by Tracy Black
‘Billy is my friend,’ he said, ‘and, more importantly, he’s a good man, a good soldier. Don’t you dare embarrass me ever again. If he wants you to help him out, then that’s exactly what you’ll do.’
So my continued abuse by another ‘good man’ was to be acceptable because it would save my dad from embarrassment and help Billy Stoppard out? As I lay there that night, with my own father raping me yet again, I wondered what the future would be for Billy’s three little girls, the ones I supposedly babysat. Would they be sold on to my dad when they got older? One of them was only a year younger than I had been when he had started on me – were they facing the same destiny?
Dad frequently had a lot of porn around the house and I always felt he probably traded it with his friends as I would see packages being passed between them. I think that was one of the reasons he kept us out of the cellar and wouldn’t let us use it as a den the way other kids did. I believe it was his storeroom for lots of things. The first time I knew of him having magazines like that was when I came home one day and Gary was acting strangely. Mum was out cleaning and Dad was still at work, and my brother had been raking around in their bedroom looking for Christmas presents. He’d been shuffling through things in their wardrobe when a stash of porn fell out. Although he thought of himself as tough, Gary had quite a sheltered life really. He was never hit and Mum treated him as if he was five years old. If he had seen porn before (and I guess there would be mags being passed around between teenage boys at that time as they didn’t have the internet), it was probably pretty tame stuff – but this wasn’t. It was hard core, and it had obviously shocked Gary a bit. When I asked what was wrong, he avoided telling me for a while, then said, ‘Come and see what I’ve found.’ He wasn’t full of bravado or showing off, he seemed genuinely puzzled and shaken.
In some ways the pictures didn’t have the same effect on me because an awful lot of those things had been done to me since I was a little girl. However, I had never seen them so explicitly. It was like looking at a catalogue of my own abuse. I completely related it to what was done to me, and I assumed these women were all in the same position as me. Maybe they were, I have no idea if it was consensual or not. Whatever the legality of it all, I was amazed there were images like that. As Gary flicked through, I saw one photograph of a woman kneeling down masturbating a man – I was drawn to it because I had never really envisaged what the reality of that act was when I was being forced into it. I didn’t even know that grown-ups did those things – I thought they were part of the special secret between daddies and little girls to keep mummies out of hospital.
From that moment on, the knowledge that my dad had those magazines haunted me. Although he never showed them to me or left them lying around openly, I could always find them easily and the fact that they existed confused me. Why were other people doing these things? The women in the pictures were grown-ups – I couldn’t understand if the men in the pictures were their daddies or, if not, what their dads would think about them doing such things. Wouldn’t they get into terrible trouble? Every time I saw Dad passing magazines or books to other men in the pub, I would wonder whether they were full of pictures like the ones Gary had found.
Once I started ‘babysitting’, I was even more terrified of going to the halfway house to collect Dad than I had been in the past. Too many times, Billy Stoppard was there and I saw him leering at me whenever I came in. He was often passing magazines to the others. I once asked Dad what they were and he just said ‘car mags’, but I didn’t know if that was the truth and I had less reason to believe it once Billy Stoppard decided to show me some of his collection.
One night when I was at his house, instead of trying to get me in the kitchen or at the door, he told me to wait a minute before I left. One of his kids had fallen asleep on the sofa, so I didn’t want to leave until I was sure he was looking after them properly.
He went into another room and came back with a magazine. He sat down beside me on the sofa – far too close – and said he wanted to show me something nice. That worried me – men who said that to me had very different ideas about what was ‘nice’. He brought out a magazine and opened it to a photograph of two naked women touching each other in their private places. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘isn’t that nice?’ I tried to get off the sofa, but he pulled me back down. ‘I need to go,’ I said, ‘my dad will be wondering about where I am.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t you worry about that – I think your dad doesn’t mind at all that you’re here with me, Tracy.’
That was exactly what worried me.
‘Look,’ he kept saying, ‘they’re having a good time, aren’t they?’
I turned my head away; I didn’t want to see or to have him watching me while I did.
I heard him flicking the pages. ‘Oh, here’s a lovely one,’ he said. ‘I like this. Do you like it?’
Again, I refused to turn my head. He grabbed my arm at the top and nipped me. I didn’t move. His hand moved to my leg and started rubbing it. ‘Tracy? Look. I want you to look. I really do think you should look.’
There was a threat in his voice – and I’d rather look at his filthy magazines than have him touch me. I looked. It was what seemed to be a Polaroid picture in the mag, an actual photograph of what I thought of as ‘real’ people. A woman was kneeling down in front of a man and they both had their eyes blackened out. She had his penis in her mouth. ‘Just think, Tracy,’ Billy said, ‘that could be you.’
I jumped up off the sofa and ran to the door – I had no idea how long I could keep fighting him off.
CHAPTER 16
STILL THE GOOD GIRL
The answer was, not long.
The next time I went to Billy and Chrissie’s, she wasn’t there and he was. It looked as if even the usual pretence of him working was to be discarded. The kids were already in bed and I walked through to the kitchen as soon as he opened the door to me.
I went to go and check on his children, but he stopped me. ‘No need – they’re asleep. I think it’s time you and I had a little chat, Tracy, don’t you?’
He held me by the elbow and guided me to the kitchen table. ‘If you don’t need me here tonight, Mr Stoppard, I’ll just head back home,’ I said.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘I’m a bit confused, Tracy. You see, I thought you were a good girl. Your dad tells me you’re a good girl. In fact, in the pub, your dad tells all of his friends that you’re a good girl.’ My heart sank. I had suspected this but I hadn’t wanted to have it confirmed. ‘So, Tracy, I think it’s time for you to prove he is right – it’s time for you to be a good girl.’
Sitting at that table, where he presumably ate breakfast with his wife and children, that horrible man unzipped his trousers and exposed himself. ‘You know what to do,’ he told me, ‘I know you do.’
I actually wasn’t sure what he meant but I knew it was one of only two options – he either wanted me to use my hand or my mouth and, after the experience with my dad, I knew I would gag if it was the latter. I hated myself for it, but in order to prevent him forcing me to use my mouth, I masturbated him. He touched me throughout but it thankfully didn’t last for long. As soon as it was over, he stroked me on the cheek and told me I was a good girl. ‘Can I go now?’ I asked. ‘Of course you can.’ I picked up my coat and went towards the door.
‘Tracy!’ he called. ‘You haven’t done the babysitting and I’m letting you off early, but take this anyway.’ He threw ten Deutschmarks at me in a gesture of generosity. How kind – I hadn’t looked after his kids but I had been a good girl and provided him with sexual release. Dad would be so proud. I took the money – I still wanted to go on the skiing trip – and left.
Dad wasn’t in when I got home, but the next night he came back from the pub and came into my room. ‘Good girl,’ he said, ‘well done.’ He left without another word.
This happened a few times and moved on to Billy Stoppard cuddling me before I masturbated him. He also started
touching me between the legs just as Dad did. I was still getting abused at home during this time too – it never seemed to stop. ‘You’re a good girl,’ Dad would tell me after he or Billy had done what they wanted, ‘you’re my good girl. You’re Daddy’s girl and your mum will be all right now.’
But she wasn’t. Her health was heading downhill fast and she wasn’t getting any better, no matter how many awful things I did with horrible men. The next time I was at Billy’s house, he told me to take my dress off. There was something about that suggestion that worried me – I thought back to the photographs and magazines he had shown me and wondered whether he would be getting a camera out.
I refused.
It had been a while since I had done that and I think he was quite shocked. ‘Are you kidding?’ he asked. ‘Since when do you get to call the shots?’
‘I don’t want to, I just don’t want to.’
‘Tough. Get over here or I’ll tell your dad what an awkward little bitch you are.’
For once in my life, I had a stroke of luck. I heard the door open and Chrissie come in. Billy shot up to give her an excuse about mixing up his work times and I took the opportunity to leave. I never went back.
When I got home, Dad was waiting. ‘Where’s your babysitting money?’ he asked. This was code – he knew if I’d been paid by Billy, then I had allowed him to abuse me and my dad could hold his head high in the pub that week, secure in the knowledge that his little girl had done him proud.
‘There’s no money and I’m not going back,’ I told him defiantly.
‘Is that right?’
He stormed off – presumably to the pub to find out from Billy what had happened. When he came back, he came straight into my room and took my piggy bank. Without a word, he emptied out all of the money I’d saved. He left the room and shouted to my brother. ‘Gary! How do you fancy going on that skiing trip? Your sister isn’t keen any more.’ I heard Gary whoop with joy as my dad twisted the knife in further. ‘Here, take this for spending money.’ The Deutschmarks I had earned in such a horrific way were handed over just like that.
I couldn’t even cry any more. Maybe Dad was right; maybe I was a prostitute. I also started to believe again what he had always told me about my collusion determining Mum’s health because, after standing up to Billy Stoppard, she was taken into hospital in a state worse than she had been for many years. This time one of her ulcers had been awful. I could smell the paraffin oil that she used when things got bad and she was losing an awful amount of weight as she couldn’t keep anything down. The physical and sexual abuse got worse when she was in hospital and my dad must have known it was rape, because I spent every episode crying, struggling, and telling him I didn’t want it.
Dad was still going to the pub a lot, when he wasn’t drinking at home, and he was still getting me to meet him there some nights. The situation which had occurred with Billy Stoppard wasn’t the only time I was sent to places to ‘babysit’ with the sole purpose of putting me in the hands of men who wanted to abuse me. I was in no doubt I was being asked to come to the pub to be shown off to men who would be interested in doing the same. It was like some sort of perverted audition in front of a group of paedophiles.
There was one guy who was part of the group there who I had actually heard of in the base. He was notorious among the kids. He was called Norman Parker and had four kids of his own. He was a good bit older than my dad, maybe fifteen years older; I knew that because he was on his way out of the Army. He was higher up than my dad and in a different regiment – this in itself was telling, as usually the ranks stuck to being mates with people on the same level as them. The more I’ve thought about this while writing this book, the more I’ve realised that the group in the pub cut across all ages, backgrounds and ranks; but they were close. There was clearly something binding them, a common interest or mutual hobby.
On this one night when I had turned up to meet my dad at his request, I was standing by the side of his table as usual (I was never invited to sit and would have felt just as uncomfortable doing that anyway) when Norman Parker appeared from the toilets. There was a drink waiting for him at the table and as he approached, he shouted out, ‘Who do we have here then, Harry?’ The fact that he asked my dad, by name, again suggested to me that they had all been talking about me before I got there. Now they were seeing me in the flesh, so to speak.
‘I told you I had a daughter,’ Dad replied. ‘This is her. This is Tracy.’ They all knew he had a daughter anyway, they knew us from the base, but this didn’t sound like him giving out information, this sounded like him presenting me in a different way, as something for them to consider.
‘Oh,’ said Norman, ‘you’ll like it at my house. You can play with my kiddies. All the kiddies like it there.’
I knew exactly what he was talking about – he wasn’t referring to his own brood as they were all older than me, he was meaning the huge gang of children who always hung around his cellar. ‘You’ll have to come round, have some fun,’ he continued.
My response was immediate. ‘No thanks.’
He looked at me seriously, then at my dad. ‘Harry, I said she’ll have to come round, won’t she?’
‘Yes. Yes, she will,’ Dad confirmed.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll see you at the play den tomorrow.’ All of the men around the table laughed.
The next day, a weekend, Dad got me out of bed early. ‘Come on,’ he told me, ‘you’re going to Norman’s today.’
‘I am not,’ I replied.
‘You fucking are. I won’t be shown up again, so get out of your pit and get washed.’
There was no arguing but I had no intention of just doing whatever that horrible man wanted me to once I got to his ‘play den’.
The house was a tip. Mrs Parker was huge and spent all day eating if gossip was to believed. The kids weren’t wild exactly, but she didn’t give a toss about them. And Mr Parker? He spent all day in his cellar playing games with the local kids and reading. I had heard from others that you could always get porn there, and I had also heard that he liked to play particular games. The stories I had been told about Norman Parker had shocked me – no one knew more than me that men with unnatural interests in children existed, but I had never heard it spoken about so openly.
When I got there, he already had a lot of children in his garden. There were bikes and toys everywhere, and he left them out constantly – I could only think that was to lure kids in. What I couldn’t understand was, if there was all this talk about him, why did other parents let their children go there unsupervised? I knew why my dad allowed it, but surely not every child there had a pervert for a parent?
Norman was all over the kids. He would chase them and play hide and seek, he would tickle them and throw them up in the air. It was obvious to me what was happening, I recognised the signs and had a sense of it. I was terrified I would get drawn into it too – I also felt that, if Parker was accepted, then it would be even harder for me to get away as so many people seemed to let him get away with whatever he was doing.
On that first day, he didn’t touch me. He seemed content to just let me watch what went on and was keen to keep emphasising how much fun everyone had, how much all the local kids liked being there. I didn’t tell him what they said about him behind his back.
A few days later, Dad said I was to go back. He took me as he said he had a book to exchange with Norman. When we got there, the book was handed over and Dad left. ‘Come on,’ said Norman, ‘let me show you my play den.’ We went down to the cellar and, again, there were toys everywhere. He had lots of bookshelves lining the walls and bowls of sweets lying around. There were also lots of camp beds, lined up in an L-shape and covered in dirty sheets, with stains on them like shoe prints. In fact, the whole place was filthy.
I realised I was the only other person there – no one else was in the cellar or the garden. Other children had done these areas up as their spaces, but this was clea
rly his territory. Everything was laid out, as it was in the garden, to tempt children. Action Man dolls, tricycles, sledges, balls, dolls, teddies, board games – it was like an Aladdin’s cave. My alarm bells had been ringing since the first time I had met him – I was getting smarter and I had been abused enough to know the signs – but I had no idea who I could or would tell about this. Everyone seemed to be blind to him – or perhaps they just didn’t care. Why was no one asking why this man had all of this lying about when his own children were far too old for it?
As I looked around, he spoke. ‘Fancy a piggyback?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Do you fancy a piggyback?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why would I?’
‘It might be fun – it would be fun,’ he replied. ‘You can have sweets. You can have as many sweets as you like.’
‘I don’t want sweets and I don’t want a piggyback. Actually, I want to go home.’
‘Well, you can’t. Your dad said you’ve to be a good girl.’
I was sick of this. I was sick of being passed from man to man like an insignificant little toy. He was suddenly distracted by the sound of some children coming downstairs and I went to sit on a garden chair in the sun. If I had to stay, I’d keep away from him.
He was easily distracted and I managed to spend the rest of the day without having to talk to him again. When I got home, Dad asked whether I had been good. The code again. I ignored him and went to my room. I had stood up to Billy Stoppard and I would do so to Norman Parker.
‘Your mum’s in hospital and we both know it’s because of you,’ Dad said, storming in. You’ll go to Norman’s again and you’ll do as you’re fucking told.’ He stood there waiting for a response. I think the fact that I wasn’t scared into making a commitment was probably a shock to him.