No Easy Road

by Patsy Whyte

  Things didn't get any better for me as I went back into the kitchen to face the cook. She was still more than a little shook up and now extremely wary of me.

  "I've called your social worker", she said. "She's coming straight up to have words with you. You're in for it now." And, she added, menacingly, "The house mother's coming back. She'll sort you out. She's a black belt in karate."

  I took the cook's words as some sort of warning. But I didn't care whether the house mother's belt was pink black or green. She didn't frighten me any more. Towards the end of the afternoon, when the house mother finally appeared on the scene, there was no great battle or confrontation. Although the cook obviously told her what happened, the house mother decided to let the social worker sort me out. Kirsty, meanwhile, crept quietly back to her room and locked the door.

  The rest of the girls returned back in dribs and drabs during the early evening after spending the day out visiting boyfriends or relatives. I'd made good friends with one of them, Sadie, who liked nothing more than to clown around and impersonate the house mother or the cook, which usually had me in stitches. A bit of a tom boy, she was considered a real hard case and everyone was frightened of her except me. We seemed to click right away. Sadie asked me what was wrong when she noticed I wasn't laughing at any of her jokes. I told her of my run-in with the cook and Kirsty.

  "I can't stand her big mouth", she said. "That bitch is always sucking up to the house mother. She needs sorting out!"

  "Yeah, go on, you sort her out", I said, unsure whether Sadie was actually joking or not.

  We were interrupted by the cook. My social worker was here and wanted to speak to me in the office. I expected to see a familiar face as I walked in, not the lady now standing before me. She was someone completely different, smartly dressed, in her late 40s with short wavy honey blonde hair. The silk autumn-coloured scarf tied around her neck perfectly complimented the green suit she was wearing.

  She introduced herself as Mrs Strachan and then asked the cook to leave us as she wanted to speak to me in private. But the cook refused, saying she was standing in for the house mother who was tied up with some other business and couldn't be here. This annoyed Mrs Strachan who pointed out the confidential nature of the meeting. But it made no difference. The cook still insisted on staying.

  "I'll be reporting this", Mrs Strachan snapped back.

  She then asked me how I was doing in my job and was I buying any new clothes?

  "No", I said.

  "You must have money in your bank book?"

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  "Do you have a bank book?"

  Once more, I simply shrugged my shoulders without saying anything. My new social worker looked hard at the cook.

  "Can you get me her bank book? I'd like to look at it".

  The cook replied, "She doesn't have any money in her bank book."

  Mrs Strachan, looking surprised, said, "I can't understand that. She must have money in her bank book. She's working. It can't all go on board. Please get me her bank book."

  The cook was having none of it. She still refused to get it. Mrs Strachan was annoyed but had to accept the brick wall she was up against. But she fired a parting shot as she got up to leave.

  "I'm going to get this investigated", she warned, staring hard at the cook with fixed steely-blue eyes. "You can tell the house mother I will be back to see Patricia and this time I will see her in private."

  With that, she walked smartly out the room leaving the cook in no doubt she meant business. As I made my way back to the sitting room, for the first time I felt I had someone fighting my corner for me. It was a good feeling. I knew I was going to like Mrs Strachan.

  While I was in the office, Sadie was banging on Kirsty's door, trying to get her to come out. I knew nothing of this at the time and only caught the tail end of a very one sided conversation as I climbed the stairs to go to my room. Sadie cursed and swore and turned the air a very deep shade of blue.

  "You start on my friend again and I'll beat the living daylights out of your smug ugly face", shouted Sadie, as she hammered relentlessly on the door.

  She calmed right down when she noticed me at the top of the stairs.

  "That'll teach her. She'll think twice before giving you a hard time again."

  A big grin came over her face. I could see she was enjoying it all, acting the hard case, terrorising Kirsty and any of the other girls within earshot. Needless to say, Kirsty took a very long time to emerge from her room. She never bothered me again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The job at the biscuit factory didn't last very long. I was sacked for not turning up. It wasn't that I didn't like the job. Far from it. I was sick of working every day just to hand over all of my wages at the end of the week.

  So I pretended to be out working. I roamed about the shops in the city centre until the house mother found out and blew her top and made me find another job. By then I was a real pain, her worst nightmare, totally out of control. I did absolutely nothing I was told. Whenever she grounded me or punished me in some other way, I always found a way around it.

  On one occasion, she ordered me to peel a huge pot of potatoes as a punishment. So I took the pot out into the garden and filled it with large stones. After peeling just enough potatoes to cover the top of the stones, I put the pot on top of the cooker and walked out. I would have given anything to see the look of horror on the cook's face when she discovered what I'd done.

  The house mother saw me leaving and reminded me I was grounded. It was hard watching the other girls all dressed up and ready to go out with their friends and I was stuck in again. No, I thought, stuff the house mother and her rules. So I put my jacket on to go out.

  "You can take that off right now!", the house mother roared, trying to show me she was still in control.

  I stared back at her frosty face without flinching, standing my ground.

  "I'm going out and you're not stopping me."

  "You go out that door, I'm calling the police", she snarled.

  "Do what you like. I don't care!", I screamed back, slamming the front door behind me on my way out.

  This went on for weeks on end. Sometimes I never even bothered going back. I hung about with some of the friends I made at the bowling alley or walked up and down Union Street all night long on my own rather than face the prison warden who showed me not an ounce of kindness or warmth. When the 9 o'clock deadline passed, the house mother always called the police. Many times I was picked up in the small hours of the morning and returned to the hostel.

  Despite all the carry ons, I got to know some of the other girls at the hostel quite well. They knew I wasn't flavour of the month with the house mother and I think they felt sorry for me. One night, they invited me to go out with them. I asked them where we were going. But no one in the small group wanted to tell me. I would find out when I got there.

  So we put our make-up on and set off. We hadn't walked very far when we reached a pub and I followed them in. The pub was quiet and cosy and I recognised a youth worker who often visited the hostel. He waved at the girls and we went over to where he was sitting and joined him.

  "What are you all having to drink?", he said.

  I was a little surprised he was buying us drinks because we were all under age. When he asked me what I wanted, I didn't know what to say. The only alcoholic drink I knew was whisky, which I sampled for the first time at a strange party I was invited to. I was working at a local supermarket at the time. It was the only place I could get a job quickly enough after being fired from the biscuit factory. But even that job didn't last long because I kept sleeping in and turning up late.

  The party was held in the living room of a flat and most of the people invited were Chinese. There was no dancing or anything like that. The place was in semi-darkness when I entered. A few candles spluttered and flickered and Chinese music played in the background, all adding to the atmosphere. A hazy blue smoke hung in the air making it dif
ficult to see anyone or breathe properly as we all sat in a circle on the floor.

  Then a voice said, "Here, have a drink."

  A glass of whisky was thrust into my hand. It tasted horrible. But within a minute or two, I started feeling relaxed and began to enjoy myself a little. As my eyes adjusted more and more to the gloom, I spotted an old friend I used to go to school with and he came over and sat down next to me.

  Andrew was always a polite and well brought up boy, rather square, the last person I expected to see here. I found the party anything but fun and told him I was leaving and he walked me home. He asked me for a date but I didn't fancy him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings either, so I told him I was all ready seeing someone else.

  "I'll have a whisky, please", I blurted out, not wishing to appear stupid in front of the rest of the girls.

  The youth worker's name was Tim, a nice guy and not bad looking either. He was casually dressed with long fair hair falling into curls on his shoulders. Easy to talk to and very relaxed and chilled out, Tim was good company to spend a night out with. He was certainly popular with the other girls as we laughed and chatted away, getting more merrier as the evening slipped by.

  The girls warned me not to mention Tim or the pub to anyone. It was a secret. They told me the visits to the pub had been going on for quite some time. I felt pleased they trusted me enough to invite me. They saw me now as one of them.

  I never talked much to Tammy in the hostel. But here, in the relaxed surroundings of the pub, we got on rather well. Tammy was a bubbly red head who was madly in love with her boyfriend. She was due to meet him shortly at the youth club and invited me to tag along. So we left Tim and the rest of the girls who by this time were a bit worse for wear from the drink.

  The youth club was no distance away and Tammy's boyfriend was waiting outside for her. They disappeared together around the back. I went inside and opened the door to the main hall. It was dark although I could see people sitting on chairs in a circle.

  "Grab a chair", someone shouted, even although no one knew who I was.

  I lifted off a plastic chair from the stack next to the door and joined them. Before I knew it, a large, thick cigarette was passed to me.

  "Take a big draw", someone said.

  So I did. The smoke hit the back of my throat and my head began to spin. The cigarette left a funny taste in my mouth. My arms and legs started tingling. Nothing seemed real any more. Then someone shouted out the caretaker was due back and everyone scarpered.

  No one was supposed to be there. That explained why there were no lights on in the hall. Outside, Tammy was nowhere to be seen so I started heading back to the hostel. But the combination of the fresh air, whisky and the cigarette smoke suddenly hit me. I staggered up the road.

  When I eventually made it back to the hostel, I found I was locked out. So I rang the doorbell hoping at the same time to keep a sensible head so the house mother wouldn't twig I'd been drinking. I almost got away with it, too. But when I reached the top of the stairs, to go to my room, I stumbled and crashed head over heels to the bottom, landing with a thud. Luckily, I was uninjured.

  "You've been drinking", the house mother shrieked.

  "No I haven't", I replied slowly, slurring my words.

  "That's it", she said. "I've had all I can take of you and your behaviour."

  "Piss of you fat cow. I've had enough of you, too!"

  I only just managed to string the sentence together as I picked myself up from the floor.

  "Get out of my sight", she yelled.

  With that, I turned to face her and blew a huge raspberry. The house mother's jaw dropped in astonishment. Her face turned red with anger. I staggered up the stairs again.

  "You've not heard the last of this. Your social worker's going to hear all about it in the morning!"

  "Yeah, yeah", I said, her threats having no effect on me whatsoever.

  My head hurt the next morning as I struggled to get up and get dressed for work. I was now working at the laundry alongside Sadie who put in a good word for me after I was sacked from the supermarket. I knew I was lucky to get a job there. The job involved washing and pressing hundreds of sheets and pillow cases from hotels all across the city.

  Sadie was right when she said it was a sweat shop. The heat was incredible from all the different industrial driers and I never stopped because there were so many sheets to get through in a day. I did have a cigarette break, which I often took out in the fresh air with Sadie, just to get away from the heat and to relax and cool down a bit.

  It was during one of these breaks that we hatched a plan to run away to London. Sadie hated the hostel just as much as I did. The idea was to get jobs and to share a flat together. Sadie calculated she had just enough money to get us to Arbroath, but after that we would have to start hitching. We would also have to leave early in the morning in order to get a head start before we were reported missing. So it meant not collecting our wages.

  When Friday came, we did everything as if it was just another working day so as not to arouse any suspicion. We left the hostel together and waited at our usual bus stop. But instead of going to work, we got off at the bus station in the city centre. I could hear the excitement in Sadie's voice growing as we boarded the bus for Arbroath. There was no turning back now.

  The bus weaved in and out through the morning rush hour traffic and headed south, leaving Aberdeen far behind us. But we paid little attention, sitting in the back of the single-deck bus. We were much too busy talking about London and wondering what it would be like.

  Neither of us had ever been there and so the thought of it all fired our imaginations. We laughed and cracked jokes and talked about all the things we intended to do. Sadie wanted to find herself a rich husband so she could own a big posh house and drive a flashy car. I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

  "Yeah, we'll both find rich husbands and never have to worry about money again", I said, not wanting to spoil Sadie's dream or to show any sign I was feeling a little worried and apprehensive.

  By the time the bus arrived and we got off, all the doubts and negative feelings vanished completely. I couldn't quite believe I was back in Arbroath so soon after leaving the place. It felt strange. I desperately wanted to see my friend Elizabeth again. I knew I was taking a bit of a risk going to the hotel where I once worked but I felt it was well worth it.

  Little seemed to have changed as I walked inside and spotted her serving guests in the dining room. She was very surprised to see me and told me she was due a break soon. So we agreed to meet in the café across the road. Thankfully, there was no sign of Mrs Cameron who would certainly have called the police because she knew I was supposed to be at the hostel.

  When Elizabeth walked into the café, we gave each other a big hug. She looked much more confident than I remembered her. It was so nice to see her doing so well. She told me she was going to be the Cameron's new nanny, and being a kind and caring person, I knew she'd be perfect for the job.

  Sadie never said much as she slowly sipped a cup of coffee. It was difficult for her to join in the conversation not knowing anything about my past life in the hotel. I explained to Elizabeth how unhappy I was at the hostel and that I was on the run. She looked worried and concerned and begged me to go back. But I said I was determined to get to London. Nothing or no one was going to stop me and Sadie from getting there.

  Elizabeth was due back at the hotel so couldn't stay any longer. I gave her a final hug goodbye and promised to write to her as soon as we made it. After watching her disappear out the door of the café, Sadie got up and I followed her into the street. We found a shop and spent the last of our money on crisps and bottles of lemonade and then started walking south along the A92 towards Dundee.

  We decided to walk instead of hitching it straight away because we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves. As far as any passing motorists were concerned, we were just two girls out walking along the road. Nothing more. Once we were far enough
away, and we judged it was safe enough, then we would try and hitch a lift.