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Diana and John appeared in their pyjamas and came and stood with me in the toilet. We could hear the two women squabbling like children, and I put my right hand up to my eyebrow and started pulling.
A few minutes later, a white-faced faced Julie appeared, grabbed the two children, and they all went downstairs. I crept and looked through the gap in the door. She was dabbing her eyes and mumbling to herself. Barbara was in the kitchen, crashing pots and pans. Julie had called a taxi on the hall phone.
When it came, she said to me, dramatically, on the doorstep, ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and then she was gone. Half of me wanted to believe her, but the other half felt it might be a promise that would be broken as soon as she said it. Julie seemed the kind of person who couldn’t mean what she said, or say what she meant. I wasn’t sure if I could believe or trust her. In my heart, I really hoped against hope that I was wrong.
After this episode, things got worse again. Barbara and Kevin went back to their reign of terror. There were slaps, kicks and punches for every little thing. Ian was becoming an even shadowy figure and spent a lot of time slumped in front of the TV of an evening. I wasn’t allowed to watch much, if any.
Ian and Barbara were arguing a lot and not getting on. She had developed a new habit: buying things and then wanting to take them back. Ian was not happy about this, and there were many arguments about money. I was now twelve going on thirteen. Some days there were deliveries in our best living room of big brown boxes: a fridge, a washing machine, a new cooker (which was mustard and brown in colour). Barbara had gone on a spending spree in Debenhams. When Ian came home there was a big argument. Usually he didn’t stand up to her, but when it came to her spending he stood his ground a bit more. They argued and argued, and finally Ian said they would have to be sent back; he was not paying for them. Barbara was livid, so the next day I was kept home from school, as my job was to wait for the men to come and take them away. Barbara was so furious at this that she got a carving knife and hit the old cooker and fridge with it, making long, dark lines on the white surface. She literally cut the paintwork in her anger at Ian. The battle may have been lost, but the war was not over.
A few weeks later, a new mustard-coloured cooker was installed and Ian was painting the kitchen a cornflower blue. She had won in the end due to the state of the paintwork of the old appliances.
‘I deserve better, after all I’ve put up with,’ claimed Barbara, and the thing she particularly thought she deserved was a furlined leather jerkin from a famous furriers in town. I was taken into the shop and made to hold her bag while she tried it on. It was extremely expensive, and something unlike anything she had worn or had before. Barbara usually wore her old lady uniform of grey and black, with a bit of beige, and now she wanted this glamorous jerkin, made of expensive dark-brown suede. Barbara kept saying, ‘It’s very practical’ and ‘It’s warm and it looks great,’ as she described it to Ian later. He said no. He didn’t think it was worth the money. Plus, they couldn’t afford it. Barbara’s face tightened into a white point, her mouth thin with annoyance.
‘You’re just a man, what do you know?’ she taunted him. ‘You’re a bloody rapist, just like the rest of them.’
Whenever Barbara was furious with Ian, he was called a ‘rapist’ – it was the worst thing she could say. I didn’t really understand what it meant, but he would go very pale and walk out the room, so it was obviously bad.
The next day, however, I was hauled into town (instead of going to school) and we bought the jerkin. Barbara was pleased. I’d never seen her so happy about something. She brought it home, put it on, and admired herself in the mirror. I wondered, fleetingly, if having Julie around had made her think a bit more about her appearance. Julie had bags and bags of new clothes all the time (no wonder her husband thought she spent too much, as she obviously did). But Barbara had never really spent on herself. She spent on the poor dogs – at least when they were puppies – and vet bills when they we
re put down (which was a frequent occurrence). She certainly didn’t spend on me, as all my clothes were second-hand. And Ian just wore the same old clothes and overalls all the time.
The next day I did go to school, which was largely a waste of time, as I spent all day looking out of the window at the trees, sky and birds, not following anything much. When I got home there was a real commotion going on. Barbara said Ian had changed his mind. He had put his foot down about the jerkin, so it had to be taken back. She was in a total fury. The next day I was kept home and sent into town with the jerkin in a bag and told to take it back and get a refund – on pain of death.
I went into the really posh fur shop, feeling completely out of my depth. The manager looked down his nose at me – I must have looked a sight in my grubby second-hand clothes. I made up a story that my mother was too fat and the jerkin didn’t really fit her now. This must have seemed crazy to him, as Barbara had bought it herself just a day earlier. After pondering for a while, he said he would return the money, but looked pretty annoyed and said he hoped this would be the end of it. I felt embarrassed, but thought: mission accomplished.
When I got home, with the refund in my hand, I handed it over to Barbara. I thought she would be really pleased, as it was a lot of money. I thought she would smile and say thank you for a change. Instead, she slapped me hard across the face and told me to go to bed without any tea. I had walked miles into Oxford (as I had no bus fare), and I had done her dirty work for her. I had missed breakfast, lunch and school to do this, and had dealt with the annoyed manager in the shop for her. Yet I had a slap and punishment for it.
I later heard Ian and Barbara arguing yet again, because while I was out on the errand of returning the jerkin, Barbara had gone into town in her car and bought loads of brand new bedding. There were piles of new sheets, a big duvet and cover and pillows in big bags in the hall. As they rowed I could hear plates, cups and saucers being flung out the back door and smashing on the concrete. This was followed by the old blankets that Ian loved, and pillowcases and sheets. He was trying to protest, saying he liked blankets, as they could be tucked in. Barbara was ignoring him, saying duvets were far superior. She wanted the best for a change.
The garden looked like a jumble sale, as I looked down from my bedroom window and watched the domestic drama unfold. Barbara was livid that Ian did not like the idea of a duvet – which people were turning to instead of traditional bedding – as he wanted to keep his old blankets. Barbara was not going to allow this to happen – what did he know? – so everything was chucked in the garden so she could have her own way. I climbed on my narrow bed and started counting the cracks on the ceiling, the blue flowers on the wall, while fantasising about ways I could leave this hell-hole madhouse as soon as I was big enough. It simply couldn’t be too soon. But how on earth was I going to escape?
17
Saved by Art
I was miserable at home and miserable at school. I was now thirteen and getting more and more interested in experimenting with my appearance as a teenager. I would put on eyeliner and mascara (stolen from local shops and secreted in my room) and foundation. I started using gel on my hair, trying to make it look a bit punky. When I did go to school I had a method for dealing with it. I was totally bored there – it really had nothing to offer me. I was in the lowest stream for cookery and needlework, as my writing and maths and most other subjects, except art, were awful, and it was utterly boring. I felt I’d done (and still did) enough domestic work at home to last me a lifetime, so I didn’t need to learn any of that. Anyway, I was interested in learning other stuff.
I would get into school and want to leave immediately. I began to bunk off, daily. I had missed so much school that I knew I would never, ever catch up. I couldn’t concentrate, and had no idea where we were in most of the subjects; it was just a way of killing time. I felt I could spend my days in a much better way by myself, on my own.
I would arrive at school, chant flatly, ‘Here, miss,’ when my name was called out from the register, then I would get up, go out the door and leave for the day. I would just disappear. It was me, gone, totally, just like that. It would feel wonderful to escape. I could breathe at last. I would walk into town. I liked looking at things and wandering about; it calmed me down. I was also smoking regularly now, and I had got some cigarette papers and tobacco from the boys in the park, so I would roll up a ciggie (they’d also taught me how to do it) and smoke. It was a relief and felt wonderful to walk along, blowing out smoke, feeling free.
I had no money, or just enough for a cup of tea (I might have pinched some from Barbara’s purse, as I never had pocket money), and I would go and sit for hours, watching people go by. I loved looking at their faces, hair, clothes, everything. I began to develop a circuit. I loved gardens. Sean had taught me a bit about plants and seeds. He grew vegetables round his caravan and I had learnt from him how to put them in the earth, cover them carefully, water them, thin them out, and watch them grow. I loved the magic of growing things.
I also loved the beauty of plants. There was something utterly wonderful about beautiful green leaves, big flowers and petals. I loved dahlias, roses, lilies and daisies especially. I loved huge plants with lots of leaves and colour. They seemed a wonder to me – the magic of life. I had to walk through the University Parks to get from our house to the city, and I found myself wandering round and round in wonder. I would always take a little sketchbook and sit on a bench and look at things and draw. The beauty of nature filled my soul; fed me where I felt empty, sad and dirty.
I felt cleansed as I took in the silence from the green, from the colours and textures, the sound of water and birds. I walked and walked, past the lily pond and the ornamental bridge, looking at buds, branches, flowers, ducks. I loved watching people with their dogs, and couples holding hands, and single people on benches, feeding the birds or eating sandwiches. There were mums with buggies and babies, elderly people with walking sticks, young people smoking and kissing. It was all a revelation to me. I was in a world of my own, and felt calm and peaceful, removed from all that was ugly and nasty. It felt so different from my everyday life, either at home or at school, where I was shouted at, demanded of, ridiculed or hit and slapped, put down and spat on. I felt in a safe bubble out in the greenery of the Parks.
Then I began to branch out. I formed a ritual walk. Out of school, through the Parks, into town, a cup of tea, and then a museum in the morning, another in the afternoon. As I wandered, I loved looking in windows and at buildings. I loved seeing other people’s interiors: the colourful walls and furniture in their fashionable living rooms. The redbrick houses, the variety of shops and cafés. I had heard of a museum called the Ashmolean, which sounded mystical. It turned out to be an amazing white-stone building with big columns and statues over the huge triangular front entrance with loads of steps. It was like a palace.
I wandered up the steps and tagged along shyly on the end of a line of Americans or Germans going on a tour round the museum. I smiled and sort of blended in. I was wearing my school uniform, so I guess they thought I was doing some sort of study trip. I would wander around with information washing over me, but just loving looking at pictures, statues, furniture and art in all its shapes and forms. I loved old crockery or pots or anything that was beautifully crafted, reeking of history. I was fascinated by the Victorian collections and the huge butterflies with luminous wings – I wondered how they had got there and where they all came from. I could breathe looking at these things.
In the afternoon, I would wander to the Pitt Rivers Museum, which specialised in archaeological things. I didn’t know anything about archaeology or anthropology, but I loved sitting and drawing the pots, the spears and, of course, their famous shrunken heads. I found these fascinating. Were they real? Real people? How could you do that? I imagined shrinking Barbara’s head down, boiling it in a big iron pot, and that made me smile.
By now my hair was growing, and I was styling it in a punky, spiky way, with gel, and I felt I had something in common with the long, pointed locks of the shrunken heads. It made me laugh. The Pitt Rivers only ever opened in the afternoons, so I felt it was my place for the p.m. shift. I would sit and draw quietly, totally absorbed. I became such a regular fixture in this museum that one of the guards would even find a seat for me to sit and draw on. I would have a little fold-out chair, and be left to draw to my heart’s content. It was wonderful. This place was mine.
It was cool and dark, with wonderful huge wooden cabinets with glass fronts, stuffed with amazing things. There was so much to see, so much to look at, that I would get lost in it all. I would be absorbed for hours. No one shouted at me, no bells rang, there was no homework. Most importantly, there were no bullies making my life hell. No blaming. No taunting. No shouting. No smacks. There was just the quiet of the museum, safe and cool, where I could run my pencils over paper and create images of what I saw, and try out new techniques, for hours on end.
Back home, I would confide in Sean that I was looking at art, drawing and slipping out from school. He would listen and nod, and not say anything bad to me. One day he met me in town and we went to the Museum of Modern Art together. We wandered around looking at rooms full of pictures and artefacts. Afterwards he bought me cake and tea, and we sat talking about what we’d seen. I found out he’d never been into an art gallery before, but he was taking me because he knew it would thrill me. He promised not to tell Barbara where we’d been, and when we got back to the house, we parted ways like old friends as I turned into the garden and he strolled onto his site.
