The Step Child (27 page)

At that point, Martin knew someone who was working at a children’s home in the Morningside area of the city. I’d been along there on a few occasions to run classes for some of the kids, where we would have whole afternoons painting and making things with craft materials. I absolutely loved it. I was never prouder than when I was helping those kids see what they could achieve artistically. When the home began recruiting new members of staff, the officer-in-charge suggested that I apply for a position. I had no idea where my life was going, and this seemed as good an avenue to wander down as any other. I was offered a post almost immediately, and my career in social work began.

Martin and I were continuing what I now know was a really unhappy relationship. I was so very needy because of what happened to me as a child, and had no other experience to go on. I didn’t honestly know what other people expected or accepted in their private lives – all my experiences had been mucked up since the start, so what could I compare things with? If I had been blessed with the knowledge I have now, I wouldn’t ever have gone out with Martin. However, as in my childhood, there were times when I could take something from what I was going through. I learned much more from the everyday world he introduced me to – the world which was perfectly normal to him. Martin’s middle-class upbringing in a well-to-do area had given him an education which went way beyond school. He and his friends knew about life in ways I couldn’t imagine. They knew how to talk freely, how not to be embarrassed by their accents or grammar, how to eat in restaurants without feeling ill or stupid, how to be just an average person. The time I spent in the company of Martin and his circle was of great value to me personally. I could soak up their conversation or even just wallow in the carefree fun they could enter into without even thinking. The more I saw of this, the more I wanted. The 1970s for me were a time when I was still trying to come to terms with my past and
dealing with the fact that it still allowed me to suffer abusive personal relationships – but I was also just a teenager. I went to Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Alex Harvey concerts. I read
The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings
, and
The L-Shaped Room
. I joined in their discussions about Marxism, existentialism, and Communism. We carelessly discussed classical versus abstract art. Often I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but I joined in anyway. I was part of it all.

The most important aspect of that time in my life was not just that I was free, but that I was being accepted as a person by people I felt were so much better than me. They never asked about my background, so I didn’t have to lie or avoid the issue. Perhaps I was finally becoming someone I could be comfortable around, someone I could love. Yet while the real Donna was perhaps finally coming through, I was still haunted by thoughts of the past and the unanswered questions for the parent who should have answered them.

MY FATHER, DONALD CHALMERS FORD
, was the first person I ever pinned any hopes on. I remember the Sunday visits from him at the Barnardo’s home. He’d come with a rolled-up bundle of comics –
The Beano
and
The Dandy
for Simon,
Jackie
for Frances and
Twinkle
for me. Helen would be with him, but all I remember is her holding the baby – Gordon – and bouncing him on her knee. We’d all be brimming with happiness and chattering. Frances always sat beside him, and even though he was only my Dad, not theirs, he was the only father figure they knew, so we all looked to him for that support, that security. I was holding on to him for dear life the day we made the momentous journey home to Easter Road for good. I remember looking at him constantly and chattering, and he answered all my questions. So how did he become the man who allowed Helen to do what she did? As I’ve said before, she made her choices – as did all of her ‘friends’, as did all of the men who abused me – but my father wasn’t innocent. As the only blood parent I knew, I had so many expectations pinned on him. He never really delivered, and I’m now left with such a mixed bag of memories that I hardly know what to think of him, the man who should have been my hero.

Everyone called him Don. He wasn’t a tall man – about five foot seven. He wore a white shirt every day. When he was at home, his shirt sleeves would be rolled up, his tie off, and he’d have a sleeveless pullover or a cardigan on, the type with pockets in the front and big brown buttons. When he was going out, he’d take off the pullover and don his tie, suit jacket and winter overcoat. Being an ex-army man, his shoes were always polished. I know of the services part of his life only from seeing photos of him in Germany, posing with his comrades, and some of him swimming in a river having fun. He seemed to be acting like a different person in those pictures, but I was getting used to people having ‘fronts’, to having so many faces they put on, that I didn’t necessarily see my Dad as someone who was living a life he had never anticipated. I knew that he had also trained as a French polisher because he was always doing something with bits of furniture, and he had boxes full of tools and endless bottles of lacquer and varnish. He loved to tell people about his ‘skills’, and he was quite a good carpenter too. I can remember when he’d be busy sanding and polishing odd bits of furniture for someone, and the smell of shellac still reminds me of those times.

There seemed to be such a contrast in the ways he behaved, according to whatever was going on at the time – and it was Helen who always determined the tone of family life. I did look up to him when I first arrived home; he was my Dad, and even at that age I knew what Dads were for. But Helen made it very clear to my Dad that I was nothing special, and I shouldn’t expect anything. Gordon was her child – and he should take precedence over me, even in the early days. She had told me straight away that she was not my Mum and I was never to consider her as such. I was such a tiny little thing and so desperately in need of love that my desire for his attention actually hurt me. I had so many questions – why didn’t he pick me up? Why didn’t he sit me on his knee as he did with Gordon? Why did I never really get any notice taken of me unless it was bad? I just wanted to be
cuddled, I just wanted to belong to a proper family; but Helen made sure it was never going to happen, and my Dad did absolutely nothing to stand in her way. We were both put in our places really.

I heard Helen shouting so much in those early days – it wouldn’t stop as the years went on, but I wasn’t used to it yet. She would tell him that I wasn’t to be spoiled, that I was to be made to realise how lucky I was. It seemed to me that everything was very difficult, even though I had no idea why or what place I played in it all. My Dad rarely stood up to her – and if he did, it was only verbally and briefly before he left the house yet again. He seemed to be working all the time. When I first went there, he worked on the buses. When I was very young, he would arrive back from work on a Friday evening with his pay-packet in his pocket, which he gave to Helen immediately. Sometimes my Dad would have a comic for me, and always – every Friday evening – he brought a brand-new Matchbox car, still in its little cardboard box, for Gordon, his son with Helen. Dad was very affectionate with Gordon, picking him up and throwing him around playfully. I can remember watching the scenes and envying Gordon his easy life. That child was never hit, never starved, never abused – in fact, it wouldn’t be long before he would turn on me too.

I remember getting to go on the number one bus in Easter Road (the one Auntie Nellie and I had also taken). It was an old-fashioned double decker bus with no door, just a pole to hold on to, then upstairs, two wooden steps at a time. I’d hear him call: ‘Tickets please!’ Then he’d come around with his metal ticket box, turning the handle, issuing the pink ticket with the blue writing giving stage number and price, and with ‘Edinburgh Corporation Buses’ stamped on to it. I can remember him walking up the wooden slatted floor in his blue serge uniform with the metal and enamel badge clipped to his jacket. Everyone chatted and endured the bumpy ride up the cobbled street – they all cracked jokes and bantered with each other. I take it he didn’t
earn much on the buses, and it wasn’t long before Helen started hassling him about their lack of money. He then took a job in the General Post Office in Edinburgh, while we still lived in Easter Road, which meant he left really early in the morning. My Dad took as many extra shifts as he could and just stopped ever really being around.

I remember his Post Office jacket hanging up on a peg, with its brass embossed buttons, alongside the old sack bag in which he carried the mail. On one very rare occasion, he took me to deliver letters with him. We were still living in Easter Road at the time. The beatings and punishments had already started and it was summer. I’d had a kicking from Helen while my Dad was standing in a corner of the tiny shared bedroom. I don’t know who else was in the house but I could hear kids playing in the back green as usual. Don and Helen had been shouting at each other for what seemed like for ever and I knew what was coming. Helen had started blaming any of the disruptions in the house on me. I listened to them as they stood over me – it was all going to be laid at my door again. ‘She’s a little madam,’ she was screaming. ‘She’s a spoilt brat.’ It all just became noise after a while, but on this day there was a break to the pattern. Suddenly, I was told to get dressed by my Dad. We were going out. I couldn’t believe my luck! Getting away from Helen was a treat in itself, but getting my Dad to myself was something so rare that I could hardly contain myself. Was he finally cottoning on to her? We went all the way to Wallyford on his bike, with me perched on the crossbar, and delivered a batch of letters. After my Dad had done his deliveries, he bought me a bun from Crawford’s the bakers. I hardly remember the beating – that was becoming my normality – but I do recall the delight of being with my Dad, away from it all.

He was and still is a bit of an enigma to me. My feelings regarding him are so mixed that I don’t know quite what to do with them. I know he beat me when I was a small child but I also know that it was at the insistence of Helen. When she left he gave me the odd ‘cuff round the lug’ but never beat me. My best memories of him are when he visited me in the Barnardo’s home, because he was always smiling in those days and bearing gifts: sweets, magazines, a little toy. It’s only when I moved back home that the memories become more contradictory. When Frances and Simon came back from Barnardo’s, Dad would take us for walks if there was any time he wasn’t working. I can remember him taking all of us on walks around Arthur’s Seat, with a bag of boilings from Casey’s at the top of Easter Road stuffed in his pocket to dole out when it looked like we were getting bored. He’d tell us all about Holyrood Palace and the park and we’d go and feed the swans at St Margaret’s Loch. I also remember him taking us to Chambers Street Museum and to the Museum of Childhood. He took all of us there for years – including Karen when she was small enough to be in her pram. Helen was never there so they are fond memories. However, when all the arguments started between him and Helen, it suddenly seemed that he wasn’t around much.

It’s not easy to speak about the feelings I had – and have – for my father because he let me down so badly. He was the only one who could have really saved me, and he didn’t. I don’t know if he was controlled by Helen in the same way that I was, but what other answer can I hold on to? He did many things that said he was not a bad man. He knew that Helen’s youngest child was not his, yet he reared her as his own after she left. Never do I recall him letting on to Karen that she wasn’t his – he didn’t call her names or stigmatise her or make her feel less like one of his own.