Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (15 page)

I hardly dared ask the next question. ‘Is she going to be all right?’

Mum snorted. ‘The old battleaxe? Knowing her she’ll outlast us all.’

‘Can I go and visit her?’

‘They don’t allow children in the hospital – especially fat, ugly ones with horrible scars on their face. Your dad’s going tomorrow so if you want to write her a note I suppose I could get it to him.’

I sat at the kitchen table drafting several versions of the note, but in the end all I wrote was: ‘Dear Nan, I love you very much. Please get well soon. Love from Vanessa xxx.’ I gave it to Mum and she tucked it away in her handbag promising to pass it on.

The next night when I got home from school, I asked immediately how Nan was.

‘I haven’t heard yet. Your dad hasn’t been home.’

‘Did you give him my note for Nan?’

‘Oops!’ Mum covered her mouth with a perfectly manicured hand in a mocking fashion. ‘I forgot. I’ll do it next time.’ She laughed sadistically at my expression. ‘Dad will be home on Saturday so you can give it to him then.’

‘Can I post it to her at the hospital?’

‘No, I’m not wasting a perfectly good stamp on something like that.’

All week I felt anxious. The spirits weren’t telling me anything specific but they weren’t allaying my fears either.

At breakfast on Saturday morning, Dad was very subdued. When I asked how Nan was getting on, he just said, ‘The doctors are doing their best.’ He spread marmalade on his toast but then only took a couple of bites and seemed to forget about it.

Suddenly the phone rang and we all jumped. No one ever phoned that house. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard it ring. Dad walked over to the dresser to pick it up and stood with his back to us.

‘Derrick Casey here … I see … I understand … Yes, this afternoon … Of course. Thank you.’

He hung up and kicked the wall so hard I knew it must have hurt his foot, then he leaned his forehead against the dresser. Without turning to look at us, he said in a muffled voice ‘She’s gone’ then he hurried out of the room. I heard his footsteps limping up the stairs.

Mum and I looked at each other. ‘So whose house are you going to run away to now? Don’t think I didn’t know about your little scheme.’

I wasn’t quite sure yet what I’d just heard. ‘Is Nan … is she dead?’ I asked.

‘Yep!’ Mum said brightly. ‘She’s dead and gone and you won’t be seeing her ever again.’

I scraped my chair back and ran outside to the pigsty to talk to the spirits. I felt gripped by a worse sense of panic than I’d ever experienced in my life. It was as though I couldn’t breathe; no oxygen was getting through my lungs. I was light-headed and my heart was beating so hard I wondered if I was having a heart attack.

‘She’s at peace now,’ my guardian angel told me. ‘But this is not the end. Don’t worry because you will see her again. Remember everything we have been teaching you.’

I hugged my knees to my chest and rocked back and forwards on my bottom. The Clown came to talk to me. ‘You’re on a journey,’ he said, ‘and this is going to take you forward to the next stage. It will test your belief at times but I know you will come through.’

I heard Dad’s car leaving and many hours later, when it was dark, I heard him coming back again. He came out to the pigsty to find me.

‘Lady Jane, you have to come in. Mummy’s made some supper and she says you haven’t eaten since breakfast. Come on now.’

I didn’t move, just kept rocking. I couldn’t stop thinking that I would never hear her voice again or see the loving expression in her eyes when she looked at me. It was an unbearable feeling.

‘Your Nan wouldn’t want you to be miserable on her account. Just think how much she loved you and wanted you to be happy. It’s your duty now, in memory of her, to look after yourself. Will you try? For Nan’s sake?’ He stretched out his hand.

I got to my feet and let him lead me back to the kitchen for supper, but I didn’t say anything at all during the meal and afterwards I just went straight up to bed. The world felt black and empty. I had no future, nothing to look forward to any more. I’d lost my only place of safety, the only person who was on my side.

B
ack in 1959 it wasn’t understood that children experience grief just as powerfully as adults – perhaps more so, because they can’t intellectualize it at all. Everyone kept telling me to be a good girl because Dad was so upset, yet I felt that my heart had split in two. It was an intense physical pain combined with feelings of severe panic as I contemplated the emptiness of the future without her. She’d been my only hope of escape from Mum’s cruelty and now that hope was gone.

I wanted to go and see Nan’s body but I wasn’t allowed, and then I begged to go to the funeral so that I could say goodbye, but it was unusual for children to attend funerals in those days and Mum forbade it. I was sent to school as normal that day, aware that Mum and Dad were dressed in dark suits and sombre hats, ready to pay their respects.

I only saw Granddad Casey once after Nan died, when we went up to Rugeley one Saturday afternoon. He seemed utterly shattered, as though a great sense of exhaustion had settled on him. The house and garden were massive for one man to manage, albeit with domestic help, and he didn’t even try. He sat in Nan’s rocking chair,
his thoughts miles away, and although I tried to cheer him up by making an effort to chat about school and my vegetable garden and the spring flowers that were coming out, I could tell I wasn’t getting through to him.

I understood exactly how he felt because I felt the same way. I carried on doing what was required – getting dressed, washing, eating what was put in front of me, answering the teachers’ questions at school, doing my homework, enduring Mum’s behaviour, going to bed – but I did no more. I kept to myself at school more than ever, standing alone in the corner of the playground each break-time, and at home I spent most of my time in the garden, talking to spirits.

The garden was a magical place for me. It was huge and Dad had only managed to tame a fraction of it, so there were wilderness patches of long grass, dandelions and wildflowers, and that was where I imagined the fairies lived. In my fantasies, I saw them prancing around with apple blossom on their heads and filmy clothes made out of gossamer. Spirit children would often join me in my imagination games, ringing a little bell to signal their arrival. They played tricks on me, sometimes tinkling the bell in one direction and appearing from completely the opposite way. At other times, the Clown came to teach me about the spirit world, and he explained more about how I would be able to use my ability to communicate with spirits in order to do good in the world, such as helping people to heal – but first I had to start to heal myself.

‘You must develop a new way of seeing,’ he explained. ‘A third eye that will let you look all the way into people’s hearts and minds.’

I didn’t understand what he meant back then, but I noticed that I was becoming more intuitive at reading people’s auras. Mum’s angry red aura softened and became tinged with blue when she was petting Janie, or if Dad told her how pretty she was looking. I could see when a teacher at school was having a bad day, or when Dad’s grief at the loss of his mother was most overwhelming, from the changes in the colours surrounding them.

I wasn’t aware how obvious my withdrawal from the world was to those around me until Mum and Dad got a letter from the school asking them to come in and talk to my form teacher, Miss Stewart. Mum didn’t go – she never went to any school events – but Dad took the afternoon off work to attend the meeting, which was at the end of the school day. I waited for him on a bench outside so that I could get a lift home. I had no idea what the meeting was about but I wasn’t particularly worried because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. Miss Stewart wasn’t angry with me; on the contrary, she had been particularly warm and kind recently.

When Dad came out of the school, his shoulders were hunched forward and I could tell from his aura that he was feeling very sad. I stood up as he approached the bench and he put his arms round me and gave me a bear hug. He held me for while without moving, then said gruffly, ‘We’d better get in the car, Lady Jane, or your mum will wonder what’s happened to us.’

As we drove, he told me what Miss Stewart had said and I listened in silence. ‘She says that you never talk to any of
the other pupils and if they ask you to join in their games you just shake your head and walk away. Is that right?’

I thought about this for a while and then nodded. Yes, it was.

‘In class discussions you never speak unless asked a direct question by a teacher and even then you answer in as few words as possible. She says you were always shy but that you’ve been much more withdrawn in the last couple of months. Is it because you’re missing Nan Casey?’

Tears filled my eyes and started trickling down my cheeks and when I looked at Dad his eyes were watery as well. This released something in me and I sobbed and sobbed. It felt as though there was an oval-shaped pebble lodged in my throat and it hurt to cry. My muscles ached and the tears stung my eyes. There’s healing crying that makes you feel better afterwards and there’s bitterly sad crying that makes you feel worse, and mine was somewhere between the two. But it was good to sit there in solidarity with Dad, both of us engulfed by the same emotions.

‘She was a magnificent woman,’ he said shakily, ‘and she loved you with all her heart and soul. You and Nigel were her first grandchildren and you had a special place in her heart.’ He paused. ‘It’s hard to explain this but just because her body is no longer on this earth, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost that love she gave you. It’s still there, and it’s yours for the rest of your life.’

‘I know,’ I said in a very small voice. The Clown had explained this to me. She had loved me in a way that meant I would always have that love. I firmly believe that this is one of the main things that helped me to survive my childhood.

‘You and I have to stick together from now on,’ Dad said as we approached the cottage. ‘We need to spend more time together at weekends, sorting out the garden and going for walks and being each other’s friend. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you as much as I should have. I think we can both help each other to get through this. Will you be my friend?’

I nodded but couldn’t speak because of the pebble lodged in my throat. I felt very sad but I also felt a tiny bit of hope for the first time since Nan died.

The next Saturday, Dad came downstairs for breakfast and announced that he and I were having a planting day. In a big patch at one end of the garden we had already planted potatoes, peas, beans, carrots and cabbage. We had also put in some apple and pear trees, making a miniature orchard area. That morning Dad gave me my own little garden, about ten feet square, and gave me some lettuce, pea, bean and radish seeds. He told me I was responsible for planting, weeding and watering it.

I made furrows with a rake and sprinkled the seeds along them then covered them up with loose soil. Meanwhile, Dad created a fruit garden over near the orchard, where he drove in stakes for the raspberries and gooseberries to climb around. We worked hard all morning then, after lunch, he suggested we went for a walk through the lanes and across the fields. As we walked, he talked to me about the flora and fauna around us.

‘That’s a hedgehog burrow,’ he said. ‘Did you know that hedgehogs get their name because they root around
looking for food in the same way that hogs do?’ He gave a snorting impression that made me laugh.

‘That’s part of a robin’s egg,’ he said, picking up a broken piece of shell that was pale blue with reddish speckles. ‘Some are blue and some are plain white.’

On our Saturday afternoon walks, I learned about all the wildflowers in the region. I loved the fabulous names, like lady’s bedstraw, Devil’s bit scabious, dogwood, corn cockle, toadflax, candytuft and shrubby veronica. Dad taught me how to tell the difference between hornbeam and beech trees, and that woodpeckers are especially partial to ash trees. He pointed out dragonflies and hoverflies, hairstreak butterflies and fritillaries. I drank it all in and never forgot a single thing he told me from one walk to the next.

One Saturday our walk took us by a pub called Pear Tree Lodge, which was a couple of miles from home.

‘I could murder a pint,’ Dad said. ‘Do you fancy stopping for a drink? We can sit outside on the bench here.’

I nodded. I still wasn’t talking very much. Dad went inside and when he came back out he presented me with a bottle of a new drink I’d never tried before – ginger beer. I felt very grown up. Wasn’t beer something that only adults were supposed to drink? I had a sip and it tasted completely different from orange squash or any other drink I’d had before. It was sweet but the ginger gave it a kick and the bubbles made my tongue tingle. I decided I was going to like it and took another swallow.

Dad produced two packets of crisps with their little blue paper twist of salt inside. ‘It’s a race,’ he announced. ‘Let’s see who can open their salt, sprinkle it on the crisps and put the paper down on the table again first. One, two, three – go!’

I suspect that Dad let me win, but nevertheless, I was still revelling in my victory when a lady suddenly appeared beside us. ‘Hello, Derrick,’ she said in a soft voice.

‘Well, Margery, hello. How nice to see you. Won’t you join us?’ Dad turned to me. ‘Lady Jane, this is Margery Wyatt, an old friend of mine. She lives just near here in Pear Tree Cottage.’

‘Hello, Lady Jane,’ said the lady with a warm smile. ‘How nice to meet you.’

I liked Margery immediately. I suppose she must have been about the same age as Mum but her hair was dark and her features softer. There were laughter lines at the corners of her blue eyes, something my mother would never develop because she seldom laughed. I liked the colours Margery wore – aubergine, petrol blue, moss green – and the stylish way she put outfits together with some beads or a belt or a pair of earrings accentuating the colour scheme. Her aura was a kind, peaceful, bluey-green colour and she had a real gentleness about her.

She stayed chatting with us for almost an hour, and I found her very easy company. She included me in the conversation in a friendly way and she didn’t seem upset if I failed to reply.

On the way home, Dad said to me, ‘You won’t mention meeting Margery to your mum, will you? Women can be a bit funny about that kind of thing.’

I shook my head. I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.

After that, we saw Margery quite often. If we walked to the Pear Tree Lodge, more often than not she came and joined us for a drink. I loved listening to her talk. There was something she said once that really struck a chord
with me. She said, ‘It’s not what’s on the outside that matters; it’s on the inside, what’s in your heart and soul, that counts in the long run.’ As a child who had been brought up to think of beauty as the most important quality, one which I was totally lacking, this was a revealing new concept and it made me take notice of Margery when she was around.

I was surprised to hear she had never got married; she seemed so pleasant and calm that if I were a man I’d have wanted to marry her. I wished I could see her more often but I didn’t know how to go about it, so we just sat companionably enjoying a drink outside the Pear Tree from time to time.

Meeting Margery was a lovely secret that Dad and I shared together, in contrast to all the bitter, nasty secrets that Mum and I had kept over the years.

On Sunday mornings, Dad and I walked over the fields to Hadzor parish church, where I went to Sunday school and he attended the main service. Through the lessons there, I began to realize just what a skewed version of religion Mum had been feeding me over the years. I learned that God loves everyone, even sinners of the worst kind. I learned about Heaven, and how any sinners who repent will be allowed in. I read a book about some nuns living in a convent, and how they fed the wild animals in the convent garden every day, and a little germ of an idea was planted in me. If I lived in a convent, I wouldn’t have to talk to other people or make friends or get a job. I could just pray and bake bread and feed the animals, like the
nuns in the book. I wished I could talk to Nan Casey about this idea; she would have known how I could go about it. I felt sure she would have approved. I hoped that she would come to me in the spirit world and tell me herself but there was no sign of her among the many voices I heard.

I looked forward to going to Sunday school, but I was uncomfortable when the teachers tried to initiate discussions amongst the pupils. I was well aware how much less sophisticated I was than the other eleven-year-olds there. One day we were talking about our hobbies and the others cited pop music, fashion, dancing, watching TV and reading magazines. I had never heard any pop music, wore clothes made by Mum, and wasn’t allowed to watch television after seven in the evening.

‘What about you, Vanessa?’ the teacher asked. ‘What are your hobbies?’

I couldn’t think of any. There was a long pause and all the others turned to look at me. I think someone sniggered. I found it very hard to think of things to say at the best of times. ‘Gardening,’ I said finally.

‘What a wonderful hobby!’ the teacher exclaimed. ‘Growing new plants and flowers is a great way to be in touch with God’s universe. Congratulations to you.’

The others turned away, raising their eyebrows and whispering, underlining what a social outcast I was. I didn’t care. I was only interested in talking to spirits, not real people.