Deliver Me From Evil (18 page)

On this occasion, however, the psychologist smelled a rat. I was asked questions, and I kept my eyes down, staring at the carpet, not answering, like I’d been told to, while Eunice talked about how difficult I was to get through to, how shut down I was, and so on. For some reason, and I don’t know why, the psychologist did not buy into the Asperger’s stunt and sent us home without a prescription. As I left her office she said, ‘I think you’re playing games with me,’ and I had to fight to keep my composure as I wanted to crack up laughing. Maybe she knew I was acting, I don’t know.

I found out later, when I was preparing for the court case, that the psychologist had written a report saying I was depressed – well, who wouldn’t have been depressed, living with Eunice? – but nothing was ever done about it. I don’t know whether this was conveyed to Eunice or not.

Anyway, Eunice was utterly furious that I hadn’t convinced the psychologist and told me I would be dealt with the minute we got back to the farm, so the journey home was full of doom, gloom and dread. Journeys home were often like that, heavy, under threat. Once home, and after a thorough beating, Eunice decided to see for herself if I had Asperger’s or not. So she gave me some of the other children’s prescriptions of Ritalin for a week to ‘sort me out’. To my mind now, from an adult perspective, and as a mum, I feel this was not only incredibly dangerous (to give me drugs prescribed for somebody else) but also evil and utterly irresponsible because, in doing so, Eunice set me off in a direction which, until then, I didn’t know existed.

I basically got hooked on the drugs straight away because their effect brought me complete psychological relief from all the isolation, fear and pain that I was experiencing daily. I knew where the supply of drugs was because Eunice had put me in charge of administering them to the other children so I began to administer them to myself as well. I began to use them at night, taking up to ten or twelve tablets. Later I’d be taking about fourteen or sixteen tablets a night. Of course now I realize this was fantastically dangerous.

So there I would be, all warm and cosy, wrapped in my blankets and I’d take the tablets. Then a strange thing would happen. I’d start speeding, rushing, but I’d be watching the clock and it would seem to be going very slowly indeed. I’d think,
Ooh, I’ve got another three hours snuggled up.
My head would be buzzing away but the more I looked at the clock, the slower it would become.

While I was taking the drugs, I also experienced hallucinations, and sometimes I’d ‘see’ Eunice shouting at me to get up. Then I’d realize it wasn’t her; it was my mind playing tricks. Other times I’d envisage cats coming up to me and I’d go to stroke them, then I’d think,
Oh, they’re not there.
I’d realize then it was the drugs, like a kind of psychedelic trip. It was really weird.

I know that taking the tablets was wrong, but at the time they provided me with a means of escape. I could remove myself from the horrible world I was forced to live in, with its constant punishments, beatings and rigid rules, and I could snuggle down and disappear into my whizzing mindscape. Best of all was the way they made the night seem so long, rather than just feeling like it lasted for five minutes. Because I was so tired all the time, and daytime on the farm was so foul, it often felt like I just had five minutes to myself – just five minutes of not being watched, punished or having to work, before I went to sleep, then five minutes before I got up and was back in the world of responsibilities and beatings. I could never sleep in, or relax, or enjoy myself.

We weren’t allowed any music or the radio, but as I moved into my teens, I would sneak under my covers a mini-radio I found on the farm, and listen secretly all cosy, my mind racing and staring at the clock I would listen to the music thinking,
Oooh, this is rude,
or
Wa-hey, this is cool,
and feel like a real growing teenager. I couldn’t dance around my bedroom as the music was ‘too sexual’ and corrupting so all I had to relieve my isolation and boredom was a sneaky listen to Shania Twain and the comfort of a ‘high induced by the stolen Ritalin.

Eunice had hoarded so many pills over the years – I guess she kept getting repeat prescriptions – that she didn’t notice her stash was going down. So I continued to take Ritalin for a very long time, probably three years or more, tripping the night away – at least, on the nights I was allowed to go to bed.

One of my regular duties was to make Eunice a hot-water bottle at night (another feature of being her slave) and sometimes it would leak into her bed. It actually wasn’t my fault – the hot-water bottle was an old one, and it might have been the seams giving way. However, Eunice’s predictable response was to make me stand up all night, naked, at the end of her bed. She said I had made her cold and wet, so she would make me cold all night. This was very embarrassing for me because I was now extremely self-conscious about her looking at my developed body. She would fall asleep, of course, and I would want to cover up, sit down or lie down. I’d even doze off and find myself curled up on the floor, but then she’d wake up every so often and shake me, or shout at me, and I had to spring back to my standing position. Naked. At the end of her bed. All night. Then I was supposed to do my full days duties after this, including schoolwork

Several times Eunice made me go out into the garden, completely naked, at three in the morning. She even did this at George Dowty Drive somewhat later, when there were teenage boys next door. It was an absolutely humiliating punishment and, having become a typical self-conscious teenager, I felt utterly horrified that one of the boys might see me over the fence.

I have no idea why Eunice did this kind of thing. Overall, she had a very strange and confused attitude to nakedness, in that she would say it was natural and fine for us children to be naked, but she was also very prudish about anything to do with sex or sexuality.

Eunice devised another punishment involving nakedness in which she would stand me in a bath and pour water over my face so I couldn’t breathe. She would yank my head back, usually by the hair, and pour a jug of cold water over my face. I always struggled and spluttered when she did something like this – I couldn’t help it. Then she would snap, ‘Relax, you can breathe,’ at me, but I just couldn’t. I’d be terrified, panicking, and anyway how could I relax when I was freezing cold, totally naked and was having icy water poured continuously over my face?

The other way Eunice liked to do her ‘water torture’ was to fill the bath, then make me kneel beside it so she could dunk my head in and hold it under. I knew shed read
A Child Called It
by David Pelzer, in which he described the terrible abuse he suffered as a child. His horrible mother did something similar, making him lie in a bath filled with cold water. Who knows whether Eunice ‘borrowed’ some twisted ideas about child cruelty from that book? She even suggested we read it one time, to show us what happened to bad children.

Because the Raeburn was often slow to warm up the bath water Eunice would often run a bath for Robert, then test the temperature. Sometimes she even dunked my head in to test it and if it was cold, or too cold for Robert, I had to have a cold bath. Nowadays I cant abide cold water; I can never get into a cold bath or swimming pool, even on a warm summer holiday – the memory of being dunked in all that cold water has simply never gone away.

By the time I was thirteen I was way behind with my homework. Eunice was a bad teacher and I didn’t want to learn from her. None of us children really did much work, but we were always made to feel we were bad as we were always terribly behind. One time the Home Tutor Inspector was due the next day and Eunice wanted to show him that she had taught the children in her care well. She looked at our books with disgust, then set us all to fill our workbooks with essays and drawings, giving us loads of maths homework to do as well. It was about three times as much work as we normally had, and although I tried I didn’t manage to get mine finished in time, what with all the housework, childcare and animal feeding I had to do as well. When Eunice found out she went horribly quiet, which meant I was in big trouble.

‘You’ll stay up all night until it’s finished. Then I’ll teach you a lesson.’

I said nothing, but looked down at the homework books on the table. Eunice glared at me and I could tell she was beside herself with anger because she was so steely.

‘You can rest assured I’ll beat you and beat you, black and blue until you’ve done it all’

Eunice went out and left me sitting at the table piled high with books. I was being starved at the time, so I felt hungry, weak and tired even before I started. It was midwinter, freezing cold (it was always cold in the farmhouse, but it seemed colder and bleaker than ever that night), and I stayed up, poring helplessly over my books. Everything swam before my eyes and I couldn’t seem to make any sense of what I was supposed to do. I began to panic. I couldn’t bear the pressure of knowing how Eunice would react if I hadn’t finished by the morning. It would be torture, I was sure. Thomas had also been set a night of homework, but he was already slumped over his books, fast asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up, although I knew he’d be in for it, too, if he didn’t finish. It all seemed completely hopeless.

As the cold light of dawn approached I began to really panic. It was a similar feeling to the time when I’d run away and hid under the car and in the donkey shed. I just wanted to escape from this terrible, oppressive place. As I looked around the cluttered, dirty room, and saw the pile of un-done homework in front of me, I just couldn’t cope. I jumped up and went downstairs to the kitchen. I knew where Eunice kept her private stash of chocolate and I got it out, my heart pounding in my chest. I ate a couple of squares and was blown away by the wonderful sweet taste as they melted in my mouth. Desperate for food and pleasure, I greedily ate the lot, then found another bar and ate that too. Eunice would go berserk once she found it missing, but I suddenly didn’t care.

Against her explicit wishes, I found a pop video and slipped it into the TV in the living room. I turned the sound down quite low, so I wouldn’t wake her up – it was still very early, only about five in the morning. Then I wrapped myself up in a blanket and watched the video. I loved every minute of it, wowed by the music and the beat, scoffing more chocolate as I watched. Then, realizing it was nearly morning, I got terribly scared. What would Eunice do if I hadn’t done the homework? What would happen if she found I’d eaten the chocolate and watched TV without her permission? I’d eaten so much chocolate I felt sick, but it was also wonderful to have a full tummy for once.

I suddenly knew what to do, how to get away from the constant fear and punishments. I rushed to find the Ritalin pills in Eunice’s hoarding place. There were several bottles there, unopened, and I guzzled as many tablets as I could with gulps of water. I kept taking them and taking them, stuffing them into my mouth; I might have taken about thirty altogether. I began to feel woozy as I went back to the TV and wrapped myself up again in the blanket. As my head began to float to the ceiling, I watched the TV melt sideways into a weird shape and suddenly felt happy. Nothing could get me now. I could drift away to nowhere, and it would all be over.

Some time later I saw Eunice’s face hovering just above mine, looking stern and intense. My legs were twitching, but I couldn’t really feel them. I felt like I was underwater, swimming in a deep, dark ocean; I’d float up to the surface occasionally and then dive back down. My body was jumping around but I couldn’t feel it at all. Eunice’s face disappeared into a black space. I think I was only semi-conscious, drifting back and then away again just as fast. I have flashes of being in Eunice’s car while Judith held me up – they were taking me to the hospital I later realized – before it all went blank

I finally came to and became gradually aware of Eunice sitting by my side in her grey outfit, looking very emotionless. I couldn’t work out where I was or what had happened for a moment. I just felt empty. Eunice said nothing when she noticed I was awake and I just lay there, numb and exhausted. Then she leant forward and said, ‘You were fitting’.

I couldn’t work out what she meant at first and looked at her blankly.

‘You were having a fit. But they pumped your stomach, so you’ll live.’

It all came rushing back: the homework, then the chocolate, the video, the pills. Eunice knew. I must be in hospital. I was still alive.

Eunice leant forward and put her hand on top of mine. She started stroking it gently. I was almost shocked, as this was so unusual for Eunice. What did she want?

‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

I blinked confusedly, trying to take it all in. I felt very thirsty now, sick and my throat was sore. My stomach and head hurt.

‘I’ve only ever wanted what’s best for you. I’ve tried to improve you. But I do love you.’

I still couldn’t say anything. My body felt almost like it was a dead leaf floating on a pond. This was Eunice telling me she loved me. This was the first I’d ever heard about it.

Then she leant even closer, put her lips near my cheek and pressed them on my skin drily. What was she doing?

‘I want you to get better. You kids mean the world to me.’

I looked at her blankly. I almost saw a glimmer of a smile on her lips as she looked back at me. I thought I must be hearing things because, in all the time I’d lived with her, she’d never said anything like this, let alone kissed me. Maybe her harsh treatment was for all my own good? Maybe I
was
bad and needed correcting? Perhaps it was tough caring for so many of us, and maybe I was particularly difficult to look after? I suddenly felt that she liked me – she’d even said she loved me – so maybe it was all going to be different from now on.