Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (11 page)

‘I
t’s because you’re not a nice child. You were a bad influence on him and that’s why Nigel had to go to a special school. It’s all your fault. You’ve only got yourself to blame.’

Mum was walking so fast, her stilettos clicking noisily on the pavement, that I was half-running to keep up with her. We were on our way to Grandma and Grandpa Pittam’s house, which was the last place I felt like hurrying to. I was particularly apprehensive because it was the first time I’d ever been there without Nigel.

‘You were always winding him up,’ Mum continued. ‘That’s why he had the fits. If it wasn’t for you he’d be able to lead a normal life and go to a normal school.’

I was eight and old enough to know this wasn’t true, but I didn’t contradict her. I said as little as possible to her these days, wary of accidentally making her cross. Without Nigel, I had no courage, no energy. I felt as though a part of me had been amputated, as though there was a huge, gaping space by my side. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that he’d be cured soon and he’d come back to live with us again. Surely it wouldn’t be long.

At first, I wrote to him every day – about little things, like Whirly eating a tomato for the first time, and the way he sniffed it suspiciously for ages before taking a nibble; about what we had done at school and who’d got into trouble with the teacher that day; and I told him about what a cow Mum was being, since he was the only person in the world who understood what that meant.

After a few days, Dad suggested that it would save money on stamps if I wrote a bit to him every day but saved them up and just posted the letters once a week. I agreed reluctantly. I had to hide the unfinished letters in the secret hiding place under my wardrobe because I couldn’t risk Mum finding them and reading what I had written about her.

Every morning when I heard the postman at the door, I ran downstairs to ask Mum if there was anything for me, but there never was. ‘Why doesn’t Nigel write to me?’ I asked her.

‘He’s forgotten all about you by now, that’s why,’ she said spitefully.

When I asked Dad, he explained that Nigel wouldn’t have stamps or anyone to post letters for him, and promised to see what he could do about that. I kept writing every week but I never got a single letter back from my brother. It was as if he had vanished into thin air.

When we arrived at the Pittams, Grandpa was waiting for me in the hall beside the grandfather clock. I felt the usual mixture of sickness and horror swirling in my stomach. I hated the very sight of him but I was
absolutely powerless to stop the things that happened to me when I stepped into my grandparents’ house. My grandmother must have known what was happening but I was still sent away with my grandfather every time we visited, to be forced to do things that made me retch and gag just to think about.

‘You two go and play,’ Grandma commanded. ‘Your mum and I are going to have a cup of tea.’

Play
– it sounded so innocent and childlike. I knew we weren’t playing. Whatever it was we did belonged to a different world, an adult one, and I was terrified of it.

Grandpa was grinning as he held out a hand to lead me down the steps into the garage. ‘I’ve got a new game today,’ he said as he shut the door behind us. ‘You’ll like it. It’s really fun.’

‘I don’t want to play today, Grandpa,’ I said timidly. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’

He sat on his wooden stool. ‘Nonsense! Course you do! Come here!’ He lifted my skirt and pulled my pants down, nuzzling my neck with his prickly chin. I jumped backwards as the bristles scratched me. Grandpa grabbed my arm to pull me to him. He put his rough, calloused fingers between my legs and began to probe there, hurting me.

I cried out, ‘Stop it! That hurts!’ and struggled to get away from his grip. My hand got caught in the chain of his fob watch, tearing it off his waistcoat.

‘You little bastard. Who do you think you are?’ he snarled, just managing to catch the watch before it crashed to the concrete floor. He slapped me across the face and I cried out again.

The garage door opened and Grandma looked in. She must have seen that my pants were around my ankles and
I was clutching my sore cheek. ‘What’s all the noise about?’ she asked.

‘She ripped my watch, nearly broke it,’ Grandpa complained, holding it out to show her.

‘You’d better behave yourself,’ Grandma told me sternly. ‘Do what your Grandpa says or you’ll be in big trouble with me.’ She slammed the door shut again.

Grandpa grabbed my arm roughly and twisted it up my back; then he dragged me over to the rocking horse. By pulling my arm upwards, he forced me to bend over it and lifted up my skirt. ‘Stay there,’ he growled, and I didn’t dare move, although I felt very exposed with my bottom all bare like that, just as when Mum beat me with the bean cane.

Grandpa pulled his wooden stool over so that he was sitting just behind me and he stuck his fingers between my legs again. I whimpered with pain as he put his finger in my bottom; it felt as though he was splitting me open, but I was too scared to struggle now in case the pain got worse.

I heard him unzip his trousers then he gave a low moan. I think he was stroking his thing, while his fat fingers continued to push inside me, splitting and bruising me.

‘Don’t worry, Vanessa, it’s going to be all right. You’ll be fine. I’m here. I’ll look after you.’

I lifted my head ever so slightly and was startled to see a fuzzy figure of a beautiful blonde spirit lady in a long, white dress. She obviously wasn’t human because she was shimmering, not solid, and she hovered a few inches off the floor over by the garage door. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said, and I wasn’t. She had loving eyes and was smiling at me warmly. Grandpa couldn’t see her. I just gazed in awe. ‘It will soon be over,’ she murmured in her musical voice.

Sure enough, I soon felt the jerking movements and heard the throaty groan that Grandpa gave when his white stuff came out. He stopped jabbing me with his fingers and got out a hanky to clean himself up. I stayed bent over the rocking horse, unable to move while he sat so close behind me.

‘There, wasn’t that fun?’ he asked, patting my bottom. ‘Didn’t you like it?’

‘No,’ I said quietly.

‘You will. All the girls do.’ He pulled the stool back to let me stand up. ‘Here – put your pants on and we’ll go and look at the birds.’ He was cheerful now, pleased with himself. I hated him passionately at that moment. The blonde spirit lady faded into mist.

I stood up and pulled my dress down. There was a throbbing pain between my legs that made it difficult to move. I looked down and saw that some blood had trickled down my legs. ‘I’m bleeding,’ I told him. ‘You hurt me.’

‘Don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get Grandma to clean you up.’ He walked over to the garage door and called, ‘Elsie? Vanessa got a bit dirty and she needs a clean. Can you fill the tub?’

He turned back to me. ‘You stay here and your grandma will see to you.’ He bent down, held my head tightly between his hands, and kissed me hard on the lips, forcing my teeth into the inside of my lip. His breath stank with a rancid, gassy odour.

I waited, and soon Grandma appeared carrying the corrugated iron tub. Mum followed close behind with a bucket of water in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I blanched, remembering the time Grandma scrubbed me raw in that tub with a scrubbing brush and caustic soap.

I walked over to them very gingerly, with tiny baby steps, so as not to chafe the swollen bits between my legs. Mum looked me in the eye with a wry, mildly curious expression, then poured her bucket of water into the tub and turned away again.

‘What did she say to him?’ Mum asked, obviously carrying on the tail end of a previous conversation with Grandma.

Grandma brought through another bucket of water and poured it into the tub. ‘That she knew her rights and he wasn’t going to get away with it. She’d go over his head to the manager if need be. That shut him up.’ Grandma turned to me. ‘Take your dress off. Here’s a flannel. You should be old enough to wash yourself now.’

‘So did she get her money back?’ Mum asked. ‘I hope she didn’t give in.’ She lifted me into the freezing water and I winced.

Grandma passed me a bar of soap and I lathered carefully and washed myself thoroughly between my legs, soaking away all the streaks of blood. The icy water provided a welcome numbness for my sore bits. Mum and Grandma stood in the garage doorway carrying on their conversation but I could feel their eyes on me, waiting to tell me off if I did one thing wrong.

‘Every penny. It just goes to show, doesn’t it?’

‘She’s a right one. You’ve got to hand it to her.’

When I was finished, Grandma handed me a frayed, scratchy old towel. I knew it was more than my life was worth to drip water through the house, so I dried myself very carefully, standing on one leg to rub each foot in turn.

Mum and Grandma carried on talking to each other as I pulled my vest over my head, put on my pants,
dress, socks and shoes and went through to the front room to sit quietly on the horsehair sofa. I didn’t want to join Grandpa at the aviary. I missed Nigel so badly it was like a physical pain in my chest, much worse than the aching between my legs. I felt I could have put up with anything if only he was sitting there beside me, taking my hand and saying ‘Don’t worry, Nessa, I’ll look after you.’

Who was the spirit lady in the garage? I wondered.

‘Your guardian angel,’ a voice whispered to me. ‘She’ll be there whenever you need her. She’ll just appear.’ Another voice asked, ‘Why didn’t you say no? I’d have said no.’ ‘She can’t say no,’ a third chipped in. ‘He’ll just force her to do it.’ I sat listening as various different voices gave their opinions on my situation.

When it was time to go home, Mum came to get me. I was sitting absolutely still, trying not to think about the dull uncomfortable ache in my tummy, low down, like a bruise on the inside, or the fact that I still felt dirty down there despite my wash in the tub.

‘You’ve got a face like a wet weekend,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not going to be moping all the way home or your face will trip you up.’ She turned to Grandma and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Bye, Mum. Say bye to Dad for me. I can’t be bothered traipsing all the way out the back.’

On the bus on the way home, I was desperate for Mum to ask me what had happened. I wanted to tell her that Grandpa had made my bottom bleed and it was still very sore, but she kept talking about the price of school uniforms and complaining that I was growing so fast my school skirt was already too short.

She must know, I told myself. She helped Grandma put me in the bath. She saw where it hurt me. She must know and she thinks it’s all right.

Was it all right? I knew, with utter and complete certainty, that it wasn’t. There was no way that what Grandpa Pittam had done to me was normal. If it was, then why had Granddad Casey never done such a thing? Why hadn’t Dad?

It was wrong. It was bad. I knew that, and I was sure that Mum knew it too. Sometimes I would plead with her with my eyes as Grandpa led me off to the garage, but she just ignored me. I was too scared to ask her directly about what Grandpa was doing to me and she never brought it up. It was something that wasn’t talked about. That contributed to my feeling of shame and a sense that it was all my own fault for not being a loveable girl.

Dad was waiting to pick us up at the bus stop and his jollity was almost more than I could bear. ‘Did you have a good time then? Salmon and cucumber sandwiches, I’ll be bound.’

‘Of course,’ Mum laughed, rolling her eyes. ‘No surprises there. How was the cricket? Did you win?’

Why didn’t I just open my mouth and tell Dad what had happened? I didn’t think he would believe me, that’s why. Mum would tell him it was my lively imagination at work again. As soon as we got back to Shernal Green I ran out into the back garden to cuddle Whirly and told him all about it. His eyes met mine and he looked sad and sorry and very sympathetic. But there was nothing anyone could do about it.

As Nigel had predicted, we didn’t go to Nan Casey’s as frequently as before. It was a long drive right round the outskirts of Birmingham from south to north, which took well over an hour and a half – more if the traffic was heavy. Visits dwindled to once a month, but Mum and I continued to go to her parents every second weekend and sometimes two weekends in a row, because they were on our side of town and only a bus ride away from Shernal Green.

Once, urged by the voices in my head, I tried to resist Grandpa. When he bent down to kiss me, I swung my fist towards his face, knocking the monocle from his eye. He reached out to grab me and I pushed him away as hard as I could, crying, ‘Leave me alone!’

‘You want to play rough, do you? You stupid little girl, I’ll show you rough.’ He shoved me so that I fell over on to the floor, then he manhandled me until he had stripped all my clothes off. I heard my blouse rip a little at the sleeve and panicked about what Mum would say. Grandpa rolled my vest into a little ball and forced it inside my mouth, then he pulled the belt from his trousers and began to beat me with it.

I writhed around on the concrete floor trying to avoid the blows, which landed on my arms, legs, back and bottom, causing stripes of stinging pain. That wasn’t working so I huddled myself into a ball, with my hands over my head, whimpering.

‘Have you had enough?’ he gloated, and I could hear the same tone Mum used when she was beating me: amusement, pleasure, excitement. He delivered one last, vicious blow to my bottom then pulled me to my feet. I felt weak, as though my legs wouldn’t support me.

He sat down on the wooden stool, took his thing out of his trousers and then lifted me up so that I was sitting on his lap with my legs to either side of him. His thing was touching my private parts. It was a disgusting feeling. I wriggled to get away and he seemed to like that, because he chuckled. He put his fingers inside me, rubbing roughly, and then he did something else that I didn’t understand. He hawked loudly, spat in his hand and rubbed the spit between my legs. He repeated this, still fumbling around with his rough fingers, then I felt an agonizing pain as if I was being ripped open from front to back. I tried to scream but couldn’t because of the vest in my mouth and then I think I passed out.