AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After that we began to creep into the orchard and watch the caravans through the hedge even more closely. We would hang around Sean Brannon’s caravan and he would come out and always give us a snack with a kindly wink: some bread, some cake, some milk and biscuits. We were like little cats creeping around, scavenging, looking for whatever we could find to keep us going. The people in the caravans had very little, but what they had they shared with us. They were our saviours, and without them we would have starved. The Polish women began to hand us scraps of cake, pie and bread, too. We always wolfed down on the spot whatever we were given, looking over our shoulders like vigilant animals, waiting for a shout or curse from Barbara.
Sean had some cuddly toys in his caravan, and one time he let us choose one each. I got a little black-and-white panda – I called him Tony. William took a tiny bear called Fizz. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were. Sometimes Sean would bring out a piece of wood and a knife and whittle a shape, like a boat. We would stand watching, fascinated. He was kind, warm and friendly. We told him our names, and he was now ‘Sean’ to us. We would watch as he skilfully carved the wood with his knife – a special knife with a knobbly wooden handle – but all the time our ears were pricked and we were ready to run if we were summoned. We knew better than to not respond to Her Mistress’s voice.
About this time Kevin began to pick on William a lot more. When I was five, Kevin was eleven, and William was seven. However, William was very small for his age, while Kevin, because he was well fed, was sturdy and strong. Kevin began to play ‘games’ with William that scared me. One day he got a flick knife and made William stand with his feet apart on the grass. The game was for Kevin to aim the knife to land between William’s legs, blade down in the earth, but for it to be near enough for it to be scary. Another version of this was you had to dance about to miss the knife as it flew towards your feet and legs. I was terrified, as Kevin had already briefly tried this with me, and the knife had landed on my foot, giving me a bad cut. When I showed it to Barbara, bleeding profusely, she just said, ‘You should be more careful, you stupid girl.’
I watched the ‘game’ unfold from the relative safety of the kitchen. Kevin was teasing William and threw the knife, which very nearly landed in William’s leg, making him jump. Provoked, William shouted something at Kevin, then Barbara, who had been pinning washing on the line, suddenly strode over and picked up William by the T-shirt collar, swung him round a couple of times and hurled him like a discarded rag doll across the grass into the rockery.
William landed badly but scrambled to his feet. Kevin watched all this grinning, shouting, ‘Ha ha!’ Enraged, William ran into the kitchen and locked the door, which had glass at the top and wood below, like a stable door. By now I was cowering by the larder, speechless, watching the drama unfold. Barbara was loping up the lawn. ‘Come back, you little bastard. I’ll kill you when I get my hands on you!’
Her face appeared at the backdoor window, florid and furious, her eyes wild with intent. ‘Open it!’ she spat.
‘No!’ said William, through the window. I was both impressed and terrified. He was in for it now. He’d said no. You never said no to Barbara, it wasn’t allowed. She turned and marched down the lawn, picking up a cricket bat that Kevin had earlier strewn to one side.
Then she marched back to the door where William was still standing at the window, defiantly looking out. Barbara looked like she was going to explode and I thought I would pee myself with fear. Suddenly she raised the bat and screamed, ‘I’ll kill you!’ and smashed the bat into the glass door, shattering it all over William, who was now screaming in terror, as was I.
Glass flew everywhere. Barbara batted and batted, and William was covered in shards of glass. Instinctively I ran up to William, who was cut and bleeding, but he seemed fixed to the ground. I pulled his arm and we ran upstairs to the bathroom. I could hear more glass shattering as Barbara bashed in the rest of it until she was able to open the door from the inside. Then we could hear her thumping upstairs like a marauding monster.
Once in the bathroom we locked the door and cowered by the side of the bath, under the sink. On the landing, outside the door, she was shouting wildly at both of us: ‘Open the bloody door, you bloody little bastards! Open the door!’ Bash. Bash. Bash. She thumped on the door with the bat. We froze, held hands and shivered, heads down, eyes closed tight shut. I started counting furiously. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three… Barbara was still beating the door. She was slamming the door handle and bashing away. Suddenly it flung open and she threw herself at William, attacking his head, his legs, his arms, with the bat. I was screaming, crying, pleading: ‘Don’t hit him, don’t hit me!’
She pulled me to standing, leant me over the bath, raised my dress, pulled down my knickers and whacked the bat as hard as she could on my bare bottom. William was sobbing uncontrollably in a heap on the floor. She kept whacking me, one, two, three times, and I thought I would die. Then she turned to William and kicked him in the stomach as he lay there, sobbing.
‘Take your clothes off,’ she raged. ‘Both of you. Now!’
Crying and shaking, we undressed as she turned the cold tap on and put the plug in the bath. ‘Get in.’ I put my toes in the icy water and, although terrified, did as I was told. William followed and we sat down in the freezing bath; the water came up to our chins.
‘Stay there, you little bastards,’ Barbara spat, then turned and stormed out of the bathroom. William and I sat there, blinking, shivering, terrified, not knowing at all what to do. We knew better than to move. We stared at each other, too frightened to speak. It was probably late afternoon, and we sat in that icy bath watching the evening light come in slowly. I started really shaking, but everything felt numb. I could see William’s body turning shades of red and blue, where Barbara had landed her bat. His cuts were bloody streaks. His lips were purple. Were we going to be here for ever? Would we die?
We could hear voices downstairs in the kitchen and the sounds of teatime: plates, chairs, movement. Still we sat in the freezing-cold bath, too terrified to move, no idea what to do. Had she forgotten us? Why didn’t Ian come? Would we be here all night? Eventually she came up – it was night now, and it was dark and we were grey shadows in icy water, numb, exhausted, hungry, frightened. ‘Get out,’ was all she said.
Barely able to move, we clambered stiffly out of the bath, one after the other, and stood dripping and shivering on the lino floor. Barbara told us to get dressed, so we did; we were too scared to do anything but obey. Tears sta
rted rolling down my cheeks, but she just barked, ‘No snivelling,’ and then we went into our tiny box room without our tea or even a drink, and the usual horrific night ritual began all over again.
After an incident like this, nothing was said. There was no sorry, no making up, no nothing. The window was replaced the next day – ‘You two just cost me money’ – and life went on as before. The only difference was that Barbara seemed more and more horrible to William now, and encouraged Kevin to attack him whenever he wanted to. She never intervened, and in fact seemed to enjoy it, even encourage it. ‘I hate the little bugger,’ is what I would hear her saying to Kevin, and William became their mutual punchbag.
Ian just turned a blind eye to everything, and lived like a ghost in the house. As he was a quiet man, he was well liked in the village and at work, but he was a blank slate to us. William and I had very few times with him alone, but on some weekends, when Barbara was in a black mood, he would take us out on a job. We would get in his van and it felt like a treat. One day we went to a house next to where Ian grew up in Oxford. It was a lovely old ramshackle place, very untidy inside, with books everywhere. Even the toilet was full of books, newspapers and magazines. I thought Barbara would be furious to see how unclean it all was, as she took bleach to everything.
Iris and John, whose house it was, wanted Ian to mend something, and William and I were sat at a table with a plate of slightly stale chocolate bourbons and custard creams and two full glasses of orange squash. It was heaven. Ian busied himself mending things, and Iris, who told me she was a writer, read the newspaper, asking me what I thought about this and that. I just sat nibbling on the wonderful biscuits, looking at her with saucer eyes. I didn’t know what to say but she was kind, like Sean. The radio would be on, with voices talking, and John and Iris would sit together and do a crossword or talk about something. I would stare at them, watching how nice they were with each other, as one made tea in a big old brown teapot and put a greasy cosy over the top. Or the other did some washing up.
We went to see them several times, and I later learnt the woman’s name was Iris Murdoch. She would often have a nap and I would watch her lovely, clever face and copy her expressions while she was snoozing. William would be walking round the room, touching things and getting restless, but I loved it there. I sat eating biscuits, sipping squash and felt safe. It was a lovely feeling in their glass conservatory, overlooking a beautiful garden. It was a quiet moment, and a real break from being at home.
When Ian was done, John and Iris would say goodbye very politely and one day John spontaneously picked up a packet of ‘mixed seeds’ and shook them. He said, ‘These are forget-me-nots, Louise, so you’d better forget me not!’ The grown-ups laughed, and I later understood why it was funny.
One day there was going to be a visit from a ‘social worker’. We had these strange people come round every so often, and before they arrived Barbara would get even more grumpy and agitated than usual. She would start scrubbing and cleaning furiously, spitting, ‘They will never say that I don’t have a clean house.’ Barbara thought the social workers were just interested in cleanliness. She scoured and cleansed, bashed pots and pans around, and barked at us to scrub ourselves. Our room had to be tidy, which wasn’t a problem, as we didn’t have any toys or belongings to speak of. In fact it was Barbara who had all the dolls and cuddly toys in her bedroom, not us.
She had a thing about dolls and owned all sorts of old, china and plastic dolls with weird painted faces that she adored. We, of course, were not allowed to play with them. We couldn’t even look. We were also not allowed in many of the rooms in the house: certainly not in the living room – with the red velvet curtains and the sideboard and TV – and not in anyone’s bedroom, other than our tiny partitioned box room. Barbara was furious, strutting about, swearing, pushing us out of the way: ‘Get out from under my feet. I don’t want those bloody interfering social workers to see you.’
I was terrified of Barbara but I didn’t want to get the same treatment as William, which was horrendous, as he had more beatings than me. So I began to play being extra nice to Mummy. I would flatter her, and try to please and appease her, hoping this would change her mood and her attitude to me, and to us. I thought she must be a very unhappy person as she was always so angry, and I began to make her little gifts. I wanted her to smile, to be nice, to be kind. I wanted to make her happy, to make her like me – and to care.
Before the social worker arrived, I went outside to where the front had recently had more gravel laid by Ian. I noticed some of the stones were really sparkly and shiny, like stars and jewels, and I went and found a little empty box in the wooden shed (it was open for once). I drew all over the box with some colouring pens and picked out some jewel stones of different colours and shapes, arranging them carefully in the box. I went to the kitchen and hung outside, trying to work out Barbara’s mood. There was a strong smell of bleach, even outside, as the doors and windows were flung wide open. I hovered in the doorway, trying to find a way to talk to her.
‘What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?’ she snapped. I felt terrified, but I persevered. ‘Mummy,’ I started, ‘I made you a present…’
She stopped and looked at me, her eyes narrowing, her nose becoming very pointy.
‘You been in the shed?’
I felt my face go red. ‘Er, yes, sorry, Mummy.’
