Invisible Child

by Mary Hayward

  As I peered out from between my fingers, the tall one came so close I could read the tattoo on his wrist: ‘I Love Polly’.

  “Here!” He flung the bag at my feet.

  Turning quickly to his mates who were now all laughing, he grabbed the fat one by his jacket, and tried to drag him off and pull him away, but it didn’t work. The fat one snatched back, and grasping me by my coat, he lifted me up and swept me down the side of the pub, his big rough hands muffling my screams.

  “Come on!” the tall one shouted, pulling at him once more. “Leave her alone. I’ve got some more beer at the flat.”

  “Sounds good to me,” his fat friend grunted.

  Dropped like a bundle of elephant dung, bruised and clinging to the floor, I was left there. They staggered off down the side of the pub, their rowdy banter echoing into the night.

  I was still licking the salt from my lips when Mum arrived. I quickly stuffed the empty packet into my pocket and tried to look pleased to see her. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she grabbed my hand tightly. Dragging me along the High Street, we shot back down Joyce Avenue, across the ramp and over the railway line, until we came to a little corner shop off Somerset Road.

  It was full of light spilling onto the pavement like a sheet of golden custard; an oasis in the urban desert, it stood proudly silent.

  Without a word, she launched me into the shop and up to the empty counter.

  The shopkeeper stopped what he was doing. It wasn’t difficult to spot me because I was the only person there.

  He wandered over to me.

  “Hello,” he smiled. “What’s this then?” He pointed to the little piece of crumpled paper tucked in my hand.

  I looked up at him for what seemed like ages, struggling to contain my fear, and then, without taking my eyes off his face, I hesitatingly pushed the note halfway across the counter, and sprang back.

  “Right,” he drew a deep breath, “let’s see what it says, shall we?” His voice was loud, and his face towered above me as he glanced down. “It’s a note from Mum, is it?”

  I didn’t answer, but stood frozen with my mouth open, eyes wide. Somehow I managed a nod whilst he fiddled in his top pocket for his reading glasses.

  Everything seemed to be in slow motion as I watched him unfold his round spectacles, bending them over his ears. Picking up the note in his right hand, he began reading the first line.

  He stopped, glanced down at me, shook his head, and then looked back at the note.

  I just stared, frozen. I didn’t know why, but I guess I was watching for him to tell me off, or worse, chase me out of the shop and—I didn’t know, but I thought if I kept watching him perhaps I could tell what he was going to do.

  He strolled over to me and peered down. His glasses slid down like the barrel of a gun, and the beads of his eyes shot me a glance for the first time.

  Startled, I cowered down, my heart pounding as his apparently kind eyes turned frosty and cold.

  I was ready to spring at the first sign of danger. But it was my turn to say it—to say my bit!

  My throat dried. Perhaps it was the salt crisps, I didn’t know. I was struck dumb, as if suffering some frightening seizure. For a moment I thought I heard my mother prompt me, although it could have been the wind.

  “Well come on—I haven’t got all night, you know,” his voice echoed around my head.

  I sprang back—I looked up at him expectantly and then...

  “I haven’t got anything to eat and...er...er... can I have it on tick, please?”

  His eyes shot at me and I felt his stare, questioning, knowing, and telling. It was like being in the headmaster’s study, his eyes boring into my very soul. Could he see the truth inside me?

  My resolve withered. I shrank back. He looked up.

  His face changed, and then I noticed the hardness spreading like some awful rash across his face until he looked positively evil. I avoided his glance. I bowed my head, like my dad did when he went for a pee in the street.

  Then he shone his gaze outside like some sort of super searchlight, peering out into the blackness. I watched him, my eyes now fixed on his gaze. Where he looked, I looked. I followed his every move, his every gesture, and I noticed his every breath.

  Would he, or wouldn’t he? I couldn’t tell—I didn’t know.

  Looking up and down, I started to notice the stiffness in his back, and a slight change of the shape of the muscles on his shoulders. They were barely detectable as the hunch changed; yet I noticed a subtle shifting.

  His eyes flicked down at the note once more. I followed his gaze as he stared out through the door. He shook his head, drew a deep breath and sighed like a dying man.

  My tummy was gnawing inside. I asked myself why I chose to miss my dinner.

  His shoulders dropped as he turned away from me. I watched the tension slowly disappear, almost as fast as it had begun, and then, his back straightened as he swung round to face me once more. I detected a softening, but I couldn’t be sure.

  It was like watching someone blow up a balloon, puffing into it and then, with each additional breath, wondering if it would burst. What would he do? I couldn’t stand it anymore—the not knowing. Something inside of me snapped. I knew I had to get out.

  I could feel a sickening knot in my tummy, writhing and twisting like some awful snake. Trapped between the shopkeeper and Mother, I retched with bile. I was going to throw up. I turned my head and was just about to run out. I froze. An intense fear ripped into me.

  I felt the warm comforting wet trickling down the inside of my leg.

  Finally he picked up the note in his left hand! No one else knew what it meant, but it told me a great deal. It signalled the preparation to fetch things with his right hand. I had watched him through the window when I first arrived and I knew he was right handed. Was he, I wondered, about to select items from the list?

  He glanced down at me and his mood appeared to change, as if I was not the first little girl he had seen. In silence he turned back toward the shelves. I watched. I held my breath.

  “Okay, now let’s see what we can do for you then, shall we, young lady?” He started to run through the list.

  The air was tense as he began to lift cans from the shelf. Then, walking past me, he fetched the potatoes from a big Hessian sack by the door. Carefully, he weighed them on the old scales before tipping them into a paper bag. He continued gathering things until, finally, he took a small packet of chocolate biscuits from the shelf beneath the counter and popped them into the bag. He left them on top for me to see.

  “That’s about all I can manage for you today, love. Now tell your Mum she needs to settle up at the end of the week—Friday.” He pushed the bag across the counter.

  “Thanks mister.”

  I grabbed the bag and carried it outside into the darkness.

  “Okay, I’ll take that.” Mum snatched the bag out of my hands.

  Then, dragging me away as fast as she could, we slipped out into the blackness of the night.

  Once over the ramp of the railway tracks, she bundled the shopping onto the bottom shelf of the pram. Dad came over and lifted me up on his back and gave me a piggyback home.

  I was so pleased with myself—I felt the Hero! I had managed to get all the food for the family. I felt elated and happy, happier than I can remember. There I was with Dad giving me a piggyback. He was so proud of me and it felt so good. I really loved my Dad that day.

  Begging for food from the shopkeepers became a way of life for me. Scouring the streets for a new shop further away in the hope that I wouldn’t be recognised became a challenge and a battle of wits. It didn’t get any easier and each time I was just as terrified.

  There was always a sense of luck attached and when it didn’t turn out well, the trauma was horrendous. If I didn’t get it right, then we didn’t eat, or we didn’t have any coal to heat the house; either way, we all suffered.

  I found I had to develop an intuitive understand
ing of body language to improve my chances of success. I learned to watch from the shop window, pick my time and choose my words carefully. It was a good strategy to wait for the wife to be out of the way. Women were the least compassionate, the more spiteful and hurtful. They would send me packing as soon as they saw me enter the shop, and then, turning to their husbands, scold them for not kicking me out sooner.

  ♣

  It upsets me when people say, “Doesn’t time heal and, besides, surely you must have got over your childhood by now?” Except, perhaps, they hadn’t considered that as a result of my childhood I am forever changed.

  A man might lose his leg and people might say “Are you getting over it?” in the sense that, “Have you recovered and the wounded stump healed?” A man might have ‘got over it’—but he will always be a one-legged man.

  They don’t understand. It never really goes away. I can’t change it or forget it. It is always there. Perhaps I shall be given a wooden leg one day. But for me it still feels like I am on crutches.

  It was as though I had experienced some frightful brain transplant, and suddenly I had the full responsibility of the family. I was now financing my mother’s fags, my father’s drink and bringing up a baby. I was a mule in harness.

  My spirit broken, my childhood in tatters—and this was just the beginning.

  My childhood stopped the day Les left home. My innocence was lost because of what happened on that day. I told myself I must carry on because I knew nothing else, and what else could a little girl do?

  I lived for hope—hope that it would get better. It got worse.

  I died of shame—oh, so many times I could not tell. I let the tears fall in silence—I wanted it to stop. It didn’t.

  Unlike Peter Pan, I didn’t lose my shadow—I lost my childhood.

  And I will never get it back.

  4

  Hospital

  I WAS TEN YEARS OLD when I came home from school with a sore throat and a fever. I ended up in North Middlesex Hospital to have an operation to remove my tonsils. I had been off school with throat infections for some time, and I suppose the doctors thought it best in the long term. The hospital was only half a mile from our house and so I expected Mum and Dad would visit.

  I remember the hospital and its long tiled corridors, the high ceilings with lamps hanging down on thin cables and chains, like some underground prison. I did not recognise the strange smells.

  I arrived in the Children’s Ward, and once settled in I was enjoying a brief moment of new-found freedom, talking to the other kids there. Hopelessly lively, I started running around until I went a step too far and the nurse told the other children to sit on my bed to stop me getting up. Then I was given this drink and I spent the rest of the morning on the toilet. I had a healthy disrespect for the nurse after that!

  Surrounded by two nurses and a man in a white coat, I was told I was being taken away to another room, under the guise of making me better: I was not to worry. I was shaking with fear when they lifted my small frame onto a trolley and whisked me away. The trolley squeaked and banged against the first wall, and then we had to squeeze past the laundry basket and other obstacles I did not recognise. We turned right, then left, and then right again down this long corridor. In the end I had no idea where I was. If it was their aim to make me mess myself; that would have been a miracle, because I didn’t have anything left in me to mess.

  I arrived in this little room, and they lifted me off the trolley and onto a raised bed, all padded with a pillow in place ready for me. Hanging on the wall was a large glass cupboard, a display case with all its shiny instruments. If I wasn’t scared before, I was sure scared now! When a doctor approached with a big rubber facemask, I was in sheer panic. I shrank back into the pillow.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m just going to put this over your face—like this.”

  Raising the mask up to his face to reassure me that it was safe, and then turning the mask toward me, he spoke softly.

  “I want you to count down from ten, slowly—ten, nine, eight—and then you will feel drowsy and fall asleep. Now tell me—what is your favourite dream?”

  I didn’t know—I always forgot my dreams and woke up with the harsh realities of life. Dreams were having hot water, heating, and clean sheets on my bed. I didn’t know what he expected me to do.

  Recoiling back into the pillow, I turned my face away as he brought this big black rubber gas mask closer to me. I retched as the smell of gas wafted up into my face, and then I struggled, pushing him away with my hand with such force that it sent a bowl crashing to the floor. I screamed out my terror.

  “Nurse!” He beckoned sideways with his hand.

  The nurse stood by my side for a moment, but I couldn’t make out her words. Perhaps I had suddenly gone deaf with my upset, although somehow I sensed her voice was soft and comforting, calming me without me realising it. Even her eyes were calming, as she stroked my hair, her gentle face so close to mine that I could smell the freshness of her smooth warm skin; such was the alluring scent of soap, I was sure she was an Angel sent from heaven.

  “Now breathe deeply and count down from ten slowly.” She talked me through it together like a duet.

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven...” I didn’t remember anything after that.

  When I woke up I found myself in the Children’s Ward. Gone was the lively young girl who had come into hospital a few hours earlier.

  Painfully swollen, my throat so tender I could neither swallow nor speak, I often felt sick. Mealtimes came and went, and soon I lost what little weight I had gained. Finally I coughed up a huge clot of blood. I cried frantically for the nurse. She brought me a bowl, and comforted me until I felt better.

  The doctor arrived at about 10 o’clock. I didn’t know if he was on his rounds anyway, but if he seemed to be concerned, he didn’t show it. He had a little shiny torch, and I remember thinking how lovely it was, and dreaming that I wanted one for myself, although I knew it was out of the question. He peered down my throat.

  “Doctor, can we…” the nurse interrupted.

  He screwed up his eyes, and continued to push my mouth ever wider.

  “Doctor—she doesn’t like Jelly”

  “What do you like then, young lady?”

  “Peaches,” I said.

  “Well, let’s see if we can get this young lady some peaches to eat for lunch today?” Turning first to the nurse and then glancing back down at me, he winked. “I think that if we give her a few peaches then she might eat something, and we can get her weight up.” He looked at me. “Perhaps you could get your parents to bring you some when they come, okay?”

  I laughed and nodded both at the same time. But my heart sank—I knew inside that Mum would never bring peaches. Mum never bought fruit of any description.

  Flicking down at the clipboard, the nurse snapped away, scribbling as she went. “Yes Doctor,” she said, glancing up, smiling and writing frantically. She dropped the clipboard back at the end of the bed before rushing ahead to keep up with the chase, the doctor, and on to the child in the next bed.

  I was lying back in my bed when the visiting time bell chirped into action. Looking back, I recall watching the mothers, herded like cattle in a stampede. Some were clutching bunches of grapes, others smiling and waving. They appeared so desperate to see their children that I could see the love on their faces. One I saw was carrying a large packet of chocolate biscuits, although I was sure that matron would not have been best pleased—I thought of all those crumbs in the bed.

  I was sitting there surrounded by it all, people watching, and observing what was going on, when I felt a sadness inside; in part because of my own situation at home—although more frequently because I saw the pain and disappointment on the faces of the some of the other children on the ward. Some had bragged during the day that they were going home tomorrow, and then I watched their parents, and particularly I noticed those breaking disappointing news.

  Some mo
thers did better than others, but more often than not, Mum would have wiped away the tears. I watched it all unfold as it followed a familiar pattern. The shaking of the head; the look up at Mum; the “I’m sorry love”; the disbelief; and then, the glance round to see if anyone had noticed, the muffled tears, the blotchy eyes and finally the red face.

  When the ward fell silent and the visitors had gone, the children fell into a different world.

  I knew about the secret tears, the quiet sobs deep into the night, the night nurse in her attempts to console, to comfort and to coax. The worry, anxiety, torture, grief, misery and the wretchedness of their plight; it wasn’t their fault, but somehow it upset me so much that I found myself crying for them. Although I could have been crying for myself.

  Nurses, young and old, got upset at the sight of it all; they would disappear from the ward, and I would listen, and hear a nurse sobbing quietly in the kitchen. Some got used to it, but others never did, and they would be moved on.

  On more than one occasion I noticed a pretty, tall and well-dressed lady in a beautiful red coat. She had been a frequent visitor to a little boy in the bed opposite—Michael, I think his name was. Always there right from the start, until the Staff Nurse would ask her to leave, she brought little books, and sitting by his bedside, she would read him stories. He seemed such a nice little boy, and I remember thinking, as I looked at her, that I wished I could have been born out of her tummy. She would often glance back at me and smile; perhaps she felt sorry for me, or perhaps she wondered why she never saw my visitors. On one occasion I noticed her talking to the nurse. I didn’t hear much of what they said, although I suspected she was asking about my Mum and Dad.

  Watching anxiously as the visiting time ticked by, I put on a brave face and read a comic.

  The large clock on the wall ticked again and again as the minutes went by. With each tick of the clock I became more and more embarrassed that I had no visitors.