by Patsy Whyte
The Rolls Royce pulled quietly into the driveway of the home and I thanked the Lord Provost for everything before going inside. The house mother was waiting for me but never asked whether I enjoyed the evening or how it all went. After shutting the front door, she told me to hand over the necklace and then go straight up to bed.
More than six years were to pass before I saw the necklace again. I telephoned the home after I left and asked for it back. The house mother posted it on to me without even a letter or short note or anything. Some time later, the necklace sadly disappeared.
My beautiful cloak and muffler were taken off me and placed in a large cardboard box. The box was kept in the house mother's bedroom. It lay on top of a wardrobe gathering dust for years. I never saw the cloak or muffler again. Nor did I ever wear the party frock or the shoes which were later given to another girl in the home while I struggled to walk about in badly fitting second hand shoes.
I was the centre of attention the following day at school. All my classmates had seen me up on the balcony and were now dying to know what it was like. I know my teacher was very proud of me. She even pinned a newspaper cutting up on the classroom wall for all to see. Later on that night, I was allowed to stay up late to watch the event on the ITN television news program News At Ten. I couldn't believe I was really looking at myself. It all felt very weird.
My appearance on television ignited the whole hullabaloo all over again at school the next day. Eventually, after telling and then re-telling the story yet again, the attention started getting a bit tiresome. Eventually, I was completely fed up with it all and refused to answer any more questions. I was glad when the weeks turned to months and my 15 minutes of fame gradually faded quietly into the background, destined to be forgotten.
* * *
More than 25 years later, I was to be reminded of the whole evening again in a quite unexpected way. I was living in London at the time. My eldest daughter was doing a school essay about parents. Although I only ever mentioned me switching on the lights once or twice in passing, nevertheless she decided to write about it. So she asked me for more details. The next day she returned home from school rather excited.
"You'll never guess what", she said. "My teacher remembers you switching on the lights! He always wondered who the little girl was. Now he knows and he's delighted."
I don't think I believed it myself. Someone still remembered me after all those years. Thinking about it, I suppose I was served up as the perfect Christmas image, unforgettable, pure and white as the snow falling on Union Street that evening. But no one ever looked much beyond that.
Of all the little girls who might have been chosen to switch on the lights, fate chose me. Was that just a co-incidence and nothing more, or was there some unseen hand at work, guiding my life? Because I have experienced such a lot over the years, I tend to favour the latter more and more. Maybe I was meant to see the Lord Provost's act of kindness in helping the crippled man. A man in his lofty position could have just driven by. No one would have known. But he didn't and it's something I've always remembered. Maybe that was the real lesson I learned that night.
Chapter Nine
The local park was no more than a stone's throw away from the home. It was a favourite haunt of the local kids, especially during the long drawn out days of summer. Hard up parents were thankful for the park because it didn't cost them anything. It was somewhere to send their kids to play. They were safe there and at the same time, out from under their feet.
I noticed the park attendant hadn't been around for a week or two. So the older kids were getting away with picking on the younger children or sometimes even battering them. The park attendant, or parkie as he was known to us, always wore a grey tunic with silver buttons down the front and a matching grey cap. He was a middle aged man who reminded me more of a bus conductor.
Although strict if he had to be, he was also very fair. He always took the time to get to know the children who played regularly in the park, happily chatting away to them for hours on end. Out came a sticky plaster or two to cover any cuts and grazes if needed. But watch out if you dared vandalise the swings or damage the flower beds or fight or swear or break any of the park's many by-laws. Then he showed his other face, which was always quick to banish any miscreant from the park.
I was holding on to the the maypole, spinning round and round trying to fly through the air. Curiosity got the better of me when I heard the sounds of laughter and muffled voices coming from some thickly growing bushes nearby. So I sneaked over to find out what was going on. The area of bushes was separated from the play area by a low wire fence. It ran the whole length of the park. I thought I recognised the voices. Carefully, I parted the bushes to get a better look and saw two naked bodies lying one on top of the other. On the ground beside them were two neat piles of clothing.
"Keep going, keep going!", said the girl, who I immediately recognised as Gabby, one of the teenagers from the home.
The boy lying on top of her was James. His face looked red and sweaty. He was also from the home. Even although I didn't exactly understand what they were up to, instinctively, I felt what I was watching was wrong. Seeing their naked bodies made me feel very uncomfortable. Nakedness was considered dirty and unchristian and therefore not acceptable at the home.
But here they both were, hiding, being secretive, doing things they were not supposed to do away from prying eyes. They never knew I was watching them. My discovery left me in a bit of a quandary. Should I report them? Should I tell the house mother? If I did, what would I say? I knew the trouble they both would be in if I did so. So I decided to say nothing.
Later in the evening, they were both sitting apart at the dinner table, carrying on as normal with not a hint of the secret love affair. They hid it all so well, from the rest of the children, the staff and the house mother. I assumed the affair continued throughout the rest of the summer because they constantly visited the park. Occasionally I heard the sound of laughter coming from the bushes. But I never went over to investigate.
When the long summer finally came to a close, the secret love affair also ended. Gabby and James left the home the following year to make their own separate ways in the world. I never saw either of them again. My primary school days were also over, too. In a few days, I was due to begin high school, which I wasn't looking forward to very much.
As for the parkie, he was phased out along with all the other park attendants across the city. No longer would we ever feel quite so safe, innocently playing childish games all day in the park until the last of the evening light forced us away. It was the end of an era.
* * *
High school proved every bit as bad as I feared. Every year felt more miserable and humiliating than the last one and the only day I looked forward to was the one when I could officially leave. But that was still several years away. As I grew from a child to a teenager, my identity was stripped away more and more. Even when visitors came to the home, Billy and me were always referred to as the Whytes.
My hair was cut short, but not by a proper hair dresser. I wore a grey school cardigan and grey socks. The other girls at my school were dressed in modern cords and fashionable tops. They talked about the discos they'd been to or the youth clubs run by the different schools or about meeting each other at night times. Boyfriends were a constant topic of conversation. So were the best ploys to use to dump them in order to go out with someone else they fancied.
Long hair was becoming the fashion and most of the girls had a grown up teenage look. But not me. It was then I realised I was different. I had none of the experiences they had. Each day was the same as every other day, nothing to get excited about. It was straight home from school and if I was more than 10 or 15 minutes late, I was put to bed after tea.
Nobody from school was allowed to call on me and I wasn't allowed to go out, to a disco or youth club. I never went shopping for new clothes or shoes except the once, when I put on the christmas lights. It was hard to e
ngage in any conversation. I knew my classmates felt as uncomfortable around me as I did around them.
One afternoon, as I left the high school, a group of kids from the school followed me out of the gates. They chanted homey kid all the way back to the home. Every day, they kept up the same taunts, both in the playground and on the way home from school. I was upset and scared but there was nothing I could do. There was no one I could turn to. It just underlined how different I was from everyone else.
Even the teachers forgot my name was Patsy. Instead, they referred to me, and the other children who lived with me, as the kids from the home. We were not like the other pupils at the school. We were a separate group with no individual identities, little better than a pack of animals.
Mrs Dawson was an exception, a kind and sweet lady, who gave me the responsibility of taking care of the plants in the classroom. One year, she let me take them home during the summer holidays so I could look after them. I felt really happy and useful because I knew how much her plants meant to her.
It was the last day of term and as I proudly carried the plants away, someone in the playground told me they knew my mother. They lived in the same street as her. I handed over one of the pot plants and asked them to give it to her. Why I did that, I don't know. I took really good care of the plants and at the end of the summer holidays, brought them all back to Mrs Dawson's class. But she never came back. Months afterwards, I heard she died of cancer.
Mr Hunter was my English teacher. He stared at everyone over the top of his small half glasses. I didn't like his class. On Tuesday mornings, he asked the class for money for school assembly. Every pupil reached into their purses or pockets and money jingled as they pulled out twopence to put in a small basket passed down each row of desks.
I dreaded the moment the basket was handed to me. Each week, Mr Hunter demanded to know where my money was and squinted at me accusingly. Each week, I said the same thing back. I didn't have any.
"You make sure you have it for next Tuesday!", he replied, in a sharp, grumpy tone.
And every time, Louise and some of the other pupils sensed my humiliation and embarrassment.
"I'll pay for her!", they said, before putting money in the basket on my behalf.
Mr Hunter never once thought to ask me why I never had any money. I begged the house mother every Monday night for money for assembly. But her reply was always the same.
"You tell them charity begins at home!"
It was different for Eddie. He was also in the home and in the same class as me. But he had a father who took him out every Sunday. Eddie's dad always made sure he had money for the tuck shop and for assembly. I had no one to give me any. If I had, I would gladly have handed it over to stop the humiliation in front of the whole class.
But it wasn't just assembly you needed money for. You also had to pay for the ingredients used in cookery class. I liked cooking, even although I was a terrible cook. My teacher was Mrs Brown, a middle aged lady with short grey hair which had a slight wave through it. She was strict but always fair and doubled up as the sewing teacher.
I told Mrs Brown I forgot whenever she asked me where my ingredients and money for the lesson were. It was a feeble excuse to use at the best of times. I used the same excuse practically every week because I couldn't think of anything else to say. She started to lose patience with me, thinking I wasn't interested in the lessons at all. But nothing was further from the truth. At the end of the lesson, she gave us the list of ingredients and the cost for next week. She never saw my embarrassment, although it was plainly visible, or understood I was making up excuses for the home.
It was just like Monday nights, with the same ritual played out once more and with the same predictable outcome. I asked the house mother for the ingredients and money and she dismissed my request, pointing out once more how charity began at home.
She used the same phrase week after week, then month after month, knowing full well how difficult it made life for me at school. It was her favourite phrase, the answer to everything, the excuse not to spend a single penny on the likes of someone like me. I was convinced of that.
One day, I got fed up with it all. I was desperate. Before going to school, I slipped into the kitchen without being seen and made my way down the steps leading to the food larder. It was a large room with shelves stacked full of tinned foods of all kinds. I was four the last time I stepped foot in there. It was my first day at the home.
As well as tins of fruit and meat, there were bags of sugar, rows of packet tea, flour and everything imaginable. It was like going to the corner shop with all the goodies on display, all within reach, mine for the taking. I scanned the shelves looking for the tin of mandarins I needed for the cookery lesson.
Quickly jumping from one neatly stacked row of tins to another, my attention was drawn to a brightly coloured label. The word Mandarins in large letters screamed out at me. Without thinking about the trouble I could be in, I nervously snatched at the tin of forbidden fruit and stuffed it under my school jumper out of sight.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching me, I hurriedly slipped on my school coat and the deception was was complete. I felt both a strong sense of relief and elation as I crept quietly out of the kitchen to join the other kids in the cloakroom. No one missed me.
The house mother was ushering the kids out the door in single file so they wouldn't be late for school. It was the usual routine and I waited my turn in the queue. Just as I reached the door, a sharp voice behind me shouted out, stopping me dead in my tracks.
"What are you hiding under your coat?", the house mother demanded angrily.
Oh God, I thought. This is it. She knows.
"Open up your coat!", she ordered.
I felt the tin slipping out from underneath my jumper. Thud! It was now lying on the floor at my feet for all the world to see. I was a thief. A hard hand flew across my face which was followed an instant later by a stinging burning pain. My right cheek throbbed and hot tears rolled down my face. The house mother's angry eyes and thunderous voice cut through me as she held my arm in a vice-like grip.
"You thief! How dare you take things that don't belong to you. You're nothing but a little tink. Bed for a month. Now get out of my sight!"
With my face still smarting from the slap, she shoved me out the door, still yelling and screaming at the top of her voice.
"Get out of my sight!" she shouted, over and over.
As I slowly made my way through the playground and out of the home, I knew every step brought me closer to school where yet more humiliation awaited me at cookery class later on in the day. What excuse could I make? I couldn't think of anything.
Then the moment I was dreading all day finally arrived. Mrs Brown gathered all the girls around the large square table at the front of the class, as she always did. Then she asked if everybody had all the ingredients required. Everyone said yes, except me.
Mrs Brown paused for a moment, then looked at me in a strange sort of way. Her eyes were kind and gentle. I wasn't sure what to make of it all. It was as if she was seeing me for the very first time. Instead of asking me what my excuse was this time, she quietly told me to go into the cupboard and collect the ingredients I needed.
From that moment onwards, I never had to make up another excuse at cookery class again. Every time I went into the class at the start of the lesson, Mrs Brown already had the ingredients laid out waiting for me, and never asked me for a penny. I served out my month-long punishment without a grumble.
Mixing up all the ingredients together and seeing what the finished result would be was one of the reasons I liked cooking so much. It was a difficult art which I was a long way from mastering. How much I still had to learn became clearer during the final test.
Mrs Brown explained we were all to be given a recipe to follow, something we'd made already during the year. She said she would not be helping us and that we mustn't ask each other for assistance. If we did, that would be looked
upon as cheating and we would fail the test.
As we stood at our tables, she handed each of us a slip of paper telling us what we were going to bake and the list of ingredients required. Written on mine was a recipe for scones. All around me, the rest of the girls were already busy measuring out ingredients into bowls or whisking away madly. They looked confident, like they knew exactly what to do. I felt the very opposite as I stared hard at the piece of paper wondering where to begin.