by Louise Allen
I would never usually go out in the rain barefoot. The nylon dressing gown was already wet and I could feel the mud squishing between my toes. Splashes of mud were visible on the bottom of my dressing gown. Fear gripped my heart as I reached the chicken run, opened the wire gate and looked for a flat rock to stand on. But everything was muddy and wet. There were stepping-stones from the gate to the coop, and I put a timid toe on each one, hoping I wouldn’t slip off into the sea of mud and chicken poo at either side. All the chickens were inside and I finally got to the boxes where they laid their eggs. Chicken poo was squeezing between my toes and I was already a sodden mess. There was only one egg; it was still warm and had two pale feathers stuck to it. I carefully put it in my pocket and then began my slippery trip back up the garden path.
I didn’t dare look into the shed again. It was still raining and I was now crying. My dressing gown and feet were splattered with mud and poo and I had only one egg. It was also freezing and my feet and hands were blue with cold. I sploshed them under the garden hose for a minute in a desperate attempt to rinse off the mud, at least from my feet. I knew I’d be for it. I hadn’t wanted to go in my dressing gown and bare feet – it wasn’t fair. It was then that I saw all the chicken poo stuck to the bottom of my dressing gown hem.
By now I was on the backdoor step and Barbara marched up to it, yanked it open and looked fiercely at me down her pointy nose. I was soaking wet all over, a real sight. I put my hand in my pocket and held out the one egg. She took it with her left hand and whacked me round the face with her right: ‘You stupid, filthy little bitch.’ She put the egg down on the side and came back, yanking the dressing gown off me. I had a thin nightie on underneath, also wet.
‘Get in here!’ With that she pulled me roughly by the arm to the larder – my precious place – but there was also a tall blue vinyl stool in there that she used for punishing us.
She bent me over the stool, face down, my stomach pressed on the top, my head dangling one side, my legs the other. I was shivering with cold and fear. Whack! There was a rolled-up newspaper across my rear.
‘You never think, do you? You just make more work for me.’ Thwack! The pressure on my stomach made me feel sick. I could feel bile coming up to my throat, and I wanted to spew. Whack! Whack! Whack! On my legs, back, head, arms, bottom. Suddenly I was sick – a mixture of fear and whatever was left in my stomach.
‘You filthy little bitch. Eat it up.’
I was forced to get down and lick the vomit off the floor. This made me even sicker. I was then pushed back over the stool and left hanging there with the top of it pressing into my stomach with agony, until she was ready to let me go. This seemed a long, long time later, even hours. I was wet, freezing, in pain and as miserable as I could be. My only way out – I started counting: one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. I then thought of poor William in the shed; at least it wasn’t just me she hated. I wondered what small thing he had done to anger her this time.
William took most of the heat from Barbara’s hatred. She seemed to loathe him more than me and, sadly, he got the worst of her treatment (and Kevin’s). He was my partner in crime, though, and we had little ways of surviving that we developed between us, for relief and fun. These ways stayed with me for a long time, and I learnt to build up a repertoire of survival tactics.
Neither Barbara nor Ian was very sociable, and they never had friends to the house apart from Kevin’s father or local women for coffee sometimes. Ian worked for a small company, and at Christmas he would be given bottles of alcohol by customers. He would bring the bottles home and put them in the wooden G-Plan sideboard in the best living room – the room William and I weren’t allowed to go into. We had both learnt to scavenge food, but we now had a new game: scavenging alcohol.
For some reason one day William and I decided to tiptoe in, pull out the cork from one bottle and have a swig. It was called cherry brandy and it tasted wonderful. We took two slugs each and then put the cork back in. I felt a wonderful hot feeling go down the back of my throat and into my tummy. The taste was weird and strong but I liked it. We spluttered the first time we tried it. We knew neither Barbara nor Ian drank at home, so we didn’t think it would be missed. The best part was that it took away the gnawing in our tummies and left us glowing. We topped the bottle up with water if it got too low. The trick was to never take too much. To not be greedy. And to not get caught.
Over time, we also took slugs out of different bottles in turn: sherry, port, whisky, wine. We were always very careful. We cleared up any drops spilt and also put the bottles back exactly where they’d been in the first place. I had learnt, with the larder and also with the birdseed, that things always had to look exactly the same, no giveaway traces, as Barbara had hawk-like eyes that would pick up any clues. Then we would find, also in the cupboard, ‘Good Boy Choc Drops’ that would be the Christmas treat for the dog. We helped ourselves to these and felt like a prince and princess at the most wonderful party. We would grin as we scoffed a handful of dry chocs. We would do all this very quietly, very secretively, hardly breathing. We would be in and out of the living room, past the red velvet curtains and the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and window ledge, as soon as we could. We always knew that time was of the essence – we had to go as quick as lightning, but not make any mistakes. It would never do to drop anything. William was clumsier than me, so I had to keep him in check, even though he was older. But we knew that the reward of having a warm, full tummy and a lovely taste in our mouths was worth it. We would also go to bed feeling quite woozy and happy.
We wouldn’t give anything away, and we had to be very controlled in everything we did. Plus we would then have our green sweeties and medicine at bedtime, so we had to not give the game away. But it was war. Every day was war, and we had to do whatever we could to stay alive. It was our little secret and something that made us feel better just for a while. However, worse treatment was always just around the corner.
It was a wonderful relief to start going out of the house to school a few times a week when I was around five. From the start Barbara never let me go every day; it was maybe two or three times a week, while William attended the local primary school. We walked with Topsy the poodle, and Barbara would whack us and push us all the way. She strode along very quickly in her brown duffle coat and we trotted after her. She would push and kick the poor dog, yanking and shoving it in all directions, swearing all the time, which made me upset.
But I absolutely loved school right from the start. There were bright colours and things to play with. The teachers didn’t shout or hit us and every day I got a small bottle of milk, which was rich and creamy and wonderful. There was lunch, too: little carrot sticks and celery, bread and cheese. Also biscuits, fruit and cake – even orange squash. I thought I had gone to heaven. Most of all I loved colouring in. I sat next to a girl who had big teeth and brown plaits, and we coloured in together. I liked colouring outside the lines, which she thought was funny. We laughed. I didn’t usually laugh, and I began to get a new, odd, feeling: I was happy.
I had a lovely teacher, Miss Nickerson, who would give me a big piece of paper and set me up with paints and a jam jar of water and brushes. She had blonde curls and a warm smile and would put an old shirt on me, buttoned at the back, and roll up the sleeves. She would clip my hair back and say, warmly, ‘Paint, Louise. Go on.’ And I would take my brush and dip it in the most fantastic colours: red, blue, green, yellow.
One day Miss Nickerson showed me a magic trick: ‘Look, Louise,’ she said, sitting down next to me, smelling of perfume. ‘If you mix yellow and blue, you get…’ She showed me and, as if by magic, a new colour appeared. ‘Green!’ I said. Wow! It was absolutely fantastic.
Miss Nickerson said, ‘You are really good, Louise. Keep painting.’ I was so pleased, so happy, that I took my painting home to show Barbara and Ian.
‘You’ve got paint on your skirt,’ was all Barbara said. ‘What does th
at place think it’s doing creating more work for me to do?’
My painting lay brightly coloured on the kitchen table being completely ignored. When teatime came, I looked around the kitchen for my painting – if Barbara didn’t want it I would take it upstairs. When I asked she just said, ‘Oh, that, it’s in the dustbin, of course.’ She had already ripped it up and thrown it away.
Barbara seemed to resent me enjoying anything at all, especially school, so she would keep me home. But I wanted to go to school. I wanted to draw and paint with the nice Mrs Nickerson. But Barbara would tell me I was ill. I wasn’t, I was well. I found home horrible and scary. I had loved learning to make green with Miss Nickerson. I liked sitting on the blue carpet in the sun and picking a book off the shelf and leafing through it. I hadn’t learnt to read, I didn’t know my alphabet and I couldn’t write, but I loved drawing and splodging colourful paint onto fresh white paper. It was a joy. I wanted to go to school and I was upset when I couldn’t.
I wandered round the garden, kicking the leaves, picking up stones. Barbara’s eyes were nearly always on me somehow. I would wander about, looking at the clouds scudding by. I would go and see Sean and pass the time with him for a while, and then wander back in case Barbara noticed. Why couldn’t I go to school? It was nice. The grown-ups there were friendly. There was stuff to do, stuff to play with. I began to collect things. I found a little matchbox and put some dead flies inside it. I took the flies and put them in a row inside the box and then hid it in my bedside drawer. I liked seeing them in there, and I wondered if they’d come back to life.
I began to get curious about my body. And one day I also began to collect my own poo. I did a poo and caught it in my hand. It was warm and nice. I would play with it and look at it, and even touch it and squeeze it. It was a bit like clay. I put it on some toilet paper and got another matchbox and put the poo in it, squishing it in. Then I put the matchbox in my pocket and carried it around. I would also put it under my pillow at night, or in other hidey-holes. It was all mine. Then I had another idea, an even better idea. I took some poo, sneaked into Barbara’s bedroom, with my heart in my mouth, and squelched it under her bed. I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom, so I waited until she was at the bottom of the garden, and I squished the poo right up into the corners of her bed, under the mattress. You could hardly see it. It gave me pleasure somehow, and I wondered if it would smell. I imagined it smelling and Barbara not being able to figure out where it was coming from – and for some reason this made me feel happy again. I wanted her to feel upset. Also, I did the vacuuming in the house, so when the poo finally crumbled onto the floor, I got rid of it easily. No trace.
I also crept into the garage, where Ian kept his van at night, and I did a little steaming poo in the corner and then covered it over with stones. I’d watched the cats in the garden do this – poo and then cover it – so I did the same. He would never find it; he would never know. If he found it, he would think it was a cat, or even Topsy. Even if he did think it was me, he would never ‘kill’ me like Barbara; he wouldn’t do anything. I felt a huge sense pleasure in my secret poo game – for some reason it was my great comfort and joy.
5
Torture and Trauma
I hated having my hair washed, although I also hated being smelly. I didn’t have many baths or showers, so I often felt very grimy. However, anything physical that Barbara did with me or William was done with as much roughness as possible. My hair would be washed in the kitchen with Vosene, out of a big green bottle. Barbara would grab me by the arm and bend my head over roughly to check if I needed a wash. It was done brutally and silently, like I was a rag doll. She would pull my hair apart, yanking it from side to side, saying, ‘You filthy little bitch, come here. God, you’re a mess.’ Hair washing happened at the sink, and the water would either be freezing or boiling. She never asked if I was okay, and would never adjust the temperature even if I screamed. I’d just get a kick or a slap and be told to stay still if I didn’t want worse.
When I was small I stood on the horrible blue stool that she bent me over to punish me in the larder, and later I just stood by the sink on a kitchen chair or on tiptoe. She would pour a jug of water over my head and then pour on the Vosene, smelling of strong tar, which would go in my eyes and sting terribly (‘Don’t fuss!’), while she scrubbed and scrubbed, digging her fingers in hard. I would cry and she would hit me with her rolled-up newspaper, or even a wooden pole that she kept in the larder, to shut me up. To finish, she would pour vinegar over my hair and it would go into the cuts on my head that she’d made with her fingernails while washing, and I would shriek.
‘Shut up, you silly bitch, it makes your hair shiny.’
After the hair came the neck scrub. A coarse flannel and carbolic soap was scrubbed on my neck until my skin was scarlet. ‘Stand still,’ she’d bark, and she would crick my neck to one side and then the other and poke in my ears with a matchstick with a bit of cotton wool wrapped round the end as a cheap cotton bud. Out would come wax and she would snarl, ‘You dirty little thing, full of oil and grease; you must be a Jew.’
I hadn’t then learnt what a Jew was but it was obviously a bad thing. Sometimes she’d poke so deep it would hurt and the matchstick would come out covered in blood and I would scream, so I’d get whacked and whacked with the newspaper until I eventually stopped. Then I counted, counted, counted, and waited for it all to end.
Everything Barbara did with us or to us was painful, humiliating or scary. She had an air gun, and was quite obsessed with it. I had no idea why she had it but it was kept in a kitchen cupboard. Kevin also had an air gun, and he would shoot at squirrels and birds, to Barbara’s delight. Sometimes she would set up paper targets on the lawn – little squares of paper on bamboo sticks with round black rings on them – or a person shape drawn on it in black with a bull’s-eye centre. Or she’d put old tin cans along a wall. Barbara and Kevin would stand, legs astride, and shoot at the targets, looking like two toy soldiers on the lawn.
One day William and I were in the garden, hovering around the chicken run, while Barbara and Kevin were doing their target practice, when suddenly I heard William shout, ‘Run, run!’
I looked up to see Barbara aiming her gun straight at us. She started shooting at us, at me, and I screamed. William and I ran as fast as our little legs could take us, still screaming, to the orchard with Barbara following after us, shooting. I could hear the pellets pinging off the tree trunks. I was petrified and we ran to take cover behind Sean’s caravan. I was shaking like a leaf. Sean was on his step, smoking.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently. Both William and I were panting and sobbing, but were even more terrified of giving the game away. We just stood, shivering and shaking, hiding behind Sean’s caravan until we felt things were safe. Sean kept asking what was wrong, but I was scared that if I told him what she was doing that she would come and shoot him to shut him up, too, so I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t bear for Sean to die; he was our only place of safety, our only friend.
However, the shooting game was not over now she had the taste for it. From then on Barbara would jump out – especially in the garden, which had been my lovely safe place of escape until then – with a gun, and pretend to shoot me point blank in the head. She would pull the trigger and I would scream while she would laugh. It was really the only time I ever saw her do a full belly laugh. Terrifying us really seemed to give her great pleasure. She would ‘pretend’ to shoot me or William as part of her regular game to keep us silent and obedient. I was terrified she might actually do it one day, especially when she got that scary look in her eyes and her nose and face became hard and pointy.
In fact, one night I was awoken by a creaking in our room. It must have been the middle of the night, as I was usually out for the count for the first part of the night due to the special medicine she gave me. When I came to, I was conscious of a big dark shadow over me – Barbara. In her hand, forced against my temple, was a cold,
hard object: the gun. I froze with absolute fear. I was tied down as usual, and I began to struggle against the strap, this way and that. Was she going to kill me? Right this minute? The gun moved closer to the side of my head and pressed into my flesh.
Barbara whispered, ‘Bang! You’re dead,’ and clicked the trigger. I held my breath and closed my eyes, searching for the golden swirls and purple colours that I could see when I scrunched my eyes up. Was I dead yet? I wasn’t breathing or moving and all was suddenly quiet. Maybe I was dead now. I slowly opened my eyes and she was gone – just like that. I spent the rest of the night wide awake, tied down, counting, counting, counting, lying in a cold, sodden bed, as I had peed myself in sheer animal fear.
Apart from terrifying us daily, and hurting us physically, Barbara was also keen on humiliating us as much as possible, making both of us wear horrible clothes. She would dress me in her horrible old hand-me-down frocks, which were truly hideous. Brown old-lady dresses with orange and yellow flowers, made out of polyester, or even a pale-blue housecoat like cleaners and housewives wore. All my school friends were wearing lovely flowing dresses, cheesecloth shirts and bell-bottom trousers with pretty T-shirts and beads. I looked like a frumpy old lady in second-hand, cut-down clothes and shoes. I wore old smelly anoraks and nasty yellowing cardigans. A shopping trip for me was a visit to the local charity shop, where I would get something very cheap to wear. I also didn’t have proper boots or warm shoes in winter. Barbara got me sandals one winter and I froze. I walked to school and back in these shoes and developed horrible chilblains – big red sores all over my feet, which hurt like hell.
