Never a Hero to Me (15 page)

The doctor seemed to accept that without question although it seemed to make very little sense. He gave me Dioralyte and left. As soon as he closed the door on the doctor, Dad came back in with a rubbish bag and swept all my Avon things away. They were the only nice things I had. To this day, I hate the smell of lavender – I liked it then, but now it just reminds me of that dark time. Even that tiny bit of normal was to be taken away from me.

That was a wake-up call for me. I was getting nowhere being a good girl – it was time for me to try a different approach. I think this happens with a lot of abused children. They’re told to be good, they’re told to behave, they’re told to keep in line – and when they do, they’re beaten and raped and betrayed. So, if that’s what happens when they’re good, why not be bad?

After the incident when the doctor had been called out, I decided it was time to try a little more resistance. What I wanted was for the abuse to stop – that simply wasn’t happening. Dad ignored me when I said no and he pinned me down when I struggled. The one way I was able to disobey him was by making friends at school. He had no idea what went on there. I also started taking my time coming home each day, and that worked out quite well as it was during the daytime that Mum was more likely to be there and she preferred it if I stayed out longer as it meant I wasn’t around her. The first few times I did come home late, she – without knowing it – really helped me by arguing my side against Dad and claiming it was ‘only normal’ for girls my age to want to be with their friends.

As a result, since we’d returned to Rinteln, I had got quite chummy with a few older girls. They gave me an insight into what other lives were like and I started to become more aware of fashion and superficial things. I made it known (to my parents, brother and peers) that my taste in music had changed. I started to listen to hard rock and wrote the names of the bands on my school jotters. This was a conscious decision for me – I had noticed that the bad girls seemed to like the same music as boys and I thought it would get me some attention. It was a time of change – clothes, as always, determined which ‘gang’ you were associated with. The good girls wore ponchos, trouser suits and culottes, while the bad ones were into Doc Martens, hot pants, platform shoes, skinners, bomber jackets and the dreaded tartan shirts and trousers. I had a poncho which I hated – it was hand-knitted and multi-coloured. I deliberately put a hole in it and told Mum I had torn it on a fence. It definitely didn’t fit in with the image I was trying to cultivate. I had bottle-green hot pants which I used to wear with platform shoes. The soles were two inches thick and had a palm tree carved on the side. The hairstyle of the time was flicked out in Farrah Fawcett style, which I attempted – unsuccessfully.

Holly Barton was a captain’s daughter from a really well-respected family. She was always friendly towards me and we often hung out together. Holly was a little bit wayward, and I liked her because of this. It was nothing too bad – she’d play chap door run, and break windows on abandoned buildings. I hadn’t fully decided to become a bad girl yet, but Holly would help me on my way. I actually wanted to fit in with the nice girls at that stage, but Holly and another girl called Glenda Miller would show me that you could have a good time being naughty. The strange thing was, I had known these girls a bit before we left for Northern Ireland, and they hadn’t been particularly friendly then, but when I came back they seemed pleased to see me. Maybe kids just grow up very quickly at that stage, or maybe I had changed a lot; whatever the reason, everyone appeared very different. I did meet some nice kids when we got back to Germany, but my behaviour put the good ones off. We all hung round the NAAFI a lot and I bought a few records there with any money I did have – my first one was the Beatles – and some people swapped them too.

One Saturday, I made the most of my mum being at home again and went into town with Holly and Glenda. I’d never been in a ‘gang’ before and was really excited – however, I had no idea until we went into the German hypermarket that the other girls were planning to shoplift. They hadn’t discussed it on the way there, but it seemed so natural to them I could only assume they did this regularly. It turned out I was a natural too. I loved make-up but wasn’t allowed it – without a hint of irony, my dad said it would make me look like a tart and that boys would be sniffing around. When Holly and Glenda started nicking sweets, I headed for the cosmetics counter and filled my pockets with lipsticks and eye shadows. It was all the German equivalent of Miners or Rimmel. Holly and Glenda gave me some of what they had stolen too, sweetie bracelets and dark chocolate, which was much more expensive in those days.

I felt quite pleased with myself as we made our way home. It had been a real bonding experience and I had shown the other girls that, despite being younger, I could do what I needed to do to be part of their gang. They were pleased with me, and with the make-up loot I shared with them, and I was on a high. I wasn’t really too bothered about getting caught as I thought that getting out of the shop without someone noticing would be the main thing, but once Holly and Glenda had gone home, I did start to think about where I could hide my stash. I didn’t have much money to spend, so I knew Mum or Dad would be suspicious if they found anything. Just outside my bedroom window was a huge tree; when I got back, I put all the make-up and sweets in a plastic bag, tied the handles and hung it on a branch. I clearly wasn’t destined to become a criminal mastermind because Mum saw it waving about out there the moment she came into my room. ‘Tracy? There’s something in that bag hanging on the tree out there,’ she commented.

‘I don’t think so,’ I tried to say calmly. ‘Bags are always getting caught in the wind.’

‘No – there’s something in there. It looks heavy,’ she said.

She opened the window and reached out – it wasn’t hard to grab the bag, after all, a ten-year-old had put it there. Mum stood, holding on to it after she’d looked inside, with her face all twisted up in that special ‘mum’ look that mixes disappointment with anger.

‘Where is this all from?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Where were you today?’

‘Town.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘Can’t remember.’

It was the sort of conversation children have been having with parents for years – a list of questions from her, followed by me giving out as little information as possible. She held the trump card though.

‘Tracy, do you remember what I’ve said to you and Gary about stealing?’

‘I didn’t steal anything!’ I lied.

‘Well, that’s fine then – you won’t be bothered about me calling the police and asking them to get to the bottom of it.’

With that, she flounced out of the room with the bag in her hand and a commitment to her version of tough love. Mum kept to her word and the police arrived that evening. I denied it all for a little while and then Dad came in. He asked the policemen if they would mind him having a quick chat with me in private. He took me out of the living room, and asked if I had taken it. I admitted I had, hoping he would say he would sort it all out – surely he owed me something? – but he seemed completely nonplussed by having police in the house, and went straight through to tell them he had got to the bottom of it.

I was told I had to take the stuff back to the shop and one of the police officers said they would be putting this on record and watching for me. I had no idea if that was true, but as soon as they left my mum started ranting and raving.

‘You’d better get her sorted out!’ she screamed at Dad. ‘I’m sick of her bad behaviour.’

The thing was, I had never stolen before and the only ‘evidence’ she had of my so-called bad behaviour was all the lies Dad told her.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What have I ever done wrong?’

‘Your father’s told me all about it.’

‘I’ve done nothing, I’m a good girl,’ I protested.

‘Good girls don’t lie and steal,’ she retorted, then sighed. ‘Oh, I’m too ill to put up with this. You deal with her, Harry. I’m so cross with that girl, I need to get out of here.’

Off she went to the bingo while my father smirked on the sofa.

As soon as she was out of the door, I knew what would happen. And it did. He was so angry at me, which made him even rougher than usual. Afterwards, he said, ‘You were told, Tracy – you know the rules. When you play up, your mother gets ill, and now the fucking police are involved. How much worse do you think that makes her? You need to fucking behave.’

I didn’t know what else to do. I let him hurt me. I let him rape me. What else did he want? I didn’t know at that stage it was all about power and controlling me. There wasn’t anything I could do apart from let him rule my life. ‘You told Mum I was doing bad things but I’m a good girl, aren’t I?’

He thought about it for a moment. ‘You’re my good girl, but you’re her bad girl. Do you want her to love you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘Then you do what I tell you. You do everything I tell you. I’ll show you how to make her love you.’ Even as I lay there, bleeding and in agony, that’s all I could think of.

Throughout the following week, Mum was really unwell. Dad said it was because she was terribly upset about the shame I had brought on her, which was worsened when he took me back to the supermarket to return the stolen goods. The manager was actually really good about it and said I had done well by being honest, but Dad made a big fuss when we got back and said to Mum that I had shown us all up. A few days later, her legs needed to be strapped up with the pain and she had bleeding, blistering mouth ulcers, which meant she could barely eat. I thought it was my fault – and Dad made the most of it. She wasn’t going out, so he had to abuse me in my own bed, usually in the middle of the night. I never knew when he would be there; I could never settle or relax. These restrictions also meant he couldn’t engage in the washing ritual as Mum would notice a bath being run in the middle of the night, so he was angry all the time.

She was taken into hospital one weekend for a few days and he abused me solidly throughout that period. Gary was at football practice, at friends, playing outside and my dad kept me away from my friends, using the excuse to Gary that they were a bad influence and that he had to keep an eye on me. By the time Mum got back, I felt physically, emotionally and mentally drained – perhaps he felt a little bit guilty, if he was capable of that, because I think he must have had a word with her. Something certainly happened, because the Saturday after she got home, she suggested we went on a day out.

I couldn’t believe it. We started off by going to the cinema then went to the shops. She bought me a lovely pink jumpsuit (it seemed lovely in 1973!), denim culottes, Wrangler jeans and Doc Marten boots, so many of the things I’d dreamed of. I had decided how I wanted to look, and – apart from the pink jumpsuit – it was a very boyish, hard look, which would be in line with my behaviour. It was our first and last girly day out. My birthday was only a few weeks away and I asked whether all of these things were my presents, but she said they were extra. We were laden with shopping, we went for a cream bun in a café – we appeared to all the world like a normal mum and daughter. At one point, I reached for her hand, but that was a step too far for her and she snatched it away. She still held Gary’s hand when they were out, and he was a teenager. My father had played it very well. He must have told her I was going off the rails, so she should take me out and see if it made a difference. I didn’t think that at the time though; I just believed that being a good girl for him had finally paid off.

I was disproportionately grateful to her for doing what so many mums did as a matter of course. That gratitude extended to my dad as well, for I had no doubt he had made this happen. I revelled in the normality of it – and it lasted for a while.

For a couple of weeks, Mum was much better with me. She wasn’t loving but she would do things she’d never done before, such as sit beside me on the sofa while I did my reading – I would deliberately get things wrong so she would help. Usually she only sat there with Gary, hugging him, while I was told to go and do my homework at the table. When it stopped and she reverted back to type, I did the only thing I could think of – I tried to get attention.

In Germany, the camp was more laid-back than it had been in Northern Ireland, and more than it had been when we were there before. It was a fifteen-minute walk from town and more like a housing scheme for Englishers, as we were known (despite being Scottish!). There was a building site nearby where they were just putting windows into new houses and that’s where I headed, feeling very hard in my DMs and Wranglers. The police drove by regularly and I made sure I was throwing rocks at the glass just as they went by on one of their circuits. There was no point doing it if I didn’t get caught. It was a conscious decision when I went out that day to do something that would get me attention. I was taken back home in the car to Mum. When Dad came home, her only words were, ‘She’s been at it again.’

As usual, Mum left the house as soon as she had handed over responsibility to him and, as usual, I was punished by him forcing himself upon me. He was in a set pattern. He’d always wash me. It didn’t hurt or bruise so much by then, so maybe I was getting used to it. It certainly felt as if he was pushing deeper each time. I was eleven years old by this time and it’s probably only now, as a mother and grandmother, that I see the true horror of what was going on – what does it take for an eleven-year-old child to be glad that her body is getting more used to her father raping her because it doesn’t hurt quite so much any more? I can see there were many times when he wasn’t angry, when he actually treated me like a lover, caressing me, stroking my hair. He had crossed another line and seemed to see me as a substitute wife. My father now thought this was all perfectly normal, I think. He would ask if I was enjoying myself, if it had been good for me, if I liked the way he touched me. He obviously wanted me to say ‘yes’ because that would normalise it even more for him. I’d ask, ‘Why? Why do you want me to say “yes”? You know I don’t want this, Dad.’ He told me it should make me feel happy inside. That was the last thing it did, but by now he had broken me.