By now I was clued-up, of course. I’d read magazine articles and I knew it was called incest, and I knew that it happened to other people too. This was the most wonderful relief, you can imagine, as if doors inside me had opened to let in the fresh air. But it was also disturbing, because the people were described as ‘cases’; they were separated off from the human race. Even more worrying, they’d all gone to court to tell the grisly details. I read those details, you bet, with an echoing sense of belonging. But what happened if someone found me out? In the photos their faces were blocked out, like criminals.
Things with my Dad had changed. I wasn’t so frightened of him now, you’ve probably seen that. I knew he couldn’t hurt me any more than he’d already done, it wasn’t possible, and I knew that he wouldn’t tell. But he was never sure about me, so I grew more powerful. There was this uneasy conspiracy between us, though we never put it into words. I’d realized by now that he was stupid, and pitiful – oh, I’d come to see so many things about him – but I was in too deep to stop it.
In too deep. Can you understand what I mean? That’s the only way I can describe it. Entangled sounds lightweight, as simple as string. Snip, snip and you’re out.
I was bound to him, I was in there with him, body and soul. I told myself that he meant nothing to me, that he was crude and inadequate, that he’d not treated me as a father should. But deep down I knew we were still bound together. We’d opened up our raw insides, the place nobody else would ever see, and what had happened would affect us until the day we died. Remember, he’d never had to force me to do anything, ever.
The sexual side was different, now. Mum had chronic stomach trouble; she knew when the pains were coming on, and how to lie hunched until they passed. It had been like that, for me; a series of episodes that I learned to expect, from the gathering signs, and to bear until they were over. I bore them because I loved Dad and wanted him to love me. But that leather man changed this. I learned soon enough that he’d been no great lover, compared to some other people, but his body had given me pleasure. Men could do that. Dad must have done that, to Mum. I felt this wonder about them, and the dark core of their marriage: the closed place I should be forbidden to touch. He said she’d never been interested, but I suspected he was lying, to make me sorry for him. Perhaps he’d forgotten; he had no powers of memory, he just went sentimental about chosen moments; most of the time he just lived in the present, like one of his animals.
I didn’t let Dad give me pleasure; I didn’t give him that power. I had some instinct of self-preservation, you see. I had to keep something separate and intact. Oh yes, I wasn’t that stupid.
I had to get away. That’s why I left school, though they told me I was fairly bright and might get an A-level if I stayed, like Jonathan stayed, into the Sixth Form. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted to get work for myself, instead of dawdling at home, smelling the pigs when the wind blew from the west. I wanted a place of my own, oh so badly; a place where I’d never have to feel guilty . . . Where I’d feel my right age. I’d sit and watch the planes slicing up into the sky, the molten clouds opening for them just like the clouds in my Bible book. I suppose I felt like my Mum, pausing in the drive; but I didn’t dare compare my feelings with hers; I shut my mind to that.
I was younger than Mum; I could do it if I tried. We’d had another offer for the land. Remember how anxious I’d been, years ago? This time I urged Dad to sell, telling him about all the possibilities that money would bring. I wanted my childhood home to be bulldozed into the mud. But he wouldn’t budge; he was that obstinate.
All he did was to sell the car park field. They brought in the piledrivers. A crane rose above the pigs’ field; it bent down, as if inspecting us with a weary, superior look, before it swung away. It carried a huge slab of concrete. One day, I thought, it’ll swing right round and drop a slab on us. Instead, over the hedge I saw the scaffolding climb up into the sky. He must have got a lot of money for that land, but not nearly enough. Dad was the original soft touch; he was a child when it came to business and I realize now that they cheated him. They got him drunk, you see, and he signed it away when under the influence. Mum didn’t know that. Despite her complaints she was an innocent, too, when it came to that sort of money.
He bought us presents: a bike for Teddy, carte blanche up the West End stores for Mum and me. He bought us a new telly and a music centre with dials like a mission control; none of us knew how to work it. He abandoned his old lorry, which joined the other vehicles behind our yard, and bought a new one. He talked for hours about his plans. He’d set up in the big-time haulage business; he’d clear the junk out the back; he’d build greenhouses and grow orchids for VIPs.
But the money melted away. He’d run up huge debts at the taxi rank, I discovered later, and he spent more time there now, losing in greater style. He was a useless poker player, being so emotional.
Then he had a visit from a couple of smoothies who said they ran an investment company. They persuaded him to part with a lot more cash. They were setting up a leisure centre in Swanage: Space Invaders, TV games, all on the rental system; that was the new thing in 1976. It was a high-risk business, they said, and only people of a special calibre had been approached. Dad fell for that one. My heart sank when he repeated this conversation, in an important voice, shortly after he sobered up. He didn’t dare tell Mum.
The project fell through, of course; that’s what they told him.
He lost £5,000. By the time the building was completed in our field – it was a big car showroom – we were near enough back where we’d started. It was autumn again now, and I’d found a job. Each morning I walked down the drive like my Mum. Ahead, the first planes were taking off. Down one side stood the showroom, all glass and yellow brick, with the trees rising behind. Some mornings were dirty-dark; on others the mist rose through the trees and the glass glinted in the early light. On the other side stood the garage whose toilets had meant so much to me. It was 24-Hours open now, its Mobil sign glaring throughout the night, and they’d expanded the forecourt to display used vehicles. There were usually four or five, and they each wore a placard on their roofs saying ‘£2,999 and I’m Yours’. I was saving up for driving lessons. Waiting at the bus stop, I’d look at my getaway cars. One day there was a Mini that cost ‘£499 and I’m Yours’. I had to meet its eye for four mornings. But the next week it had gone.
Coming back from work, looking out of the bus, I’d see the tall, skeleton poplar trees around the factories, and the sky streaked red behind them. In the hotels the bedroom lights would be switched on and the curtains closed. Shadows moved in there. Soon they’d be making their getaway; soon they’d be closing their curtains on the other side of the world.
I spent as little time as I could at home, and then I stayed indoors. Mum was for ever complaining about the mud; you should have seen it. Out the back it had always been muddy, except in summer, when the weeds grew tall and cotton wool blew from the willow herb. The caravan was only made of plywood and its panels had warped now. More than ever, our back view looked spoilt, and temporary, and submerged.
Out the front, though, we’d once had a patch of grass. Trouble was, the veranda roof had collapsed, breaking the panes, and Dad had hauled a new load of bricks and planks right across the lawn. He never did rebuild the veranda – like everything else he started it, and fiddled around, on and off, for years, but he never finished. So the front of our bungalow looked like a building site, too. He’d covered the planks with plastic, but as time passed the plastic got torn, through natural causes aided by Teddy’s penknife, and it flapped in the wind like wings.
I remained indoors, in my room. I was confident enough by now to know the door would stay closed. I’d told Dad I didn’t want him in there and nowadays he meekly agreed with what I said. The décor hadn’t changed much. I hadn’t painted my room because I’d set my sights on leaving it. The only thing I’d done was buy a blind for the window, which I could pull right dow
n so no gap showed.
I’d given Teddy most of my unsuspecting toys. Under his ownership they hadn’t lasted long; if they were hard he took them to pieces and if they were soft he disembowelled them. I just kept Kanga. Both her eyes were gone now; a grey sack slumped on my pillow, she mourned blindly her lost son. I’d pinned up some film posters; Sandra’s brother worked for Rank and he’d given them to me. They covered the damp patches. My wardrobe was nowadays crammed with clothes. Its sliding door was stuck and my crimson dress poked through the slit like a tongue.
If you’re wondering what I did, all those hours alone, I’ll tell you. I inspected my face and I played my Let’s Speak French cassettes. I didn’t need to keep the tapes low, because the telly was so loud. Just once there was a bout of shooting, then a hush. Everyone must be dead. I was just replying to my tape,
‘Oui, je suis étrangère.’
My words were clear as clear. But nobody asked me, later, who I was talking to, not even Teddy. I don’t think they took in anything while the TV was on.
I’d passed my O-level French, quite well actually. You needed a foreign language to be an air hostess; the British Airways form said, ‘One foreign language would be a great advantage’, and I knew the competition was fierce. I’d set my heart on that job, though I had to wait until I was eighteen. So I worked my way through the course and I was up to Cassette Six now. I stored the tapes in the chest of drawers, under my woollies.
It wasn’t just my face I inspected; it was all over. I shut the door and tilted the mirror this way and that, each time jumping on to the bed to inspect the next portion. You can see why I needed the blind. That winter I was slimming in earnest. I had a weight chart which I kept hidden amongst my underwear. I had to be slimmer if I was going to get anywhere in life.
All day I worked with food, which you’d think would make it harder. But it didn’t. By the time I got home the smell of cooking nauseated me and it was easy not to eat anything, even though I often fried the tea for the rest of them. My thighs stayed plump, I’ve always hated my thighs, but by the spring I had got my waist quite small. My heavy breasts still embarrassed me, even though the leather man had seemed to like them. So had the man at the Holiday Inn. Have them, I’d thought, keeping my head turned away. You’d call my figure ripe and old-fashioned, I suppose, like those Edwardian ladies you see undressed on postcards.
I lost weight in my face, which was the best thing. Mum actually said I looked peaky. My face was no longer a pink pudding. It stayed pink, but its shape showed now. My features weren’t remarkable, but they looked neat enough. I had to tie back my hair for work, but in the evening, with my fair hair brushed around my face and my make-up on – then I actually looked pretty. This sounds egoistical, but you must realize that my looks were all I had. Some people better themselves through their brains, or their high-powered connections. Some people, like Gwen, wanted to be vets. I wanted to get out.
The only person I let into my room was Teddy. I haven’t really told you how much Teddy meant to me. The simplest things are always the hardest to explain. I loved him. It frightened me, how much I loved him; it was the only pure emotion I had. He was the reason I could bear to stay at home.
He was a real toughie by now, with his crew-cut bullet head. Like me, he wanted to be off. At six years old he was roaming miles. You couldn’t do anything with him. That lovely, clear face would seem to be listening but then, the moment you turned your head, he’d be off again. He told such tales, the little liar, that you could never find out where he’d been. Sometimes he came back covered in mud, or tar. He talked about the gypsies under the flyover. Once he came back with a roll of photographic paper, so he must’ve been up at Kodak. I hoped he hadn’t nicked it, but it was no good asking. I think he went round the back of factories and looked appealing. People would take him in and give him their sandwiches.
When he came home hours later, exhausted but still swaggering, it was to my room that he swayed. He’d drop asleep on my lap, just like that, as if a light had been switched off in his skull. He looked so beautiful, sucking his fingers, his face streaked and his nostrils bubbling. He did, honestly.
One day in spring, though, something terrible happened. I’d just got home from work. Teddy’s school bus dropped him off earlier. With the lighter evenings he was often off somewhere by the time I arrived back. Dad was over at the garden centre, doing a labouring job, so I presumed Teddy had wandered away in that direction.
I went into my room. As I said, Teddy liked going in there, and I saw the usual evidence – the armless torso of his Action Man, propped against the chair leg, with his guns lined up in front of him. Teddy had long ago lost the uniform so the doll sat nude behind his weapons. I was going out later that evening, so I started to pull off my shoes. It was then I glanced at the Action Man again, and saw what he sat on.
It was my pills – my foil panel of pills . . . You know, birth control pills. I kept them in my jewellery box. It was next month’s supply.
I snatched up the doll. The panel lay there. Its three rows of blisters were all popped.
‘Teddy!’ I screamed, and rushed out into the yard. ‘Teddy!’
Micky, our dog, started barking. Otherwise, silence.
‘Teddy!’
Twenty-one pills, he’d eaten. I ran round behind the garage to look at the depot, jumping up to see over the hedge. Teddy sometimes went there. The doors were shut and the cars gone. The reception window was dark. It closed early on a Friday.
I was just going to search the outbuildings when I remembered his bike, so I rushed into the garage to look. It was gone.
That ruled out the market garden. Dad was working far off, in the middle of the field, building a tractor shed. Teddy wouldn’t have bumped across that ploughed earth on his bike. He must have gone off along the road.
I ran down to the petrol station. The attendant hadn’t seen Teddy so he must have gone the other way. I ran along the verge. The lorries roared past; someone wolf-whistled. How long before he died?
My footsteps thudded. Oh God, what had I done? There was nobody selling flowers today, not even the boy who’d replaced my friend. I stopped outside the car showroom. Round the side, by Parts and Accessories, men in orange boiler-suits were horsing around, punching each other. It was knocking-off time, and Friday.
The space was so wide, between me and them. At last I reached them.
‘Have you seen my brother?’ I gasped.
They paused. ‘The little boy?’
‘On his bike.’
They shook their heads. ‘We’ve only just come out. Ask Len. In front.’
I ran back, past the miles of plate glass. Cars on plinths stood in there. I pushed through the front door and asked the man in the showroom. He hadn’t seen him, but he’d been busy on the phone.
I ran on down the road, stumbling over the grass. Tears were streaming down my face, because of my wickedness. It took an age to reach the Flexed Products factory. Cars were reversing, and queuing up to get on to the road. I ran past. They were leaving the Kodak factory too. There was no bike; he wouldn’t be there now, with the factories closing. I ran on.
Ahead, parked on the verge, stood the snacks caravan.
‘What’s up?’ The man leaned out of the window.
‘Have you seen a little boy on a bike?’
He pursed his lips, considering, screwing tight a ketchup bottle.
‘In a blue anorak?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Seen you with him before,’ he said. ‘Your son, right?’
‘My brother. Have you seen him?’
He jerked his thumb. ‘That way. Going like the clappers.’
I ran on. My legs were dragging now, heavy as concrete. My darling boy, my darling Teddy . . .
I reached the hotel. It seemed to take an hour, my feet dragging in their slippers, to get past the car park. I kept my eyes on the road. Where would he collapse? Would his dear body swell up? My head roared . . . I
could hardly breathe. Ahead of me, in the sunlight, I saw the roundabout and the parade of shops.
An AA caravan was parked on the verge. It had been there for years; there were flower beds around it, planted with tulips. Across the road, I saw Teddy’s bike lying on the grass.
Cars hooted as I ran. Brakes screeched. I was over the grass now, and leaping up the steps.
A man sat at a desk, with Teddy beside him.
‘Teddy!’ I shouted. ‘Did you eat them?’
Teddy looked up calmly. He was cutting up a brochure with scissors.
‘I’m a member,’ he said. ‘He said I’m a member now.’
‘Have you eaten them?’ I shouted.
‘No. Cross my heart.’ He rolled his eyes.
‘Er, my fault miss.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘He’s not telling the truth.’
‘Isn’t he?’ I swung round.
‘Now, little man. You tell her. Go on, or I’ll take away your membership.’ He winked at me.
‘Did you?’ I asked.
‘Only three.’ Teddy pointed the scissors. ‘He gave ’em me.’
‘He what?’ My head span.
‘Just three,’ said the man. ‘No harm done, I hope.’
Teddy wiped his nose. ‘S’not my fault.’
‘What?’
‘You said I wasn’t to have sweeties from men I don’t met before.’
‘Sweeties?’
‘But he’s my friend.’