Deliver Me From Evil (9 page)

Eunice spent years perfecting her means of shutting children up and trying to squeeze absolute obedience, literally, out of them, making them suffer in silence as much as she could. Even Judith was clearly cowed by Eunice, although she was a tall, grown woman. She once told me we had it easy as she’d been horsewhipped regularly when they had had ponies when she was little. This only goes to show how psychologically scarred and beaten Judith was. Yet she was no slouch either when it came to meting out corporal punishment. She made us drink washing-up liquid and clouted us just like her mother. Eunice often made Judith hold us when she beat us, too.

Eunice would try to strangle me and the other Bad children. She would stride swiftly towards me, pinning me down with her beady grey eyes, then suddenly her large hand would be wrapped around my throat. She’d hold me tight by the neck and squeeze very hard, but not enough to stop me breathing entirely. She was clever and usually knew when to stop. I could still breathe, just, but only very raspingly

My first reaction would be to try to fight her off. It’s natural – when someone is trying to stop you breathing, you struggle, you fight for air. But Eunice would rise to the challenge and scream at me, inches from my face, ‘Relax, relax, you can breathe.’ Relax! Was she joking? How can you relax when someone is trying to squeeze the life out of you? So, I would freak out, pushing against her, thrashing around while she held onto my throat, that hard, concentrated gleam in her eye. I’d think,
She
’
s going to kill me
or
I’m dying.
But the more I struggled the harder she squeezed. So, eventually, I learned to quieten down, hold still and accept what she was doing, allowing her to terrify me into compliance.

The strangling was something she kept up her sleeve for when she really wanted to get my attention for something I’d obviously done wrong according to her Big Book of Misdemeanours. As with all her punishments, her objective was to break my spirit; once this was achieved she simply lost interest and stalked off, job done.

Although the food at Eunice’s house had been seemingly plentiful at first, it became increasingly meagre once I lived there full-time. For instance, Eunice would allow us only four slices of processed bread a day. Flimsy white sliced bread. Four slices, no more, no less. It was yet another one of her arbitrary yet rigid rules. But children get hungry and their appetites vary from day to day depending on whether they are growing or sick, whether it’s hot or cold weather, if they’ve been physically active or any number of other factors. They might want one slice of bread when they’re not particularly hungry or maybe six, even eight if they’re ravenous. It’s just common sense.

However, if we were found to have helped ourselves to any food that was not allocated to us we would get beaten. And not just a tap or a slap, but what I called a ‘proper beaten-style’ beating.

Although I got away from Eunice when I went to school, I carried her rules in my head wherever I went and I would be fraught with fear about getting them wrong or doing something that she would not approve of, or worse, violently punish me for.

When Eunice doled out here punishments it was never in temper. It was always done in a cold, hard, calculating and clinical way. It was sadistic. She would say, ‘I’m going to punish you now,’ then there would be a wait. It might be ten minutes or it might be an hour, or when we got somewhere else, like home, if I’d been at school. It could even be ten hours later, the next day or the next week, way after the so-called misdemeanour was past. But it was noted, and the punishment would always come. This meant I’d be on edge, my stomach churning as I waited. It was never just over with quickly but hung over me like a huge, dark cloud until she was ready to let rip.

Then she would grab me by the arm, drag me into the living room and close the door. While I stood trembling in the middle of the room, she would go and get a piece of wood that she kept under the stairs with her Jehovah’s Witness books. It was about two feet long – I think it was the handle off an old copper saucepan or something.

‘Take your shoes and socks off,’ she would command.

If I hesitated for a second, I knew she’d get even angrier, so I’d crouch down or bend over and take them off. If I had tights on, they would have to come off, or if I had trousers on, I’d roll the legs up.

Eunice would stand beside me, patiently, while I did this. She would be holding the wooden stick in her right hand and tapping it on her left palm, as if testing its weight.

Then we would stand there, side by side in the dingy living room. She would wait to see if I cried or trembled and I would try my utmost to shut down and not show her anything.

I remember the first time it happened. I had no idea exactly what she was going to do and just stood there trembling. Suddenly, Eunice bent over, as if she was going to plant something, and I felt an enormous ‘clunk across the toes of my right foot. The pain seared through my bare feet and it felt like someone had chopped them with an axe. It was agony. I couldn’t help screaming.

‘Be quiet. Don’t fuss. You’ll make it worse for yourself

How could it be worse?
I was shaking and crying with pain, but Eunice was bent double again, raising the stick and now she was going at my toes with great, unrelenting clunks. Clunk, clunk, clunk . . . on and on, five, ten, fifteen times. Then she changed foot.

‘Stand still, you’ll make it worse,’ she said again.

By now I was beside myself, yelping and screaming. But there was no let-up until, finally, the punishment was done and I was left shocked and crying. A few times after being punished like this I’d ask Eunice for a hug and she would briefly put her arms round me. For a moment I would feel comforted. I had been punished and now my ‘mummy’ was showing that although I’d been bad, she did still love me. It was twisted and makes me feel sick now but children need affection so much they will ask for it even from their abuser.

Once, when time was short, she whacked me with the wood over my shoes; when I tried to get my shoes and socks off later that day they were glued to my feet with congealed blood. My feet were a terrible mess. Of course, I never received any treatment at the time and, to be honest, I probably said nothing about it as I knew there would be no sympathy and certainly no visit to a doctor or hospital.

A toe beating could be prompted by something trivial like lying or something more serious, like stealing. Or it could be something imagined – something Eunice was convinced I’d done, whether or not I had. Oddly, in the early days at school I did go through a phase of hoarding all the school scissors, board rubbers and other things that I could find and putting them in my school bag. I’ve got no idea why I did it, but the teacher found out, and I was told off. I got a thorough beating across the toes for it when I got home. Another punishable offence was when I actually forged Eunice’s signature in my little blue school text book. I had to do spelling and tables tests at school and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to do it. Eunice had to sign my homework book to prove I’d been practising and I was too scared to ask her for it, because she’d test me and I was terrified of her. I had to read out the answers while I wrote them down in front of her and I didn’t want to experience the consequences if I got anything wrong. So I forged her signature and she found out because the teacher could tell it was an obvious forgery. I got a nasty toe beating for that.

After these beatings my toes would be black and blue all over. I remember once at the swimming baths – before Eunice had put an end to those outings – one of the dads noticed my bruised toes and asked, ‘How did you do that, then?’ I just said, ‘Something fell on my feet,’ of course. Even in those early days I knew somehow that I was not supposed to tell the truth about Eunice’s behaviour. Yet, that was so ironic given that the beatings were so often because I was accused of not having told her the truth. This meant that I had to double-think everything all of the time, presenting one story to Eunice for her satisfaction and another to the ‘world’ in my life outside. Another thing at this time is that Eunice stopped me having school dinners which I liked – probably because of the cost – and began to give me a packed lunch that consisted of a bit of iceberg lettuce, a slice of cucumber and a bit of tomato. There was no bread, so there was nothing filling in my lunch. I hated salad, like most kids, so being bored with having it every day, come rain or shine, I put it in the bin quite regularly. However, one of the children who was watching me from the house – probably Charlotte – saw me do it, and reported back to Eunice. So I had another beating for being ungrateful and wasteful.

We children were not set up to be a happy household, to support and trust each other or to comfort one another when things got tough. No, we were set up as enemies from the start. We were to watch and monitor, then dob each other in to save our own skins. It made us almost feral, forcing us to fight our own corners, putting ourselves and our own survival first.

In the hierarchy Charlotte and Robert came first, and the rest of us were to serve them. One day there were six pieces of bread on the table at tea time, and only five of us there. Thomas, being a boy, was always hungry and was eyeing up the extra slice. Charlotte, however, who always had a big appetite, also had her eye on the bread. Thomas made a move to pick up the slice

‘Mummy, Thomas is taking my bread,’ whined Charlotte.

Thomas had hardly touched it, but Eunice, infuriated, picked up a nearby can and threw it at Thomas’s head. It hit him near the eyebrow and blood started trickling down his cheek

Not missing a beat, Charlotte picked up the slice of bread and started munching.

‘That’ll teach you to be greedy’ said Eunice, not offering any help. I tried to give him a tissue for the blood, but Eunice snarled at me, ‘And you’ll do as you’re told. Sit down until I tell you to move.’

Cowed, I didn’t move, but inside I was seething, not only at Charlotte’s provocative behaviour, but also because Thomas was hurt and I could do nothing to help him. Sarah just sat with her head down, trying to be ‘good’, while Robert was largely oblivious to what was going on. He was only a toddler and was off in his own little world.

At first the beatings and other vile punishments really hurt. My eyes would fill with tears and I’d feel overwhelmed by pain and indignation. My face would flush with anger and humiliation and I would try to escape her iron grasp. But Eunice was determined to beat me – all of us – into submission so I had to pretend to give in to make her satisfied. I’d be counting the cracks in the wall and thinking,
It’ll be over in a minute, if you just hold still.
In the end I Iearned to blank out, to numb my feelings, to detach from my body, to go somewhere else within myself until the punishment was done. I learned to simply switch off and endure.

That was the only way to survive. Or so I thought.

CHAPTER 10:

Eunice had a grand plan. I truly believe that she cleverly, calculatedly and coldly devised her plan – actually a scam – and then enacted it, methodically, over a period of time, taking us children with her as her unwilling entourage.

Eunice had seen an opportunity to acquire some more property for herself – a second home in the country – without having to buy it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about this. Although she was quick to denounce me, Thomas and Sarah as evil, she was more devious than any of us. She accused us of what was actually true of herself. She was up to no good, but she covered it up and hoped, as always, to pull the wool not only over our eyes, but over our entire heads, too.

Unbeknown to us, Eunice had begun to befriend an elderly man called John Drake who owned a farm near an affluent, pretty market town called Pershore, north of Tewkesbury. I think she met him after fruit picking on his farm some time before we knew her and had somehow kept in touch. She must have made a mental note to go back and groom him in the same way as she had my parents: she could see a niche and would fill it when there was something in it for her. John had never married and he didn’t have any children and was now living alone.

The first time we met John was on a May bank holiday in 1994. Eunice packed us up in her Volvo Estate and we drove off into the country for about half an hour until we reached a bend in a leafy road. We all piled out and went through a big crossbar gate, past a large, rambling red-bricked Victorian farmhouse with neatly trimmed lawns and huge trees. A selection of vehicles was parked around the various outhouses.

A man in a flat cap welcomed us. He had yellowish, salt-and-pepper hair, wore those typical baggy tweed trousers with braces and smelled of sweat. John Drake was not a healthy man. He was a heavy smoker with a hacking cough who breathed heavily and wheezed noticeably all the time. He was very small, with a red face, and looked ancient to me.