Chapter 16: Monday 18th May - (Jaclyn’s Story).
Jackie stared at me for a few moments, for reassurance, not knowing if she could put any trust in me, then she lay upon the car bonnet.
She looked at the photograph of herself, closed her eyes and began to weep.
Her left hand, which still held the photo, rested on her chest while her right hand she placed upon her stomach.
Her whole upper body vibrated as she wept silently with tears from her closed eyes beginning to trickle down her cheeks into her hair.
I lay down beside her whispering “Jackie, tell me what’s wrong?”
“I want to help you, I want to be your friend.”
Jackie opened her Navy-blue eyes turning towards me she sobbed. “I’ve never had any friends.”
I looked at her puzzled. “I would have thought it was impossible for an eighteen-year-old not to have had any friends.”
She saw my confusion and signed. “My father wouldn’t allow me to have any friends.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly sighing,
“My father travelled all around Britain preaching in churches up and down the country.
Ever since I can remember we have never been in any place more than a few weeks at a time.
He always told me that other children would be a bad influence on me and if he, as much as, caught me saying ‘hello’ to anyone he would beat me until I promised never to speak to them again.”
“You must be kidding?” I asked astonished.
“I wish I was,” she sobbed, “and if I ever looked in the direction of a boy I would get battered for weeks on end.”
“That’s impossible,” I sighed, not knowing whether to believe her or not.
“You don’t believe me - do you?” she asked hurt.
My eyes must have betrayed the fact that my brain couldn’t accept her explanation, so she sat up and crossing her arms in front of her she grabbed her tee shirt at her waist and hoisted it up to her shoulders in one swift movement.
The sight of her bare back shocked me as her skin showed the outline of several scars and whip marks deep into her milky white skin making it look like a very haphazardly ploughed field.
I placed my hand in the centre of her spine and gently felt the rough ridges in disbelief.
“Why?” I asked almost in tears for her.
“Why would he do that to you?”
Jackie lowered her tee shirt, trapping my hand beneath the cotton material, jumped off the car to break all contact with me, and turning towards me she cried.
“I kept asking him that, for years I constantly kept asking him why?
Why I wasn’t even allowed to see other minister’s children?
I hated school, I hated going to church, I hated leaving the house encase one of the parishioners should smile at me.
By God, I hated that man for making my entire life a complete misery.”
Jackie spoke with so much hatred in her voice she frightened me.
“For eighteen years I kept on asking why?”
She folded her arms around her heaving chest, walked a few feet away from where I leaned on the car, and turned to face me.
Her breathing vibrated as the hatred in her heart showed in her dark eyes.
“I failed in everything I did because of that man.” she continued shouting.
“Every school I went to - and believe me I’ve been to hundreds of different schools from one end of the country to the other - I was always the dunce because I was so frightened to open my mouth to speak to anyone.
When you’re the only daughter of ‘Saint’ Jack Bradley and his ‘Blessed’ wife Lynn - hence the name Jaclyn - you learn not to ask any questions.
I kept running away from them, but Jesus, I couldn’t even do that right.”
All the time she spoke I could tell by the tone and pitch of her voice that she was beginning to become hysterical, but I didn’t want to stop her tale of woe until she had finished and got it all out of her system.
“I even failed several times to get away from him.
I would leave the house without any food and without any money, and just wander around getting cold, tired and hungry until the police would pick me up and take me back to another beating.
I didn’t even know how to get away from him and I was frightened to ask anybody.
That’s how pathetic I was.”
Her emotions were so inflamed as she screamed at me.
“During all that time I kept asking why, why, WHY?”
She put so much effort into her last ‘why’ she fell to her knees in the mud, sobbing under the pressure she was bringing upon herself. “Why?” She sobbed quietly.
“Three months ago I had my last beating.
I made up my mind that I would get my own back on that man.
I was determined that I was going to kill him for putting me through hell every day for eighteen years.”
Jackie staggered to her feet again with thick mud all over her legs from her knees downwards, but she took no notice as she walked towards me slowly with her arms folded.
“Can I have another cigarette?” she asked standing before me.
I hurriedly pulled a cigarette from my pocket, lit it, and handed it to her asking, “Did you kill your father?”
Slowly and quietly she puffed on her cigarette as she walked over to sit on a moss-covered wall by the side of the farmhouse.
The entire area seemed to be a mass of mud, moss and manure, but Jackie didn’t seem to care what state her clothes got into, although I wondered if I could protect my car seat when we eventually went home.
“No,” she sighed looking towards the dying embers of the sun,
“No, I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t even do that right.
For weeks I planned how I was going to kill him and as usual all my plans went wrong.”
“One Sunday night three months ago he was beating me for refusing to go to church, when a strange power possessed me.
I grabbed his belt and turned on him like some kind of wild animal.”
Jackie buried her head in her hands as she recalled the experience.
“I don’t know where I got the strength from but I held him down and started to repay him for eighteen years of torture.
For about an hour all I did was beat him with his belt until his entire body was a mess of blood and his skin was a mixture of black and blue and red.
I kicked him, I punched him, and I leathered him with his belt.
I threw everything I could find at him - chairs, candlesticks, books, bibles, his gold-plated two foot high cross.”
“For the last few minutes while he lay in agony, I continuously pounded every part of his blood soaked body with his heavy cross - and I was enjoying it.
I wanted to crucify him for the pain and agony he had caused me, and I intended for him to know what pain and agony were.”
As Jackie described the event she re-enacted every movement.
“When I was sure he was at death’s door I stood up, raised the buckled cross above my head intending to smash his head open with one final blow.
Suddenly, it was pulled from my hands and smashed against the wall.
I turned around to see my mother weeping for him.”
The whole sad story was becoming too fantastic for me to accept any more.
“Your mother?” I asked astonished, “She allowed him to torture you all those years?”
“Just before she told me to get out and never come back, she told me she was frightened of him too and he made her promise never to tell me about my past.”
Jackie finished her cigarette and lay down upon the rough surface of the mossy wall looking up towards the crimson sky.
I slowly walked towards her to lean upon the wall by her head where I gently brushed her hair from her tear-stained, mucky face as she closed her eyes and began to weep again.
“She told me that I wasn’t their child.
She said t
hey had adopted me when I was only a few days old.
She told me that my real mother must have been a whore and that my Dad believed I had evil in me, and if he didn’t try to protect me from the sin and corruption in the world then I would end up a whore just like her.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I whispered as she sat up again.
“Do you know?” she continued, “She hurt me more with those few words than HE had all these years?
I couldn’t believe what she was telling me so I ran from that house and kept running for four days until I dropped from exhaustion and hunger.”
Jackie jumped from the wall and walked slowly towards the car again.
“Next thing I knew I woke up in a caravan somewhere near Fraserburgh where I met Elaine.”
She sat upon the car bonnet as she continued.
“Elaine fed me and burned all my bloodstained clothes giving me some of hers.
She told me she would take care of me if I looked after her caravan while she went out to work.
I really thought I had found a friend who could teach me a thing or two about life.”
Jackie leaned onto the bonnet and sobbed.
“Elaine taught me a lot of things.
She taught me how to lie, how to cheat, how to steal and she taught me how to become something my Dad had tried to beat out of me for eighteen years.
Elaine taught me how to become a whore.”
She turned sideways to look at me as I walked slowly towards her.
“For six weeks I was so full of drink and drugs that I couldn’t move.
For six whole weeks every moment of the day and night I was constantly being raped by men who would do unmentionable things to me while I lay there helpless trying to make sense of it all.
For six of the worst weeks of my life I was subjected to orgies with as many as four men at the same time and I was too weak to escape.”
“Elaine told me that if I tried to run away she would go to the police and tell them I had killed my father and I would end up in prison for years.
I felt so used I couldn’t get away - even if I had the strength to run I had nowhere to run to.”
“One morning I woke up alone - for the first time in six weeks - and I decided to get out of there.
I found a suitcase and threw everything I could into it.
Everything that fitted - all the food in the place.
I turned that caravan upside down taking anything that I might need.
I found hundreds of pounds in every crevice of her den of vice and sin, and I started running again.
I ran to the train station and got onto the first train that came in and ended up here.
I saw an advert in a newspaper for that flat across from you, where I’ve been hiding, trying to figure out what to do when the money runs out.”
I sat down next to her as a gentle rain began to fall and taking her in my arms I hugged her tenderly while she wept into my shoulder.
“I’m frightened that I’ll have to go onto the streets to make enough money to stay here, and then I’ll end up a whore like my mother - whoever she was.”
“Don’t worry” I assured her quietly, “I’ll help you, and you can trust me. I’ll take care of you.”
Jackie broke away from my embrace, “I have no right to ask you to help me, I don’t even know you and now you know about the things I’ve done I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t want to know me.
Maybe I should go to the police and turn myself in and let them send me to prison or take me home.”
“Don’t worry, they can’t take you home.” I assured her.
“They have every other time.” she sighed.
“You’re eighteen now, they can’t take you back to your father if you don’t want to go.”
Her eyes widened as she squealed, “You mean they can’t make me go back now? I’m free of him?”
“You’ve been free to leave him since you were sixteen.” I told her quietly as she stood looking at me agog, as the rain became heavier.
“Why didn’t somebody tell me?” she wailed.
“Probably,” I tried to say as sympathetically as I could, “because you were too afraid to ask.”
She raised her face to the sky and laughed as the rain mixed with her tears as she smiled and repeated calmly. “I’m free, I’m finally free.”
I let her revel in her happiness for a few seconds before I said.
“You might be free, but you’re not out of trouble yet, kid.”
“What do you mean?” she asked curiously.
“Well, firstly, if you don’t get out of this rain you will catch your death of cold.”
Jackie smiled as we re-entered the car.
“Secondly,” I lit another cigarette and handed it to her.
“Unfortunately, the police are looking for you.”
“Oh No,” she sobbed quietly, “You said they can’t send me back.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her, “They won’t send you back if I have anything to do with it.”
“I’ll find out tomorrow why they’re looking for you and I’ll come to see you tomorrow night with what they say, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered, “Thanks for listening to me.
I have never been able to tell anyone the whole story before.
I hope you can help me, Brian.
You’re a good man and I know I can trust you.”
Diamonds by Brian Ritchie Page 22