For the rest of the exam Grace dwelled on her past. One thing she was sure of: the identity of Susi Bechhöfer did not appeal to her in the least. In any case, everything was so much more straightforward as Grace Mann. Whoever she was and wherever she came from, Susi Bechhöfer surely had nothing to contribute. There was no room in Grace's life for this interloper whose sudden presence augured only trouble. The fact was that the very sound of the name sent painful memories flashing through Grace's mind - memories of being described by her school friends as looking 'foreign'; memories of learning as a child that she had been brought to Britain from a faraway place called Munich, in a frightening country called Germany. All in all, the sooner Susi was cast aside, the better. The Reverend Mann's great secret might have been laid bare, but for the present it had emerged unscathed. And it was Grace's refusal to acknowledge Susi's existence that he could thank for that.
Grace's past was not the only secret father and daughter shared. In other areas too the Reverend had sworn her to secrecy. He had good reason to demand her silence. As he knew full well, if the truth were to be discovered he would not only be stripped of his clerical collar, but would find himself behind bars. For ever since the diagnosis of Eunice's illness, the head of the Bible College had been had been unable or unwilling to restrain himself from seeing Grace in a different light. No longer just someone to whom he was closely attached, she had become for the Reverend a sexual being, and therefore a potential means of gratifying his own desires. Here was the real reason why he was so determined that Grace should not stray from his study when she was at home. For in that closed room she could be trained to tend to his needs. Nor would she dare refuse him.
Grace, remembering the rapport they had until recently enjoyed, tried to continue to be a normal daughter to him, but the Reverend had changed the rules. Constantly demanding more, he wanted her to play the role of his lover as well as his child.
'Grace, I can come into your bed tonight, can't I?' he would ask as a matter of course. It did not occur to Grace that this was a request which she might have been able to refuse. Nor indeed that she might appeal to someone for help. Not only was she completely terrified of her father - a look from him could send her scuttling up the stairs - but she was also barely nine years old when he first made such demands. Once in her bed, he cast aside all pretence of self-control.
Just as the Reverend's black moods would spring up from nowhere, so too would his sexual desire. Nor was the abuse confined to the night. In fact, it occurred more often during the daytime, in his study, although that was by no means the only place. In the early days Grace dutifully obeyed him, although she came to loathe him for it. But as she entered her teens, she did at least pluck up the courage to ask why she should have to perform such tasks. The Reverend's reasoning, grotesque and distorted though it was, served to convince her to carry on, for that was what mattered to him.
'Because if you do this to me, Grace,' he would explain, 'it makes me feel that you are my own child. You know that the greatest tragedy of my life has been that I haven't been able to have children of my own. So if you do this for me, it just makes me feel that much closer to you.'
The Reverend had developed a habit which he practised with great skill. Should any opportunity present itself for sexual contact with his daughter, he found himself both unable and unwilling to resist it, even if the setting was well removed from the relative security of his study. Perhaps a public setting made the abuse even more exciting. Or perhaps it served to illustrate all the more vividly to Grace how he was able to control and manipulate her at his whim. How else to explain a Baptist minister abusing his daughter in the shabby surroundings of the public swimming baths at Penarth, near Cardiff?
No wonder the Reverend looked forward to Grace's return during the school holidays; nor that she contemplated them with a heavy heart. Once she was back, he would lose little time in resuming his advances. On one occasion, having met Grace from her train, he drove straight to a nearby chemist's shop, mindful that contraception was in order now that Grace was reaching puberty.
No wonder, too, that the Reverend could never find anything positive to say about any teenage boy who expressed an interest in his daughter. Seldom did his refrain vary, no matter how impeccable the suitor's character and credentials.
'No, Grace, definitely not for you. Definitely not for you,' he would insist.
The reason for these repeated refusals was not difficult to detect. Even the idea of his daughter being wooed by another man made the minister of religion desperately jealous. He wanted her all to himself. Had he not made his terms clear many years earlier?
In order to buy Grace's loyalty, the Reverend relied on the powerful weapon of the implied threat: 'Because if you don't do as I say, Grace...' Of course he never went on to spell out what might befall her should she refuse. For Grace, the worst thing was not knowing what sanctions might follow. Ignorant of what reprisals might be in store, she was at the mercy of her fertile imagination, as the Reverend had intended. Was it not possible, the agonizing thought occurred to her, that Grace Mann, like Susi Bechhöfer before her, would be cast aside, consigned to the past?
The Reverend's strategy was to serve him very well, because for more than a decade Grace did not utter a word about her predicament to anyone. Throughout these years it remained a secret.
Towards the end of her teens, however, Grace began to feel differently about what had happened to her, and much of the anger repressed since childhood began to surface. And yet Grace was unable to summon the courage to confront her father about the pain he was causing her. For the Reverend continued to exercise a powerful, almost hypnotic control over her every move. For all that she was a young woman now, rather than a child, she was still struggling in vain to break free.
Her feeling of revulsion reached a peak when one day when the Reverend Mann spoke to Eunice in a tone that Grace felt to be full of bitter accusation.
'Eunice,' he bellowed, unable to control the fury welling inside him. 'You have got cancer.'
Crying to herself, Eunice limped up the stairs. 'I haven't,' was all she could say.
As the Reverend raged - all the while seeming to Grace more and more like an animal - Irene busied herself in the kitchen. It was an all too familiar scene. Having delivered his blow, he would withdraw, stricken with remorse, awash with guilt and grief at the brutal savagery of his tongue. The furious moods that would descend on the minister seemed to come from nowhere - and the result was always the same: a black cloud would hover over the whole household, although Irene would carry on as if nothing had happened.
Appalled by her father's unfeeling treatment of her ailing sister, Grace could stand no more. Without a word she walked into his study, picked up the telephone and began to dial 999 - to talk to the police. Now the truth concerning her father's sexual abuse would be revealed. But as she did so the minister walked into the room. Lost in his own troubled thoughts, he did not see Grace, who silently replaced the receiver and crept out of the room, feeling at the same time relieved and thwarted.
Afterwards Grace dwelt for a long time on what had happened. She realized as she made for the phone that should she report her father's behaviour and a criminal prosecution ensue, she would be responsible for triggering two important consequences. First, there would be an enormous scandal within the ranks of the Baptist Church. Now, as she thought about it afterwards, this outcome scarcely troubled her.
By contrast, the second prospect did. With the Reverend Mann almost certain to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, there would be no one to provide for Eunice. And that was one extra burden Grace was not prepared to add to her already heavy load. It was out of loyalty to her sister, she realized, rather than concern for her father, that she had replaced the receiver.
For the Reverend Mann it had been a narrow escape: once again he had been saved from public exposure.
FOUR
Obsessed
Throughout the twins' late childhood and teens Eunice
continued to be very ill. Much of the time she was in great pain, and Irene would administer the most powerful medication available, in an attempt to relieve her suffering. Eunice often called out in the middle of the night: 'Mummy, Mummy, I don't know where I am.' Instantly she received the reassurance she sought. But by the time Irene had returned to her bed, Eunice was anxiously shouting for her again, completely disorientated, her mother's words of comfort having already faded from her mind. The days too were seldom without trauma, mainly because for several years Eunice suffered almost continuously from seizures which would cause her to drop to the floor, clutching her head and writhing in pain.
Nor, in this instance, had medical science been able to work its wonders. In fact, Eunice had hardly regained consciousness from her second operation when her parents were summoned to the consultant surgeon's room - a route they had come to know well. There they learned that the operation had not been carried out to his complete satisfaction - indeed he was not sure if it ever could be - but he felt it was his duty to try one more time.
Each time Eunice went into the operating theatre, her faithful Aunt Flora, who had kitted out the twins with clothes on their arrival in Wales, swung into action once more. Aware that Eunice felt very self-conscious shorn of her hair, Flora set about producing a series of little bonnets, including a yellow and pink pixie hat, of the same material and colouring as her clothes, so as to form a matching outfit. Flora's sewing skills were put to good and frequent use, for altogether Eunice was to have her hair removed seven times. And all to no avail.
'I'il never forget the day,' Irene would recall, 'after ten days in the Royal Infirmary, when the doctors produced the word "incurable". We drove off, with tears rolling down our faces, all the way home. Incurable - at just ten years of age.'
Having tried and failed, the surgeons admitted there was nothing more they could do. The patient could now return home; she would not have to face surgery again. Worst of all, the upshot of this string of interventions was that Eunice was extensively paralysed - not just in her legs, but also down her entire right side, so that she had only one good limb out of four. As a result, she would be wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life. The Manns, drawing strength from their Christian convictions, chose to take a positive view. At least now their daughter was no longer in pain. And although her body had all but ceased to operate, her mind remained intact - not least her cheerful disposition. For Eunice soon demonstrated that she did not intend to waste time bemoaning her fate. Quite the contrary: she attended a special Girl Guides group at a local hospital and even went to camps. In the process she grew to be dearly loved by those who came into contact with her. And she returned that love, as she did to her foster parents. Full of gratitude, she would often fling her good arm about her mother's neck and hug her tightly.
'Just forget it, my love,' Irene would reply, struggling to control her own emotions. 'We're glad to be able to do it for you. We just wish we could give you a new arm or a new leg.'
And then she would add a few extra words, because she knew they always comforted her daughter and brought a smile to her face. 'Never mind, my love: there'll be no wheelchairs or wonky arms or legs in heaven.'
As devoted as Irene was to Eunice, so was she derelict in her duty towards Grace. Although she developed an uncanny knack of absenting herself on the occasions when her husband seemed likely to seek sexual favours from Grace, her intuition was far from fail-proof. On several occasions she walked in on father and daughter at a most inappropriate moment, with the result that all three parties were covered in confusion and embarrassment. Almost every time, as Grace quietly slipped away, a fierce argument would erupt between the Reverend and his wife, their angry words reverberating around the household.
Afterwards Grace would receive not a word of sympathy or support from her mother. On the contrary, like her father before her, she soon found herself at the mercy of Irene Mann's sharp tongue. Underlying these attacks was Irene's painful realization that her foster daughter had become a rival for her husband's affections, and a formidable one at that. In her mother's eyes, therefore, there was little that Grace could do, try as she might, to win even her most meagre approval.
Irene Mann might have failed in terms of mothering Grace, but she also had a raw deal as a wife. Not only had her husband forsaken her bed; she also had the humiliation of knowing precisely where and with whom he was likely to be at night. In fact, during the school holidays the Reverend had a habit of abandoning the marital bed altogether in favour of a spare room a little way along the corridor of their flat, so as to be opposite Grace's bedroom.
It was hardly surprising that Grace found it difficult to forge anything like a normal relationship with her foster mother. Likewise, while Irene displayed genuine love and tenderness towards Eunice, she could rarely find it in herself to show affection to her other daughter. In any case her husband would not have permitted it, for his practice of excluding all rivals for Grace's affection had not altered with the passage of time. Grace was not to be shared - not even with her mother. 'Sometimes you would think that those two were lovers,' said Mavis Wainman, a visitor to the family home - an observation which must have hurt Grace's mother, innocent though it was.
The destructive undercurrents flowing through the Mann household eventually began to take their toll on Irene. Tending to Eunice day and night was extremely draining in itself. But in addition to that duty the Reverend's wife was obliged to be available to counsel female students at the Bible College, many of whom wished to consult her about their own personal problems. It was a role which she carried out with much skill and aplomb. But with no one to counsel her in her own difficulties, and unwilling to reveal the dark secrets of her own marriage, Irene began to show more and more signs of stress, experiencing bouts of hyperventilation and falling to the floor in hysterical paralysis. It was not long before she herself was confined to bed, diagnosed as suffering from nervous exhaustion.
Mother and daughter, estranged from one another as they were, had one thing in common: neither had anyone at all with whom they could share their sense of isolation - least of all each other.
At the same time, despite Grace's concern for Eunice, all was not sweetness and light between the twins. For many years there had been considerable tension, for although she rarely said as much, Grace resented the fact that her sister had become both disfigured and incapacitated. Previously they had talked, walked and run together, whereas after the tumour was diagnosed these activities had ceased abruptly. As young children they had played happily together, with Eunice invariably the leader of the two, often protecting her more fragile sister in minor skirmishes at school. But those days had long since gone. The sad truth was that from the moment she had set eyes on her sister neatly propped up on pillows in her hospital bed after her first craniotomy, Grace had felt that her twin had already passed from her.
Eunice's illness had prompted Grace to make a painful reappraisal of their relationship. The situation had not been at all easy to accept, and when Grace was back at home from boarding school she would occasionally take out her frustration on her sister. There were frequent arguments, often concerning the family piano, a dark upright model to which she was very attached. Grace loved to play it, but Eunice could not bear what to her ears was a string of ugly, discordant sounds.
With Grace out of the way at school, Eunice naturally came increasingly under the influence of her mother, on whom she had become entirely dependent. As a result, during the school holidays it would not be long before Eunice was herself pointing her finger at her twin sister. 'That's a very unchristian thing to do,' she would often remark. And then, just to remind Grace of the many binding rules of the Mann household, she would warn her twin: 'Mummy and Daddy wouldn't like that.' For Grace, it seemed that her best and oldest friend had ceased to exist. Once again she had been abandoned.
For years Grace had been leading a double life, as is the fate of many a child sent away to boarding school. But f
or Grace, the contrast was unusually extreme. At Clarendon she enjoyed close and enduring friendships, laughter and fun. Awaiting her at home were an abusing and controlling father, an invalid sister and a remote mother. However, when she was fifteen and a half she was forced back into this nightmare full time, for the Manns had decided that she should leave school. Based at home, she would attend the local technical college and sit the O-levels in English and French that she had failed at Clarendon.
Grace's return home ushered in a period of despondency. Not only did she find her studies dreary; what seemed to her even worse, she felt a victim of her parents' shortage of money. At a time when, like any teenager, she wanted to dress up and enjoy herself, the Reverend made it abundantly clear that she would have to make do with her school uniform, comprising a shapeless dress, a V-necked sweater, striped socks and distinctly unflattering shoes. Again and again she was reminded that she was lucky to have as much as she did, given the strain that Eunice's condition placed on the family purse. In time Grace acknowledged the dilemma, and realized that there was no point in complaining.
Throughout this period she struggled to maintain the optimism she had known at Clarendon. But whereas at school she had been buoyed up by constant companionship, now she retreated into daydreams to lift her spirits. Sitting alone in church, she would imagine a life in which she was free of the sexual obligations imposed on her by a domineering father, free of his rages, free of the petty restrictions in which he sought to ensnare her.
For the Reverend Mann was as determined as ever to have his daughter all to himself. In recent years he had braced himself for the day when he would have to allow Grace out into the world. How, he had often wondered, would he be able to isolate and control her when her school-days were over? Although it entailed a degree of exposure to the wider world, the technical college was a necessary step if Grace was to make something of herself. At least, he could comfort himself, the clothes she wore to class were hardly calculated to attract the attention of the opposite sex.
Rosa's Child Page 5