by Anya Peters
Brendan waved and I smiled and walked between the bright machines, listening to all the loud noises and pushing tokens in the slots, trying to spend them quickly. It was no fun on my own. My brothers and sisters would have known what to do, all skidding about the place breathlessly, shouting and laughing. I was lost without them—didn’t know what to do on my own, didn’t know how to be Anya without them. I always felt like I was disappointing everyone. I could do everything in my head, but didn’t know what to say or think or do out loud. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel either, or what I was allowed to feel.
A big, cold feeling swept up inside me. I missed my brothers and sisters and wanted to be amongst them all again, squished up on the settee, eating pick ‘n’ mix and laughing at cartoons, one of them again.
The wind had died down and we sat at a table outside a cafÉ under a big green umbrella. I had a cheeseburger with onions and Coke with ice, and the others had big sugary triangles of apple pie and cups of tea. Mummy asked me if I’d enjoyed my holiday. I wanted to lie and tell her that I hadn’t, that I only liked being with her, because I knew that would make her smile. But the other two were watching me and I felt shy, so I nodded. When she asked me what I’d done I told her about the horses and Brendan’s children, and how Caitlin was teaching me to ride.
‘Are we flying back together?’ I asked, excited to be going on a plane with Mummy. She lit a cigarette and told me she couldn’t come over with me, that she had to stay a few days more, and I’d have to go back on my own.
The cheeseburger stuck in my throat. I washed it down with some Coke and tried to keep my face blank so the other two didn’t know what I was thinking. The light disappeared from Mummy’s face. I could tell she knew what I was thinking, that I couldn’t go back there to my uncle on his own. But of course even she didn’t know the real reason I didn’t want to be on my own with him.
‘It’ll only be for a few days,’ she said, crushing her cigarette out in the ashtray Brendan pushed over to her, ‘then I’ll be back.’
I had pineapple fritters after my burger and ate them slowly, trying to hide my fear and not to ‘let her down’ or ‘show her up’.
‘Can’t I stay here until you go back?’ I asked later, following her to the toilets, but she said they were all going to be too busy with the funeral arrangements.
I still had some tokens left and when I went back I tried to get the pennies to fall off the cascading machines, my eyes welling with tears as I stared hard through the scratched glass, seeing all the coins hanging off the edge, about to fall with the slightest nudge. I could see the reflection of the grown-ups huddled together behind me, playing shove-a-penny with my nerves. I can’t go back there on my own. When I finished my tokens and went back to them, Mummy said Brendan had a surprise for me.
‘How would you like to come over to Italy with me for a couple of weeks?’ he asked. ‘I can get the time off and I could do with a holiday. There’s a lady who lives there I’d like you to meet. She’s a niece of mine, you’d like her. She’s always got her nose in a book like you too. I’m just a show-off really, I want to show you I know someone with brains.’
‘Italy?’ I said, looking at Mummy, trying to read what she was thinking from her face, and trying to remember how far Italy was. Then I remembered the long boot shape of it on the map on the classroom wall.
We were meant to be in Italy for two weeks, just while Mummy helped Kathy with things after the funeral. But at breakfast near the end of the second week Brendan asked his niece Caroline, who we were staying with, if she would look after me there for the rest of the summer. I couldn’t breathe. I knew it was all a trick; that they weren’t going to let me go back to Mummy. I stared up at Brendan helplessly, too shy to say anything in front of Caroline.
Brendan somehow persuaded her, without consulting anyone in England when he went back to Ireland. I stayed there for the entire summer. Mummy didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t speak to her. Nobody seemed to think about how being away from my brothers and sisters and Mummy for all those weeks, not knowing if I could go back, would affect me.
It was a hot summer and Caroline had to drag me around with her everywhere she went, constantly grumbling, ‘I wish this summer would roll on.’ She wasn’t used to children, especially frightened, mistrustful ones, and kept saying she wanted me to go home, in a way that hurt behind my ribs.
When Brendan eventually came back we met him at the airport, standing at the glass watching him coming down the steps of the plane like a movie star, his jacket looped with one finger over his shoulder and his tie loosened in the heat, which rippled silver across the runway. It reminded me of watching him coming across our landing at the flats on hot days in summer. And how much I wanted to go back home.
Although it was hot Caroline said I could wear the new, green, Italian coat she’d bought me, with the pleat down the back, to show off in front of him. She’d taken me to my first proper hairdressers too. When he saw me his eyes widened and he asked me for a spin. I did as he asked, knowing the back was swinging from side to side, the way it did in the mirror, and I tried not to let them know how pretty I felt, and how much like all the other girls.
‘You look like a different child altogether,’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you sure you are the same one?’
On the last day I had my portrait drawn in my new coat by a small oriental man on the Spanish Steps in Rome. Brendan was taken aback when he saw it, unrolling it onto the cafÉ table, weighting the ends down with the salt and pepper pots and his hands.
‘Do I look like that?’ I asked.
‘He’s made you look far too old,’ Brendan said. ‘It’s the way you’ll look when you’re about eighteen…it’s the look your mother had.’
I didn’t know which mother he was talking about.
Chapter 19
When I came back from Italy the arguments and violence grew worse. He made it clear that he didn’t want me back and didn’t like the changes in me. Maybe he was fearful again that I’d told someone about what he’d been doing. Maybe he also resented the fact that I’d been allowed a break from all the abuse, and that I could almost look him in the eye again. My brothers and sisters seemed to have grown used to me not being there for a whole summer too. He told them not to talk to me, that I wouldn’t be staying long, that I wasn’t one of them and didn’t belong there.
I knew my brothers and sisters were just jealous of my ‘holiday’ and so I didn’t talk about it, trying to put it out of my mind and settle in amongst them again. But my uncle’s ridiculing began again. ‘This is not a hotel,’ he would say at any opportunity. ‘You’re not in the Ritz now.’ And my brothers and sisters would snicker behind their hands with him if he wasn’t too drunk yet, as Mummy told them all to leave me alone.
The sexual abuse didn’t take long to start up again either. From visiting Brendan’s house and Italian families with Caroline, I now knew how other people lived, knew that this wasn’t ‘normal’. No one in their houses banged down on the floor for little girls to go up to them.
The only thing that changed was that he seemed to think he had to hit me even harder, to be certain I would never tell Brendan, or anyone else, the truth. I was used to being hit, to having ‘busted lips’ and nosebleeds, and bruises over my arms and legs from his punches. The bruises were usually disguised by my clothes so there wasn’t much anybody could see, like the pains between my ribs when I breathed or lumps the size of eggs on the side of my head from when he threw or kicked me out of his way. But it was harder now, getting used to it all over again.
When he called or knocked down on his bedroom floor with the shoe for me to go up I would shake inside and sit there trying to ignore it, praying that one of the others would give in before me and go up instead, hoping he just wanted a fizzy drink for his hangover or a pen to do the Pools with or some soap for his bath. We would squabble between us until he banged down again. Usually I would have to go. Sometimes one of the boys would jump up s
aying, ‘It’s you he’s calling, not us,’ but I would pretend not to hear and sit rigid on my hands, crossing my fingers under my thighs until they came back down. They always came down saying the same thing: ‘Daddy said you have to go,’ or ‘Daddy says he wants the black comb. You have to take it up to the bathroom to him.’
I’d find the comb and put my arm around the bathroom door, waving it through the steam, saying, ‘Catch, I’ll throw it in.’ Trying not to see him, or breathe in the stench of him.
‘Hand it in to me,’ he’d say.
’No.’
’Get in here.’
I’d go in looking anywhere but at him and he would laugh at my nervousness.
‘Stand there.’
Sometimes I had to just stand there and he’d make me watch him while he soaped himself. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ he’d say. Other times he’d make me wash him myself. I had to soap him all over as he lay back. Usually he’d close his eyes, so I would try to do it without looking, pushing the sponge across his skin, trying to avoid going between his legs, but he’d never let me avoid it. If he’d been washing himself, he’d lie back afterwards and tell me to comb his pubic hair. I’d shake my head but he would make me.
‘Look at it,’ he’d laugh, lifting his pelvis out of the scummy water and forcing me to open my eyes. Through the curls of darkened hair I would see his penis lying there, soft and discoloured and repulsive.
‘Touch it.’
I would pull the comb through the short hair, trying not to touch him, trying not to look, staring at the black mould speckled on the wall above the door where the strips of stiff, flowery wallpaper were coming away from each other. Or, if he made me look at it, I’d look at the dark mole high up on the inside of his right thigh. I was always crying when I did it.
‘You can’t say it’s dirty after you’ve washed it yourself,’ he’d say.
‘It still is,’ I would remind him, as I did whenever he asked me if I liked it.
‘No,’ I’d say.
’Why not?’
’It’s dirty.’
’You’ll like it one day,’ he would laugh.
I usually had to wash his hair too, squeezing the washing-up liquid he used for it into my hands and scrubbing his scalp hard as he knelt up in the middle of the bath with his eyes closed.
‘Watch what you’re doing, you bitch,’ he’d say, wiping his eyes as suds slid down. ‘What are you trying to do, blind me?’
When he was ready to get out I would hold the towel out and then dry him. I would try to dry the other parts, the stretches of rough, pimply skin, trying not to touch between his legs. But I never got away with it. He would wrap the towel around his waist, shake his wet hair like a dog, and go up to the bedroom carrying a bundle of his clothes, telling me to clean out the bath and come up.
I would stay in the bathroom or tiptoe downstairs hoping he’d forget it, but he never did. He’d call me from the top landing, and I’d say I had to get some cleaner for the bath, or I’d just taken the wet towels down to the laundry basket.
Spreading the towel on the floor he would make me shake talcum powder between his legs, handing me the red, square tin of Imperial Leather from the mantelpiece. I had to smooth it over his penis too, then he would lie back on the bed and make me put it in my mouth, telling me how clean it was now and not to complain as I heaved at the taste and gagged for breath.
My mind wanted to float off, but a bit of me always had to stay there listening out for Mummy coming back or for one of the boys spying outside, or one of the girls coming up and catching us. I always had to be ready to jump off the bed.
The more he did it the angrier he seemed to get with me afterwards. Maybe he was battling his demons and losing. Maybe he didn’t know how to stop, so wanted me out of the way to give him no choice. My shock and tears just seemed to amuse him.
After a few of Kathy and Brendan’s visits came and went, he saw that he could do anything he liked to me again and that I wouldn’t tell. He clearly enjoyed humiliating me too. Once, his brother, Shaun, had come back from a holiday abroad and given him a pack of playing cards with pictures of nude women on the back, and a pen with a woman who became nude when you turned it upside down.
‘I’m not having things like that in my house, there are children here,’ Mummy shouted. ‘I want those out.’
His brother just laughed at her and my uncle kept them. When the others had gone upstairs he made me stay there and play. Mummy was only upstairs in the bath. He shuffled them and made me play snap with the picture backs, forcing me to look at them. I burnt with shame as I put down my cards on top of his. If he won I had to kiss him, with his dirty, beer-stinking breath.
‘Open your mouth,’ he said, putting his rough tongue—like thick sandpaper—into it, the shock of it stopping me in my tracks.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked, smirking. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘No,’ I cried, trying to pull away.
‘You will,’ he said as he shuffled for another game, laughing at my tears.
Sometimes he did actually throw me out of the house, pushing me through the front door at the height of one of their rows. Mummy usually stopped him, or unlocked the door again and forced me to run up to the bedroom while she took the brunt of his fury.
One night I got a real taste of how much easier and calmer life would be for Mummy without me there. During an argument I’d been called back out of bed and asked again who my father was. Brendan had been over just a few days before, and I’d gone to the hotel he was staying at that looked out over Tower Bridge to have lunch with him as a birthday treat. None of my brothers or sisters had treats like that, so it wasn’t fair, and I usually paid for them afterwards.
Again that night I said I didn’t know who my father was when he asked, trying to get me to tell him it was Brendan. As usual, he didn’t believe me and tried punching a different answer out of me. Mummy had told me a long time ago that it wasn’t Brendan and her word was enough. I never had to ask again.
She tried to make him leave me alone, but he had other reasons for hating me then, for wanting me out. Maybe he didn’t know how to stop what he was doing to me, and with me spending days with Brendan in a hotel, who knew what secrets I could have told? His paranoia was driving him mad. In the end he pushed me outside in my nightie onto the street in the pitch dark, screaming that he never wanted to set eyes on me again, reminding me that I didn’t belong and that I wasn’t wanted there. Maybe that was the only way of stopping himself now, to have me gone.
I ran up the wet road, barefoot, up on tiptoe, almost blinded by tears. I felt fear and shame at the thought of the neighbours seeing me. I didn’t know where to go, which direction to take. I heard the door shake in its frame and the scrape of the top bolt being pushed across, and behind it Mummy’s screams faded away.
Hearing the argument die down in the house as I walked away made me think that that was what it would always be like if I wasn’t there. Mummy’s life would be peaceful. I stumbled up the road towards the smear of the streetlights near the boarded-up church at the top, my tears unstoppable, not able to bear the pain in my head or the thought that I was the one who caused all the trouble for Mummy just by being there.
I didn’t even dare to stop when I eventually heard Mummy calling out my name and, turning, saw her running up the road in the dark after me. She’d got her tweed winter coat on over her purple velvet dressing gown, and was carrying a coat for me. She put the coat and an arm around my shoulders, trying to push my feet into some slippers of Stella’s, pink ones edged with a roll of dark-pink fur, and sizes too small for me. I gripped them onto my feet with my toes and we walked on, crying into each other.
Mummy stopped to lean against a wall, crying loudly and dragging on a cigarette she’d found in her coat pocket. She looked pitiful, broken, all the fight knocked out of her, making my tears fall even harder. All I could do was listen helplessly, absorbing the pain: Please, Mum, be strong, don’t
give up now, not now. I rubbed her shoulder awkwardly through the rough tweed of her coat, feeling each of her sobs deep down in my bones, not knowing what to say. Then she crushed her cigarette against the wall and cursed him through her tears, saying she was going back, vowing she wouldn’t let an animal like that lock her outof her own home.
‘You go,’ I said, ‘I can’t…’ But she took no notice and made me go back with her.
We walked back and she picked small stones out of the wet soil under the bushes and threw them up at the windows to get one of the others to come and open the front door. She tried to calm me down as she prised my fingers from the gate. I’d wet myself, hot pee sliding down my legs and soaking Stella’s pink slippers as we eventually walked into the hall, both shaking.
Next time Brendan came over I took the day off school and Mummy and I met him in the restaurant at the back of BHS. They discussed the secondary schools I might go to. Brendan wasn’t familiar with the English school system and asked Mummy about grammar schools.
‘Has she a chance of getting in?’ Brendan asked.
We weren’t really the type of family that got into grammar schools. Mummy lit another cigarette, and picking loose tobacco from her tongue said, ‘That one’s got brains in places you and me don’t even have places,’ which made Brendan laugh and me blush.
Mummy was always saying that proudly about all of us, whenever we tried to show her how to do long division or fractions or spell big words. No matter how hard my uncle tried to knock me senseless over the years he never could. What neither Mummy nor Brendan had realised, though, was that I would have to pass a test in verbal reasoning.
‘What’s that?’ Mummy asked.
’Speaking out loud.’