Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted. Toni MaguireЧитать онлайн книгу.
as I stood in that playground I was overcome with shyness, so instead of doing what the teacher, who I later found out was called Miss Evans, asked I just looked around the play area with the bewilderment of an isolated only child suddenly faced with a sea of other children for the first time.
In total there were around twenty children, all of them showing different emotions. Some had tears in their eyes, others stood in small groups clutching their satchels nervously, whilst their mothers, looking almost as tearful as their offspring, whispered final comforting and encouraging words before waving goodbye.
But although I saw the tears and the woebegone faces that reflected how I also felt, I was far more aware of how those children looked, and they all looked different from me.
There was not one child dressed as I was. I was very aware of my faded second-hand dress and the cardigan with darns in the elbow – these other children were so clean and shiny they positively gleamed.
Girls’ hair was held in place by pastel-coloured ribbons, pretty crisp cotton blouses were tucked into darker pleated skirts and shiny leather shoes covered white-socked feet. Even the boys, with their hair freshly cut in short styles, white shirts with the shop creases still evident, knotted ties, miniature blazers and knee-length short trousers, looked band-box fresh.
I looked down at my own skinny bare legs tucked into Wellington boots, raised a hand to my ribbon-free hair that my mother had cut and which hung jaggedly to just below my ears, and wanted to go home. I knew even as early as that first day that I was not going to like it there and because I was different that I was never going to make friends.
A bell rang loudly and the teacher showed us how to form something she called a crocodile but was really pairs of children forming a queue. We followed her into an airy classroom where we were seated at scaled-down desks. Miss Evans asked each of us in turn to say our names out loud. She told us that we would do that every morning so that she would know if anyone was missing, and as each name was said she ticked a large book that soon I learnt was called a register.
Surely she could tell that just by counting us, I thought, but said nothing.
Next we were each given coloured crayons and sheets of paper and told to draw whatever we wanted. I scribbled lots of wiggly lines, admiring the colours on my sheet.
Half-way through the morning we were given small bottles of milk and a white waxy straw to drink it through.
At dinnertime another crocodile was formed and we were walked to the canteen. As soon as the last mouthful was swallowed we were sent outside to play. That first day I stood on the edges of the playground watching the other children playing. I wanted just one of them to come up to me and ask me my name and invite me to join them; but no one did.
In the afternoon the teacher read us a story. To me it was just words without meaning about things I did not know about. There were no books in our house, just newspapers and the occasional women’s magazine, so ‘telling a story’ was not a concept I understood. Bored, my gaze kept wandering to the window. I saw some of my classmates’ mothers drifting into the playground and standing in small groups chattering to one another. My eyes focused on the road behind them – I was waiting for the familiar figure of my mother to appear.
The clamour of the bell announcing the end of the school day rang out and as it trailed into silence I saw my mother push her bicycle through the gates and, exactly as I had done that lunchtime, stand apart from the other mothers. They in turn, like their offspring had done to me, paid her no attention.
‘All right, Marianne?’ she said when I walked up to her.
‘Yes,’ I replied, for something told me to say no more.
‘That’s good, then,’ were the only words she spoke before placing me on my seat and peddling away.
She did not ask me any more questions.
Neither did my father.
Maybe they already knew what I was beginning to learn, that children who look different do not make friends.
It had been many years since I had allowed myself to think of the lonely little girl that I had once been. But as she appeared in my mind, I felt tears prickle at the back of my eyes. I saw her scraggy little form standing day after day at the edge of the playground, hoping, but not believing, that she might make a friend.
I remembered her bewilderment at hearing words like ‘holidays’, ‘central heating’, ‘conservatories’, ‘patios’ and ‘indoor bathrooms’, and heard once again shrill mocking laughter ringing out when another child saw her confusion.
I thought of how she had tried to cover up her hurt when as the months rolled by she also heard about birthday parties she was never invited to and presents she could not imagine ever owning: dolls’ houses with tiny replicas of modern furniture in every room, three-wheeled bicycles painted a glossy red and dolls whose eyes opened and shut and that cried like real babies.
The children talked of treats she could only dream of: outings to tea shops where pink meringues, scoops of ice cream and fresh raspberries with cream were consumed, of new dresses being bought by doting grandmothers, of trips to the seaside and the funfair and so many other things that set her apart.
Having no stories of her own that she thought she could share, she kept quiet.
I tried to conjure up more images, but my memory seemed fixed on the picture of that little girl standing alone in the playground. Sighing a little, I pushed myself out of my comfortable seat and went to the cupboard where the family albums that recorded happy events were kept. Pushing them to one side I pulled out an old brown envelope that the years had faded to a burnt-out yellow.
Such a thin package, I thought sadly. Although I had not looked at its contents for over two decades I knew that inside it were the only photographs that recorded my first fifteen years. I took those few grainy black and white snapshots out of the envelope and placed them face up on the table.
There were none of me as a gurgling baby or as a toddler clutching hold of my proud parents’ hands as I took my first steps. Most of them showed me with other people. It was as though the camera, wanting to capture their images alone, had included mine by accident, for I was always standing on the edges. There were a few school-group photographs taken when I was about twelve. Those I pushed to one side, for I wanted to see myself when I was younger.
There were only two. The first was a black and white snapshot taken of my first brother and me when he was a plump baby and I was a scruffy six-year-old. We were sitting side by side on our old settee. It was me he was leaning against but it was my mother’s hand he was grasping. A wide gummy smile was on his face while I, all skinny arms and legs, was gazing blankly into the distance.
That was a time when I had grown to realize that my parents did not love me. Before my brother was born I had not seen my parents bestow tenderness on anyone else, but now when I watched my brother being picked up and looked at with those expressions of care that were never shown to me, I did not doubt it. I had listened to words of endearment being whispered to him and even on one occasion heard my father say ‘My boy’ with such a note of happy satisfaction ringing in his voice that I felt an emptiness that physically hurt.
For seeing that love, that unknowingly I had yearned for, given to another left a cold empty space under my ribs. I thought then it must be me that was unworthy of it, for my brother had been born too short a time to have earned it. At first when he was just a tiny mewing little creature I would stand looking at him marvelling in the perfection of his rounded limbs and creamy skin, and as he grew so did my love for him – however, with that love came another feeling; not jealousy but more an acute loneliness.
‘Look at your little brother,’ my mother would say as he took his first faltering steps. ‘Look at that smile,’ she would say to my father. ‘He’s going to be a heartbreaker all right.’
I’m over