style="font-size:15px;"> Outwardly they were the perfect family, but in reality, the marriage was a sham.
Albert spent all the time with his old mates from the RoyalNavy, while Mum looked forward to, and enjoyed the banter and sense of humour of the ‘Paddies’, a gang of Irish roadmen who drank at the pub till all hours. They were a scruffy bunch in their work clothes during the week, but on the weekends they would put on their suits, shirts and tie’s and the smell of tar was replaced by the smell of Brylcreem and Imperial Leather. Albert was content to play happy families believing Phillip was his son, that is, until I came along.
I was born on a wet windy Wednesday morning at Gloucester Royal Hospital in October 1955.
Mum would tell anyone who would listen, ‘Caroline was such a beautiful baby with her mop of jet black hair and her big rosy cheeks. She had the most beautiful green eyes, framed by long black curly eyelashes. She was just so beautiful. When I took her back to the maternity ward that morning all the other mums and nurses couldn’t believe she was a newborn. She looked three months old she was so bonny.’
I used to cringe when mum bragged about me, her beautiful daughter. She made me sound like Snow White.
I didn’t look anything like Mum or Albert but I did bear an uncanny resemblance to one of the Irish roadmen, Michael Mahoney.
Albert already suspected Mum was having an affair and seeing me just confirmed it for him. That in turn put doubt in his mind about Phillip being his son. The farce of a marriage was over and Mum took eighteen month old Phillip and me, a babe in arms, and left Albert.
We moved in to Quedgely Court, a big mansion-type house on the south side of Gloucester that had been converted into bedsits, and lived there for a couple of years. I remember it well, even though I was just a toddler at the time. We lived there until Mum got behind with the rent and then we had to leave.
When I was three years old, Mum took a job as a housekeeper to a farmer and his two sons on a farm in Painswick. Sadly the farmer had lost his wife and needed Mum to help out with the day-to-day housekeeping chores.
I loved living on the farm, chasing the ducks, milking the goats, plucking chickens and riding my pedal car down the long, steep drive. I missed my dad coming round to tuck me in to bed as he did at Quedgely Court, but he still took us out on the weekends for a ride around the country lanes – Mum and Dad on the motorbike, Phillip and me in the sidecar. Ever since then, I have always had a fascination for motorbikes and the men that ride them. Maybe through them, in a strange way, I feel I’m with my dad again.
I don’t know why, but we left the farm and ended up staying with Michael, my dad, in his flat in Matson on the outskirts of Gloucester. He usually shared the flat with his workmates, but at the time they had just returned to Ireland for a couple of months, so there was room for us.
I liked being with my dad; he was a kind and religious man, a devout Catholic. He had crucifixes hanging on the wall and a beautiful painting of Mary and the baby Jesus. I always felt that Mary’s eyes were staring at me, watching me, especially after Dad told me he would know if I had been a naughty girl because Mary would tell him!
Of course, I tried to be good, but it wasn’t long before I got into trouble. I stole a pile of shillings off the kitchen shelf and attempted to spend them at the grocery van that called at the council estate. The ‘Van man’, as I knew him, dobbed me in it, and it was after this that Dad gave me my first and last scolding. Even though he didn’t smack me, his disappointment in me hurt me more than any of the beatings I was to suffer later on in my life.
Soon afterwards, we had to leave the flat and moved in with friends of Mum and Dad’s, Jim and Joan Brady. The Brady family lived in a three-bedroom flat on the same estate; they had five children of their own at the time, and the stay was only meant to be short-term – a stop-gap. Mum was desperate to find us somewhere to live. She had told friends that she would not give up her children; she would never allow us to go into a children’s home – never!
In the spring of 1960, my mum met Alfred William Harris, a coalminer from Cinderford, a small town in the Forest of Dean, through mutual friends. Within six weeks of meeting him, Mum married Alfred (Alf), the man who was to become my stepfather. We were homeless and Alf was recently widowed, so it was more a marriage of convenience than a marriage of love, though I’m sure they grew to love each other over the years.
Four older stepchildren – Ray, Josey, Keith and Chris – were now part of my family. Then there was me – by now five years old – and Phillip. But we weren’t to be the last of the children by far! My first sister, Suzanne (later called Sue), was soon born and eighteen months later twins Angela and Adrian arrived. Shortly after that, Mum lost a set of twins in an ectopic pregnancy, but became pregnant again straight away and successfully gave birth to two more twins, Richard and Robert.
While Mum was heavily pregnant with the twin boys, Josephine, who was by this time seventeen, got married to her fiancé John. They decided to go on a boating honeymoon and invited Ray and his fiancée Betty as well as our cousin Rose and her new husband John. (Strange coincidence but our Rose’s maiden name was West and John’s nickname was Fred, they were known as Fred and Rose West but that’s where the familiarity ends.) One night after a few beers, Ray went up on deck alone and never returned, his body was washed up three days later, he was just nineteen.
In the short time Ray had lived with us, he had made my life a living hell. He would call me ‘the spoilt brat’ – and this when I was only nine years old! He caused plenty of arguments between my mum and Alf, and he seemed to enjoy hurting me, both physically and mentally. When our parents were out, he would make me sit still on a chair and, if I moved or spoke, he would hit me around the face. Even when I had a bad nosebleed, which I was prone to, he would hit me for making a mess, and call me a ‘dirty bitch’. He knew I had a weak stomach, so he would tell me he had spat in my porridge or put bogeys in it; he’d do anything to upset me and was always spoiling for any reason to take it out on me. When I complained, I’d get a telling-off or a smack for making a fuss.
The worst thing Ray did was to tell me over the Sunday roast that I was eating my pet rabbit Snowy, which had, I thought, escaped from his hutch the day before. As it happens, it was true. I was so upset that I cried and ranted at Alf for being a murderer and swore that I would never eat rabbit again. After that, Alf started hitting me about and picking on me. There was one grim consolation though: Ray had left for good, he was dead and he wasn’t coming back.
I always made matters worse by telling Alf, ‘You’re not my dad. My dad will come and take me away to live with him, and I don’t have to do as you tell me!’ Well, my high hopes of a reunion with my real father were soon dashed: Alf stopped my father, Michael, from seeing me. I was six years old at the time and believed that they had a falling-out over money. Years later, I was to find out the truth.
We were a big family on a low income and money was tight. An accident at work had put a premature end to Alf’s career. (Ironically, a year or so later the coalmine where Alf had his accident was shut down.) With so many of us in the house, personal space was unheard of – both in the flat we first moved into and, eventually, in the three-bedroom council house that we moved to when I was eleven years old. The only room in the house that you had to yourself was the bathroom, which had a lock on the door. Thank God we had a downstairs toilet too.
No longer the baby of the family, I gradually started to feel rejected. I would play up to get my busy mother’s attention. I longed for the feeling of being loved and protected by my older siblings and loved and looked up to by my younger siblings, yet I always felt like an outcast. I was desperate for love and affection and, being the middle child in a family of ten children, I had to fight
