Never a Hero to Me (13 page)

He pushed me down again and I did open my mouth. I thought he meant for me to give it a grown-up kiss. I had seen people on TV and films kiss with their lips apart and I told myself that, if I did that, he would let me go, but as soon as my mouth touched his penis, he shoved me towards it with such ferocity that it went straight into my mouth. I tried to jerk back but he wouldn’t let me go. I was crying and making a noise like a trapped animal but he kept telling me over and over again how much I liked it, how much I was enjoying it, how much little sluts like me could think of nothing else but this.

The more he pushed me onto him, the harder he seemed to be getting. I could taste horrible things, it was salty and there was something coming out of it. All of a sudden, I could bear it no longer and I gagged. I could feel vomit rising in my throat and there was a light-headedness overwhelming me. The gagging wouldn’t stop and as I writhed about he finally threw me off him. ‘For fuck’s sake, Tracy!’ he shouted. ‘That’s supposed to be nice for me and you’ve fucking ruined it.’ He pulled his pants and trousers on and stormed out of the room.

I lay there crying – as much at his words as his actions. Nice? That was supposed to be nice? I was a child. I couldn’t even think how he could come up with the idea to make me do that, as I didn’t even know oral sex existed. A light flicked on. He had said that it was meant to be
nice
. Not to help Mum, not to make her better, but to make him feel
nice
.

That wasn’t why I was doing this – something changed that night, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Maybe it was the location which did it, but Dad seemed to have the luck of the Irish. One day, while I was looking out of my bedroom window after school to see if Hilary was playing on the pavement, I saw an ambulance draw up. It pulled up across the road from our house, but my heart was in my mouth. It could just as easily be for Mum as anyone else. I had assumed she was at bingo when I came in and only Dad was there, but now I wondered.

‘Mum? Mum?’ I shouted as I jumped down from the seat at the window. Rushing out of my room, I ran straight into Dad. ‘What’s all the shrieking about?’ he asked.

‘Mum! Where’s Mum?’

‘Bingo.’

‘Are you sure?’ I needed him to confirm things. I needed him to tell me the truth.

‘Of course I’m fucking sure – I’m not stupid like you,’ he replied. ‘What’s going on?’

‘There’s an ambulance out there,’ I pointed towards the window, ‘and I thought they might be coming in here.’

He walked over to where I had gestured. ‘Mmmn,’ he said. ‘Actually, your mum hasn’t been feeling too well, but that’s not for her. You need to be very careful, Tracy, it could easily have been here to take her to hospital. You need to make sure you are
always
a good girl.’ My heart sank. Although the abuse had been continuing and his strange bathing rituals were as regular as ever, he had never again tried to force me into oral sex. If he was thinking I wasn’t being good enough, I could only pray he wouldn’t try to force that on me again. ‘Think about it,’ he said, as he left the room.

I went back to my viewing point just in time to see a stretcher being taken out of Hilary’s house. I could vaguely see a woman’s face and knew it was her mum, not mine. I had long held suspicions that Hilary was abused too, but these thoughts were purely down to her being sad and a loner. When I had discovered some time ago that her mum didn’t keep well either – these illnesses were never really specified in my youth when children were expected to be seen and not heard – then it all fell into place for me. If her mum was ill, if she was sad, then she would have a secret with her dad.

With my own father’s words ringing in my ears, I could only think one thing. Hilary hadn’t been good. She hadn’t been good
enough
and now her mum was being taken into hospital. I wondered what Hilary had refused to do? Had her daddy tried to get her to do the horrible thing with her mouth as well?

I didn’t see Hilary that day – or for the rest of the week. About ten days after I had seen the ambulance pull up in our street, I came home one half-day to the sight of a line of hearses outside her front door. Running inside, I could hardly bear to watch them from the window but I caught a glimpse of Hilary walking beside her father. She was pale and tiny; it was like looking at myself, I thought.

My dad used to appear beside me as if he had supernatural powers. Maybe I was often in a world of my own or maybe he just liked to catch me unawares, but this was one of those times. As I stood with tears falling from my eyes, thinking of Hilary’s loss and of what it would mean for me if my own mum died, he was there with an arm around my shoulders.

‘Sad, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘So sad when a little girl’s mummy dies. Hilary will be all on her own now, I guess – I hope her dad doesn’t mind looking after her.’

‘Why would he mind?’ I asked.

‘Well, if Hilary hasn’t been a good girl, if it’s her fault that her mum died, then I suppose her dad would be within his rights to be very angry.’

‘Was it Hilary’s fault?’ I asked quietly.

‘I would think so,’ he confirmed. ‘I hope it’s making you think, Tracy. It’s a terrible thing when a daughter doesn’t love her mum enough. Can you imagine how that poor woman must have felt on her deathbed knowing it was her own child who put her there?’

‘Will . . . will that happen to my mum?’ I stammered.

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘I really don’t know. We can only hope that you’ll learn a lesson from this and be a very, very good girl from now on. That would be a terrible thing to have on your conscience for the rest of your life.’

It was a lucky day for my father when Hilary’s mum died – and he would make the most of it. Things had been changing slightly in that I was being much more vocal about my opposition to the abuse. There had been occasions when I had actually run away from him and locked myself in the upstairs bathroom until Mum or Gary came home, in order to thwart his intentions. That wasn’t easy. He’d stand outside, banging on the door, shouting and swearing, calling me all the names he could think of and threatening to batter me senseless when he finally did get his hands on me, but all I would think of at those times was that I was at least delaying what he wanted to do, and every minute without it happening was a minute I savoured.

There had also been times when he had tried to drag me into his bedroom by my hair, and I had physically fought him off. I have plenty of physical mementoes of those days and nights. He liked to hit my back and the back of my head. He enjoyed kicking and punching me in the kidneys, where it was hidden but a lot of pain could be inflicted. He had lots of favourite places. To this day, I have a rib always out of place because of what he did – whenever I’ve been X-rayed, doctors have said I must have had it cracked when it was young, but I have always been evasive about how it actually happened.

Sometimes I would be able to keep him off until someone came back, or, a couple of times, as had happened the time he had tried to force me to give him oral sex, he would rant at me and say that I had ‘spoiled’ things. I didn’t always win. There were times when he caught me, dragged me to his room, and abused me in anger, which was always even more painful than usual. He was letting his true side show more and more often; there simply wasn’t always the pretence that it was for Mum, or that we were doing this for a greater good. It was becoming more and more clear to me that he enjoyed this and when his perfect scenario wasn’t played out, he would be furious.

The fact that I was making it clear I didn’t want this was a big difference. Even if it did help Mum – and I wasn’t always sure about that, although the death of Hilary’s mother had blurred the lines again – I was more aware of sex, and realised that was exactly the sort of ‘relationship’ my father and I had. And that was wrong. He must have felt so powerful that he could ignore my pleas and screams and still get me to indulge his perversions. He was forcing me every time. Of course, he had always forced me in that it was always abuse, but when I was much younger I was more naive and simply accepted his reasons even when it hurt and made me feel awful. Now, I could shout out against it and he could still make sure it happened; I think that was an enormous power trip for him.

Mum seemed oblivious. She hadn’t been ill for a while but, apart from the death of Hilary’s mother, Dad wasn’t using that excuse very much to control me. She had a little job doing a few hours cleaning each week – he liked that because it got her out of the house even more. One night, just after she left, he told me to get my arse upstairs. I refused and he threatened me, as usual. There was nothing new in the threats, nothing new in the words he used or the punishments he shouted about, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of him pawing me that night. I ran upstairs to the bathroom, as I’d done many times before, and he chased me. Just before I got the door closed, he reached in, grabbing me by my jumper. I had a blouse on underneath and I heard them both rip as the material was snatched. I threw all of my weight against the door and slammed it in his face. He ranted and raved at the locked door, but eventually gave up. I decided I had to get out – I dragged the laundry basket over to the bathroom window and stood on it. I could climb out and get away. As I climbed up, I saw the fabric of my jumper and blouse flapping about. Wriggling out of them, I popped them in the laundry basket and rescued a top I’d placed there the day before.

I climbed up, clambered out of the window and dropped onto the low roof below. It was then just another jump to freedom. I didn’t do much. I wandered around the camp for a bit, then realised I had to get home. It was cold, I had no money, no friends, and nowhere to go.

When I got home, he was sitting on the sofa with Mum, the ripped clothes from the laundry basket in his hands. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ she asked me. Before I could speak, he interrupted. ‘I told you, Valerie – she wanted to go out, I said she couldn’t, she had a temper tantrum, and even ruined her good clothes.’

‘I just don’t know what to do with you,’ Mum sighed.

He did.

He got off that sofa and battered me right in front of my mother, who sat there stony-faced, as unemotional as if she was drinking a cup of tea.

This is the woman I was trying to save.

I believe that event made Dad realise I was slipping out of his control. I was getting older, understanding more, and questioning things. He could still force me, he always could, but never again would I quietly comply with his abuse of me.

He needed to up his game; he needed to go to the next level.

He needed to rape me.

When awful things happen in life, you don’t always remember every detail. I’ve had to put together so many little parts of that awful night, because it is the
act
itself which is imprinted on my memory and will be for the rest of my life. From the bits of the jigsaw I have collated, I do know that Mum was, of course, at bingo that night. I know that it was just after Christmas, because I had a new
Jackie
annual. I know that it was a normal day – and one of the most awful ones of my life.

Dad hadn’t actually been doing anything to me for a while, certainly since well before Christmas, and I think he may have been lulling me into a false sense of security, or building up to it. It may have been that he was in two minds about whether he was going to take his abuse to the next, abominable level and, certainly, I knew from his reactions during some previous encounters that he was getting more and more angry about me continually saying that I didn’t want to do these things.

Maybe he was having a crisis of conscience. I hope so, but doubt it. Even if that was the case, he must have managed to convince himself that it was fine after all, that his own personal depraved sexual needs came before anything else, as always.

When I got home from school, Mum was already making dinner, a sure sign that she was planning to go out. Gary wasn’t there as it was his night for Scouts, and Mum said she’d pick him up on her way home from bingo. As soon as the three of us had eaten, Dad snapped at me to go and get a bath. It was barely five o’clock but when I questioned this, he said I was mucky from playing and school. This was the first thing which should have rung an alarm bell – when I hadn’t been abused by him, it was up to me to decide when I bathed. The baths after abuse were part of his ritual and he wasn’t interested at any other time as to when I washed. Now I was getting older, I was much more aware of personal hygiene and more able to take care of myself – I made sure I washed when Mum was there and, although I was never dressed very well, I was a lot better than in those early days when I smelled and was always called names.

I did as I was told and when I came down Mum was putting her coat on. Although it was still early, she liked to get a particular seat at bingo so tended to meet her friends well before it started. Dad told me to get back to my room and have an early night – I could read for a while, but he’d come up to tell me to put my light out.

‘It’s fine,’ I told him, nervously, not wanting him in my room at all. ‘I’ll just read for five minutes.’ I would rather do that and then pretend to sleep than risk him coming in to me.

‘Disobeying me again,’ he said, pointedly directing the comment to my mother. ‘Why are you such a bad girl, Tracy? As I’ve said,
I’ll
tell you when to put the light out.’

I trotted off to my room and resigned myself to a horrific night – I had no idea just how bad it was going to be. When he came into my room and climbed on top of me, I thought it would be like any other night, but there was something about his attitude, the look in his eye, which panicked me, and I tried to push him off my body.

He said nothing, just forced himself on top of me a little more strongly before starting to touch me all over. He pushed my nightdress up and his horrible nicotine-stained fingers found their way inside my pants. He pulled those off and started hurting me so badly; he was rougher than I could ever remember. His fingers were going so much further than they ever had before; I didn’t think I could stand it. Dad was panting and getting out of breath. I hoped it would be over soon.