afternoon. But did those social workers never think to ask where I was, or to wait another five minutes, or to suspect that there was something wrong when one of the children they were there to see was absent on the very day they called?

Alongside these mundane reasons for being allowed out were the times when I was allowed to sit in the living room with the rest of the family. This was such a novelty that it remains with me to this day. And, of course, there were the occasions on which she would ‘let’ me brush her hair. Of all the non-violent, non-abusive things Helen could think of, this was the worst. I despised her so much that the very thought of touching her in any way made me nauseous. I can revisit the smell to this day – the staleness of her scalp, the way it stayed with me long after the chore had been completed. Helen believed the granting of this favour to be a special treat, and, as she passed the hairbrush to me, I could feel the bile rising in my stomach. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her, and yet here I was trapped in some awful parody of domesticity, making my stepmother look ‘lovely’.

As an adult, I see the irony in that. Helen’s transparent little favours – a trip to buy some provisions, five minutes in the living room, a feeble attempt at getting the tangles out of her hair – were always a means of getting her own way. There was another category entirely, which I came to view with blind panic, errands which had nothing to do with shopping but everything to do with her continued exploitation of me.

As you walked around the corner from Edina Place and our house, there was a whole host of shops on Easter Road. It was a typical 1960s street. Just past the Tiffin Café, next to the fishmonger’s, was one particular shop.

The barber’s.

It was a traditional shop front, right down to the red and
white striped pole outside. But I doubt anyone could have really guessed what was waiting for me in there on the days I was sent on an errand. Behind such a warming, stereotypical exterior, I was to have some of my most appalling experiences.

On my first visit to the barber, Helen asked me to take a message. Her version of ‘asking’ was never quite as pleasant as the word might suggest.

‘Ugly! Get your arse through here!’ she called to me in the boxroom. It was teatime on a weeknight, probably around five o’clock, as she passed me a piece of paper with something written on it. ‘Take this. Don’t read it – you know better. Take it, get along to the barber’s, wait … for a bit, then get your lazy, ugly, bastarding self back here before I leather you.’

I’d been to this barber’s before when my brothers were taken for their ‘short back and sides’, so I knew where it was. I was often given chores such as taking the boys for haircuts, motherly things that needed to be done but which Helen couldn’t be bothered with when there were parties to organise and Special Brew to drink. The man who ran the shop also owned it and had spoken to me on haircut days and on seeing me pass his door at other times.

He seemed fine.

He seemed normal.

He seemed nice.

Nothing about his demeanour or words at those times had given me any indication that he was one of Helen’s ‘special friends’. I don’t know whether he was one of the men who regularly came to her parties. I suppose our house was close enough to his shop for him to nip out even during work days, but I found it hard to match up the faces of those who came to Helen’s parties with those I saw out in the real world, in day-to-day life.

The Barber – I don’t know what his real name was – to me was just a rather small man with glasses and slicked-back
Brylcreemed hair. He wore the typical white jacket of barbers at that time, waist-length with four patch pockets, two on the chest and two at waist level. He kept combs and scissors in the chest pockets and always managed to produce a sweetie or two from the others.

Nothing unusual.

Children like men like that.

I took the piece of paper from her – what could have been written there? – and ran round the corner. I belted past Mieles, the chip shop, where the aroma of freshly cooked chips would almost make me faint with hunger. Plenty of times I had picked up discarded newspaper wrappings with the remnants of someone’s supper and hungrily wolfed down whatever was left. I would lick the sauce or vinegar dregs from the packets left lying around on the streets and thank my lucky stars for the wastefulness of others. On this day, however, I didn’t have time for such luxuries. I had been told to hurry by Helen – the Barber couldn’t wait. Thoughts were buzzing through my head – was he to come to our house to cut the boys’ hair? Was a party planned that he was invited to? Was Helen selling something else off and telling him to collect it? None of them came even close to anticipating what was ahead of me.

I went straight into the Barber’s shop, pushing the half-glazed door, ringing the door bell as I did so – no point standing on ceremony when I was on what seemed to be such an important mission. Even though it wasn’t that late, there were no customers inside – just him. I told the man I had a message from Helen, which I handed straight over. As soon as I gave him the piece of paper, he walked to the door and put the lock on. I wondered what Helen had written. That everything was fine? That it was all sorted? That he could do what he wanted because Helen had authorised it?

He was looking at the note and I was looking at him. His baggy grey flannels were hanging down from under his jacket as
he started talking to me. ‘Helen says you’re to help me clear up,’ he said. I was even more confused. Was that it? Why was I to help out today? Was it going to be a regular job? Why hadn’t Helen told me? Was I going to get a sweetie, or was I to be cheated of that? I looked around, but everywhere was so clean and tidy that there was nothing for me to help out with. I thought I would try anyway.

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Where will I start?’

‘Just polish the counter,’ he answered. ‘Just make a good job of that, and then we’ll see.’

I started on the job that didn’t need doing as he stood and watched.

‘Well done, you’ve made a grand job of that,’ I was told after a while. He reached into his pocket – a sweetie! Everything had worked out – although I couldn’t understand why I’d had to go through the rigmarole of doing an unnecessary job. Still, I had done what was asked of me. I shouldn’t be due a beating for that, maybe just a slap round the head when I got back.

‘Would you like a wee shot on the chair, hen?’ he asked.

Things were looking up! This was a real treat. A bonus.

The big revolving black leather seat had already been something I’d had a go at when I was in with my brothers. I’d love to have another shot – and on my own this time too! The chair was quite big, and I was, of course, pretty small, smaller even than I should have been at that age, but I could manage to get up onto it myself. The Barber had other ideas – maybe he was just being nice? – and he came over to me, lifting me on to the chair and spinning me round. I was having a bit of fun for once.

As quickly as the spinning had started, it stopped. All of a sudden, the Barber halted the motion of the chair and turned me to face him. He was looking at me squarely in the face. His eyes looked as if they too were twirling, due to his milk bottle lens glasses. I barely knew what was happening, it was so quick.

This nice man with the sweeties in his pocket and the spinning
chair put his hands on my knees and let them travel up my legs, lifting my skirt as he did so.

I was terrified.

This wasn’t right.

Even I knew that, and I certainly knew it wouldn’t stop there. I looked towards the door of the shop but the place was closed down, the blinds pulled so that no one could see out or in. I could hear the traffic on Easter Road go by quite normally. Buses taking people to town, or bringing them back home. Other children walking outside the door, laughing. The chattering of women walking by, their heels clip-clopping, clip-clopping as they passed by.

I tried to push my skirt down to cover myself but he was too strong.

‘I’d better go,’ I whimpered. One lie to try. ‘Helen will be so worried. She’ll wonder where I am.’

The Barber laughed. He knew the game a lot better than I did. ‘Don’t you worry about Helen, hen,’ he snorted. ‘She knows where you are. Everything will be fine. She knows you’re … helping me.’

My heart was pounding. I was dreading what was going to happen next. The Barber tugged and pulled at my pants and forced my skinny legs apart. I was crying and asking him to stop but he wouldn’t. He got his penis out and started masturbating whilst forcing his fingers inside me. What was he doing? What was he thinking of?

I was so ashamed. So embarrassed. So full of tears and fear and confusion. It didn’t touch him. Perhaps my distress made the experience all the sweeter for him.

‘Come on now, stop your greeting. That’s me done, now. If you keep crying like that, folk will think there’s something wrong. You wouldn’t want someone to think there’s something wrong, would you? Now, wash your face. Get yourself cleaned up. You’ll get a sweetie if you’re good.’

He was washing himself as he spoke to me, over the sink where he shampooed hair and shaved people.

Where good people came for their haircuts, where children sat and got ready for their first day at school, where men sat and discussed their weekends and their families.

The Barber had taken just a bit more of my childhood away.

He had his back to me; I wasn’t really there any more – not for him. I did as I was told, washed my face and straightened myself up. I looked in the mirror and hated the face that stared back at me, hated the fact that I was the sort of person that had these things done to them, hated the fact that it kept happening. How bad must I be for this to keep going on?

The Barber was finished. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a MacCowans penny dainty. The green and white tartan wrapper sat in my hand. ‘Eat it now, eat it here,’ he said. ‘If you keep that until you get home, one of your brothers will have it away quick as a flash. D’you fancy another wee go in the chair?’

I was in a daze. I ate my sweetie and sat in the chair – my reward. I walked home, my helping out over, my errand completed. Who could I tell? Helen? She had sent me there. She knew exactly what was going on. My Dad was on one of his eternal overtime stints. There was no one – and I was beginning to wonder whether anyone would believe me anyway. It seemed so unlikely. I knew the world went on as usual even while I was being abused, so how could I think that the world would even care?

Visits to the Barber became a regular occurrence. Each time I would dread it more, as each time the level of abuse changed. I was never vaginally raped by the Barber, but his attacks were so appalling that I find it hard to think of them, even as an adult. I was raped by other men, but even to this day cannot talk, cannot ‘go public’ on those particular instances of abuse. Each time the Barber chose what was to happen, and I would never know
exactly which part of me he would abuse, which part of me he would attack. After that first time, I never got a sweetie again. I would be sent,
loaned out
and then abused as if it was the most natural thing in the world.