Street Kid (10 page)

By the time I got back, Freda had taken all my books and locked them away – she must have had second thoughts about burning them. She carried on raging about the Hillyards, calling them every name under the sun; and of course when my dad got home from work she told him what I’d done. She usually refrained from telling him anything that would make him go off the deep end, but this time she must have thought she’d get found out if she didn’t.

My dad was madder than I’d ever seen him before. The idea that I had been talking to people on our street frightened him and that they might have found out that Freda wasn’t his wife and that I wasn’t her daughter sent him right over the edge. Everything he’d built in Hulme, the whole idyllic family picture, was in peril because of me. He must have thought the whole house of cards was about to fall down around him. The fact that I’d been mixing with the Hillyards, a family he considered far beneath him, only made it worse.

My father rose slowly from his chair to stand over me. He let out great snorting breaths from his nose and the veins stood out in his neck. ‘How dare you betray me?’ he hissed. For a moment I was icy calm, like being in the eye of the storm. I could see flecks of spittle in his goatee.

He really laid into me then, bouncing me all over the place; kicking, punching, throwing me across the room. Starting in the living room, then through the kitchen, right up the stairs and into my bedroom. I knew that he wanted to beat me so he could see me cry, and because I wouldn’t cry he beat me even more.

All the while my father was punching and kicking me, there was a thought, a whisper, inside my head.
You can beat the outside of me all you like but you’re not going to get the inside of me. You’re not going to see me cry.

Each time my father threw me across the bedroom floor, he’d pull me up by the arm and kick me across the room again. Freda must have realized that if he went on like that, he’d kill me and I heard her crying, ‘Stop it, Jack. Stop it, Jack. Stop it, Jack.’

When Dad had finished with me, Freda helped me down to the living room where she sat me on her knee and asked if I wanted anything to eat. She must have been really worried. My father was sitting in the chair opposite, staring into space and breathing fast. Sitting on Freda’s knee, touching her, made me panic even more and as soon as I could, I got off and struggled back upstairs to my room.

When I was lying on my bed that night, I had the feeling that I wasn’t actually there. I was somewhere else, though I didn’t know where it was; I couldn’t picture the place. I must have slept then because the next thing I remember it was the middle of the night. There was a
frantic hammering in my head and my throat was parched. My eyes were burning like hot coals and all my senses, my skin, my eyes, were palpitating. It was terrifying as I had no control at all – it wasn’t like when you have a sore place which can be eased by rubbing it: my whole body was pulsating. It was as if it had a life of its own. Rebelling. The pulses in my eyes were pumping, pumping, pumping. I couldn’t see anything; I was totally blind. The pulses were so strong that I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head.

When I woke in the morning, my head felt as if it was twice its size. I dragged myself downstairs somehow; nothing would have stopped me doing my chores. Something bigger than the pain in my body drove me forward. I think I knew that if I didn’t carry on I’d collapse. It wasn’t courage; it was simply that I was scared to death.

I couldn’t pick up the buckets of coal because the muscles in my arms had been torn and stretched by my father dragging and flinging me. I found the strength from somewhere, though, and pulled the buckets, inch by painful inch, across the yard and into the kitchen.

That night, as I stood by my bedroom window, I was filled with an intense desire to escape. I’d felt it before, but now it was burning so strong. I gazed at the gas lamp and wondered if I’d be able to catch the cross bars on the post if I jumped from the window sill. I’d seen the boys in the alley playing at cowboys and lassoing the bars on the gas lamp with a piece of rope. They’d make a loop seat, sit on it, and swing round and round the post. If I had that rope now, I thought, I could throw a loop myself and swing down on it. I’d read so many Enid Blyton stories, full of daring escapes with knotted sheets, that I yearned to
do the same. Nobody would see me, nobody would know where I’d gone.

Then the fear took hold of me again.
But where would I go? How would I find my mother? Where would I start? Where was Patricroft? Where did they live? How do I get there?
The questions piled on top of me until I felt suffocated. In the end I got to thinking,
What if I get found? What would he do to me if I was brought back?

And then I felt crushed by it all. Even looking at the stars, which I’d always imagined were my real family, loving me from a distance, didn’t make me feel any better.

Chapter Nine

I
never played with Edna again after that. Life went on in Wood Street, but it wasn’t the same. Sometimes I looked at one of the gaps in our row where a house had been bombed and felt like there was a huge gaping hole just like that inside me. I was still here, going on the same as before, but it was different now.

Things got much better when I moved up to Miss Williams’ class at Sunday School. I was eight years old by this time and had been going to Sunday School at Bridgewater Hall every week since I’d arrived at Hulme. It suited my dad and Freda to let me go as they were out all day Sundays at the Spiritualist church.

I liked Sunday School. Because the hall was a little distance away from where we lived the kids didn’t know me there, and so they were perfectly friendly, allowing me to join in the activities. We used to sing children’s hymns, such as ‘Jesus wants me for a pilgrim’, and we were taught all about the Scriptures, drawing pictures and making cards. We acted out little bible-story plays, and I soon found that I loved performing.

Miss Williams saw something special in me. She was a tiny person, with big round glasses, like bottle ends, which
she never seemed to look through but always over the top of. Her hair was like a close-fitting cap of tiny, tight curls and she’d wear a little blue pillbox hat on top of them on her way to church which matched her suit. Her white blouse was always buttoned right up to her neck.

Soon after Miss Williams had taken over our class, she called me over at the end of the morning.

‘Judith, I was wondering if you’d like to join the choir,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if your parents will mind as it will mean your having to attend morning, afternoon and evening services.’

‘Nobody’s there in the day, Miss, so it wouldn’t matter,’ I told her.

‘Excellent! That settles it then,’ she said with a smile. ‘We’ll start next Sunday.’

The next week, when all the other kids went home with their parents after the morning service, Miss Williams, knowing I had nowhere to go between services, asked me if I’d like to come home with her. She didn’t have a family of her own and I reckoned she was probably lonely too. At school, the teachers never seemed to see or care that I was an unhappy child, but I know Miss Williams sensed it immediately, although she never said anything.

Miss Williams lived in an ordinary terraced house like ours, not far from Bridgewater Hall. When we got there, she led the way inside, hanging up her coat and hat on a peg by the door. I did the same. My coat was a cast-off from one of the richer members of my dad’s Spiritualist circle and it was much too small for me. I couldn’t really lift my arms but I was proud of it all the same. It was red with a hood, just like one Princess Anne had been photographed wearing.

When I walked into the front room, I stopped dead in surprise. It was so cluttered with things that I didn’t know quite where to walk. Against one wall there was an organ and facing that a piano. There was sheet music everywhere, on music stands and in piles on a table in the middle of the room. The walls were hung with religious paintings and wooden crosses.

During the week, Miss Williams was a music teacher. Although her Sundays should have been a time of rest, she didn’t waste any time but got straight to work with me.

‘Now Judith, sit yourself here, dear,’ she said pulling out the piano stool. ‘I’m going to show you how to hold your hands. That’s it, bend your fingers like that. Lift your wrists a little.’

I tried a scale and then, having introduced me to the notes, Miss Williams said she wanted to show me a game that would make them easier to remember.

‘I’m going to hide these cards all over the room,’ she said with a twinkle. ‘And you’re going to play the notes in whatever order you find them.’

Miss Williams had a stack of large cards and on each was drawn a musical note and its name. ‘Now, hide your eyes, Judith!’ she said.

It was much easier to remember the notes after playing the game. When I had collected all the cards, I found it funny when the sounds I made on the piano made no musical sense at all, jumbled as they were. Soon I was trying to swap the order of the cards I’d found so that they made a better tune.

‘That’s it! Look how quickly you’ve learned the notes,’ said Miss Williams, clapping her hands. ‘Well done, Judith. You almost made a scale there.’

Later we practised my singing. Miss Williams was very exacting. I had to stand just right and learn to control my breathing, taking in the air from somewhere just above my tummy.

‘No … no … no … no … no,’ she intoned if I wavered or went sharp. Then, ‘Hooold, hold it!’

When I got it right she clapped her hands and said, ‘Clever girl, clever girl!’

After our lessons, Miss Williams brought out a delicate china tea-set and a plate of lovely little iced cakes. They must have cost her a lot of money and I don’t imagine she had such fine things every day. It gave me a warm feeling to think she must have bought them just for me.

Chapter Ten

I
t was a relief when spring brought the warm weather with it. By now my red coat was so small that I’d started walking in a funny way, so I was happy to put it by. I was relieved to be rid of my socks too. I’d been forced by Freda to wear an old pair of my father’s, darned at the toes and heels. They were so big for me that the heel came half way up my leg. I used to try and tuck the toe end underneath my foot, but that made it hard to walk.

I never had any new clothes. Freda would bring me the odd thing from piles of clothing people had put by for the jumble and so, except for those evenings when we were doing our perfect family act, I always looked pretty ragged. Because Freda wouldn’t dream of spending a penny on me, as well as Dad’s old socks I had to wear her cast-off knickers. It was humiliating going to school with her knicker legs flapping around under my skirt. One afternoon, in desperation, I sat down at Freda’s sewing machine and had a go at sewing a pleat in the leg material. Luckily no one at school ever saw my huge grey knickers as I used to slip a pair of blue school pants over them before changing into my gym slip. Dad’s socks I couldn’t hide away.

I was eight years old that May of 1953. I never quite knew what day my birthday was as the occasion was never mentioned, let alone celebrated. It was only years later, when I stole my birth certificate from my father’s things, that I found out for certain. I remember then, as I studied the certificate, being desperately disappointed to find that Dad really was my real father, and that I wasn’t adopted or stolen as I’d often dreamed I must be. I always longed to be somebody else’s kid.

That May, Freda told me we were going to the Isle of Man for a week. My dad had been invited to preach at a Spiritualist gathering there and our ferry fares and bed and breakfast expenses had been paid for. He was hoping that there might be some rich pickings to be made from this new circle.

Although I knew we’d be staying at the seaside, I wasn’t at all excited to be going. Somehow I found that leaving behind the routine of my chores caused me more anxiety than having to do them perfectly. Being torn from the safety of my bedroom and books was hard, but leaving Gyp behind was the worst thing of all. I didn’t trust Madge to make sure she was fed and her water dish filled and the thought that she might think we weren’t ever coming back nagged away at me.

When we reached the Isle of Man, I wasn’t allowed to attend any of the seances or gatherings. The first couple of days I hung around the garden of the bed and breakfast or wandered about the streets. On the third day, though, Freda and my dad took me to the beach.

Dad led the way down the steps and onto the sand. The sea was quite far out and there was a huge stretch of beach. It was already busy with families arriving and setting up their stripy windbreaks and deckchairs.

‘Stay there and don’t move,’ my father ordered. I sat down on the sand next to the ice-cream shop. Without glancing my way again, he walked quickly away to join Freda who was waiting up on the promenade.

It was like my first day in the yard at Patricroft again, being told not to move and not knowing how long I’d have to sit there. Only this time there was plenty to watch, and instead of being cold I was warm.

The hours passed to lunchtime, and as the sun rose in the sky I soon became hot and thirsty. Freda hadn’t thought to leave me with anything to drink so I had nothing with which to quench my thirst. And, as I watched the picnic baskets being unpacked, my stomach started rumbling too.

I tried to take my mind off my dry mouth and empty tummy by making an ice-cream shop of my own, filling cone-shaped shells with sand and pretending to ask customers what flavour they wanted. I piled up tiny shells and stones and used them as money.

I didn’t dare walk down to the water’s edge to have a paddle, much as I would have liked to. I was too fearful that my dad might come back at that moment and find I wasn’t in the place he’d left me. It wasn’t just his wrath I was afraid of – I was scared that I might be left on the beach forever, like a towel someone had forgotten to take home with them at the end of the day. If I wasn’t there, exactly where he’d told me to wait, would he bother to look for me at all?