by Louise Allen
Now the chicks were transferred to the chicken run and becoming proper chickens, but they were still quite small and fluffy. I would go in and talk to them, and when I sat down Lucky would jump on my shoulder or lap and I would tell him about my day. I would take him out on the lawn and play with him until it was time for bed, then I would put him back in his pen and say goodnight.
Barbara and Ian were still tense with each other. It was something about her underwear, but I didn’t understand. It had become a cold war now; they were hardly speaking. Kevin was being his usual annoying self, swiping at me, teasing me about Lucky, but I didn’t care. Something was brewing, however, and I could feel it in my guts.
One day, after school, I saw Barbara unlock one of the kitchen cupboards, take out a brown bottle and pour some of the green pills she gave me at night straight into her mouth. She scoffed the lot. Then she turned and saw I had seen her.
‘If it wasn’t for men, the dirty bastards, I wouldn’t have to take these,’ she spat at me. ‘He’s a filthy pig,’ she said, meaning Ian. She often complained about him: how he smelt, the state of his underpants (‘he doesn’t wipe himself properly’), and even one time when her own underwear had gone missing and ended up in his drawer.
‘He’s a filthy bastard,’ she said, turning and trying to take down a huge ice cream container from the top shelf. It flew out and fell on the floor, spewing bottles of pills everywhere. I was amazed by the amount of pills, and she saw me looking.
‘Don’t you dare tell anyone about my pills, d’you hear, you little bitch?’ I nodded. ‘Or you’ll get what for!’
Next day I had my usual morning routine with Lucky and went to school with a furious Barbara, who was sulking all the way, still angry with Ian it seemed. After school I went out to find Lucky, as usual. I called for him and waited. I couldn’t see him in the chicken run, which was strange. Barbara had gone straight out into the garden when we got back and was busy hosing around the greenhouse. I went into the hen house, and there were a few chickens on their nests, including some of the school ones. But no Lucky. I carried on whistling for him. Where was he? I ran up and down the garden, round the shed, in the bushes. No Lucky.
Barbara was at the tap, filling a metal bucket. Finally I realised I’d have to ask her. She must have seen him. I was panicking now. Lucky was my friend, my world. Had he been eaten by a fox (sometimes the foxes came in and took a few chickens) or had he got out? Barbara was swishing water around with a bamboo stick as I approached. I looked in the bucket and jumped. I could see a load of baby mice, all pink and tiny, swirling around in the water like floating marshmallows. She was drowning them, poor little things.
‘If you don’t get rid of them, they’ll be all over the house,’ she hissed venomously. She turned the tap off, threw down the stick and marched back into the house. Job done.
I bent closer over the bucket, and at the bottom, under the pink mouse corpses, was something else – a small black body, twisted, with its neck bent. I screamed and burst into tears. It was my darling Lucky.
8
Hatred and Help
After Lucky’s untimely death I was sadder than I could bear. I cried and cried and cried until I could cry no more. The whole world had gone completely dark. No William. No Lucky. I felt totally abandoned and alone. I sat in the shed, my head on my knees, licking them, empty and bereft. Counting, counting, counting. Pulling my eyelashes out in little clumps. Ripping out hair, bit by bit. Wherever I was – at home or at school – I seemed to be hated. I just didn’t understand why. Barbara and Ian were not talking and the atmosphere was very tense all the time.
Every so often Barbara did a lot of shouting and crashing of the pots and pans in the kitchen. Sometimes she would throw things out the back door in a raging fury. Ian would keep out of harm’s way and did a lot of hiding in the garage, pottering about or watching TV. Barbara would spit that Ian ‘wasn’t a real man’, whatever that meant. There was another upset about her underwear, which had gone missing off the washing line, and she was accusing Ian of taking it. Why, I had no idea. He had his own underwear – I ironed it. It was all very confusing.
It was a miserable house. Kevin spent his time being bossy, picking on me or eating what he wanted in front of me and generally ruling the roost. His real dad hadn’t visited for months now and he never talked about him – it was like he’d evaporated down the motorway somewhere. If I was in the kitchen, passing by, I’d get a slap, whack, kick, punch from Barbara or Kevin or both. If Ian was there he would turn away and busy himself, even if I was slapped in front of him; he pretended he didn’t see it. He never intervened.
One day Barbara was in a total rage. She had bought something for the house and Ian didn’t want it. He wanted her to take it back. She picked up pots and pans and started throwing them at Ian, and then out the back door and onto the grass and plants. I was standing in the garden near the chicken run, holding my breath, watching things fly out and about. When Barbara went off on a rant, it would go on and on for hours. Ian scuttled out of the house and into the garage, his safety zone. Then Barbara spied me watching. I tried to pretend I wasn’t listening.
‘I saw you,’ she shouted across the garden really loudly. ‘What do you bloody well want?’
I stared at the ground, not moving, hardly breathing. A statue.
‘Oh, stop looking like that; your sort are always all right, no wonder the Germans hated you.’ My blood froze. ‘You filthy little Jew,’ is what she spat at me then and slammed the back door.
My only place of safety in the whole world was Sean Brannon’s. I went there as often as I could. The Polish people who pitched next to him were very private, although they were kind enough to me and William, and knew we appreciated the occasional piece of cake or sandwich they gave us. Yet Barbara would tell me, ‘They’re Polish and filthy’ if she saw me looking at these caravans. She hated the travellers. ‘They’re Gypsies, and you need to keep away from them. Hitler tried to finish them off,’ she’d say with a sniff.
I didn’t know who this Hitler was, but from the way she said it he sounded like someone to be feared, but also respected as a master. She also called him a devil, so I was very confused. She was always talking about him too. I had ‘the Devil’s eyes’, so we must be related. So I must be as bad as Hitler.
I went round to see Sean. Unusually he was talking to the Polish people. I crept through the trees, not wanting to be seen, and hovered beside Sean. When the Polish people saw me, they smiled. ‘The robot’ was wearing a trilby hat and a long brown mac, and was very tall. ‘The witch’ was wearing what she always wore: a headscarf and dark clothes with a flowery pinny in front. Her face was very thin.
‘Why don’t the Germans like me?’ I whispered to Sean, wide-eyed. I’d never met a German person and didn’t understand what the problem was. What had I done?
The Polish man looked very surprised and said, ‘Vy you ask?’
I said my mother had called me a Jew. He looked pained. ‘What’s a Jew?’ I asked. Barbara had often thrown this word at me, and I didn’t really know what it all meant.
‘I’m Valdek,’ said the Robot. ‘Vis is Sofia.’ They both smiled and nodded at me. ‘Vee Jews too.’
The woman leant forward and stroked my hair, nodding warmly, then squeezed my arm in a kind way. She no longer looked like a witch, and he wasn’t a robot. Not at all. I felt tears prick my eyes.
Back in Sean’s caravan, over milk and bread and butter, he explained Hitler was a bad German man who had hurt a lot of people in the war. He had killed many Jews – millions of them – in a terrible way.
I couldn’t take in what he was saying. Why millions? Were Jews such bad people? Did it mean people would kill me? Maybe it explained why Barbara hated me so much. Did she like Hitler? But no, she didn’t, she was always saying Hitler was bad. If she didn’t like Hitler and she didn’t like Jews, who did she like? It didn’t make sense. Sean sat and smoked and ruffled my hair.
�
��Never mind, girlie,’ he said. ‘More milk?’
Next time I wandered to the orchard and onto the common land, as I did almost every day now, I heard the Polish people making a sound like they were calling birds. I tiptoed over, looking around to make sure Barbara or Kevin wasn’t spying. Sofia handed me a huge wedge of bread and jam and, on another day, a big piece of almond cake wrapped in greaseproof paper. I wolfed it down on the spot, crumbs flying. It was delicious. She smiled and squeezed my arm again. Another day they gave me sweets. Valdek and Sofia gave me a Toblerone and I hid it under an old plant pot in the orchard – a little stash for desperate times. It was near the back of the orchard, by the grass roller and the compost heap, and I didn’t think anyone would look under it. It looked all old and discarded.
When my birthday came around – which I had begun to realise was sometime in June, although it was never celebrated – Sean gave me a giant bar of Dairy Milk and the Polish people gave me a little plastic wicker basket of jellied fruits. All these went under leaves in a plastic bag, under the pot and out of sight, and I hoped they’d stay safe. I also hoped Kevin and Barbara would never think to look there – I took that risk. There was nowhere else to stash them, and they kept me going, sweet by sweet, chunk by chunk, for a very long time.
Now William and Lucky were gone I felt very lonely at school. I sneaked Tony the panda into my bag and carried him about with me. One lunchtime two older girls pulled me from the playground, where I’d been standing alone by the wall, holding onto Tony for dear life, and pushed me into the smelly playground toilets. I was terrified. They pressed me back against the sinks and towered over me.
‘Your mum is a witch – everyone knows that,’ one of the big girls snarled in my face. ‘Why does your mum beat you? Are you a dog?’ sneered the other, smaller girl, making an ugly face at me. They both laughed.
‘Your mum’s a man,’ said the first girl. ‘She starves you ’cos you’re a darkie.’
Tears streamed down my face and my fingers were digging into Tony, but I said nothing. I could feel the sink sticking into my back, but I bit my lip.
‘Tell your mum to go and get her broomstick,’ said the biggest girl – and with that they both left, laughing.
I stood shaking and realised I’d wet myself. My socks were wet and there was a puddle on the floor. I went into the toilet and cleaned myself up and told Tony we should never tell anyone. There wasn’t anyone to tell. I’d been in so many meetings at the school when William was still there, with Barbara, the teachers and the Head, and we had both learnt to keep our heads down and say nothing. We knew if we said anything to a teacher in front of Barbara that when we got home it would get even worse. All hell would break loose. We actually feared an outsider’s kindness as, although Barbara tried to pull the wool over the social workers’, neighbours’ and teachers’ eyes, when we got home we would have to pay for her being shown up.
‘Nobody will ever believe little bastards like you,’ she would spit at us, hitting us about the head and body with her newspaper roll. ‘Nobody wants you, nobody cares.’ We completely believed it was true.
Now I was alone with the travellers it was even trickier. Barbara knew I went down to the orchard and onto the common land beyond as often as I could. Sean would collect his paper from a box at the end of the lane every morning and I would go down to meet him and follow him back. I would tag along to his caravan and stay there as long as possible. I even stayed the night once or twice, with Sean making me up a little bed on the sofa, with coloured crocheted blankets, where I felt safe and sound and slept without horrible green pills and medicine.
Sean went and asked Barbara for her permission and, amazingly, she said all right. He knew he had to be careful with Barbara, as she was always striding about the garden, shouting and swearing. He saw the state I was in, as he always had food and comfort at the ready. But he needed to live in his caravan as a good neighbour, as did the Polish people, and he wanted to keep the peace, so he didn’t want to argue with Barbara as he knew she could make trouble and get him evicted if she wanted.
Every so often social workers would turn up at our house. Sometimes it was because the next-door neighbours had made a complaint about the way Barbara treated me (or William, when he was still there). There had been many complaints, nearly all of them ignored. Sometimes it was after something had happened at school and we were ‘investigated’. And sometimes it was just out of the blue – or so it seemed to me. Barbara always turned on some charm when they arrived and got out the tea and biscuits. (I would note the biscuits for a raid on the larder later, where I could filch one or two.)
The social workers always came with felt-tip pens in their bags. I would recognise the same packet from the previous visit, as the same pens were still dry or worn out. They would give me some paper and ask me to draw ‘my family’. I would draw Barbara and Ian, and sometimes Kevin and the dog. I would also draw Sean. I always put chickens in the picture. When it came to Sean, I put a lot of effort into drawing his tweed cap, and drew a big red love heart on his chest. The social worker asked me who he was, and I said, ‘He lives there,’ and pointed out the kitchen window, to the land beyond the garden and orchard.
Then the social workers, two women – one older, with dark hair in a suit, one younger, who was blonde and wore jeans – talked to Barbara, who was out in the garden watering plants. I watched as they all walked down to the orchard and looked over the hedge towards the caravans. My heart started racing. Had I done something wrong? Would they hurt Sean? Would they take him away? When they came back, one of the social workers came and sat next to me. I was still drawing but I now felt scared.
‘Has Sean ever touched you?’ the dark-haired older one asked. I thought for a while and said he touched my hand and showed them my hand. She sat and scribbled something in her notebook. Then she asked, ‘What do you do together?’
I said we played. It wasn’t true, as in fact I usually just drew while he drank tea out of a big mug or read a newspaper. I felt I shouldn’t say that I slept on his sofa sometimes but, just as I began to say something about learning to plant seeds with Sean, Barbara came over and said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ to the older woman. It was like she didn’t want me to say any more. I wondered if I was doing the wrong thing talking about Sean. Maybe it would get Barbara in trouble, and then I’d get it. Or worse, I’d get Sean sent away – and then I would surely die.
When they left, Barbara was furious.
‘You have to be bloody careful what you draw. That lot are bloody stupid idiots with their backsides hanging out of their jeans.’
I didn’t understand what their backsides or jeans had to do with anything. Barbara ranted on about them only knowing about life from books and ‘what was the use of that?’ She told me they didn’t understand people, not like her, anyway. However, a few days later the two women were back again. The dark one in the suit crouched down beside me by the chicken run where I’d been feeding the hens. I felt suspicious the minute she did that, as I knew something was coming that I wouldn’t like. She wanted me to look at her, and to trust her. Then she said, ‘Louise, you’re not to see Sean any more. It’s not right that a little girl spends so much time with a man.’
I burst into tears. Sean was my only friend. He was kind. He gave me food. I wanted to scream, ‘Nooooooo!’ at the top of my voice, but Barbara was a few feet away and I knew she was watching me like a hawk ready to swoop. Sean was my lifeline and he was being cut. What would I do?
The next days and weeks were endless. I kept going to the edge of the orchard and looking for Sean through the hedge. He would be out on his step, smoking, and would smile. I would poke my head through the hedge, wave and look at him longingly. He would wave back and give me a thumbs-up. The Polish people would also wave and I would wave back. They were kind people who saved me from starvation and boredom and I was banned from seeing them all. I was being punished yet again. All I had left now was the chickens to talk to. I cr
ied and cried and cried talking to the chickens.
I sat in the shed, head on my knees, talking to myself. Counting. I wondered where William was now. Why had he gone like that? Why didn’t he take me with him? I counted. Pulled out more hair. Ripped my eyelashes. Licked my knees. Tried to find somewhere in my head where it was peaceful. I drew pictures of the caravan and Sean, but they made me cry as I missed him so much.
It was an eternity until the social workers came again. They brought out the same old tired packet of pens, with the same dried-up ones and wonky ones. I sat at the table and they once again asked me to draw ‘my family’. I had learnt my lesson, so I drew a perfect picture of Barbara and Ian, with Kevin and me and the dog. A happy family. No Sean. I didn’t mention Sean, although in my heart he was all I could think about. He was the nice man who made me toast and milk and bought me Ruffles and Dairy Milk bars. The one who listened to me when things got really bad at home. He knew a little bit about how things were, although we were both very polite when we talked about Barbara. I didn’t want to make a problem and I was scared of telling the truth to anybody, even to Sean. Nobody knew how bad it really was.
The dark-haired social worker looked very pleased with my drawing. With no Sean in it, I think they thought everything was all right. Also, Barbara probably didn’t want to get into trouble, so she didn’t tell them I’d actually slept in the caravan sometimes. It was another of our family secrets, although this time in my favour.
