Never a Hero To Me

by Tracy Black

  I was so ashamed as I slid out of my nightie. Ashamed that he could see me. If he had been a normal daddy, it would have been fine. He would have checked the water, helped me in, kept the door open a little to make sure I was safe; but none of this was normal, none of it felt like it was to look after me. It felt as though it was all about what he wanted and needed. As I washed myself, he stared at me, and I felt his eyes burn into me as he leaned closer. He kept looking at the door, as if to confirm to himself that it was closed – to this day, I always keep the bathroom door ajar when I’m having a soak.

  I tried to get out after a few minutes, but he poked my shoulder with his finger. ‘You’re going nowhere,’ he said, ‘dirty little girls need to make sure they’re properly clean.’

  ‘I am, Dad,’ I said, ‘I am.’

  He snorted. ‘I’ll be the judge of that. Wash.’

  I started all over again. There wasn’t much of me to wash in the first place, but I went over every part of me with the flannel and soap just to make sure.

  ‘Harder,’ he told me.

  I did as I was instructed until he finally spoke. ‘Out. Move yourself.’

  I clambered over the rim of the bath with no help, and tried to dry myself as best I could. Again, he offered no assistance and didn’t try to touch me – he just stared and stared and stared. What I didn’t know was that this would prove to be one of his requirements almost every time he abused me. His need for me to have a bath, and his need to watch me while I was in there, would be a major component of what he did to me. He would never touch me while I was in there, but he would always stare nonstop in a way I couldn’t comprehend. Was he trying to work out what had happened, what he had just done to me? Was he trying to make me feel worse, as if I had not a shred of privacy, nowhere at all to hide from him? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

  When I was dressed again – in clean pyjamas, not the nightie which represented the shameful things he had done – he walked out of the room without a word and I quietly went to my bed, where I was left alone.

  Over the next few days, my life acquired a pattern of sorts. I’d go to school as normal, but I wasn’t allowed to have contact with anyone outside of that time. I couldn’t have friends round, I couldn’t go to visit anyone else. I had to cook and clean, I had to tidy and organise. As my dad had told me, I was the woman of the house. He never spoke of what had happened, and I didn’t dare bring it up. I had no conception really of what had gone on anyway – I didn’t have the words for it or the awareness of how wrong it had been. All I knew was that I didn’t like it, that he was in charge, and that I never wanted it to happen again.

  After a week, Mum came back home – there were no fanfares, no celebrations, she was just there one day when I got back from school. If she’d missed me, she didn’t say. If she had any suspicions over what had gone on, I wasn’t aware of them. What I did know was that it didn’t last. The sickness started up again and the sores all over her body started appearing. It would be the start of years of hospitalisations. I suppose I had been aware of her symptoms starting up again but at the same time I didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might go away as she had before. When I left for school in the mornings, she was often up being sick already. When I came back, she had a horrible grey pallor to her and I knew she was in pain. She didn’t always try to hide it and I would hear her groaning in agony. I had no idea what was wrong – which was unsurprising, given that the doctors were all perplexed too.

  One day, a few weeks after the night which had started it all, I got home from school and Mum had gone. I rushed in the door and realised there was no sound of her vomiting. Dad was sitting in his chair, in his Army uniform, a can of beer in his hand, smoking as he always did.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked, although I knew the answer. I could sense her absence, if that makes sense; it felt different from when she was at the bingo or had just popped out to the shops.

  He always took his time to answer me, unless he was shouting or telling me I was in trouble straight away. It seemed like an age passed before he told me the inevitable truth.

  ‘Hospital.’

  There was no sugar coating or comfort.

  ‘Come here,’ he demanded.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  Another pause.

  ‘What sort of fucking answer is that? I’m your father, I said “Come here” so you should fucking jump.’

  I stood still.

  ‘How stupid are you? Come here.’

  I moved forward a few steps. He was in his khaki trousers and shirt, all the usual gear. Even at home, I seldom saw him in civvies. He seemed to need that uniform, need the status it brought him even in his own house. His eyes were dark, hard, unfeeling. All I wanted was a daddy who would take me in his arms, in all innocence, and hug me as he told me that my mum would be better soon. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, to make up for the loss of my mum and be the dad he should be, not the monster he had shown himself capable of becoming.

  ‘Do you know why your mum is back in hospital?’ he asked me. I shook my head. ‘It’s because of you. It’s all your fault, Tracy.’

  Just as he said those horrible words, the door slammed and Gary came in.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ he asked, just as I had done.

  Dad’s response was always warmer towards him, and he didn’t swear at Gary nearly as much as he did at me. ‘She’s in hospital, son. Now, go through to your room, get changed and get your homework done.’ Gary did as he was told, leaving me alone with Dad again. ‘Now, where was I?’ he pondered, falsely. He knew exactly what he had been saying to me. ‘Ah, yes. Your mum. In hospital again. Thanks to you, Tracy, all thanks to you.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything, Dad, honestly I didn’t.’ Even to my own ears, my voice sounded pathetic.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been a good girl.’

  ‘No. No you haven’t. And do you know how I know that? It’s because, if you’d been a good girl, your mum wouldn’t have had to go back into hospital.’

  Just as he said this, Gary came back through with his school bag and sat down at the table.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked my dad.

  ‘Er, homework,’ Gary stated obviously.

  ‘Not in here you’re not.’

  ‘But you told me to do it,’ he responded, much more bravely than I ever would have done.

  ‘I told you to go to your room and do your homework. And that’s where you’ll go,’ he said, as Gary sighed dramatically and picked up his things. ‘Take these with you,’ he added, throwing his Army boots at my brother. ‘Get the polish and bull the buggers until I can see my face in them. I’ll come through and check on you when I decide. You stay there. You understand?’

  Gary nodded, sighed some more and left the room. This, I would soon discover, would be one of my father’s strategies. When he wanted Gary to be distracted and focused on some petty task that he had to get right for fear of incurring my dad’s wrath, he’d get sent to his room, usually to bull the boots. This meant the boots had to be rubbed with polish or beeswax until they were as shiny as possible, and Dad always liked to get a bit of glory for how well they had been done – from this point on, I don’t ever remember him doing them himself, he always got one of us to do it for him, usually as a punishment for me or a distraction for Gary.

  He turned his attention back to me once Gary had closed the living-room door behind him.

  ‘Come here, Tracy,’ he said, quietly. I walked towards him, my heart heavy with the knowledge that whatever was going to happen was inevitable. I couldn’t get out of anything my dad decided to do to me, and there was no one there to save me. ‘What is really important is that you understand what is going on.’

  I could feel myself wanting to argue with everything he said. I understood nothing.

  ‘You’re a big girl now.’

  No, I’m not, I wanted to say. I’m little, I’m only five, and I want you an
d Mum to look after me.

  ‘You need to start realising that you have responsibilities and that when bad things happen, it’s your fault.’

  I don’t want responsibilities, I want Mum to be OK, and I want you to stop hitting me and doing those horrible things to me.

  ‘Listen to me, Tracy – this is really important.’

  I held my breath as he pulled me towards him.

  His hands travelled up my body and he wrapped his legs around the side of me.

  ‘Your mum is ill because of you.’

  No! That can’t be right, I thought, I haven’t done anything to Mum.

  ‘But you can make her better too. Do you understand, Tracy? When you’re a good girl, it makes Mum better. When you don’t do the . . . things that make you a good girl, Mum ends up in hospital. She got home, didn’t she?’ I nodded. I couldn’t argue with that. ‘She got home because you had been a good girl, but then you started being bad again. And now she’s back in hospital and only you can sort that out. You need to be good. You have to be good.’

  I may have only been small, and I may have previously worried that I wouldn’t understand, but I understood all too clearly now. The only times he had told me to be a good girl was when he had done nasty things to me, when he pushed himself on me, and rubbed himself on me, and touched me. When he panted and breathed strangely, when he watched me in the bath and he called me a dirty little bitch.

  When all of that happened, and when I let it happen, I was a good girl.

  When I was a good girl, Mum got better.

  ‘It’s easy really, Tracy,’ he whispered, his hot, smelly beer breath in my ear. ‘You need to be a good girl. There are things to do that will make you a good girl. It’s really important to remember that good girls keep . . . the secret, because, if you tell, Mum will get ill. She’ll become more ill than she’s ever been before and it will be all your fault. I’m sure you don’t want to be the one who puts your mum into hospital, do you, Tracy?’ I shook my head as he spoke. ‘But you will – you will if you don’t keep the secret and do what you need to do. There’s nothing wrong with it, you just shouldn’t bother your mum. It’s up to you, it’s all up to you.’

  Everything was falling into place. If I wanted Mum home, I had to do those things, I had to let him do those things. I had done them and she had come home; when I didn’t do them, when he didn’t try to make me do them, she had got ill again.

  As he told me all of this, the tears rolled down my cheeks. I felt his hands all over me, his fingers in places they shouldn’t have been, as he said over and over again, good girl, dirty little bitch, good girl, dirty little bitch . . .

  All I could think was, I’m doing it for Mum, this will make her better, I’m doing it for her.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE LOVING COUPLE

  Dad was his usual self outside of the family home – a great guy, admired by all – while at home, every time Mum was in hospital, he was abusing me. Over the next six months, she was hospitalised a lot, but the nature of her illness, which was still undiagnosed, meant she was also perfectly well at times. On those occasions, she seemed to like to spend as little time as possible at home. She loved bingo, and went there as often as she could, and she loved spending time with friends and neighbours. They weren’t a loving couple and didn’t seem to need to spend time together. In the past, Dad had made comments about her going out, especially about her ‘wasting’ money at the bingo, but now he seemed to positively encourage it. It doesn’t take a lot to work out why – an empty house was all he needed.

  When people ask me what my dad looked like, I find it hard to describe him in some ways – there was nothing remarkable about him at all. People tend not to have ‘evil’ tattooed on their foreheads. I feel that what he did to me should have made him noticeable in some ways. People didn’t seem to see anything was the matter with me, no matter how I tried to make them as the years went on; but surely, I often thought, surely others would sense a monster in their midst. They didn’t.

  The truth is, Dad was amazingly unremarkable. He was quite short, and had a medium build which would turn towards fat later on in his life. Despite the fact that he loved to brag about being in the Army, he was only a clerk. He got the uniform, he got the kudos, but he wasn’t off saving lives or risking his own. He spent all day every day sitting on his backside, so, unless he was away on a six-week exercise, he would have no activity at all – unless constantly lifting cans of beer to his mouth counted. I never saw him do an assault course, I never saw him run, but he wasn’t a clerk because he had injuries or a disability, he had simply chosen that role. He always said he chose it so he could have a trade, but he didn’t actually have one of those either as far as I could see.

  As I got older, I realised he was the living embodiment of someone who had his cake and ate it – he was in the Army, but not in the Army. He had the respect and glory, but he did bugger all to acquire it. I’ve known brave men, I’ve listened as their deaths have been reported, and I can assure you my dad did not possess one ounce of courage in his character. It used to hurt me so much when he told people he was in the armed forces, that he had been based in Northern Ireland during the Troubles for a while, and they would respond with respect. Without going into detail, he never had to say how little he did, he just had to say the magic word ‘Army’ and people thought he was a hero. He was a disgrace to all those brave men and women who do justice to their position.

  My dad was in it for the role he played. He loved his uniform. He loved how people looked at him when he walked by in it, and he took enormous pride in that symbol of his status. He adored being on parade and he needed everything to be immaculate. But, of course, I did the bulk of the work to make things that way. I was the woman of the house, after all. I made everything shine, I made everything glisten, and he just stood there – a big man in a safe job.

  That was definitely his persona and, while there are many good, decent men in the Army, there are also far too many like him, cheery with everyone else, but staunch disciplinarians within the home, making their wives’ and kids’ lives a misery. They love having a sense of authority and yet they’re often not the ones actually doing anything in the front line. That was him. He had a light moustache, jetblack hair, dark eyes, a real Mediterranean look. He always had his hair short and Brylcreemed. He smelled of Old Spice aftershave and stale cigarettes, and I still feel sick when I get a whiff of him from another man.

  My mum was almost the same height as him, maybe an inch shorter, and she had a very distinctive mole on her cheek. She was slim and good-looking, with long, thick white-blonde hair which she wore in a beehive. That beehive was her pride and joy, and she must have kept the hairspray industry in business for years! I remember one night when we had only just arrived in Rinteln, I woke up in the early hours to the sound of her screaming. I rushed through to their bedroom, which held no horrors for me at that time, to find my dad swatting at her head as she continued to shriek the place down. We’d spent the whole day unpacking MFO boxes until late, and she’d fallen asleep with her clothes still on only to be woken by dozens of cockroaches crawling all over her. They’d come from the boxes and seemed to have set up camp in her beehive! It was one of the few funny moments I can remember in my childhood, although any humour was soon dismissed the next day when she had to go and get it all hacked off.

  It soon grew back and returned to being her crowning glory. Mum was a handsome woman with very high cheekbones which she never complemented with make-up. Her face was always scrubbed clean and her clothes in particular. It was the 1960s and most women were wearing short skirts – my mum was no exception and she had a preference for tight-waisted dresses which were halfway up her thighs. She never wore trousers and always took good care of herself when she could.

  While my dad liked to smell of Old Spice, Mum’s perfume of choice was Tweed. She liked to be surrounded by smelly stuff and always bought Avon products. Wherever we lived, there was an Avon rep
on camp, and Valerie was a good customer. She especially liked their soaps, which came wrapped in tissue paper inside pretty little boxes, often with a drawer you would slide out. I remember soaps in the shape of bells, umbrellas, and flowers aplenty. We had pelmets and mantelpieces covered in them and Mum placed them all around the house.

  The women on camp would hold Avon or Tupperware parties where they all congregated in a house. They’d take turns every six weeks or so, and there would be about eight of them at each one. Mum tended to go with Agnes to these and they’d all take turns at providing sandwiches, tea and cake if they were the host. The parties would be held in the early evening and kids would play outside together until they were finished two hours later. They gave the women an opportunity to catch up on any news and gossip. Mum tried to host one once but Dad was horrified when he came home early and caught her; she was told never to hold one again. After this, she went to the other women’s houses, refusing to take me and Gary. Her excuse was that the women wouldn’t want us two eating their sandwiches when they couldn’t bring their kids to our house. I remember feeling it was another form of alienating me from ‘normal’ life. I had to stay home when she went to one, whereas Gary would do his own thing and wait for Mum outside the house and come home with her later.

  She enjoyed being with friends, who she would pick up quite easily wherever we moved – they were never hugely close, but Army wives have to learn to be quick at making new female friendships, and they can’t get too tied to each other either.

  When I list the things my mum liked, to me, it seems quite a lot. Perfume and Avon, soaps and bingo, friends and fashion.

  But she never liked me.

  I know that lots of children, at whatever stage of their life, may make that claim. Their mum doesn’t understand them, or she’s too strict, or she’s too bossy, or a million other things. However, I can categorically say, with hand on heart, that my mother simply didn’t like me.