Baba Lenka

by S E England

  I’d be going to the canal.

  Loathing consumed me. My head was throbbing and my cheekbone was swelling up rapidly. Bloody hell, I couldn’t even see properly now. He seemed to have become nastier overnight. Call it intuition, but it felt as though there’d been a shift in the way he regarded me as I lay in bed – a dangerous upping of gears. Lenka had been convinced Uncle Guido had seen something in her he found threatening, sensing perhaps that she despised him. And as I walked along the canal path, it came to me that Earl felt the same way. Oh, he’d always been a ranting drunk who took it out on his wife and granddaughter, but now he’d been triggered on a whole new level. And it was highly personal.

  Although the spring day was heady with cherry blossom and birdsong, a sense of doom hung over me. The normally grim canal sparkled, and the grass was bright, studded with thousands of daisies and starbursts of yellow dandelions, yet still it was impossible to shake the shadow of darkness. Who was my visitor last night? He seemed familiar, uncannily similar to the man who appeared to Lenka as Uncle Toby. Yet I couldn’t recall anything further…

  Reaching the bridge, I stopped to lift my face to the warmth of the sun in an attempt to dispel it. But as I did so, a strange thing happened. The air chilled, and in a repeat of that day long ago in Rabenwald, the sun became the moon, the vibrant colours of the day ebbed to black and white, and day switched to night. Traffic noise ceased. There was not a sound. Except a distant whistle of wind whipping off mountains and chasing through the trees…

  It lasted less than a second, before the spring day catapulted back into focus, the brilliance of it surreal and the noise too loud. I fell back against the stones of the bridge and sank to my haunches, dizzy and badly disorientated.

  The whispers should not have been a surprise. I knew with near certainty what was going to happen. But they were. Seeming, as they did, to come out of nowhere. Out of the ether. Or my head.

  Give us work, Eva. Give us work…give us work…

  The stark parallel between the surreal dreams of Lenka’s life and my own reality punched me in the gut. Would I now get ill? How ill? How fast? It couldn’t really be true…could it? Really?

  Once again, the sound of children’s laughter resounded from every direction, tinkling on the soft summer breeze in a ghostly game of hide-and-seek.

  Give us work…give us work…

  How long did I sit there, huddled on the ground with my head in my hands? Probably all afternoon, until the temperature cooled, school was over, and the bullies who hung around the chip shop would have gone home. What choice was there but to traipse back? There had to be a way out of this, that’s what I was thinking. Maybe if I just packed a bag and left – one more runaway teen on a bus to the metropolis?

  Anyway, by the time I unlatched the gate into the backyard it had turned five. And Earl Hart was waiting.

  He stood at the door to the scullery with a woodbine dangling from his lower lip. If he’d once had a shining human spirit in there, it was sure as hell snuffed out now. A cloud of sooty blackness clouded his aura. So, too, on the breath he exhaled - plumes of it like I’d once seen on a documentary of Hitler dictating to the crowds. It had come out of his mouth in billows that the people below were breathing in. It hung over the hordes like a thunderstorm waiting to burst. They were lifting their heads to hail him while sucking in all that blackness.

  Something really bad was going to happen, something that had been brewing for days now, maybe weeks. It was in the way he looked at me, in the curl of his lip. I hesitated, fingers lingering on the latch. Where was Gran?

  He inclined his head. “Get indoors!”

  Like wading through deep water, my limbs felt heavy and my feet dragged as I crossed that yard. Ducking under the washing line, I hung back a little.

  “Where’s—”

  But his iron hand reached out to cuff the back of my neck, and sent me sprawling inside. Immediately he clicked the door shut behind us and locked it.

  Grabbing my arm, he said, “Yer making me a bloody laughing stock, yer fuckin’ little bitch!”

  “What?”

  His eyes were barely recognisable – hard black bullets. Beer fumes blasted into my face. “Know what they’re calling yer on t’ estate? Well then, do yer?”

  “No.”

  “A slut, that’s what.”

  “Why? I don’t—”

  His great spade of a hand struck me across the skull, and for a second I thought he’d knocked it clean off my neck. Then it came again, stinging like fire, then again and again and again, so hard my body was thrown across the room. I fell badly, cracking my head on the corner of the sink, reeling and desperately struggling to my feet when, to my horror, he began to unzip himself.

  “What? Oh, hell no! No, no!”

  Fuck, no!

  There was not enough time to stand up or get out of the way. One hand had already pinned me to the wall, the other yanking up my skirt and wrenching down my knickers. His knee was pressing into one thigh, and the struggle was futile.

  It’s not happening, can’t be, can’t be. It isn’t me…not me here…not true…

  The familiar scullery with its yellow Formica cupboards and chequered linoleum thumped in and out of my vision, in and out, in and out, along with the pain, the excruciating, burning pain of rape.

  He crushed my spine into the cupboards, banged my head against the corner of the kitchen unit and slammed a hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.

  And after it was over, he shoved me off, instructed me to get washed and not to breathe a word or I’d be homeless by tomorrow.

  Then and there I vowed I would take Uncle Toby and Satan any time – any day of the week – over this.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Like all those with something to hide, Earl Hart lied. Within hours he set about a smear campaign, expertly manipulating my grandma’s weaknesses. I lay on the bed upstairs while he told her I was no better than I ought to be, and she was not to take up any tea. I could ‘stew in it’. Fancy lying on the bedroom floor in her own sick, so hungover she couldn’t even find the bed – a slut just like her mother. Hadn’t she been a bit of a tramp before she’d met our Pete?

  Well, that played into Grandma Hart’s dislike of my mother, who had never been good enough for her son. I pictured her nodding.

  “You were right about ’er all along,” Earl went on, pressing home the advantage. “And this one’s just as bad. Right little tart. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t get knocked up. There’s talk she’s been going with lads, and that’ll be another mouth to feed then – more work for you to do wi’ a screaming babby! What a bloody disgrace, after all we’ve done for ’er an’ all.”

  “It’s that red hair,” Gran said. “Red-haired and far too pretty for her own good.”

  I turned onto my side, so desolate even the tears wouldn’t come. No more, no more… It was true I’d never been happy here, but it had at least been a safe haven. How could your own flesh and blood turn on you like this? And so brutally? Where did you go when you had no family? I stayed curled in a foetus ball for hours, rigid, trapped in time, until eventually they went to bed. The bedsprings squeaked as they climbed in, quickly followed by snoring vibrating through the walls.

  Then, and only then, did I dare creep downstairs for a glass of water. Every step on the stairs creaked loudly. My whole body hurt, stinging with cuts and bruises on the outside, throbbing with an unfamiliar ache inside. Weight-bearing sent shockwaves of pain up my leg as slowly I limped down the hall towards the scullery.

  Moonlight streamed in. Carefully, so the pipes wouldn’t crank, I turned on the cold water tap and had just started to fill a glass, when a mass of shadows appeared on the far wall. It floated like a cloud of dust, spreading now across the floor and cloaking my figure in darkness.

  Give us work…give us work…

  I finished filling the glass, drank it down and refilled, trying to keep calm.

>   Give us work…give us work…or we will make you sick…

  A memory of Lenka tiptoeing into Guido and Heide’s bedroom flashed into my head. But I was not ill yet. No, I couldn’t do to Earl what Lenka had done to Guido. My grandad was, after all, simply a product of his time - a hard-drinking, fist-fighting misogynist with little education. And he had fought for his country and provided for his family. No, I couldn’t do what Lenka had done. Besides, I did not know how to. So I stood at the scullery sink, looking out at the full moon, drinking water. Thinking.

  Come on, Eva, give us work…you must…or you know what will happen.

  Use of the dark arts was a slippery slope. Cross the line and you could not then cross back again. And Lenka had become extremely unwell, desperately sick, so what choice did she have? Whereas I…I was fine.

  The lovely cool water trickled down my throat, soothing and fresh.

  Draining the glass, however, I was just about to pour another to take upstairs when the most almighty spasm of colic gripped my intestines. The intensity had me doubled me over, panting, gasping, until it passed. It must have been the cold water hitting an empty stomach?

  Muss i’ denn,

  Muss i’ denn,

  Zum Städtele hinaus…

  That was right, an empty stomach…

  Carefully, with only a slight sigh from the seal as I opened the fridge door, I did what was forbidden and took something out of it without asking – just one slice of bread and a small piece of cheddar. That was all, a tiny sandwich.

  At first it felt good to eat, the peristalsis of solid food working its way down to line the stomach, comforting. God, that was good. So much better. Finishing it off, I picked up the glass of water and turned towards the door. Which was when a near tidal wave of colic washed over my whole body. Whoa! Then it came again. My stomach clenched into an angry fist. It took my breath, and a cold sweat broke out all over, the bread and cheese weighing inside like lead balls.

  Holding on to the side of the sink, I stood shaking, waiting for it to pass. Bloody hell, that was horrible. But it was just a reaction to the cold water and food. It wasn’t what happened to Lenka. It wasn’t the onset of something sinister.

  Was it?

  Back in bed, though, I could get neither warm nor comfortable, and a dull ache cramped down the right side of my head. None of this was surprising after such a physical assault, especially on top of the night before. I told myself repeatedly this was only to be expected. And tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow I’d make plans to get out of here. He’d never get to do that to me again. Not ever.

  What about finding Dad? Couldn’t I go and stay with him for a while? Didn’t he say he and this new woman were in Leeds, that he was buying a house? Thing was, last time I’d mentioned it, Gran said they were in the process of moving and not to keep pestering. If I wanted to see him, she’d ring and he’d come here. Okay, well, I’d ring him, then…

  Mind chatter together with a sore head and stomach prevented sleep, but eventually I did drift off, on some level aware the pain was increasing. Surfacing periodically, I told myself it would pass…to just sleep and then tomorrow, tomorrow…

  In the end though, a series of violent convulsions forced me to wake up. A terrific roll of colic broke out, crunching my intestines into contortions. By then I was shivering violently, coated in sweat and short of breath. I tried to hold out until first light, but at five when Grandma Hart got up, there really was no option but to shout for help.

  She took one look and said she’d fetch the doctor. Downstairs, the call was made on the phone in the hallway, but it turned out he was busy with a childbirth and couldn’t come.

  “It’ll wear off,” she said, bustling back upstairs. “These things do. It’ll be the gastric flu or summat. You’d best stay in bed today, love.”

  By evening, though, even sips of water came hurling back up. A sickly cluster of migraine worked its way from the back of my skull to the nerves in one eye, and all I could do was lie there in a fever of exhaustion, praying for relief. But that relief never came, and the racking pain continued through the night into the next day.

  The following morning, on day two, a sore appeared on my upper arm – a large, oozing blister that pulsed and throbbed as if something live was pushing up from underneath.

  Gran brushed the matted hair back from my forehead. “Well, I’m flummoxed – I don’t know what’s up with you, love. It looks like food poisoning. Summat foreign you ate at that party. Mrs Dixon, well, she’s not like us, is she?”

  This was the Mrs Dixon who had fed and looked after me like a daughter all these years? The Mrs Dixon who cared, who laughed and danced and bought me treats and clothes the same as she did for Nicky, her own daughter?

  “What do you mean, ‘not like us’?”

  “Black.”

  The shock of what she’d said dropped like a lump of dirty rock into a clear lagoon.

  “Anyhow, I’ve to go and put your grandad’s tea on or – well, you know what he’s like?”

  “I’m glad she’s not like you,” I said.

  She patted my hand. “I know you’re a good lass, really, underneath, but your grandad’s right: once you’re better, you’ll probably need to think about getting a job and leaving school. He says you’re to stand on your own two feet from now on. I don’t think you can stay here much longer, love.”

  I told myself it was their upbringing and a lack of education. I told myself that for a full minute after she’d left the room and plodded downstairs to grill his pork chops. But it didn’t work. I found I was gripping the sheets in both hands, screwing handfuls of them into balls, the pain of her ugly words beyond comprehension. I don’t think I could have ground my teeth together any harder.

  I loved Mrs Dixon almost as much as I loved Nicky.

  Give us work…Eva, give us work…

  The demons were gleeful, laughing…triumphant…dancing…

  Another sore appeared on my arm, followed by another and then a whole rash of them rose up in a plague, blistering and seeping. What the hell was I going to do? Was there anyone I could turn to? Who? Please God, there had to be someone.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  There was only one person, wasn’t there? I didn’t want to burden her with my darkness. But she really was the only one.

  We sat on her sofa, Mrs Dixon and I. She took my hand in hers. “Oh, Lordy. Child, look at the state of you!”

  I was bone thin, shivering and doubling up with colic every few minutes. Each seizure wrung me out. I couldn’t even sip water.

  “Why hasn’t Maud called the doctor?”

  “He were busy. She thought it were food poisoning and it’d get better. I dunno.” I squeezed her hand. “Mrs Dixon, I can’t stay there any longer. I don’t know what to do. I need some ’elp.”

  Her eyes grew huge as full moons. “Can’t stay there? Why, whatever’s happened to make you say that? He been hitting you again? I know he’s handy with his fists, everyone knows—”

  “Worse than that—”

  I held her gaze until comprehension registered and a cloud of revulsion passed across her features. And then she took me into her arms and bear-hugged me while I cried.

  “You’ll have to go to the doctor’s, and you’ll need a story.”

  “No, I’ll wait and see first if, to find out if, you know?”

  She nodded.

  Nineteen seventy-eight and the police barely considered domestic abuse a crime. Besides, people like us would never consider legal action. Not only did we not have the money, but no one brought family business into the open like that. You didn’t wash your dirty laundry in public so that other people got to know and looked at you funny! Incestuous secrets were buried, and those it happened to thought they were the only ones, that they’d got what they deserved just like the abuser said.

  Mrs Dixon, though. Well, the expression on her face was the first indication this perspective might be wrong, and t
he effect on me was that of fog rising off a murky pond.

  After a while she said, “I don’t know how much to tell you, Eva, but it’s probably best you know a bit more about your grandad. And your dad, come to that. It might help you decide what to do.”

  She worked in a care home for the elderly. And those old folk liked to talk – some of them about ‘Earl the Hammer’.

  “The Hammer?”

  She nodded. A few years ago after overhearing a heated discussion between some of the residents, she’d asked one of them, an elderly lady called Maureen, who they were talking about and what they meant.

  “I was thinking about you, child, and so I asked her, ‘Didn’t he fight in the War? Are you talking about Earl Hart, the union leader?’

  “‘Aye, ’im! And he were kicked out o’ t’ army an’ all, so don’t let him tell you no different. Dismissed for extreme violence, he were – bare-knuckled fights and an out-of-control temper that saw him slam a hammer in the back of a man’s head.’”

  My hands flew to my face.

  “Eva, I knew then I had to watch over you. And there’s more to it. Maureen said, ‘Aye, and I knew his missus an’ all. Miscarriage after miscarriage she ’ad because of how he knocked her about. And little Pete were never a day without a black eye. No wonder he left home at sixteen, poor little bugger.’”

  I looked up sharply when she said that. “My dad? But he put me back here! With Earl. I was only eight.”

  Mrs Dixon shook her head, confounded. “Maybe your mum and dad had worse troubles? Maybe they didn’t know what else to do and hoped it wouldn’t be for long? They must have had good reason, they must have.”

  My heartbeat rocketed, the impact of this new revelation blurring all rational thought. My own father had abandoned me, dumped me with his violent father, and then left Mum for another woman. What had he done with her? Was she still alive? Had he killed her? Was he just as bad as his own father? Why couldn’t my mother even be visited? They’d lied and lied and lied. All of them. All lies.