money than most men earn. At home in the evenings, she also did the bookkeeping for other small businesses. I helped her file things to one side as she finished them. I also learned from her. When she typed a business letter, I watched. It helped me with my English schoolwork.
Mum once took a new job at a garage. The garage was nearer to where we lived and she was sick of travelling on the bus—sadly the trams were now gone. She could now walk home. After a couple of years passed, she started seeing the garage owner, Paddy. She was madly in love with him. After going out together for a year or more, Mum and Paddy decided they wanted to live together so he moved in with us. I was told he was my ‘new daddy’. I never liked him from day one; I did not like his attitude or his table manners. He slobbered when he ate.
One evening I was home a bit late. I had been at my friend’s house just down the road for a play. We got carried away with our game as children do. When I arrived home, maybe half an hour late, he was waiting for me with his belt off. I knew I was in for it. He grabbed me and pulled me over his knee as I struggled and kicked my legs. Then he really embarrassed me as he attempted to pull down my knickers and belted me across my bottom. It was very painful and left me with nasty red welts. After that, he belted me on several more occasions, each time for an even more trivial reason. I think he enjoyed it and I hated him even more each time it happened.
As we only had one bedroom, I slept in Mum’s bed. This didn’t change when Paddy came to live with us. I slept in the middle so I would not get disturbed. My baby brother John slept in his cot in the same room. He looked very peaceful as he slept, all tucked in safe and secure. I hated sleeping with them, especially on a Sunday morning when Mum and Paddy didn’t go to work. Mum would always get up first and go downstairs to the kitchen before the rest of us woke up. She did this so not everyone was in the kitchen all at once. She would cook a full breakfast on Sunday as a treat. As soon as she left the room, he sexually abused me. I hated it. When Mum came back, he would act as if nothing had happened. I was too young and innocent to understand and just felt so confused. I knew in a way it was wrong but I dared not tell. How could I explain it? I felt scared if they didn’t believe me I would be in more trouble and everyone would know and look at me disapprovingly. Our sleeping arrangements were far from proper and Paddy took advantage of the situation.
I was always frightened of him. Paddy was a horrid, large man with a loud voice and he spit and slobbered when he spoke. My memories of him are ugly. I hated him and yet I felt guilty for my hatred. This was the man that my mother loved and trusted. Perhaps I was really the bad one. In my innocence, I judged myself, unaware that I was actually a victim of this awful man. I started wetting the bed and suffering a lot of bladder and stomach problems, as well as becoming very underweight for my age. The school doctor was worried and suggested to Mum that I should see our local doctor. After seeing several doctors and a specialist, I was finally admitted to hospital under observation. I stayed there for ten months. The doctors considered I might have tuberculosis of the bowel but never made a definite diagnosis. As I look back now, I believe my illness was caused by the undue stress I was under while my mother’s boyfriend, ‘the pig’, was living with us for almost a year and a half.
I loved it in the hospital because I was away from Paddy and I made many friends with the other kids in my ward. We had fun playing board games and colouring pictures. There was a teacher who came in to the hospital to keep us up with our school work ready for when we returned to school.
I was finally discharged from the hospital to go home, but to my surprise and disappointment, not to my grandparents’ home. It was a bit of a shock. Without mentioning it to me, my mother had moved to a new house, without Paddy. I tried not to look too excited. Secretly, I wanted to celebrate. I could hardly contain my happiness at that moment of such intense relief. Mum had been given priority to be allocated a council house. Normally this would take ten years or more, but due to my health problems and the fact that she was pregnant—another event I knew nothing about—and there would be no room at the Howard Road house for all of us.
My mother now had three children and a new home for us all. This of course meant a new school for me, but I had to change schools either way as I was of senior age. My sister had been born whilst I was in hospital. I got to meet her when I returned home. She was ten months old. Her name was Barbara and she was a chubby little thing. Paddy, my sister’s father, was a womaniser so I assume he found someone else. In a positive light, at least we got a house out of it—one I didn’t have to share with him.
I missed living with Grandma and Grandad. Living with them had provided me with much needed stability and routine. Grandma was of the generation where women never worked outside the home and men were the providers, unlike my mother’s generation. I was lucky to have those few years with my grandmother. Every day, whilst living in the new house with Mum and my siblings, I wished I could return to my grandparents’ home. But I knew it was not possible; this was my new life in the council house.
Chapter 5
I was now twelve and my brother John was six. Barbara was two years old and went to the nursery school attached to John’s primary school. My school was in the opposite direction. Our new house was on a council estate and the majority of people living there were poor, including us. We had experienced the middle-class lifestyle and found it difficult to adjust. Our house had three bedrooms and one bathroom. In order to have a warm bath, the brick copper in the kitchen had to be lit and whoever was having a bath had to pump the water up to the bathtub. I have no fond memories of the place. It was very unappealing. In fact, I thought it was a dump compared to Grandma and Grandad’s.
To make things worse, I now had to do chores. After school, I had to light the fire which my mother had already laid the night before. I would then wash and dry any breakfast pots. I then peeled potatoes for dinner and put them in the saucepan ready for when Mum got home from work. Saturday mornings when Mum went into work I had clean the entire house. This task included cleaning and polishing all the floors. I had to get on my hands and knees to clean the kitchen floor. My brother never did anything to help. We fought about it all the time. It was very difficult adjusting from one lifestyle to another.
The girls’ school down the road was not as nice as I thought it would be. I felt out of place. Maybe it was the social class distinction as the other girls and their families seemed a lot poorer than us. The majority of them had nits and appeared scruffy compared to my pleated skirts and hand-knitted jumpers and cardigans. They must have thought I was a bit of a snob. Maybe if we’d worn a school uniform, there would have been less distinction between the haves and have nots. But a couple of years on the school officials made it compulsory for most senior schools to have uniform also gym uniform for sports and PT.
The lifestyle change was especially difficult for me. Before the move, I believed everyone lived like Grandma and Grandad, with lovely home-cooked meals and pudding, eating at nicely laid tables. This was what I had always known. Mum didn’t bother with setting the table nicely with serviettes and condiments. She just never had time. Once she arrived home from work, the table was just laid basically with knives and forks salt and pepper that were it. Breakfast in winter was porridge with milk and treacle. It was delicious. The warmer months called for cornflakes, sugar and milk. Weekends were different. Mum did lay a nice table whenever we had visitors, usually on weekends. It took a while but eventually I came to terms with the change. I tried to look forward to the future realising I could not change things beyond my control.
I eventually made friends with Hazel, a girl who lived nearby and was in my class at school. We became very close friends and confided in each other right through until the end of our school years. Gertrude, another friend of mine, also lived down the road. Whenever Hazel was with her boyfriend, Gertrude and I spent time together. She didn’t seem to have many friends. Gertrude and her family just did not seem to belong in our council estate. Unlike most
