floodgates had opened. She rarely stopped. I had been naïve enough to think that the worst thing was being ignored – well, now I was getting plenty of attention and it was horrible. She didn’t taunt me when my Dad was there, and she made it quite clear that I wasn’t to mention it to him either. As soon as he came home from work, she would start making little comments about how difficult I was, how awkward, how unhelpful, what a saint she was for putting up with me – and, instead of being the good, lovely Daddy I was desperate for, he believed every word of it. He’d tell me to be good, to help Helen, to realise how lucky I was and not to make things difficult, but he never once asked me if it was true. I was so little that I couldn’t have made complicated arguments for and against our relative positions, but I knew right from wrong, and I knew when things were unjust.
When Helen’s temper flared, she would scream at me to go to my room and then bark out some more orders. ‘Sit on the bed! Get your legs straight out! Put your arms straight down by your sides!’ I would have to stay like that for as long as she determined was appropriate. It was agony. My back ached; my limbs ached; I wasn’t allowed to cry; I wasn’t allowed to move. I honestly thought that if I even blinked too much, she would know and I would be punished even more. There were a few variations. Some days, there would be new additions: ‘Take off your clothes! Keep your vest and pants on! Face the wall! Don’t look at the wall! Look at the ceiling!’ The punishment was always for nothing; it was always for something she had decreed to be a flouting of the rules, even although they were rules of which I had never even been made aware.
As time went on, more punishments for more unspoken rules emerged. I would be sent into the lobby where the brick recess was still standing unfinished. My Dad and Uncle Alex were allegedly making this space into a little room, but, like most of my Dad’s projects, it never really came to anything beyond theinitial wrecking. It was so tiny and odd-shaped that I doubt he could have done anything to it with the best will in the world, so the rubble remained, the bricks stayed exposed and the stink of damp was there constantly. It became another focus of Helen’s increasing hatred of me. ‘Get in there, bastard child,’ she would snarl. ‘Get in there. Face the wall. Don’t move or I’ll know about it. Then you’ll have it coming. Ugly little bastard.’ I didn’t know what was ‘coming’ but it always seemed that what she implicitly threatened me with would be even worse than what I was enduring. Hours spent in a hole in the wall staring at nothing as I got colder and ached more, and felt the hunger rise through me until I shook, seemed preferable to Helen’s next stage of punishment, whatever it turned out to be.
If the damp recess wasn’t to my stepmother’s liking, and the bedroom had lost its attraction, then the bathroom always came in useful. It was a very long, narrow room with a bath, toilet and sink. There was a pulley above the bath, and I remember having to let it down on its squeaky runners to hang up wet washing. There was a high ceiling and it was always freezing. Helen would decide which of her favourite options would be chosen that day. ‘Stand in the bath,’ she told me the first time I was sent to that room. ‘Take all your things off apart from your vest and knickers and stand there, bastard, just stand there.’ I did as I was told. She pushed her face close up to mine. ‘You’ll stand there until you learn your lesson. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t sing or talk to yourself. Just stand there.’ And I did. Other times, I’d be told to stand by the toilet, but the same routine held. No moving. No sound. No indication that it was anything other than what I deserved.
That was my life. I was five years old. I had a father who saw nothing. I had a stepmother who hated
When Helen’s temper flared, she would scream at me to go to my room and then bark out some more orders. ‘Sit on the bed! Get your legs straight out! Put your arms straight down by your sides!’ I would have to stay like that for as long as she determined was appropriate. It was agony. My back ached; my limbs ached; I wasn’t allowed to cry; I wasn’t allowed to move. I honestly thought that if I even blinked too much, she would know and I would be punished even more. There were a few variations. Some days, there would be new additions: ‘Take off your clothes! Keep your vest and pants on! Face the wall! Don’t look at the wall! Look at the ceiling!’ The punishment was always for nothing; it was always for something she had decreed to be a flouting of the rules, even although they were rules of which I had never even been made aware.
As time went on, more punishments for more unspoken rules emerged. I would be sent into the lobby where the brick recess was still standing unfinished. My Dad and Uncle Alex were allegedly making this space into a little room, but, like most of my Dad’s projects, it never really came to anything beyond theinitial wrecking. It was so tiny and odd-shaped that I doubt he could have done anything to it with the best will in the world, so the rubble remained, the bricks stayed exposed and the stink of damp was there constantly. It became another focus of Helen’s increasing hatred of me. ‘Get in there, bastard child,’ she would snarl. ‘Get in there. Face the wall. Don’t move or I’ll know about it. Then you’ll have it coming. Ugly little bastard.’ I didn’t know what was ‘coming’ but it always seemed that what she implicitly threatened me with would be even worse than what I was enduring. Hours spent in a hole in the wall staring at nothing as I got colder and ached more, and felt the hunger rise through me until I shook, seemed preferable to Helen’s next stage of punishment, whatever it turned out to be.
If the damp recess wasn’t to my stepmother’s liking, and the bedroom had lost its attraction, then the bathroom always came in useful. It was a very long, narrow room with a bath, toilet and sink. There was a pulley above the bath, and I remember having to let it down on its squeaky runners to hang up wet washing. There was a high ceiling and it was always freezing. Helen would decide which of her favourite options would be chosen that day. ‘Stand in the bath,’ she told me the first time I was sent to that room. ‘Take all your things off apart from your vest and knickers and stand there, bastard, just stand there.’ I did as I was told. She pushed her face close up to mine. ‘You’ll stand there until you learn your lesson. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t sing or talk to yourself. Just stand there.’ And I did. Other times, I’d be told to stand by the toilet, but the same routine held. No moving. No sound. No indication that it was anything other than what I deserved.
That was my life. I was five years old. I had a father who saw nothing. I had a stepmother who hated
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