by Louise Allen
We went to see them several times, and I later learnt the woman’s name was Iris Murdoch. She would often have a nap and I would watch her lovely, clever face and copy her expressions while she was snoozing. William would be walking round the room, touching things and getting restless, but I loved it there. I sat eating biscuits, sipping squash and felt safe. It was a lovely feeling in their glass conservatory, overlooking a beautiful garden. It was a quiet moment, and a real break from being at home.
When Ian was done, John and Iris would say goodbye very politely and one day John spontaneously picked up a packet of ‘mixed seeds’ and shook them. He said, ‘These are forget-me-nots, Louise, so you’d better forget me not!’ The grown-ups laughed, and I later understood why it was funny.
One day there was going to be a visit from a ‘social worker’. We had these strange people come round every so often, and before they arrived Barbara would get even more grumpy and agitated than usual. She would start scrubbing and cleaning furiously, spitting, ‘They will never say that I don’t have a clean house.’ Barbara thought the social workers were just interested in cleanliness. She scoured and cleansed, bashed pots and pans around, and barked at us to scrub ourselves. Our room had to be tidy, which wasn’t a problem, as we didn’t have any toys or belongings to speak of. In fact it was Barbara who had all the dolls and cuddly toys in her bedroom, not us.
She had a thing about dolls and owned all sorts of old, china and plastic dolls with weird painted faces that she adored. We, of course, were not allowed to play with them. We couldn’t even look. We were also not allowed in many of the rooms in the house: certainly not in the living room – with the red velvet curtains and the sideboard and TV – and not in anyone’s bedroom, other than our tiny partitioned box room. Barbara was furious, strutting about, swearing, pushing us out of the way: ‘Get out from under my feet. I don’t want those bloody interfering social workers to see you.’
I was terrified of Barbara but I didn’t want to get the same treatment as William, which was horrendous, as he had more beatings than me. So I began to play being extra nice to Mummy. I would flatter her, and try to please and appease her, hoping this would change her mood and her attitude to me, and to us. I thought she must be a very unhappy person as she was always so angry, and I began to make her little gifts. I wanted her to smile, to be nice, to be kind. I wanted to make her happy, to make her like me – and to care.
Before the social worker arrived, I went outside to where the front had recently had more gravel laid by Ian. I noticed some of the stones were really sparkly and shiny, like stars and jewels, and I went and found a little empty box in the wooden shed (it was open for once). I drew all over the box with some colouring pens and picked out some jewel stones of different colours and shapes, arranging them carefully in the box. I went to the kitchen and hung outside, trying to work out Barbara’s mood. There was a strong smell of bleach, even outside, as the doors and windows were flung wide open. I hovered in the doorway, trying to find a way to talk to her.
‘What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?’ she snapped. I felt terrified, but I persevered. ‘Mummy,’ I started, ‘I made you a present…’
She stopped and looked at me, her eyes narrowing, her nose becoming very pointy.
‘You been in the shed?’
I felt my face go red. ‘Er, yes, sorry, Mummy.’
Her face hardened. ‘You’re not allowed in there.’
I persisted and offered her the box with my sweetest smile. She bent towards me, opened the box and looked in. A snarl came to her lips. ‘That’s my new gravel in there. What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, you little thief?’
I felt tears pricking my eyes as I continued to try to look sweetly at her. Surely she could see it was a gift, a present from me? Jewels.
‘Put it outside and get out of my way.’
I put it on the window ledge and slunk off, totally crushed. I went down to the chickens and talked to them for a while, and sat on the grass feeling very sad indeed. William was already in the garden kicking stones about and digging for worms. We didn’t have toys to play with. Then I heard a car on the gravel and I noticed the social workers arrive. I watched as Barbara turned into another person completely: smiley, charming, chatty. Ian hovered in the background then disappeared. She made a pot of tea and I could see a plate of biscuits being handed around through the open kitchen window. My stomach rumbled. I clocked that for later – I imagined creeping into the larder and finding a crinkly packet of digestives with thick chocolate…
I was daydreaming about biting into a biscuit when I heard the back door open and one of the social workers came across the grass to where William and I were skulking about. Oh, we’d be in trouble now, no doubt. Both of us shrank from her as she approached, and we crawled backwards across the lawn. We’d had a few visits in the past, and I hated them and never understood what they were for or what we were supposed to do. The woman bent down towards us and smiled and seemed quite friendly, but I knew I had to be on my best behaviour or I would get it later.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, smiling. I didn’t know the answer, so I didn’t say anything. Nor did William. It was uncomfortable. We didn’t dare look at each other, so we looked down at the grass. Then I remembered and pointed to my colourful box over on the kitchen window ledge and we all went over to it. I opened the lid.
‘Oh, aren’t you clever finding those?’ she said to me. I smiled, gratified. I could see Barbara in the kitchen, watching like a hawk. I could feel her eyes boring into my back and her claws sinking into my shoulders even though she was six feet away. Barbara was still talking to the other social worker behind me. I could hear her explaining that William needed to be tied into bed as he went sleepwalking at night and he might fall through the banisters. I knew this wasn’t true, but knew better than to say anything.
Meanwhile my nice lady talked to William and then came back to me and said, ‘Thank you for showing me your stones, they’re beautiful.’ I could feel Barbara tighten behind me.
Later, as the car left the drive, show over, Barbara marched over to the box, picked it up and strode through to the front of the house. I followed her and watched in despair as she tipped the stones back onto the drive. I watched sadly as she trod them into the rest of the gravel, kicking it all about to mix them in. When she turned back to me, her face was bright red. She strode up to me and slapped me hard across the face, first on one side, and then the other, hissing, ‘You stupid little bitch.’ It stung like mad and I was thrown backwards against the wall, completely confused as to why she was so angry. Now the social workers were gone, the usual angry Barbara had come back – and boy, didn’t we know it.
The next weekend Kevin was picking on William again, despite the broken window incident. I was in the back garden, being punished for something. The boys were out the front, by the willow tree, and I could hear Kevin shouting at William, so I crept round the side of the house to the front, worried what might happen to William.
‘You’re just a cry baby,’ Kevin was sneering, which made William angry, so he charged at him, knee height. I hadn’t really noticed Barbara, who was hoeing the front flowerbeds, when all of a sudden she turned round, raised her hoe, and hit William right across the head with the soil-encrusted blade. He screamed and fell to the ground, blood pouring out of his jagged head wound. We all stood stunned for a moment, watching William writhing in agony on the lawn. Then Barbara shouted at Kevin: ‘Go and get a towel,’ and after hovering for a moment, Kevin ran past me, pushing me against the wall violently as he went.
William was rolling on the ground screaming and blood was spurting all over his face. Barbara stood and looked at him, hissing, ‘Be quiet!’ and ‘Stop it!’ But poor William was beside himself. Kevin was back with a towel and she bent over and wrapped it roughly round William’s head. He was still lying on the ground, with the towel getting redder by the minute.
‘Stay with him,’ Barbara barked at
Kevin, who said nothing, but didn’t move. Barbara then brushed roughly past me without a word and I heard her call for an ambulance, using the phone in the hall. I was holding my breath all the time. I didn’t know what to do: should I go to William? Stay by the wall? Try and find Ian? Barbara came out and looked at me hard: ‘What did you see?’ she snapped. I said nothing. I was shaking. She gave up and went over to William and got him to sit up. Barbara sat on the grass and leant William against her. It was the first time I had ever seen her do something like that. Kevin just stood around looking awkward, hands deep in his pockets.
When the ambulance arrived, I snuck along the path to the edge of the lawn while the two men in uniform got out and said cheerfully, ‘Oh, what have we got here? Been gardening have we?’ Poor William said nothing. His head was wrapped in the blood-sodden towel, but he was now floppy on the ground. Barbara said nicely that the poor lad had had a nasty accident and had tripped and fallen on the hoe. She’d told him not to play with tools – they were dangerous. But would he listen?
The ambulance man nodded, put William on a red stretcher and carried him into the ambulance. Barbara got up and gestured to me to get in the ambulance along with her, William and Kevin. I was shaking in my shoes. Was William going to die? There was so much blood, and he was so pale I was scared.
Once we got to hospital, William disappeared behind a big screen and the doctor in the white coat came and said it was a deep wound, and he would have to have stitches, a ‘tetanus injection’ and a big head bandage for at least a week. He would also have to stay the night in hospital to watch for something called ‘concussion’. Barbara turned to me and said loudly, in her nice Mummy voice, so the doctor could hear, ‘You see, Louise, that’s what happens when you don’t look where you’re going!’
4
Cruelty To All Small Things
Barbara often boasted that she had worked as a nanny most of her life for a very posh Oxford family before she’d married Ian. ‘They had nice children,’ she would say, pouring bleach down the sink. ‘Well-behaved, not like you – you’re no good for anything apart from breeding.’
At five years of age I would be given a large block of carbolic or green Fairy soap, a bucket of water and a brush, and told to get down on my knees and scrub. Everything had to be spotless.
‘Scrub the floor, come on,’ she would snap. ‘Or are you stupid and lazy like that slut who gave birth to you?’
My knees would hurt and my hands would get red and sore, but I would scrub and scrub every inch of the brown-speckled kitchen lino. Barbara would constantly drop these dark hints about my ‘real’ mother, but I knew better than to ask anything.
‘You’re fat and ugly, like your mother,’ she would say, washing down the drainer, her back to me. ‘You won’t amount to anything.’
I would dip the brush in the hot soapy water and scrub and scrub, thinking, Where is my mother? And then, I thought you were my mother?
Then she would spit, hanging up the tea towel, ‘Nobody wants you anyway,’ and I would feel a heavy lump in my chest. I’d feel tears pricking, but I would bite them back. If I had a real mother, why had she left me here with this woman I called Mum? Where was she? Why wasn’t she here? It was all very confusing.
I would be set to do a pile of ironing. I could hardly reach across the board. The iron was heavy and steam shot up in my face. Barbara would come and inspect my work: ‘Do it again, you lazy little bugger.’ I duly did it again. I wanted to please her so badly, to get a smile, a cuddle, a ‘thank you’. But they never came no matter how hard I pressed shirts or pillowcases, standing on tiptoe. Then I would beat the carpets with her, using funny-shaped things like tennis bats when she hung the rugs over the line, and all the dust would whoosh out and make me cough. I also learnt how to make the beds with special ‘hospital corners’, which meant pulling the sheets tight and folding them over precisely like an envelope at two bottom corners.
‘You’re lucky, my girl, to be living in such a beautiful home as this. Not like me – I grew up in a workhouse,’ she said under her breath one day. I imagined a dark frightening place, like a haunted house, with big, noisy industrial machines. She also mentioned a convent, and nuns whom she’d feared and respected. She was also constantly saying men were only after one thing.
‘Men will use you just like they use all girls like you,’ she would say darkly, as we filled the birdseed into pots for the chickens. ‘Your mother was a whore, and you look just like her.’
I would be left thinking, What is a whore and how does she know I look just like her? But it was impossible to ask anything further, because an answer was a swipe across the face, a punch, a push, a whack with the back of the hand or the rolled-up newspaper, plus: ‘I’ll send you back if you don’t shut up!’
But if Barbara didn’t like me, she absolutely hated William. She would shout at him, punch him, kick him, snarl at him, all the time: ‘C’mere, you little ginger bastard, I’ll show you what for.’ When I was about five years old, and William was seven, I would regularly watch him being pulled by his ear or yanked by his arm and dragged across the lawn, kicking and screaming, to be locked in the garden shed for hours on end. My heart would thud in my chest whenever I watched this happen. I was treated to ‘shed time’, too, many times, and I knew that feeling of loneliness and fear inside, holding my knees and licking them for comfort, while counting and wondering if she would forget me altogether or if I would die of starvation.
Later I would creep around the shed when Barbara wasn’t looking and peek through the window. There would be William, huddled in a corner, his head on his knees, his arms round his legs. I knew he would be crying. The only compensation was that the birdseed was in there, and I hoped he’d have some. He was usually bruised and bleeding and often had big cuts across his arms and legs from sticks she would use on him. But if I was brave, and Barbara wasn’t around, I’d knock on the window and we’d look at each other. I knew I had to be careful, so I’d slip round the shed and down into the orchard, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sean, who always made my heart lift.
If he was there, smoking on his step, I knew I’d get a friendly ‘There she is,’ and a little plastic cup of milk or orange squash, a chunk of nutty bread or a biscuit. I would sit next to him on the step and quietly listen to him whittling his wood or humming an Irish tune. I just loved being next to him, and even loved smelling his smoke and watching the light twinkling through the apple trees. For once I felt safe. But I knew I couldn’t stay there long, as Barbara would notice my absence and there’d be hell to pay.
Apart from helping with the household chores, I also had to feed the chickens. When I was little we had only three, and I gave them names: there was Percy the cockerel and two others, Lucy and Sophie. Percy was a Rhode Island Red and had a wonderful red comb and big red and brown feathers. He was magnificent. The girls were black and white with red combs. Later we acquired some Peking Bantams, with lovely fluffy bottoms. I liked being with the chickens and I would often go and sit in their coop and talk to them. Sometimes their mites fell on me and I would be crawling with them. I had to brush them off quickly, fearful of what Barbara would say. I also had to collect the chicken eggs three times a day, come rain or shine. Some days there would be three eggs, or five, and other times none or just one.
One breakfast time I came down to the kitchen dressed in the old blue nylon dressing gown Barbara had given me, and I sensed something was wrong. Barbara was red in the face and I couldn’t see William anywhere.
‘What’s the matter with you, sour puss?’ Barbara snapped at me. I said nothing and went and sat on the dog’s chair. Barbara always had dogs – but not for long. She liked poodles, and she had one after the other. They seemed to have very short lives, though. She would be very hard on them, just like she was on us. She would kick and hit them, smack them across the nose and use a choke collar that she would yank all the time when we were out walking them. At that time she had Topsy the Poodle, and the
blue fabric kitchen chair was Topsy’s. I often sat in it, as it was small. That morning Kevin was heartily tucking into fried eggs, bacon and toast, and Barbara was pouring him orange juice. They smiled at each other, conspiratorially.
‘He’s been naughty,’ Barbara said suddenly, catching my thought.
‘William’s in the shed, where he belongs,’ Kevin spluttered, nearly spitting out his juice. Barbara smirked along with him. I didn’t like it. I knew how horrible the shed was. I got up and went to the back door and looked down the garden, thinking about poor William. It was raining hard.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I’ll get the eggs,’ I said, ‘but I’ll get dressed first.’ I wanted to get my shoes and clothes on because of the weather. Barbara’s face turned sharp. ‘No, you’ll get them now. But I don’t want a speck of dirt on that dressing gown – if there is, I will kill you.’
I wanted to put on my shoes and clothes, but I knew I couldn’t go against her. With that, I opened the door and stepped barefoot into the freezing wet garden. I heard her say to Kevin, ‘Do you want a couple of sausages with that?’ as I closed the door.
I held my dressing gown out of the muddy pools of water and tiptoed down the garden to the left, towards the chickens. This took me near the shed and, hovering at the window, I could hear whimpering. I peeked in and I could see William in his pyjamas, his head curled onto his knees, his arms round his legs. The padlock was closed outside, so I guessed she had locked him in. I turned to look back and could see her watching me out of the kitchen window, so I had to walk on up the muddy grass path to the chicken run at the end of the garden. I looked back at the house and I could see them both watching me now, and laughing.
