by Jane Elliott
‘I can’t take them all,’ Granddad protested, ‘and it will be a chance in a lifetime for her.’ But nothing was going to change my stepfather’s mind.
One year, though, Granddad was actually allowed to take me away on holiday. We went to Hastings in the tourer caravan that he kept on the drive and it was just him, me and the dogs. It was like heaven, feeling safe and happy all the time.
Granddad also had a static caravan in a holiday park at Southend. We sometimes went there as a family at weekends or during the holidays, and if Granddad was around it was harder for Richard to get at me. He still managed to, of course. In the evening he would tell the others to go out to Bingo, offering to stay in with me because I’d been naughty earlier in the day and had to be punished.
‘Oh, Janey,’ Mum would sigh, ‘what have you done now?’
‘We’ve been in a caravan together all day,’ I’d think. ‘You know everything I’ve done.’ But I never said anything in my own defence, knowing that would ignite Richard’s wrath, and Mum would be willing to accept that I needed to be punished. So they would all go off without me, leaving me alone with Richard for a few hours. I usually got to go out one evening in every holiday, but to earn that treat I would have to go out for a walk with him earlier in the day to find a quiet place where I could ‘do him a favour’.
One year he actually announced that he was going to go home for the day to collect a giro, because otherwise we wouldn’t have any cash. Needless to say I had to go with him. He would always use the same excuse: ‘I’ll take Jane with me in case my leg plays up. She can make me my tea and get me my fags.’ That was always the reason why I had to be with him wherever he went. This time I couldn’t believe that not only was I going to have to spend an uninterrupted night with him but I was going to be missing my holiday as well.
When we got home we had to go straight to his and Mum’s bed, where he spent hours abusing me. It was awful knowing that no one was going to be coming back and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Once it was all over he went to sleep cuddling me as if I was his wife and in the morning we had to do the whole thing all over again.
If ever Mum was away for the night, which was quite often when she got ill with her kidneys or when she was away giving birth, I would have to sleep in the bed with Richard as if we were a couple and one morning one of my brothers saw me coming out, even though I always tried to get back to my own bed before they woke up.
‘What you doing in there?’ he wanted to know. I made up some excuse about having gone in there to get something and he seemed to accept my explanation without question, but then why wouldn’t he? What child could have imagined what was going on between his father and his sister?
One of my uncles had a caravan, too, just in front of Granddad’s, and we would go there as well, but when it was just Granddad and me it was the best time imaginable, whether we were in the caravan or out shopping or in his house.
It couldn’t last, of course, because nothing good ever did. Richard took against Granddad and Uncle John, just as he took against everyone. He did everything he could to stop me going round to their house because he knew how much I enjoyed it and how kind Granddad was to me. I guess he was afraid I’d let something slip if I was there too much.
Once Richard had taken against someone his vindictiveness would be irrational and petty. One moment he would be attacking my uncle in the street, the next he would be sneaking around the back, cutting through their television aerial and telephone wires.
Because I knew my way around Granddad’s house Richard used to lift me over the fence when he was out and make me break in and take things that he and Mum wanted, like food or tobacco or something from the freezer. Sometimes it would just be money or a credit card that they were after because they wanted to go shopping. I hated doing it because it made me feel that I was betraying Granddad.
When Uncle John eventually married, Richard took against his poor wife and if he saw her in the street he would try to run her over.
Granddad also had a girlfriend he was planning to marry, but Mum and Richard took against her for no reason other than she wasn’t ‘family’. If we happened to come out of our house at the same time as Granddad, I was instructed to ignore him, and I would never have dared to disobey such a direct order. I was later told that that nearly broke his heart. They eventually beat him up and drove him and my uncle away. I think there was a final argument over some money they’d borrowed off him or something, but the reasons didn’t mean anything, they had just decided to drive him away. By that time Granddad had had a stroke and Mum and Richard were worried that he would die and they wouldn’t inherit a share of his house because he would leave it to his widow.
People sometimes used to complain to the police after they’d been attacked or intimidated by my stepdad, but they always withdrew the charges after receiving a warning visit from Richard or Mum. They all decided it was easier to get the council to move them to another estate than to face the intimidation and violence that went with trying to get justice. So there was no one to stop him doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. To me, as a child, he seemed invincible. There was no point trying to fight him or escape from his power, because he would always win in the end and the retribution would always be worse than whatever had come before. So whenever I was asked to do something, no matter how petty or obscene it might be, I knew I had to agree with a merry laugh if I didn’t want a beating or worse.
As I grew older he would make me do him different favours. Sometimes he would drop a favourite routine for a while and try something new, occasionally going back to an old practice for a change. I never knew when some new demand was going to be made.
One summer’s day we were all outside cleaning the car in front of the house and doing some gardening when Richard suddenly went inside with no explanation. I didn’t think anything of it until he leant out of the open bedroom window and called down to me to come up and help him out with something. My heart sank, but I told myself it couldn’t be anything too terrible because Mum and the boys were all around. I didn’t even bother to close the front door as I went in, thinking I would be going back out again in a few minutes.
When I got to the bedroom he was standing waiting for me.
‘Shut the door,’ he said.
I obeyed.
‘You’ve been bad,’ he went on.
My heart sank. I knew I was in trouble.
‘You’re in my little black book.’
I’d never heard of this little black book before.
‘You know what for, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, knowing that if I protested my innocence or ignorance he’d hit me for being cheeky or for lying.
‘You’ll have to be punished for being in the black book.’
I nodded, having no idea what he was planning but certain it would be unpleasant.
He made me kneel down in front of him and unzipped his trousers. Even though I’d never done it before, I suddenly knew what was coming next.
‘Put it in your mouth,’ he said, ‘and suck it nicely.’
The window was still open, the net curtains blowing in the breeze, and I could hear Mum outside telling the boys to keep cleaning the car and not to go inside the house. Maybe it was because they were wet and would make a mess on the carpets, or maybe it was because she didn’t want them stumbling across something they shouldn’t see. I was terrified they would come in and find us and Richard would be sent into a rage and would attack Mum and it would all be my fault. It was making me feel sick and I started crying, which made him angry.
‘Do it properly,’ he ordered, pushing my head towards him, making me gag but giving me no chance to disengage.
When I’d done it enough he took it out of my mouth and masturbated himself in front of me. We then went back downstairs to rejoin the others and continue cleaning the car as if we were one big happy family.
The sexual abuse itself was never enough for him, he always had to wrap it up in som
e sort of psychological torture which he would pretend was a game that we were both enjoying.
One day, for instance, when everyone else was out, he called me to the top of the stairs.
‘You owe me a favour,’ he told me. ‘So you can have a choice of how to repay me.’
The choice, it seemed, was him giving me oral sex, me doing it for him or me kissing him on the lips. I’d never had to kiss him before and I thought that would be the least disgusting of the three options. At least he wouldn’t be touching me anywhere private.
Once I had chosen the kiss he told me that I was going to have to put my tongue in his mouth. I thought I was going to die. I tried to do it so he wouldn’t become angry, but it just made me gag. Because it was so disgusting, even worse than the oral sex, I couldn’t do it properly and he became furious, making me do all three things as a punishment for doing it badly.
Thinking about it afterwards, I realized it had been a trick all along and that he had always intended to make me do everything. Any ‘games’ involving ‘choices’ were just that, games. I would always be the loser, so in the future I might as well choose the worst option first in the hope of getting it over and done with as quickly as possible.
When you’re a small child you sort of assume that your life is normal, that everyone else is going through much the same experiences as you are. The first indication I had that perhaps this wasn’t so was when I was out playing with one of my friends and she said she was going to go home.
‘But your mum’s out,’ I said, genuinely surprised by her decision.
‘It’s okay, my dad’s there,’ she replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and I realized that she wasn’t actually frightened of being in the house on her own with her father. Was it possible that her dad never hurt her? Was I the only one who was being made to do these things? How could I find out when I had been told that Mum and I would be killed if I ever discussed such private matters with anyone else?
Eventually I mustered the courage to confide what was happening to me to my friend Hayley, having absolutely sworn her to secrecy and extracted a secret from her first in order to secure her discretion.
At first she couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her.
‘You know,’ I said when she looked puzzled, ‘he makes me do the sort of things that married couples do.’
She was horrified and immediately wanted to tell her mum so that he could be stopped. I reminded her of her vow and of the secret I was holding of hers. I warned her I would have to kill myself if she breathed a word and she saw that I was serious. She thought for a while.
‘As he’s not your real dad,’ she suggested eventually, ‘perhaps you could just pretend you’re having an affair.’
‘I don’t want to have an affair with him!’ I wailed and from the look on her face I think she was able to understand my pain, even if she wasn’t completely able to understand what was happening to me, and knew that she could never breathe a word until I was ready. She was the best friend I could possibly have asked for. But even though I knew I could trust her, I still had rushes of panic when I thought about what would happen if she ever let my secret slip out. The next time Silly Git asked me to do something horrible I plucked up all my courage and complained that Hayley didn’t have to do that sort of thing for her dad.
‘How do you know?’ he demanded, instantly suspicious.
‘I don’t know,’ I backtracked quickly, knowing how terrible the retribution would be if he thought I’d told anyone about what happened between us. ‘I can just tell she doesn’t.’
‘You ever tell her anything and I’ll kill you,’ he promised, and I had no reason to doubt it.
Hayley and I were as inseparable as we could be, considering how little I was allowed out of the house. Whenever I was given permission we used to play rounders or skate in the car park round the corner or sit playing cards in the tourer caravan that Granddad kept parked in his drive. Even then, however, my freedom had limits. When the other kids got tired of staying in the car park and wanted to go round the block, Hayley would always stay with me, knowing I wasn’t allowed to go any further from the house. Sometimes, if Richard was off mini-cabbing for a few hours and Hayley’s mum was in with my mum, she would plead, ‘Oh, let her go with the others,’ and Mum wouldn’t be able to think up any reason why I shouldn’t be treated just like them, so I was allowed to go, but this didn’t happen often.
Knowing that she couldn’t come knocking on my door and that most of the time I was forbidden to knock on hers, Hayley used to sit on a wall just out of sight of our windows, waiting for me to come past on one of my dozens of trips to the shop every day. She never had long to wait and we would chatter all the way there and back, with her peeling off at the last corner so that Mum and Richard wouldn’t see us together and think I’d disobeyed orders and knocked for her as I’d passed. We became ‘blood sisters’ on the grass outside a block of flats in our street, picking scabs off our knees and rubbing them together so our blood would mingle. She would eventually prove to be as true and faithful as any blood sister could be, putting herself and her family in considerable danger in order to speak up for me.
Hayley’s mum was pretty friendly with mine and one evening when my stepdad was off mini-cabbing, she came over to our house for a smoke and a chat and they sent me back to Hayley’s house to babysit her little brother and sister with her. Once the little children were in bed, we decided to raid the drinks cupboard and found her mum’s bottle of Malibu, plus a few others, and pretended to each other that we were getting roaring drunk as we took swigs from each bottle.
When Hayley’s mum returned unexpectedly and said I had to go back because my dad had come home early, I felt sick with fear in case he worked out what I’d been up to. I had no idea I had actually become drunk until my head hit the fresh air and I tried to get back across the road to our house and found myself ricocheting off every car in the street.
Part of my brain was sober enough to know that if Richard realized I was drunk I would be in big trouble. I made a huge effort to make my movements and voice seem normal. Before going into the house I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself, but all that happened was that a terrible urge rose inside me to giggle, which I knew would earn me a good beating because my stepdad wouldn’t be able to understand what I was laughing at. I took a few more seconds and then let myself into the house. I took off my shoes and socks so that I didn’t make any marks or leave any fluff on the carpet and popped my head round the door to the front room to see what the mood was like.
Richard and Mum were both there and Richard was sitting in his armchair eating the four egg mayo sandwiches that Mum always packed in his lunchbox when he worked nights, ready for him when he came home. It was a large lunchbox and I could see it quite clearly as I walked into the room. It was on the floor and there was plenty of space to walk round it, but for some reason my bare feet weren’t obeying my brain. It was as if they were being pulled by a magnet towards those soft moist sandwiches. I stood frozen in fear as I felt them squelch beneath my toes, waiting for the explosion.
‘You been drinking?’ they both asked, laughing.
For some reason I didn’t get into any trouble, just had to peel the sandwiches off the soles of my feet and go to bed. The next morning they made me apologize to Hayley’s mum for stealing her drink. She thought it was all a big laugh.
It was strange how sometimes things that I would have thought would get me in trouble were no problem at all. It was as if all the normal rules of good parenting had been turned on their heads. It was always impossible to tell when Mum and Richard would find something funny and allow me to laugh too. It was as if I needed to have their permission to laugh and if I did it without permission they would think I was being cheeky or laughing at them and I would get a wallop. It was all very confusing.
One of Richard’s favourite places to take me was the loft. There was no ladder, which made it difficult
to get to and unlikely that my mother or anyone else would disturb us without us hearing them coming. There were no lights either, and no boards on the floor, just a few bits of wood at one end.
Richard would tell Mum we were going up to look for something or other, climbing up from the banister and pulling me up after him, lighting a candle or matches and making a few rustling noises to let her think he was searching for something. When we got to the far end he would get out some pornographic magazines and look at them while stroking my chest and private parts and making me masturbate him. If Mum disturbed us by shouting up to find out what was keeping us, or if I hadn’t done a good enough job, or if I had a miserable expression on my face, he would blow out the candle and leave me up there on my own, telling Mum I was being moody or sulky and needed to be taught a lesson.
I hated it up there in the dark amidst the spiders and God knows what else. I would sit at the edge of the hatch looking down at what seemed an impossibly long drop.
‘If you want to get down, then jump,’ Richard would taunt, ‘or else you can stay up there all fucking day!’
He would eventually get me down because Mum would start moaning at him.
Sometimes when Mum had gone out to Bingo and he knew she was going to be some time, he would bring the magazines downstairs and make me re-enact what the women in the pictures were doing and read out loud the words that were written in the bubbles coming out of their mouths. He would get cross if I did it wrong. If the boys were in the house they knew better than to come out of their rooms once they’d been sent to bed.
One day Mum went up to the loft herself when Richard was out mini-cabbing and she needed some clothes. I begged her not to, but couldn’t give her any good reason why not. I stood helplessly on the landing as she fetched a chair and hoisted herself up. I could see through the hatch that she was rooting around in the area where he kept the magazines. As she came back down onto the chair she had them in her hand. She asked me what they were doing up there and I could feel myself turning bright red with shame.