by Maureen Wood
I stayed well out of the way of all the trouble. I liked peace and quiet, and when I was inside I spent most of my spare time reading. I’d often hide myself away, in the still of the bedroom, engrossed in my latest book, whilst all hell let loose downstairs. Dad himself was a keen reader, too.
‘You can travel the world in a book,’ he used to say. ‘Get away from it all.’
It was just about the only thing he and I had in common. He enjoyed the odd classic, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, which he passed on to me. But mostly he read books on horror and crime. It did not bode well for the future, and later I would look back and shudder at the irony.
Dad would often treat himself to a new paperback, especially if he had time off work, but I was never allowed to buy a book. All my reading material came from school or from the local library. Aside from his love of books, which didn’t really fit with the rest of his character, Dad was a straightforward, no-nonsense sort of bloke. And unless he was dealing with Jock, he was a quiet and taciturn character; Mum did most of the shouting in our house. But the notion of escape, of broadening my horizons, through a novel really appealed to me. And the seclusion, as I read on my own, hour after hour, was bliss. My usual nickname was ‘Mo-Jo’ but Mum gave me the nickname ‘Dozy-Mosey’ too, because I was forever tripping up as I walked around the house with my nose in a book.
I loved having a nickname. Mum rarely showed me any attention and never much affection either. She was not a tactile person, and not given to easy shows of emotion. So her choosing a nickname for me was a small sign that she had noticed me and that I figured, to some degree at least, in her thoughts. It gave me a feeling of belonging and I grasped it with both hands.
Apart from the bust-ups between Dad and Jock, it was Mum who doled out the discipline in the family. She had a fearsome temper, and her punishments, more often than not, were brutal. When we got up in the morning we had to tiptoe around the house, speaking in whispers. Waking Mum was like waking the devil; she would hit the roof if her lie-in was interrupted. One morning I woke her by shouting at one of my sisters. Mum marched downstairs, her eyes blazing with fury, and whacked me across the knee with a poker. Over forty years on, I still have the scar.
Whilst our lives were in some ways chaotic, spent running around outside with droves of other kids, they were strangely regimented, too. We had lists of chores to carry out: hoovering the bedrooms, changing the beds, dusting, polishing, washing and ironing. And Mum was always handy with her fists if our efforts weren’t up to scratch. To me, she was a bit like a dormant World War 2 bomb, lurking upstairs. One false move and she could explode, at any time.
We had a rota taped to the pantry door and all chores had to be carried out straight after school. If we went out to play without finishing them first, we had Mum to answer to.
One day, much to our amusement, Jock simply refused to do his tasks.
‘If you want the bathroom cleaning, do it your fucking self,’ he told my mother.
We watched, transfixed and delighted, as she grabbed him by the throat and rammed him up against the wall. She was only 5 foot 2 tall, plump, with a round face and glasses, but she was more than a match for Jock.
‘You will do as you’re told or I will fucking kill you!’ she seethed, her hand on her hip.
I was scared, but I was used to being scared, so it was no big deal. There was an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty in the house all the time, and I just got used to it. Another time, Mum had told me to change the beds, but I was only eight years old and getting a pillow back into a pillowcase proved much harder than I had anticipated.
‘Do I have to do everything, you dumb bitch?’ she spat.
She cracked me hard against the back of my head before grabbing the pillow from me. I shrugged it off and quickly learned how to do my chores to her standards. But what I really wanted was to learn how to cook. Even as a little girl I enjoyed being in the kitchen; we had a large ceramic sink and a wooden drainer and an old black cooker. To me, it felt like the warmest and friendliest room in the house. Mum was a good cook, too; she enjoyed baking and trying new recipes.
‘Can I help?’ I asked, poking my face round the door of the kitchen.
But Mum flew at me as though I’d done something wrong.
‘Get out of my bloody kitchen!’ she shouted, swatting me with a tea towel. ‘Don’t ever come in here again.’
Again, I sauntered off without giving it much thought. I was used to her. Yet after she had finished cooking she always called us in to wash up and clear away her mess. My sister washed, and I dried. The shared hardship might have brought about a camaraderie, a sense of togetherness, but somehow it drove a wedge between us kids, and our chores were done in silence, under the watchful, waiting eye of our mother.
But if I was wary of my parents, I idolised Jock. He was my big brother and I looked up to him and loved him with all my heart. Of all my siblings, he and I were the closest. To me, he was the tallest, strongest, bravest brother I could have wished for. And I was indulgent of his moods and his grumpiness, too. I knew he reserved the worst of his temper for Dad.
One day I was walking home, glued to my Enid Blyton book as usual, and one of the older boys from my school started to make fun of me.
‘You’re a swot,’ he teased. ‘What a nerd, always stuck in a book.’
And with that he punched me in the face and my nose just exploded. There was blood everywhere. Gasping with pain, I ran home sobbing, blood staining my school uniform. As soon as Jock saw me he demanded an explanation, before grabbing his leather jacket and going out to find the offender.
‘I battered him,’ he told me later, in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘He won’t be bothering you again. Don’t worry, Mo-Jo.’
Jock didn’t make a big fuss about it; he was well-known for fighting and getting into trouble in our neighbourhood and the other kids were terrified of him. It was no big deal for him to be throwing punches. He was a big lad with an even bigger attitude. The next day I spotted the same boy as I walked to school, and he ran off in alarm. He never even looked my way again. I played it cool, but secretly I was beaming and bursting with pride. I felt completely untouchable. My Jock, my protector, had laid down the law.
But whether Jock really did it for me or simply for his own amusement, I would never know. I didn’t give it much thought at that age. I just felt as though I had someone on my side for once, and it felt fantastic. But though I was in awe of Jock, I never wanted to be like him. I marvelled at him, but I did not admire him. I think I sensed, even then, that he had hidden depths and they might well be swirling with filth. But for now he was a typically wayward teenager. He wore a uniform of skinny jeans, a white T-shirt, Doc Marten boots, and spent most of his time in his bedroom, with the Sex Pistols blaring out and Mum hollering up the stairs at him.
‘Turn that crap off!’ she screamed.
It wasn’t until she was hammering on his door, ready for a fist fight, that he complied. Sometimes he took it even further than that, and he would wait until she was battering him before he gave in. One day he came home from the barbers smirking and with a shocking Mohican and, again, Mum flew into a rage.
‘What will people think?’ she screamed.
But Jock didn’t seem to care at all. He was in regular trouble, and he took it all in his stride. Authority – and the threat of authority – never seemed to bother him one bit. I wondered whether really he quite enjoyed all the fuss.
Although I didn’t have many friends at school I had lots of mates on our street. Joanne and I were part of a much larger group and there was often a big gang of us playing manhunt on the field behind the houses, or swimming up at the local pond. One time I fell off a rope swing into the pond, and after that I learned to swim pretty quickly. Now, even though I was just eight years old, I loved splashing around and diving in with the bigger kids.
Our local
lollipop lady, Jane, had a heart of gold, and she would often pack a big picnic for us all on sunny days. One July day, at the start of the 1979 summer holidays, was a real scorcher, so hot the tarmac was bubbling up on the road outside. The street was swarming with wasps and kids; we were the only ones with any energy in the baking heat. There were mums in deckchairs outside their front doors, fanning themselves with rolled-up newspapers. There were dads with hankies on their heads and socks on, knocking back cans and gearing themselves up for a brawl later on.
‘Water fight! Water fight!’ screamed one of the boys.
And that was all it took. Word spread through the kids like an electric shock and suddenly we were all racing down the street to fill old Fairy liquid bottles with water. Our water supply was temperamental in the house, because of the summer drought, so we had to queue to use an outside tap further up the street. Seconds later it was all-out war. We raced up and down the paths, hiding behind fences and bins, squealing in horrified delight when we were sprayed with ice-cold water.
It was the best and the worst of shocks, all at the same time. But as the heat began to fade I found myself soaked to the skin and ready for a hot bath. Our home-made weapons discarded for another day, we all trooped inside, glowing with the excitement of the fight, shivering with the cold.
As I went upstairs I could hear Pink Floyd blasting out of Jock’s bedroom. His door was closed, as always. He was too cool and too angry for water fights. I slipped into the bathroom, closed the door behind me, and stripped down to my undies. To my surprise, the door opened again and there was Jock, standing right behind me.
‘What do you want?’ I said, hugging my arms around myself, suddenly self-conscious.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he leaned towards me, put his hand down my knickers and started to touch me. I was scared and anxious. It didn’t feel right, but I didn’t know what it was. Fear overwhelmed me and, though I tried to shrink back, he just pushed himself further into me.
‘Stop,’ I pleaded, my voice wavering. ‘Please, stop.’
It felt like a lifetime before Jock took his hand away. He looked me in the eye and said: ‘If you breathe a word, we will all go back into care, and it will all be your fault.’
He stomped back to his room without saying anything more and I was left, shivering now with shock, wondering what on earth had just taken place. Suddenly nauseous, I ran to my bedroom, slammed the door, and cried on my bed for hours.
When Mum came in, she tutted impatiently and said, ‘What are you crying for? What’s the matter, for God’s sake? Shut the bloody noise up now.’
I shook my head and said truthfully, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
‘Well, I’ll give you something to cry about if you don’t stop,’ she snapped.
I had no name for what had happened to me. And even if I had, I couldn’t have confided in her. She just wasn’t that sort of mother. I had the responsibility, too, of keeping the rest of my family safe, for hadn’t Jock threatened that we would all go back into care if I told anyone? Instead, I pushed it to the back of my mind, convinced it was a one-off, some sort of aberration in Jock that he would not repeat. And when I saw him the next day he acted completely normally. I could almost imagine it had never happened in the first place.
It was a couple of weeks later that Mum sent us out blackberry picking, so that she could bake a pie. She was a walking contradiction; on the one hand, she would attack us for the slightest transgression, yet she would also bake and cook wonderful meals and insist that we all ate around the table together at 5 p.m. each night. And again, we were left to our own devices, fighting and running wild. Yet there were also things expected of us; we had responsibilities. She was impossible to predict, and that made her all the more tricky to deal with.
On this particular day we were packed off to Black Bank, an area near our house that was famous for plump blackberries. The path took us past the pond, through ferns and grasses to a large banking. To me, as a little girl, it was like a forbidden forest. There was a whole gang of us from the street searching out the best berries. It was like a day out. But as we picked and chatted I suddenly noticed Jock creeping up behind us. And then he grabbed my arm and steered me into the ferns, away from everyone, where it was quiet. None of my friends even looked around, but of course they all knew Jock, so they presumed he just wanted to talk to me. Besides, they knew his reputation, too, and none of them would have dared question him. I could feel his nails digging into my flesh. My heart was in my mouth. I felt my insides churning.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
But my voice was smaller and thinner than I’d hoped. I was no match for him. Once we were away from the others, he pushed me heavily onto the grass, lay down beside me, and pulled up my skirt. I screwed up my eyes and held my breath as he forced my knickers down and thrust a finger roughly inside me.
‘You’re hurting me!’ I squealed. ‘Leave me alone! Please, Jock, stop. Please!’
‘I’m enjoying it too much,’ he grunted.
I tried pushing him off, but he was too strong. His breathing was loud, rasping and uneven. He didn’t even look like Jock. My Jock. In my child’s mind he looked like a monster, a ghoul, a bogeyman, and nothing like my brother at all. On the other side of the brambles, I could hear the rest of the kids laughing and playing. But they might as well have been on the other side of the world, they were so out of reach. For me, it lasted hours. In reality it was a matter of a few minutes. When he was finished, Jock just got up and walked away. With shaking hands, I pulled my knickers up, the long grass itching my legs, as the tears streamed down my face.
I couldn’t face the other children, so I stumbled off in the other direction, my thoughts clouded by the physical agony Jock had inflicted. I felt like I was burning inside. But I eventually detoured back to get some blackberries, because knew I would be in trouble if I went home empty-handed.
To a little girl, a beating from my mother and a sexual assault by my brother were both much the same. I was too young and too innocent to understand the distinction. I knew simply that they brought pain, and I would try to avoid them at all costs. Afterwards I made my way home, but the attack dominated my thoughts. It never occurred to me to tell anyone, though; Mum was not someone I could approach. I knew that from bitter experience.
I had once come home from school crying because another child had hit me. Instead of the sympathy I was kidding myself she might show, Mum had shouted:
‘Get out there and belt them back or I will give you a good hiding. And stop crying, for God’s sake. Your face will stick like that if you’re not careful.’
So I knew it was pointless to ask her for help.
The blackberry pie stuck in my throat like shards of glass as we sat around the table in silence. Jock didn’t even look at me, but then, he never usually did. He kept himself to himself. As time went on, I managed, once again, to shut it out. I still didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have a way out either, so the only option open to me was to block it out entirely. I no longer felt safe with Jock. But he was still my brother, and I still loved him. I couldn’t change that, whether I wanted to or not.
Chapter 2
I have no idea whether my ninth birthday, in October 1979, was a happy one, because now the memory has been completely destroyed in my mind. There was certainly no party, and the day would have been spent pretty much like any other: ticking off a seemingly endless list of chores before playing out with the other kids in the street. But part way through a game of rounders Mum called me inside and gestured at the radio.
‘Hush,’ she ordered. ‘Just listen.’
We sat and waited for a few moments and then the DJ on Radio Stoke said: ‘And now a very Happy Birthday to Maureen Donnelly.’
My face lit up as he began to play ‘Bright Eyes’ by Art Garfunkel.
I was thrilled. Mum was not a demonstrati
ve woman and I knew better than to hug her, but I felt so pleased. More than anything, I felt special. As if I was noticed, loved and wanted. I ran back outside to my friends, bubbling over with my news, that I was so important I had my very own birthday dedication on the radio.
‘Honestly,’ I told them. ‘He said my name. My full name.’
By the evening I was lying on my bed, reading quietly in the now-empty house. The day’s events were still warm in my memory when Jock padded quietly into the room.
‘Happy Birthday,’ he smiled. ‘Have you had a nice day?’
There was a moment of anxiety when he came through the door, followed by confusion. He was smiling and seemed so unthreatening. Had he forgotten the attack, just as I had tried to? Perhaps it was something he hadn’t wanted to do and now he was sorry? Whatever the truth of it, I felt sure it was in the past. It was done with now. Besides, it was two months ago, and that was a lifetime to a nine-year-old. What I realise now, with hindsight, is that Jock had simply been biding his time. Waiting to see if I would tell anyone. Waiting for the house to be empty. Waiting to pounce.
Jock sat on the bed and said: ‘I’ve got your present here. It’s a special birthday present.’
Excited, I let my book fall and said, ‘What is it?’
Without another word, Jock unzipped his trousers and I watched, frozen with horror, as his face clouded over, and once again he no longer looked like my brother. It was as though someone had drawn a dark blind over his real features. The monster was back. He pulled his penis out of his trousers and said: ‘This is the present.’
And then he raped me. Pain, a searing, cruel, unforgiving pain, deluged throughout my entire body. I felt like I had been stabbed. I stared, wide-eyed, at the flowery pink and purple curtains, at the pink bed covers, at the Abba posters above my sister’s bed. I remembered how Mum went mad when I unpicked the pink bedspreads and I imagined myself now, picking at threads, pulling out strands, one after another, faster and faster, whilst my brother raped me. He wore a St Christopher necklace and it swung back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum, as he thrusted back and forth inside me. I fixed on the necklace, trying to blot out everything else except the glint from the medal as it swung. When he had finished, Jock stood up and said: ‘Happy Birthday,’ as he pulled up his jeans.
