Thrown Away Child

by Louise Allen

  I later heard Ian and Barbara arguing yet again, because while I was out on the errand of returning the jerkin, Barbara had gone into town in her car and bought loads of brand new bedding. There were piles of new sheets, a big duvet and cover and pillows in big bags in the hall. As they rowed I could hear plates, cups and saucers being flung out the back door and smashing on the concrete. This was followed by the old blankets that Ian loved, and pillowcases and sheets. He was trying to protest, saying he liked blankets, as they could be tucked in. Barbara was ignoring him, saying duvets were far superior. She wanted the best for a change.

  The garden looked like a jumble sale, as I looked down from my bedroom window and watched the domestic drama unfold. Barbara was livid that Ian did not like the idea of a duvet – which people were turning to instead of traditional bedding – as he wanted to keep his old blankets. Barbara was not going to allow this to happen – what did he know? – so everything was chucked in the garden so she could have her own way. I climbed on my narrow bed and started counting the cracks on the ceiling, the blue flowers on the wall, while fantasising about ways I could leave this hell-hole madhouse as soon as I was big enough. It simply couldn’t be too soon. But how on earth was I going to escape?

  17

  Saved by Art

  I was miserable at home and miserable at school. I was now thirteen and getting more and more interested in experimenting with my appearance as a teenager. I would put on eyeliner and mascara (stolen from local shops and secreted in my room) and foundation. I started using gel on my hair, trying to make it look a bit punky. When I did go to school I had a method for dealing with it. I was totally bored there – it really had nothing to offer me. I was in the lowest stream for cookery and needlework, as my writing and maths and most other subjects, except art, were awful, and it was utterly boring. I felt I’d done (and still did) enough domestic work at home to last me a lifetime, so I didn’t need to learn any of that. Anyway, I was interested in learning other stuff.

  I would get into school and want to leave immediately. I began to bunk off, daily. I had missed so much school that I knew I would never, ever catch up. I couldn’t concentrate, and had no idea where we were in most of the subjects; it was just a way of killing time. I felt I could spend my days in a much better way by myself, on my own.

  I would arrive at school, chant flatly, ‘Here, miss,’ when my name was called out from the register, then I would get up, go out the door and leave for the day. I would just disappear. It was me, gone, totally, just like that. It would feel wonderful to escape. I could breathe at last. I would walk into town. I liked looking at things and wandering about; it calmed me down. I was also smoking regularly now, and I had got some cigarette papers and tobacco from the boys in the park, so I would roll up a ciggie (they’d also taught me how to do it) and smoke. It was a relief and felt wonderful to walk along, blowing out smoke, feeling free.

  I had no money, or just enough for a cup of tea (I might have pinched some from Barbara’s purse, as I never had pocket money), and I would go and sit for hours, watching people go by. I loved looking at their faces, hair, clothes, everything. I began to develop a circuit. I loved gardens. Sean had taught me a bit about plants and seeds. He grew vegetables round his caravan and I had learnt from him how to put them in the earth, cover them carefully, water them, thin them out, and watch them grow. I loved the magic of growing things.

  I also loved the beauty of plants. There was something utterly wonderful about beautiful green leaves, big flowers and petals. I loved dahlias, roses, lilies and daisies especially. I loved huge plants with lots of leaves and colour. They seemed a wonder to me – the magic of life. I had to walk through the University Parks to get from our house to the city, and I found myself wandering round and round in wonder. I would always take a little sketchbook and sit on a bench and look at things and draw. The beauty of nature filled my soul; fed me where I felt empty, sad and dirty.

  I felt cleansed as I took in the silence from the green, from the colours and textures, the sound of water and birds. I walked and walked, past the lily pond and the ornamental bridge, looking at buds, branches, flowers, ducks. I loved watching people with their dogs, and couples holding hands, and single people on benches, feeding the birds or eating sandwiches. There were mums with buggies and babies, elderly people with walking sticks, young people smoking and kissing. It was all a revelation to me. I was in a world of my own, and felt calm and peaceful, removed from all that was ugly and nasty. It felt so different from my everyday life, either at home or at school, where I was shouted at, demanded of, ridiculed or hit and slapped, put down and spat on. I felt in a safe bubble out in the greenery of the Parks.

  Then I began to branch out. I formed a ritual walk. Out of school, through the Parks, into town, a cup of tea, and then a museum in the morning, another in the afternoon. As I wandered, I loved looking in windows and at buildings. I loved seeing other people’s interiors: the colourful walls and furniture in their fashionable living rooms. The redbrick houses, the variety of shops and cafés. I had heard of a museum called the Ashmolean, which sounded mystical. It turned out to be an amazing white-stone building with big columns and statues over the huge triangular front entrance with loads of steps. It was like a palace.

  I wandered up the steps and tagged along shyly on the end of a line of Americans or Germans going on a tour round the museum. I smiled and sort of blended in. I was wearing my school uniform, so I guess they thought I was doing some sort of study trip. I would wander around with information washing over me, but just loving looking at pictures, statues, furniture and art in all its shapes and forms. I loved old crockery or pots or anything that was beautifully crafted, reeking of history. I was fascinated by the Victorian collections and the huge butterflies with luminous wings – I wondered how they had got there and where they all came from. I could breathe looking at these things.

  In the afternoon, I would wander to the Pitt Rivers Museum, which specialised in archaeological things. I didn’t know anything about archaeology or anthropology, but I loved sitting and drawing the pots, the spears and, of course, their famous shrunken heads. I found these fascinating. Were they real? Real people? How could you do that? I imagined shrinking Barbara’s head down, boiling it in a big iron pot, and that made me smile.

  By now my hair was growing, and I was styling it in a punky, spiky way, with gel, and I felt I had something in common with the long, pointed locks of the shrunken heads. It made me laugh. The Pitt Rivers only ever opened in the afternoons, so I felt it was my place for the p.m. shift. I would sit and draw quietly, totally absorbed. I became such a regular fixture in this museum that one of the guards would even find a seat for me to sit and draw on. I would have a little fold-out chair, and be left to draw to my heart’s content. It was wonderful. This place was mine.

  It was cool and dark, with wonderful huge wooden cabinets with glass fronts, stuffed with amazing things. There was so much to see, so much to look at, that I would get lost in it all. I would be absorbed for hours. No one shouted at me, no bells rang, there was no homework. Most importantly, there were no bullies making my life hell. No blaming. No taunting. No shouting. No smacks. There was just the quiet of the museum, safe and cool, where I could run my pencils over paper and create images of what I saw, and try out new techniques, for hours on end.

  Back home, I would confide in Sean that I was looking at art, drawing and slipping out from school. He would listen and nod, and not say anything bad to me. One day he met me in town and we went to the Museum of Modern Art together. We wandered around looking at rooms full of pictures and artefacts. Afterwards he bought me cake and tea, and we sat talking about what we’d seen. I found out he’d never been into an art gallery before, but he was taking me because he knew it would thrill me. He promised not to tell Barbara where we’d been, and when we got back to the house, we parted ways like old friends as I turned into the garden and he strolled onto his site.

  She was al
ways suspicious when I had been to see him, or came in from school with him (as he picked me up a few times and walked back with me, bringing me Curly Wurlies or Ruffle bars, and talking about this and that). I always got a sense she was almost jealous that I liked him, although she wouldn’t say so directly. She would just be snappy as I came in, and I would pretend I’d been at school all day. Why was she jealous when she didn’t like me at all? Or was she frightened I’d give something away and she’d be found out? It was all very confusing.

  When I got braver about slipping out from school, and I could lay my hands on a bit of money for a bus fare, I would hop on a bus and go all the way to Blenheim Palace and back. This was wonderful. I would wander in and attach myself to a tourist group. Or I would sneak into the shop, then slip into the toilets and into the building from there. It was absolutely fantastic inside. I couldn’t believe real people lived like that. There were enormous gold mirrors, huge paintings, beautiful sofas, Persian carpets, elaborate tables and chairs. It was fabulous, and I made a vow to myself that one day I would have things like this myself. I wanted to live better, to live well, to have a lovely environment, to live with beauty rather than grotty, horrible, ugly things. If rich people could live like this, why couldn’t I? I didn’t think I’d ever have the money, but I thought I could create things that looked like the things in Blenheim. I just had to look at them very carefully and draw them, copying their curves and shapes, colours and textures.

  As I drifted from room to room in Blenheim, I felt like I could easily live with this kind of furniture. Why not? How fantastic would it be to wake up in a four-poster bed, with heavy damask curtains; to have portraits hanging on the wall of your family because you were so important? I didn’t have any family or a name I could show off, but the idea that you could be so important that all your relatives hung on the wall for all to see really tickled me.

  I decided I would learn to paint portraits and began to draw people as well as plants. As the days went by and my freedom grew, and I filled myself with art and beauty, I also looked at everything more closely. I was watching people in the street, looking at fashion, seeing what people wore, how they spoke, what they did. There was a whole world out there I didn’t really know anything about. It was like I was surfacing from an underground dungeon. I began to experiment with my hair more as a consequence, and wanted to colour it. I knew Barbara would go berserk, but I nonetheless decided I would have a proper colourful Mohican sometime soon. I knew school wouldn’t like it either. I didn’t care; I was past caring.

  When I sat in cafés like the Nosebag, which was a popular vegetarian café in Oxford, I would listen to music, watch other young people being free and easy in their clothes and style, and think, I want some of that. I began to plan how I would do my hair, change my clothes and break free from my granny straightjacket of cast-off clothes once I was alone. I’d definitely wear something more freaky, funky and fun. I was beginning to feel no one could stop me – a bit of a mistake, as it turned out.

  Of course, my jaunts around town on regular schooldays did not go unnoticed. Because I was living more and more in a fantasy world in my head, I sort of believed I could get away with walking out of school. I felt so caged, so exhausted with the whole rigmarole of pleasing Barbara, which never worked, and so fed up with trying to fit in at school, that I now felt beyond it all. I wanted out as soon as possible. I just didn’t know how to get out.

  But, of course, school wasn’t happy with my behaviour. I was turning into a rebel overnight. When I walked round Oxford or sat in the Nosebag, I saw other young people dressed in punk clothes, which I drew afterwards. I also listened to punk and post-punk music flowing out of shops, and it was exciting, angry, and spoke for me somehow.

  I was also in the class with all the rough girls, many of whom were now hanging out regularly with the horrible men on the Cowley Road and getting into big trouble. Some of the girls whispered about what was going on, and it was really scary. I heard they were being given drink and drugs in exchange for sexual favours. I was now smoking dope as often as I could, and smoking cigarettes whenever I could get my hands on them. The boys in the park kept me supplied, as long as I was amusing. I didn’t have any close friends but I was beginning to form my alliances.

  Barbara was contacted by the school and there were meetings with teachers and the headmistress. I had warnings and was asked where I went. I sat in the Head’s office, looking at the floor. I just shrugged. I was told I was getting ‘an attitude’. The headmistress was ‘disappointed’. It wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

  Barbara sat dabbing her eyes, saying, ‘I don’t know how to handle her. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I’ve tried so hard with her, but she’s such a difficult child to deal with.’

  I would glower at her. She knew full well what she did wrong. I didn’t say, because the minute we got home, she would grab me by the hair, slap my face as hard as she could, and punch me to the floor. Kevin would join in with a kick to the ribs and buttocks. They were a class double act. But there, in the headmistress’s office, Barbara played the ‘martyr mother’ and it made me sick.

  I would agree to go to school, and go straight to the art room. I loved it there; it was the only place I wanted to be. The art teacher, Miss Willetts, was understanding and kind. She just handed me paints, pencils, charcoal, and I would dive into the paper, disappear into colour, and be calm. Everyone knew I was good at art and, despite being a naughty girl now, the other pupils still got me to draw their pictures for them. I was the Queen of arms and legs, the Majesty of perspective and form.

  Once home, I would sneak out over the road to the house of one of the park boys, Dave. He was older than me, working as an apprentice in town. His friends would come round and we’d hang out together. They treated me like one of the lads; it was great. They weren’t university boys; they were working-class guys. They didn’t try to abuse me like Kevin and Mark, either, which was a real relief. At least some boys were okay.

  Dave’s friends would come round, and they would play the latest albums: UB40, Black Uhuru, Bob Marley. We would smoke dope together (‘mar-ju-wah-nah’ or ‘Mary Jane’, as they called it), and I would feel lovely and light-headed, like I could face anything. I loved being with them; I felt free. We laughed a lot and they were nice to be with. I was building a new life with these boys; I smelt a whiff of freedom.

  They even taught me to grow a marijuana plant, which I snuck into the greenhouse at home. I knew when I went back, smiling, with stoned eyes to Barbara, she would be sniffing round me, firing questions at me, slapping me across the face or whacking me with the rolled-up newspaper. But I didn’t care any more. It was as if I had a new, thicker skin.

  Another strange thing was, even though Julie’s visit had ended in disaster, Barbara was still hinting all the time that I should go and visit her, or go on holiday with her. I had heard nothing from Julie since her stay, despite her saying she would ‘be in touch’. I was beginning to see that she really was full of empty promises. I then heard from Barbara that she had snared Vernon, the taxi driver who she’d picked up in the local pub. She hadn’t had to get a job after all, as she and Vernon were now living together somewhere not too far away, between Swindon and Oxford, with the children. Julie seemed very good at getting another man to look after her – or rather someone to buy her stuff.

  I was still trying to work out who my real mother was, and who I could rely on, and finding little made sense. Then, one Saturday, Barbara got a letter and came and found me out in the garden. It was from Julie. Barbara was looking at me with her usual stony expression.

  ‘Your brother needs a kidney,’ she said, out of the blue. I was feeding the chickens, looking at the flowers and mooching around, wondering how soon I could escape to the park to see the boys.

  ‘He’s to have an operation. He’s got to have yours.’

  I stared at her, not understanding at all what she was saying.

  ‘Well,’ snapped B
arbara, ‘are you going to let your brother live or die?’

  I suddenly felt terrified. What? I didn’t want to have an operation. Or lose a kidney. Anyway, Julie didn’t want me! John had hardly spoken to me. Why should I do that?

  ‘If you don’t give it to him, he’ll die,’ she stated dramatically. ‘You’re a selfish bitch if you let your own brother die for the sake of keeping your kidney. How can you be so selfish?’

  She went on like this for days and days, trying to wear me down. For some strange reason I didn’t really understand at the time, I would not say yes. I was sick of saying yes when I meant no. I felt enough was enough, and I didn’t want to do it. I refused to agree. Barbara was beside herself.

  ‘You are the most selfish bitch I have ever met,’ and on and on she went. ‘You would let him die, destroy his family… He’s a lovely little boy, how could you do that? He’s worth ten of you.’

  Barbara went round our neighbours and people in the village shop and spread the news of my selfishness. She went on and on to Ian about it. Kevin ridiculed me for being a baby and a scaredy-cat. Barbara even told school about it. There was no escape. I had a lovely dying brother and I wouldn’t save him. All I had to do was give my kidney to him, but I wouldn’t, as I was a spoiled, selfish little nothing. I stood my ground; I wouldn’t do it, but Barbara wouldn’t let it go. But nor would I. I felt terrible deep inside, though. What if he really did die if I didn’t give him my kidney? How would I live with that? What would the consequences be? Would Julie understand?

  Then I would remember her looking in the mirror, putting on her lipstick, trying on clothes and not talking to me. Or the children, including John, whispering to his sister, giggling and running away when I came in the room. They didn’t want to know me, either. No. I was not going to do it. No. I’d had enough. If the situation was reversed, they wouldn’t do it for me. Nobody would.