My Daughter, My Mother (36 page)

‘I’ve told him – I don’t trust him, and I don’t love him. He’s a ****ing bastard to me, and he doesn’t deserve to have kids . . . I know, he’s a ****ing nutter, he ought to be locked up and the key thrown away, but in the end he is their father . . .’ On and on she went. Joanne’s nerves were stretched taut.

She couldn’t phone Mom and Dad’s house too early. She knew Karen nearly always stayed up watching TV. She needed to wait till ten or so, to be sure she’d answer. Was she even allowed to use the phone that late? She thought about phoning Michelle, but it was so long since they’d spoken, and Meesh might be sympathetic, but in the end she’d just say, ‘Told you so.’

By the time ten o’clock came, she was shaking with the need to do something. Gina had at last shut up and hobbled off upstairs.

She dialled and inserted the money, her blood banging. The phone connected: Karen. Thank God!

‘Hello?’ Karen’s voice sounded very cautious, as if expecting trouble.

‘Karen?’ she spoke quietly as if the house were all listening. ‘It’s me.’

‘Jo!’ Karen’s voiced lifted in relief, then erupted into anger. ‘For God’s sake, where are you? We’ve all been worried sick!’

‘I had to leave . . .’ She broke down. Hearing her sister’s voice signalled her real world coming back to her in this foreign place. ‘Has Dave been round?’

‘Has he been round? What do you think? Of course he has! He’s been beside himself. What on earth’re you playing at, just disappearing without telling anyone? Where are you?’

‘Is he angry?’ She was snivelling down the phone.

‘What do you think? Yes! Well, no. He was at first. He was wild. Now he’s all over the place. What’re you playing at – everyone’s in a right state. You’ve caused no end of trouble, Joanne. Who’re you with?’

For a second she didn’t understand the question. ‘Who . . . ? You mean . . . ? I’m not with anyone!’ Her voice rose in indignation. ‘Is that what you all think: that I’ve run off with someone? For Christ’s sake, I’m in a home – a refuge. I couldn’t stand it any more. He’d been hitting me, for months. I never said, but then he started on Amy, and that was when I knew I had to go . . .’

She was weeping now, hardly able to get the words out.

‘How could you think . . . ? You got to believe me, Karen. I don’t know what’s up with Dave, but he’s not the person he used to be. He gets angry and lashes out. I’m frightened of him. And now the police might be onto him . . .’ She trailed off into sobs.

There was a silence down the other end of the phone, which seemed to go on forever.

At last Karen said very solemnly, ‘Is this true?’

‘Of course it’s true – what d’you think I am?’ Joanne wailed. ‘But don’t tell him! For God’s sake, don’t mention the police to him! I mean, they might not even . . . I don’t know. Just don’t say anything . . .’

‘I won’t.’ Karen sounded dazed.

‘
Promise
me.’

‘I won’t, I told you. I thought . . .’ Pieces of a puzzle were coming together in Karen’s head. ‘Last time I came over. There was something not right – I could see, but I never thought. Oh, Sis, I’d never’ve thought Dave . . . Is it really true? That’s not like him.’

More quietly now Joanne said, ‘I know. But it’s true. I don’t know what to do. I think he needs help. I’d come back, but my social worker says . . . I’ve got a case conference tomorrow.’

‘Case conference? You’ve got a social worker?’ Karen sounded very sober now.

‘Yes. I didn’t have any choice once I’d . . . It’s weird, Karen, everything just gets taken over.’

Slowly Karen said, ‘Look, I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad what’s happened. Try and get them to take it in. Where are you?’

‘I’m not s’posed to say.’

‘No, I suppose not. Mom and Dad aren’t going to find this easy. I’ll just tell them you’re okay – they’re worried sick.’

‘What’ve they said?’

‘Mom’s furious. More angry than I’ve ever seen her. She thinks it’s terrible. You know: Dave can do no wrong. Make your bed and lie on it – all that. Thinks you’ve gone mad. Dad’s been tutting, but it’s hard to know what he thinks.’

‘Well, yeah.’ They both laughed, faintly.

‘Stay where you are. I’m going to talk to someone at work, tomorrow if I can – get some advice. Look, are you okay? And Amy? It’s nowhere near your house, is it?’

‘No, it’s okay. He wouldn’t find us. And we’re all right for now. It’s not very nice – some of the other kids are terrible. But there’s a nice woman in charge.’

She wanted to break down and sob for her sister to come to her, but knew it would be unfair. She swallowed and kept control of herself.

‘That’s good. Now, look, phone me tomorrow – same time.’

‘I will.’ Joanne felt a surge of warmth and relief. Karen was all right really. She was more than all right, in fact.

‘Give Amy a kiss from me.’ Karen paused. ‘It
is
true, isn’t it? About Dave?’

‘It’s true,’ Joanne said miserably. ‘I wish to God it wasn’t.’

Forty-Four

The next night she spoke to Karen, quite late, once the house had at last gone quiet. Or, rather, Karen spoke to her. Joanne could hardly get a word in edgeways at first. Karen had consulted Hilary, her counsellor friend. She had also spoken to Dave.

‘The thing is,’ she spoke carefully, but Joanne could hear her enjoyment of a certain kind of authority in the situation, ‘Dave’s blaming you for everything – and, at the moment, Mom agrees with him. You know what their generation are like about marriages breaking up. You don’t do it. Must be the woman’s fault, she’s supposed to be the centre of the marriage and the household, blah, blah, and all that.’

Karen sighed, heavily.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m quite surprised what it’s brought out: the way Mom’s been on about it. I thought she might have been a bit more understanding. She won’t hear a word against Dave – she thinks you ought to come back and get on with it. Knuckle down, sort of thing.’

‘What, even if he’s violent to us?’ Her hurt and anger made Joanne’s voice shrill. ‘Even if he hurts Amy?’

‘The thing is, she doesn’t believe he’s capable of it.’

‘Why’s she taking his side? She’s my mom, not his!’ Joanne was trying to swallow down tears. ‘And what about Wendy?’

‘Well, you know what she’s like – in a world of her own half the time. Won’t hear a word against him, either.’

‘Was she nasty about me?’ Joanne wasn’t sure why she asked this, but she seemed to need to know if everyone in her life had turned against her.

‘No – she wasn’t actually. I just don’t think any of it’s really sunk in. Anyway, what I was going to say was, I had a conversation with Hilary, the counsellor woman at work. She talked to someone else, who she said had worked with a lot of battered women . . .’

Battered women?
Joanne thought. She remembered Doreen, and the state of Gina’s toes. God, she’d become a label! She’d had enough of this.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. We had the case conference today. The police are going to interview Dave. It’s a first offence, and there wasn’t much evidence. Amy had some bruises, but they’d almost gone by the time we got here. He might just get a caution . . . If I go back, we might end up with a supervision order, I think they call it.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Karen was silenced for a moment. ‘Well, I s’pose they have to . . . The thing is, if Dave’s blaming everything on you, no one’s really got anywhere and you’re safer staying out of his way. You need to give yourself some time to think, away from his influence – and with all this going on.’

‘I know,’ Joanne said, but her spirits sank, dismally. What she wanted to hear was someone saying: Go home – you can forget about this nightmare. She just wanted everything to be all right again.

‘No one’s really talked to Dave, I don’t think. Not properly,’ Karen said. ‘They’re all just saying, “Oh, poor Dave, his wife’s run off with their kid.” So he’s not really looking at himself. Maybe I should . . .’

‘Maybe you should be a counsellor,’ Joanne suggested wearily.

‘Umm,’ Karen said, sounding pleased. ‘Perhaps I should. But maybe the police had better talk to him first.’

September weather was setting in. The trees drooped, leaves turning rusty at the edges. Joanne ventured out with Amy. From the house they had access to Edgbaston Reservoir and Summerfield Park. The weather was changeable, but as often as possible she took Amy out, happy to get away from the house and all the misery and aggravation it contained. At first she felt vulnerable stepping outside. Everyone was obsessed with security and wary about the house being watched. Although she knew Dave had no idea where she was, she, like the other women, felt as if they stood out a mile as soon as they left the house. Doreen never went out at all.

Dave, she had heard, had been formally cautioned by the police. Although the pressure was always on in the refuge to make a plan, to sort yourself out, and Megan was in and out talking to her, Joanne knew she needed some days of quiet, to think.

She walked for miles with Amy in those gusty, early autumn days, sometimes stopping to feed the ducks. She would find herself standing for heaven knew how long, gazing out over the grey water, then coming to and wondering how long she had been there. Sometimes sobs rose up from her thoughts and she would weep uncontrollably, in the middle of the park. Her emotion was often brought on by thinking about her early years with Dave, how full of hope he had been: he had been special, chosen, brimming with confidence. She had almost worshipped him. She wept for all that had been lost, for both of them. Now he was full of rage with her and a sense of betrayal – according to Karen.

Thinking about the future seemed impossible now. It was as if she was in limbo in this place, this house of alien smells and people, which was neither a home of the past nor the future, but a holding pen from which her life must somehow go on.

She had great respect for the women who ran the refuge – especially Marcia, to whom she found she could talk easily, and she admired the way she handled a lot of difficult situations. But in Jackie she also saw someone who had special gifts, especially with the children. What they really needed, Jackie told Joanne one day, was a man to work there, to show the children that not all men are violent abusers. But such men were hard to find.

However, Jackie was one of the few people who could get any response out of Gina’s boys, who despite their angelic looks and winning ways were devious, angry and violent. Their blond sweetness would alter in seconds to show furious, snarling faces, boys who bit and kicked at any sign of attention and who went out of their way to trip up and bait other children. Maeve kept her cowering girls well out of their way, but there were endless problems involving the boys.

As the week passed, Joanne gradually learned more about the other women in the house. Gina, the prettiest and closest to her age, was always the most forthcoming. If they met in the kitchen she was always full of chat, but Joanne soon learned not to trust her.

‘Gina’s been in and out of here,’ Marcia warned her. ‘I wouldn’t believe everything she says. To be honest with you, we’re in the last stages of having those boys taken into care. Gina looks sunny, but her own background was a nightmare – and the dad’s more of the same. The trouble is she has no idea what normal behaviour is, bless her.’

Gina would relate with relish some of the injuries that Benny, her husband, ten years her senior, had inflicted on her.

‘The first time I come here – that was when he blacked both my eyes – you should’ve seen me; like summat out of the
Black and White Minstrels
! That’s ’cos my nose was broke as well; and I had a broken rib or two, but you couldn’t see that. Then there was the time he broke my jaw – see here, I’ve got wire in here, but they made a lovely job of it. I had Jase as a baby then, and Benny couldn’t stand him crying . . . This was before he got systematic about it – I mean, this time, with the claw hammer: he just worked his way along . . .’

All this told while frying bacon. Benny was a big softie really, she assured everyone. It was only she who understood him. Gina completely horrified Joanne, and she found herself avoiding conversation with her.

She never really worked Maeve out, and in any case she was gone within a few days. Devoutly Catholic, she managed to give off an air of self-righteousness while also blaming herself for all that had happened. Her daughters looked cowed and terrified, but Joanne never worked out where the truth lay there. She was replaced by an older lady called Linda, who seemed very depressed and just said she couldn’t stand any more. Her children were grown-up. She’d had enough.

Of the other two, it was Doreen for whom her heart bled. Joanne gradually learned, both from Marcia and from Doreen herself when she occasionally stopped and spoke, that the woman was forty-five and had seven sons. Her husband had been violent all through their marriage, but at any backchat from her or attempts to leave him he had immediately got her pregnant again, so that she didn’t feel she could desert the family. Now the boys had grown up, and after their education in violence from their father, the older ones had started setting about their mother as well. Doreen had at last acted on repeated advice from social workers and health visitors to get out of there and try to save Danny, the youngest, from going the same way. Now she lived in terror of her husband finding her. Joanne could hardly take in the pain, fear and heartbreak that this gently-spoken woman had suffered.

As for Mariam, she really did not speak English. She had been brought over as a bride from Bangladesh by a man who had already twice tried to kill her by throttling her. She was fifteen years old.

Joanne found she longed to be out, to do something normal.

One afternoon she decided to try getting on the bus into town. She asked Marcia’s permission, and Marcia told her it was absolutely up to her, to assess her own risks. Where could be the harm? Joanne reasoned. Dave was the one person she really couldn’t risk running into, and he would not be in town on a workday afternoon.

All the same, sitting on the bus as it crawled along the Hagley Road, she was surprised at how nervous and strange she felt. It reminded her of when she first had Amy, coming out of the hospital as if to a world that had changed. Whereas of course it was she who had changed. It felt today as if everyone was staring at her.