Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted. Toni MaguireЧитать онлайн книгу.
hair, a pale face that was often far from clean, and round blue eyes that already looked at the world with a cautious and slightly untrusting expression.
I did not know then that I was unloved, for without the joy of being cuddled or the comfort of being tucked up in bed and read to, or the security of being made to feel special, I had nothing to compare it to.
I had no word for fear either, so I could not have explained what I felt when goose bumps crept up my arms, the back of my neck prickled and my stomach felt as though a swarm of butterflies were fluttering around inside. But by the time I took my first shaky steps and formed my first words, I knew it was the sound of my father’s raised voice that caused these feelings.
The moment the front door opened and he staggered into the room he would yell at me, ‘Who do you think you’re staring at?’ At first, when I understood the anger but not the words, my mouth would open and release a loud howl that resulted in more shouts from him until my mother crossly removed me from his view. Later I learnt that the moment his presence filled the room I always had to make myself very small and very silent or, preferably, invisible.
The house where I spent my first seven years was a small cottage in a row of six. The front door led straight into our sitting room where narrow stairs led to the two bedrooms. My parents’ was just big enough for a double bed and a chest of drawers while mine, with its bare plaster walls and floors covered with brown cracked lino, was hardly bigger than a cupboard. The only furniture in it was a small bed covered with an assortment of old coats and torn bedding pushed against the wall opposite an uncurtained window.
The farm where my father worked as a labourer owned it and, like many farm workers’ cottages, our occupancy made up part of his wages.
The farmer, being old fashioned and cantankerous, refused to accept the rising cost of living and paid his discontented workers a pittance. ‘They have free housing, don’t they?’ was his defence. Unfortunately he also believed that ‘free housing’ came with no maintenance obligation for the landowner, and during the winter months it was a cold damp place. Neither rolled-up newspaper, placed along the bottom of doors, nor plastic sheeting pinned to rotten-framed windows stopped chilly drafts nipping tiny ears and noses and wrapping cold fingers around bare legs. Shivering, we sought a place by the fire where, with our fronts warm and our backs cold, we would huddle round its inadequate small black grate where damp logs burned.
When the sky darkened and rain sleeted down, making playing outside impossible, I spent my days in the tiny living room which served as kitchen, sitting area and, on the rare occasions when a tin bath made its appearance, bathroom. Furnished by cast-offs given by both sets of grandparents, I remember a dull maroon settee with sagging springs that nearly poked through the threadbare and faded material, a wooden dining table with four rickety and unmatching upright chairs and a scarred sideboard piled high with saucepans and other kitchen utensils. The living room lacked even one feature that could have made it either comfortable or welcoming – it was a dreary, dark room in a dreary, small house.
There were three doors in it: one to the staircase that led to the bedrooms, one to the back yard, where the washing of both clothes and dirty pans was done, and the third, the front door, led, it seemed for my mother, to nowhere. For apart from going to the shops for our food and basic supplies, she appeared to have little life outside of those walls.
Feeding us, which was never an easy task, seemed to take up almost all of my mother’s time. My father, even though his contribution to the housekeeping came second to his visits to the pub, expected a warm meal every evening. Regardless of the time he arrived home, should it not be on the table within minutes, his bellows of rage rent the air and meaty fists rose in fury.
He was a binge drinker, as we have now learnt to call them. My mother never knew whether he would go straight to the pub after work or come home first for supper and then head to the pub to drink until his pockets were empty.
Knowing that on the last days before payday he would look for any remaining housekeeping money, my mother tried to hide small amounts so that she could always ensure that there was at least bread and milk in the house. Within hours of her finding a new hiding place for the few coins she had secreted away, my father’s desire to drink seemed to give him an uncanny power of detection and he always discovered it.
On those days the tension in the room was almost a palpable force. He’d slurp his tea, shovel his food into his mouth while his eyes darted around the room and my mother, knowing what was to follow, hovered nervously nearby. Maybe she prayed that just this time his mood would lighten and he would choose to stay in.
But he seldom did.
Sometimes he would ask for the money with a smile, other times with a grimace and sometimes with threats but, however he presented it, my mother knew it was a demand and not a request.
Her protestations that there was nothing left were always received with an angry glare.
‘Sodding liar, that’s what you are,’ was his normal response. ‘Now give it to me if you know what’s good for you.’
My little body would shake with fear and I would slither quietly from my chair and creep behind the settee. With hands held over my ears and eyes screwed up tightly, I tried to block out the images and sounds of what was happening. I would hear the scrape of his chair being pushed violently back, the sound of his feet in their heavy working boots stamping across the room, the crash of saucepans thrown to the floor and the clatter of sideboard drawers being emptied onto the floor.
Those sounds mixed with my father’s angry shouts of ‘Where are you hiding it, you bitch?’ and my mother’s wasted protests of ‘There’s nothing left’, until the kitchen rang with the sounds of his search and her pleas.
The roars of rage would increase and were followed by the unmistakable thuds of fists connecting with a body. My mother’s sobs, the thunder of heavy feet on the wooden stairs and then finally his triumphant shout would let me know that his search had finally yielded its booty.
‘There, you useless slag, I said you were hiding it from me.’
Once again the lure of the pub had won. It called out to my father, its siren’s call erasing all thoughts of his family’s needs.
When the door slammed, announcing his departure, I would remove my hands from my ears, open my eyes, uncurl myself and hesitantly come out from behind the settee. Each time it happened I felt a lump in my throat when I saw my mother sitting slumped in utter despair.
The red marks of a handprint were on her face, a trickle of blood smeared round the edge of her already swelling mouth, a bruise was beginning to stain her arm and the tears of despair were sliding silently down her face as she surveyed the chaos around her. It would make me want to run to her and offer her comfort. There were times when, without the energy left to push me away, she let me nestle against her knee, but mostly, as soon as I said the word ‘Mum’, she gave me a look of such frustrated anger that I shrank back from her.
‘Mum what, Marianne? Can you not leave me alone for one moment? Now what do you want?’
At that age I did not have the words to tell her that I wanted to feel safe, that I wanted to crawl onto her lap and have her arms around me and be told that everything was going to be all right.
Instead, faced with her rejection, fat tears would spurt from my eyes as I wailed with my answering misery.
Anger usually left her face then, to be replaced sometimes by a mixed expression of fleeting guilt and resigned impatience.
‘Oh, stop your whingeing now! It’s not you he went for, is it? Let’s find something to dry your tears.’ She would fumble in her pocket for the grubby rag that passed for a hanky and hastily dry my tears. ‘You know it’s not your fault, Marianne.’
Those brief moments of rough maternal kindness would temporarily console me but I still believed that somehow it must have been my fault that she was angry. After all, there was no one else there to blame.
When there was not enough money left for even the most basic