Never a Hero to Me (24 page)

One Christmas time when I was staying with them, Diana told her parents how I never got any presents from my mum and dad at any time of the year and that they never sent parcels to school for me. Mrs Hayes gently told her to not say such things and distracted her attention. The next day there was a pile of gifts for me. The Hayes had gone out and bought me loads of stuff, from make-up to a record I really liked (I remember even to this day it was ‘Just Call Me Angel of the Morning’), from a selection box to clothes. Mrs Hayes had even bought me a cherry lip gloss which I coveted hugely, and which was all the rage. It was one of the loveliest things anyone had ever done for me, and it meant even more because they didn’t make a song and dance about it. As a child, the little things could have such an effect on me and as a grown-up I have tried to remember that; you never know what a child is going through at home, and simple acts of kindness can make their lives more bearable.

Those Christmas holidays, discos, excursions to the boys’ school and days out in Germany formed the backdrop of the next four years of my life. In the middle of it all were the normal things of music, fashion, make-up and friendships, and I felt happier than I ever had before. The lack of contact with my parents had been the norm for such a while, I could almost allow myself to relax and believe they would leave me alone permanently. Of course, I wanted love, but I didn’t want it on their terms.

By the time I had been at boarding school for two years, I realised there were more people like me than I had first imagined, both at my school and the one for boys. The majority of kids were there because there was no school for British kids near to where they were living, and there were others whose parents were abroad on long placements. However, there were also others who, like me, had been sent there because they didn’t function well within mainstream schools, for whatever reason – usually it was because of truancy and getting into trouble, but my own experiences had led me to realise these activities were often a smokescreen for other, darker problems.

After a while, I started to become inquisitive about why other kids were there – looking back, I think in some ways I was hoping to find someone like me. While I had previously suspected that some children were abused – such as my friend in Northern Ireland, although I never had any evidence of that happening – I had never discussed my own abuse with another youngster. As I became more and more ‘normal’, I was curious to know how many of us there were. Was there a whole anonymous group of abused children who never knew that others were there because we were all so used to silence and secrecy? The thoughts would go around my head whenever a new pupil arrived – why were they here? What had they done? What had been done to them? Even with friends who seemed to have straightforward family lives, I often wondered. I, of all people, knew what went on behind closed doors. The longer I was away from my dysfunctional family, the more I wondered about others.

David was the son of a private and was in his first year at school with us, so he must have been about twelve when I first met him. He had a younger brother who still stayed with their parents. A few weeks after he arrived, I met him for the first time when some of the girls escaped to the boys’ school one weekend. By this time, we knew the boys pretty well and, although some girls had boyfriends, we mostly had a laugh and sometimes a drink with them. David got into the older boys’ group very quickly, so I wondered about him. One night, I gathered the courage to ask why he was at boarding school. I tried to phrase the question in a way which would allow him to suspect the true meaning of what I was asking.

‘Why are you really here?’ I queried.

He looked at me as if I was mad.

‘Because I’m a right little shit,’ he said.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked.

He continued to look at me as if I was the daftest thing he had seen since his arrival and then walked away. ‘Talk about
what
exactly?’ I heard him say.

The thing was, I didn’t know what to ask or what I wanted to hear. Abused children are so used to being told one thing and hearing another that communication can be hard. Black can mean white, night can mean day, and sometimes nothing makes sense. I’d been told that I loved being abused. I’d been told that I enjoyed being raped. I’d been told that I encouraged my dad to violate me. I’d been told that when I allowed all of this to happen, I was a good girl.

Was it any wonder I sometimes felt as if I didn’t know the rules by which everyone else lived?

I wasn’t the only one. Just after I had started boarding school, I went for a cigarette one day with the older girl who was meant to be looking after me. There was a ‘smokers’ tree’ situated at the far end of the school, far away from teachers and the prying eyes of Matron. A girl called Jenny Donaldson was there when we arrived. She was a little older than me and quite aggressive. We had met before, but had never really chatted – smoking often bonded girls of different ages but I didn’t feel any warmth coming from Jenny.

As soon as we arrived, she started asking me questions, one after the other, almost leaving me no time to answer them.

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Yes, a big brother.

Is he at the school too?

No.

Where do you live?

Rinteln (it seemed the easiest answer – my parents could be anywhere by now).

What rank and regiment is your dad?

He’s in communications.

Are you going home in the holidays or staying here?

I’m staying here.

Do your parents write to you?

No.

Do they visit you?

No.

Do they send you parcels?

No.

Do you miss them? Do you? Do you miss them?

As she threw the questions at me, I started to cry. This was unusual for me as, generally, I tried to show little emotion, but it was almost as if she was leading me down a path of interrogation which would eventually reveal all the things I was trying so hard to hide. The prefect intervened when she saw my tears.

‘Stop being so nosey, Jenny,’ she said. ‘Leave her alone.’

Jenny screwed up her eyes and looked at me even more closely. ‘There’s something fishy here,’ she announced. ‘There’s something fishy about
her
.’

I looked aghast at her as she uttered those words and I bent down to pick up my bag, planning to go back to school. Jenny grabbed my arm and pulled me up.

‘I know,’ she hissed. ‘I know. IT happened to me too. IT happened to me and you just have to face up to IT. Get on with your life. You can’t change anything and you’ll get no sympathy here.’

Every time she said ‘IT’, she nipped me. If she did sense anything in me, a kindred spirit, it didn’t bring out any sense of camaraderie. She was looking at me as if I was filth; it was just the sort of look to take me back to how my dad used to look at me too. Maybe she was right, maybe there was something wrong with me – or maybe I reminded her too much of something she was trying to forget.

I ran all the way back to the dorm and threw myself on my bed, shaking.

There were secrets everywhere, and I still wanted to keep mine to myself. I’d decide when to talk – it wouldn’t be down to someone like Jenny Donaldson. I’d had enough of bullies to last me a lifetime.

There were more damaged souls than just me and Jenny. One girl called Hannah, who was almost sixteen, actually ran away during the night. She’d saved up enough money to try and get back to Scotland where her grandparents were. She was caught at the airport. Like me, she was one of the pupils who didn’t go home over the holidays. Jodie told me she had seen her in the corridor when she had been brought back. Hannah was shouting and screaming that she refused to go back home, but the matron of her dorm was saying it was her parents’ wish and she was to be taken out of school. Hannah was told there was no other way and that her dad would pick her up on the last day of term. She ran away again a few nights before that, but was caught once more – we never saw her again. When the story came out, it spoke volumes to me that she had wanted to get to her grandparents, not her mum and dad.

The other girls would gossip about people like Hannah and what she’d done, but they would talk around what, to me, seemed the real issues. They’d discuss how much money she’d saved, or what time of night she ran away, but it was almost as if they were scared to address the questions which remained unasked.
Why
was she so desperate to avoid going home?
Why
did she cry so much when told she had to be returned to her parents? No one wanted to pick at the seams; who knew how many girls would unravel if that happened?

Instead, we all focused on what every teenage girl found solace in: music and fashion. The 1970s may have been the decade that taste forgot, but when you were living in the middle of it, the sartorial horrors seemed an absolute delight! We lusted after mud-brown culottes and orange wraparound skirts. There was no such thing as ‘too much’ denim. Bell-bottoms were still around, as were tie-dye T-shirts. Clunky high-heeled platforms were worn with everything, and there were even attempts to hand-make the fashions we saw in magazines. I was never really that fashion conscious, but I joined in as much as I could. Some kids, mainly boys, were even beginning to wear punk outfits, but it was early days and the places they could access such gear were few and far between.

After my disastrous attempt at an Afro hairstyle, my hair grew back, and I was much happier with the next trend – pageboy haircuts. These were, in retrospect, truly hideous. Everyone looked as if their granny had put a bowl on their head and then cut around it, but we all had dreams about sleek, turned-in, mid-length cuts with severe fringes. A lot of girls were also getting their ears pierced – including me. It was done with a cork and needle, and you simply had to suffer the pain as a rite of passage. We all tried to sneak some big hooped earrings into our daily uniform, but Matron would not allow it. There were notices up all over the dorms saying that only ‘sleepers’ would be allowed, and we had to abide by it. I was quite grateful. The cork and needle hadn’t exactly done a professional job, and the huge hoops dragged my lobes down unbearably. Still, I had a good moan with everyone else about how Frau Schneider simply didn’t understand being young.

Music was changing too and a gulf was appearing between the boys and girls as things moved towards the punk years, which would change what we all listened to forever. The girl pupils liked Barbra Streisand, Hot Chocolate and Leo Sayer, we mooned over the Bee Gees and Barry Manilow, while the boys discovered the Sex Pistols and the Jam, Blondie and the Knack.

Over the four years, things did change – not just the outside world and the parts of it which encroached on our lives such as clothes and songs, but what was inside too. It was in some ways an uneventful time in my life, and this suited me fine, but I also changed enormously, gaining an inner strength and confidence I had previously never known I possessed. I kept my head down, worked hard and never really got close to any of the teachers. I had friends, but didn’t confide in them; I regret that. I wish I’d told Diana Hayes or Kate everything as I think they would have been tremendously supportive.

As we went through our last year at boarding school, the dorm girls and I often discussed what we were going to do. The others all planned to go back to their parents and take stock, whereas I wanted to be independent, working and happy. I began to look forward to leaving the past behind me. School had given me four invaluable years of safety and security; from that, for the first time, I was optimistic about my life. At sixteen, my parents would have no hold over me. Although they had shown no interest over the past four years, the thought of legal freedom meant a great deal to me. I could finally become the person I wanted to be.

To get to that point, I would have to see my father again. I knew this was coming but I wasn’t as scared as I might have expected to be. I had been away from my whole family for four years, so when I was told I would have to attend a meeting with Dad in the office of the headmistress, I accepted it. This was simply another stage I had to get through to move to the next part of my life.

When I walked in, he was already there. He kept looking at the floor, which meant I could stare as much as I liked. It was odd to see this monster again – and even odder that he seemed so insignificant. I was obviously taller and older, I was a young woman, whereas he seemed to be heading towards old age very quickly. He was actually younger than I am now, but appeared absolutely drained. There was simply no life in him. It was hard to reconcile this
nothing
of a man with the creature who had terrorised me.

The headmistress, Miss Thorne, had to do most of the talking. She made a little speech about how well I had done, how popular I was, how everyone would miss me, but he didn’t respond. Miss Thorne looked at me throughout, smiling in a supportive way, and I did the same back to her.

‘Mr Black,’ she said, ‘perhaps you would like to tell Tracy what her options are now that she is able to leave us?’

He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her, not me. ‘She has to go to family – there’s some in England or Scotland. Ask her what she wants.’

Scotland held good memories for me so I told Miss Thorne I would like to go there. I wanted to be independent and get a job, I wanted a home of my own – and I wanted to make a family. ‘Fine,’ Dad said, and left the room.

Miss Thorne looked embarrassed. ‘Well, my dear,’ she said, ‘all I told your father was true. We have loved having you here and we hope you have enjoyed your stay.’

I couldn’t even begin to express what being at boarding school had meant to me. Through CO Stewart, the Army had paid for me to live in safety for four years, through every holiday, and with everything I needed. I knew I would never see him again, but I wanted to thank him with all my heart. The Army may have harboured a monster in my father, but they had also saved me from that monster.