Black by Design

by Pauline Black

  Fortunately for him, his wife had forgotten her door key, otherwise he would have been caught in flagrante, with some serious explaining to do. As it was, just like ‘Old Christie’, he got away with it again, or so he thought.

  He rushed to the front door and let in his wife and mother-in-law. They had come back early by car because somebody had given them a lift. Ordinarily they caught the Sunday service bus which took ages and was very unreliable. I often wonder what would have happened had they not come back when they did. If they had come back an hour later when they were supposed to, then I think that I would have been introduced to something more than underage heavy petting.

  He was flustered for the rest of the afternoon. I was worried, because I knew that some invisible barrier had been breached, the Rubicon had been crossed and would be again unless I said something to somebody. But whom could I tell?

  As the afternoon wore on, Doris sensed that something was amiss. She kept asking if anything was wrong.

  ‘No,’ I answered unconvincingly.

  George looked worried, probably because he thought I might blurt something out that would stop his little game in its tracks. I just wanted out of the house as quickly as possible. Eventually I told them that I felt sick and wanted my mother to come and get me. Doris looked relieved when she realized that my quietness was due to illness. She could relate to that. She rang my mother and explained the situation and within fifteen minutes I was on my way home. As we left the house, I could tell from George’s expression that he knew that he had gone too far this time and there was trouble ahead.

  I went to bed early, because I had to keep up the pretence of feeling sick after I got home. I was sick, sick with worry, not sick in my stomach. I knew that you weren’t supposed to see pink fleshy things at the tops of people’s legs, and certainly not a man’s legs.

  I lay in bed for ages shaking with fear, until my mother came in to kiss me goodnight. She took one look at my face, which can be very expressive when it needs to be, and asked me what was wrong. I told her that something had happened that afternoon and I didn’t know how to tell her. What do you mean? she asked.

  Then I told her, I can’t remember the exact words I used, but I remember saying between sobs: ‘He laid me down on the floor, it was because he laid me down on the floor.’

  I kept repeating those words, because that was what had been different from the countless times that he had handled me as though I was a doll completely at his disposal. Then I began to cry uncontrollably, begging her to believe me. I think she did, although the only thing I craved at that moment was a cuddle, which was not forthcoming. She just stood at the end of the bed staring at me, with a pensive expression on her lopsided face.

  Dad poked his head around the bedroom door to see what all the fuss was about. Mum hustled him outside. I heard her say: ‘George has been touching her.’

  Dad’s response was swift and decisive. Immediately he wanted to confront George with his crime, but my mother said it was too late and besides Doris was pregnant, the shock would be too much for her. They went into their bedroom and shut the door. I listened to their low voices animatedly talking. Soon my mother came back into my bedroom and quizzed me again about what had happened. I answered her questions as truthfully as I could. Then she made me some cocoa and told me to go to sleep. How could I go to sleep, when I sensed that my tiny world was about to change for ever?

  Early the next morning the house became a whirl of family comings and goings. Dad had not gone to work. My brother Ken arrived; he had not gone to work either. Dad and he paid George a visit first thing, before he had a chance to go to work. I do not know what they said, all I know is that Dad and Ken arrived back at the house after a short while with a nervous-looking Doris and George in tow. Junior had been left in the care of the mother-in-law.

  They seated themselves on the three-piece suite in the sitting room. Then my mother came upstairs to fetch me. I began to realize the horror of the situation as she led me downstairs. I felt like a condemned prisoner. When I entered the room all eyes turned to me. It was like being led to slaughter. I was made to stand in the middle of the room and tell everybody what George had done to me for the past two years.

  Under such intolerable pressure, I became completely tongue-tied. All I could hear above the thumping of my heart was my mother nervously repeating: ‘Go on, tell him what you told me. Don’t be scared.’

  I cautiously lifted my eyes and stared directly into his. Seeing his discomfort strengthened my resolve. He looked like a gecko. His prominent eyes, made even larger by the thickness of his glasses, swivelled nervously around the room as if he was searching for a place to hide.

  He was dressed smartly, white shirt and tie, pressed grey suit, highly polished shoes. He looked ready for battle and the picture of respectability, the illusion marred only by the large beads of sweat popping out on his upper lip. Doris sat beside him in her sensible coat and shoes, her right hand clasping his forearm protectively while her left hand balanced on her large pregnancy bump. Her face was expressionless.

  I just wanted to get out of the room. I couldn’t understand why my parents were making me see him again. They already knew what had happened. Why didn’t they sort it out with George? Why did I feel like I was on trial? Then it dawned on me. Perhaps they thought I had made it up? Desperate to show that I hadn’t, I blurted out enough words to explain what George had been doing. When I finished, it was as if the air in the room had been removed. The silence was complete.

  Then Doris filled the vacuum by valiantly releasing a torrent of hot air in her husband’s defence. Her words fell over each other in their haste to fill the yawning chasm that had opened up between the two families.

  ‘She’s making it up. Of course George wouldn’t do such a thing,’ said Doris heatedly. ‘She’s just a dirty little liar. Always wants to be the centre of attention. Always showing off. You’ll have trouble with her, mark my words. You don’t know what you’re getting if a kid’s not your own. Bad blood, that’s what this is all about, bad blood.’

  George told her to calm down. I think everybody in the room was scared that she was going to give birth right then and there. Simultaneously all the adults started shouting at each other. I was forgotten in the melee and began to cry. I kept thinking: ‘Why did you tell, why did you tell? They don’t believe you anyway.’

  Eventually the shouting stopped and George and Doris left. They didn’t leave voluntarily, Dad ordered them out of his house. The abuse was never mentioned again.

  I had to pass his house every day on the way to my new school. Sometimes I saw him backing his car out of the drive. Occasionally, I had to wait while he backed right past me as his wife waved him off. She would slam the front door shut when she spotted me, as if to obliterate a bad memory. If she could have hit me with the same force that she unleashed on the door, then I’m sure that I would be dead. He pretended I was invisible. Soon I changed my route, preferring to walk over a mile out of my way rather than be subjected to this daily torture.

  My parents never spoke to them again. Ken continued his relationship with them, albeit surreptitiously, I later discovered.

  I felt betrayed.

  The troll died in 2007.

  THREE

  ‘WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD’

  Me aged eleven – first day at senior school

  The ’60s were transitional times, both for the world and for me. Many countries were busy making the transition from being run by the British Empire to their own governance; from the children that colonialism had made of them to the fully fledged adulthood that only independence can bring. I, too, was busy making my own transition from child to teenager, moving from the hitherto omnipotence of the kitchen table to the freedom of my bedroom, that independent teenage fiefdom that must be defended at all costs.

  Until my twelfth year, the kitchen table had been the hub of my family life. It was made of dark oak, with two hard-to-handle extending leaves, which
were rarely used due to lack of space in the already cramped kitchen. It had large, swollen legs, like the oedema in the inflated ankles of old ladies. Diagonal wooden crossbars held the whole structure together. Two or three threadbare blankets, of pre-war origin, covered the tabletop, providing insulation from any heat sources. On top of these was a pungent-smelling, brightly patterned oilcloth, which was the tablecloth for weekdays, but on Sundays it was covered by a starched white cotton cloth for the ritualistic weekly roast dinner, which happened at about 2 p.m. or whenever my dad saw fit to return from the pub. The table occupied one side of the small rectangular kitchen. Only three mismatched wooden chairs surrounded it after my four brothers left home. When I was very small, Jock, an understandably grumpy, shaggy brown, crossbred terrier lived in a wooden box under the table until he died of distemper when I was eight. He was never replaced.

  This table was the most versatile item of furniture in the house. On Mondays, the table was stripped bare except for the radio and used to sort out piles of dirty clothes into coloureds and whites. Then Reckett and Coleman’s Robin starch powder was added to a large metal bucket of boiling water, which I stirred with a big wooden stick into a glutinous mess before going to school.

  Some people think that ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’, but this was not good enough for my mother; she considered that starchy stiffness was next to Godliness. All I can say is, I pity those poor angels if she is now working in Heaven’s laundry room! My dad and I suffered sore necks from the amount of starch added to our white shirts, his for work and mine for school. The stiffened petticoats worn under dresses in the ’50s were subjected to the same fate, before the advent of early ’60s’ fashions mercifully consigned them to jumble sales.

  On Tuesday afternoons, the table was converted into a makeshift ironing board by rolling back the oilcloth and covering the blankets with a candy-striped winceyette sheet. My mother started ironing at precisely 2 p.m., when Woman’s Hour began. I watched in awe as she worked her magic on the white starched meringues to make them at least recognisable items of clothing, if barely wearable.

  The table was left idle on a Wednesday, apart from the daily late afternoon chore of peeling and preparing vegetables for tea. On Wednesdays my mother went shopping in the morning and visited friends or relatives in the early afternoon.

  On Thursdays pastry was rolled out on it during the afternoon pie-baking session. Friday afternoons were reserved for mixing ingredients together in large Pyrex bowls to make lots of cakes for the weekend, just in case relatives unexpectedly arrived. Since this rarely happened, most of the cakes from these marathon baking sessions made their way into my dad’s lunchbox for the rest of the week, much to his chagrin because he was not a sweet-toothed man.

  Just before I started school, the table became a makeshift desk, where my mother taught me the alphabet and how to read, while she continued her housewifely chores alongside me. In return, when I was older, I would sit and read library books to her or write thank-you letters for her after school.

  My cooking and cleaning skills were learned from observing her way of doing things for so many years, most of which are now redundant with the advent of labour-saving devices and ready-made meals, but I will always enjoy the taste of freshly prepared food and the smell of polished furniture in my home, in deference to my mother’s way of doing things.

  The table set my mother’s agenda for every day and only illness or a death in the family caused a deviation in this schedule. It was privy to many a secret or family argument. This old wooden workhorse outlived both my parents and is probably alive and well today at the back of a junk shop somewhere in Essex.

  In pride of place on the kitchen table, next to the wooden trays propped against the wall, which conveniently hid the flotsam and jetsam of old biros, bits of paper and buttons that washed up on its far shore, stood the radio.

  In my early years, it was a wooden surround Ecko, with two big dials receiving long and medium waves and VHF. Every weekday, except Wednesday, my mother religiously tuned into two programmes, Listen With Mother at 1.45 p.m., followed by Woman’s Hour at 2 p.m. I would sit at the table with my ear as close to the radio as possible, while she sewed lost buttons onto clothes or darned Dad’s holey old socks. It was a ritual that we both enjoyed. I can still remember the frisson of childish excitement, as I heard the gentle melody of the ‘Berceuse’ from Fauré’s Dolly Suite fade and then those immortal words, spoken in patrician tones by what sounded like a very elegant BBC lady presenter: ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’

  By the time I was twelve, the family radio had changed with the times, from the valve variety to one with transistors. Now, a new, shiny, beige plastic Bush radio with a red rotating dial and its own carrying handle brought the news to our household. My interest in pop music had suddenly flourished when I discovered the Tamla Motown artists and the Beatles. Immediately, I considered the radio my property, re-tuning it to the trendier sounds of Radio Luxembourg, instead of the Light or Home programmes favoured by my parents.

  As I migrated from the companionship of the kitchen table to the seclusion of my bedroom with my new transistor radio in tow, I began a somewhat tortuous and confused journey towards adulthood. Most evenings I could be found sat at my desk doing my homework while listening to the radio, happily multi-tasking.

  After bedtime at 9 p.m., I would huddle under the sheets, fiddling with the radio dial, trying to get Luxembourg’s intermittent signal, but mainly hearing only white noise. I suspect that half the teenage population of Romford was similarly occupied, our future musical tastes honed by a small European Duchy.

  Then I read in the newspaper about the new pirate station Radio Caroline that had recently started broadcasting the songs of the swinging ’60s all day from a ship moored in the English Channel. Until then, and apart from Radio Luxembourg, there had only been a Sunday afternoon chart show on the BBC Light programme and maybe one other on a Saturday dealing with contemporary pop music. In 1965 another ship housing ‘Radio London’ entered the fray. It did the same job as Caroline, only better. Piracy on the high seas was fast becoming a winning formula for disseminating the new counterculture’s pop sounds and simultaneously manipulating the innocent minds of the nation’s youth.

  At school the most popular bands were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Indeed, each pupil had to be a supporter of one or other of these bands. If you liked both then it transgressed some unwritten playground rule. Most of my friends loved the Beatles, particularly the girls who took the prettily insipid, puppy-dog-eyed Paul McCartney to their hearts. I couldn’t see the attraction. As far as I was concerned the four mop tops from Liverpool looked cute in their matching suits and their songs were memorable in the same way that it was impossible to forget the words to nursery rhymes once heard, but for me nothing beat the raw power of the guitar-driven Stones. I adored Jagger’s primal howl, seductive androgyny and energetic performance. He sounded black, but he wasn’t; his facial features looked black, but he wasn’t. Also the very sight of him wriggling his skinny torso suggestively while performing on TV was enough to enrage my mother, which was a prerequisite for me liking anything at the age of twelve. He was my perfect idol.

  Romford Technical High School in the 1960s

  I loved many of the girl singers of the day too, Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw in particular, and even the mysterious French singer Françoise Hardy, who’d just entered the British charts. The only problem was that their images of long, poker-straight, parted-in-the-middle hair and thin, gamine bodies were totally unattainable for me. As I approached my teens my body had acquired womanly curves. Unfortunately in the early ’60s girls with large breasts need not apply in the fashionable stakes, particularly if the twin orbs in question were always struggling to emerge from whatever cotton and elastic contraption held them in place. Just to clarify, I was hardly of Jordanesque proportions, but my blossoming bosom was a huge inconvenience for the style of uniform favoured at
my school. Gymslips were de rigueur for us girls between eleven and thirteen. These old-fashioned garments suit only the flat-chested brigade; they are totally impractical for encasing rapidly expanding womanhood.

  In among the teen angst and unrequited love stories that were the main fodder of the pop charts emerged an intriguing voice. When I heard Bob Dylan singing ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ on a cold spring night underneath my yellow flowered eiderdown, I thought that he had penned the song just for me. His characteristic raw nasal voice, always seemingly in search of a packet of Lockets, roared a clarion call through the ether, imploring me to mount the barricades. Whose barricades didn’t matter. Political ideas didn’t mean too much to me at that age, but I was ready to follow him anywhere. His lyrics succinctly summed up my straitjacketed family life.

  An awareness of another world beyond the sleepy, suburban confines of Romford took shape in my mind. Eager to be more familiar with this new world’s styles, ideas and music, I started avidly watching Ready Steady Go every Friday. This innovative TV youth programme began with the immortal words ‘The weekend starts here’. Unfortunately for me, that promise of an exciting weekend ahead finished with the closing credits. I had but one hour to enter this seductive alternative reality, where a magical audience full of young strutting peacocks dressed in hipster jeans and graphically designed clothes, their Vidal Sassoon precision haircuts elegantly swinging like weighted velvet curtains, bobbed their heads to the music, danced and cheered their new pop idols. I wanted to be one of that hallowed crew, but I was too young. I felt like Alice in Wonderland after she drank the potion that made her shrink – tiny and insignificant.