They Stole My Innocence Read online

  ‘So, she continued, ‘if they didn’t want to mix with us, we didn’t want to mix with them. We made a part of St Helier ours by turning small pubs into Irish ones. The French took over another area – it was called French Lane. It was to those places that the farm workers went on payday. Not just Irish, but the French and, later, the Portuguese as well. A right babble of different tongues, it was, in there. The locals gave those places a wide berth, I can tell you. Us girls thought we were so sophisticated, sitting in the bars with our shandy in one hand and a French Gauloise in the other.’

  ‘Was that where you had your first drink?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, darlin’, it was,’ she replied. ‘The first, but not the last, more’s the pity.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  2008

  The first time the police invited me to help with their enquiries, I was not asked to come to the Jersey police station, but to some premises they used at Broadcasting House. They said that, for an informal meeting such as ours, ‘It’ll be more relaxing.’

  On my arrival I was led into what seemed, with its couch, armchairs and coffee-table, a small, cosy sitting room. That was until I saw the tape recorder.

  Two people were going to interview me, a man and a woman, who sat in the armchairs while I took my place on the settee. I remember it being uncomfortable, lower than the chairs, with a sloping seat that made it difficult to sit upright. Thick mugs of tea appeared and, wanting to delay the questions as long as possible, I stirred in the sugar slowly, then sipped it.

  With some relief I noticed an ashtray on the table and, without asking, lit up. I sucked hard at my cigarette, letting its acrid tang soothe my frayed nerves, blew out a cloud of smoke and steeled myself for the first question.

  I heard the click of the tape recorder being switched on, then I was asked by the woman police officer, whether I was ready. I glanced towards her, but not able to meet her eyes, lowered my gaze. A hot flush of embarrassment suffused my face as I saw what my nervousness had made me miss; the non-smoking sign.

  “Oh God,” I said, my fingers trembling as I ground the cigarette out on the top of my packet. “I’m sorry, so very sorry, I didn’t notice,” and with every stuttered word, my little spurt of nicotine-induced confidence evaporated. She made no comment to ease my discomfort. She simply asked again if I was ready.

  They wanted to know about Colin Tilbrook and those rich businessmen who had visited the home, I thought.

  The silence, while I waited for the first question, was loud in my ears. I could hear my heart beating, feel the moisture on my hands, and suddenly the room was unbearably hot. I wished I had asked for water. I would have been able to press a cold glass to my cheek, which felt aflame.

  The first question came – not from the woman, as I had expected, but from the man.

  ‘Tell us about the Jordans, Madeleine,’ he said.

  The Jordans had arrived at the home during Tilbrook’s reign. That name conjured up the sound of screams, the half-lives of damaged children, broken bones no bigger than a bird’s, and the helpless sobbing of those who knew nobody cared.

  But I still didn’t understand, at least not then, why it was them they were asking about. The Jordans had arrived in my life much later than the people I’d thought they wanted to expose. And, bad as they were, surely they were not the most important of those who had inflicted so much pain and suffering.

  ‘We want to see if there’s enough evidence against them to bring them in for questioning,’ the woman said. Perhaps she’d seen my confusion on my face.

  ‘What – just them?’ I asked, in disbelief. But I didn’t need to wait for the answer. I felt a burning anger in my stomach. It was not those two I had come to be questioned about. If we had been listened to, if any action had been taken, I would never have met them. I’d said as much before I could stop myself.

  ‘Madeleine, you were placed in the crèche for your own safety.’

  This time it was the woman speaking. In my head, I heard the words, ‘Your mother was an unfit one; a woman who loved the bottle more than you.’ And, believing that was what she was thinking, I glared at her.

  That was when I realised that neither she nor the man in his dark blue suit and sparkling white shirt would be satisfied until they had cracked open the shell that, over the years, I had managed to build and dug out every last one of my secrets. Then they, not I, would decide what to do with them.

  The man’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘You were placed back with your mother more than once, weren’t you Madeleine? But it just did not work out.’

  And I knew what he meant was that my parents were criminals because they had done time.

  ‘No,’ I said emphatically. ‘My mother was not a criminal.’

  ‘So what was she, then?’

  ‘She was sad,’ I replied.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The memories of my mother, when first I came to know her, were mine and mine alone, and I was not ready to share them. The sense ones, sound and smell, still remain vivid and undimmed by time.

  By the time she had tried to explain to me why she had lost us, Marilyn Monroe was dead and she was no longer compared to Elizabeth Taylor. Gone was the firm body of her youth and, in middle age, she was bordering on scrawny. The high cheekbones, once so admired, were hardly discernible under the soft puffiness of her face.

  Drink, the men who had entered her life, then left, and four pregnancies had taken their toll, but her eyes were still a deep blue and her hair, although no longer falling in glossy waves, remained defiantly black. She no longer smelt of soap and Yardley’s Lily of the Valley perfume, as I remembered so vividly from my early childhood. Those scents belonged to that younger mother, the one with the bright smile and the never-ending promises. An aroma of gin and tobacco — the scent of grief and disillusionment – clung to the mother I grew to know.

  My childhood mother might still have harboured the fantasy of meeting a man rich enough to look after her, but the older one was only too aware that a blend of naïvety and avarice had led her to catch Tragedy’s wandering eye. Only alcohol, which she convinced herself was a temporary measure, allowed her to dream once more of a rosy future, until her ‘best friend’ became her worst enemy and mocked her for her dependence.

  I had asked her, with some degree of self-interest, why she had never returned to Ireland. If she had, how different my life would have been. The other question I wanted answered was why, when she had escaped a world she saw as narrow, she had married the first man she had met. Surely there must have been more to it than that he was simply the best-looking fellow she had ever seen.

  It was Jim with whom she walked into the register office just three months after arriving in Jersey. ‘He was a local lad,’ she had said, in a voice grown deep and raspy, ‘not Irish. I didn’t want one of them, you see. If you go out with an Irish man, you end up talking to other women while they play darts or snooker with their friends. Now Jim, he knew how to treat a lady. And that’s what he called me, a lady!’ When his name was mentioned, her eyes would take on that faraway misty look and her mouth lifted in a smile, as she delved through the layers of her memories to when she was nineteen.

  ‘I was too good to work in the fields, he told me,’ she said proudly. ‘And I still wanted to better myself. Oh, Madeleine, you should have seen him the way he was then, opening doors for me, bringing flowers – why, he said that the first moment he clapped eyes on me he was simply besotted. Yes, he promised me the earth, all right. Said he was going places, that his boss thought the world of him. And once I was his wife, no one would dare call me “Irish scum” again.’

  ‘And you believed everything he told you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Maybe I should have asked why a register office, but he was not a Catholic, I was young and he was so very handsome.’

  So my mother had done what she had left Ireland to escape from: she had seen no deeper than the charm of a good-looking rogue, who made her feel special.
/>   Her parents were not there for the wedding, and neither were his. That should have told her something, but any misgivings were pushed firmly aside.

  Less than a year after the marriage she was washing nappies, cooking and cleaning from dusk to dawn. The romance faded and, with each of her two pregnancies, grew even fainter. My mother no longer went dancing down French Lane on a Saturday night. Instead she darned and sewed, while her husband spent his money on beer and whisky.

  Less than five years after she had said, ‘I do,’ the man who had promised her the earth left the island in search of pastures new. Pastures where there was clearly no room for a wife and two sons.

  Without him, she was, once again, just an Irish immigrant.

  There were no relatives, no one to lend her money for food or rent and, most importantly, no one to give her moral support. Her mother, aunts, cousins and siblings were in Ireland and, however homesick she might have been, however lonely, however desperate, she could not return there. In the late fifties her register office marriage was not recognised in Ireland by the Catholic Church. As far as the Church was concerned, she had been living in sin and borne two bastards. No amount of Hail Marys would gain her forgiveness for that in the village she came from.

  So my mother had few choices. She had to remain in Jersey and, if she wanted to eat, she had to return to work. Her two children, with the help of their paternal grandparents, were placed in care. As the sons of a Jersey man, they were not sent to Haut de la Garenne, which was for problem children and the sons and daughters of immigrant families. That was the one thing their father given them: his name.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My mother returned to the back-breaking work at the farm. The only way out was, she knew, to find another husband. She was also aware that a Jersey man was out of the question. She needed to find someone who had just arrived from Ireland. Someone who knew little about her history.

  After a spring of planting Jersey royals, my mother knew she looked good. Hard work had toned her body and the sun had put a glow into her cheeks. Unlike the other girls who worked alongside her, she had not allowed her face to become weather-beaten or her hands to be ingrained with soil. She scrubbed her grimy nails with soap and lemon juice, and smothered every part of her that the sun touched with liberal amounts of Pond’s cold cream.

  She looked as good as new, she decided, when she took herself to a dance at the Irish centre. On the night that she described to me, she was wearing a red and blue tartan dress, with a low, square neckline and, over layers of stiff petticoats, a wide, swirling skirt. Laughing, she had drawn another girl up to dance. ‘After all, Madeleine,’ she had told me, ‘sitting demurely on a wooden chair, waiting to be asked, was never going to get me noticed!’

  It worked. When a hand tapped on her shoulder, she turned and looked into the green eyes of the man who became my father. Under the silvery light of the sparkling glitter ball, she smiled, pouted and swung her hips to the beat. Then the lights dimmed as the band changed to a slow number: Paul Anka’s latest song. She smiled at the green-eyed man, rested her head on his shoulder and nestled closer.

  When she was granted a divorce, the green-eyed man proposed and she happily accepted. Her priest, knowing my mother’s wishes, sought permission for her to be married in church. His request was granted: the Catholic Church hadn’t recognised her first marriage as it had taken place in a register office. Her new husband, like Jim, promised her a future; vowing that he was not going to be a labourer for ever and that, one day, he would provide her with a decent home. All they had to do was save a little.

  They started married life in what was called a ‘flatlet’. It was up two flights of stairs in a building permeated with the smell of boiled cabbage and fried onions from the kitchens of the Irish immigrants. Later, when the Portuguese came, roasting garlic, olive oil and espresso coffee scented her home. Grubby, cracked lino covered the floor of the entrance hall, while the pattern on the worn stair carpet was undetectable. On one side of the first landing was the shared phone, with scribbled numbers decorating the walls, on the other the communal bathroom, with its shilling-devouring meter.

  On the next landing a door led into their flat. An oblong room, with scratched wooden furniture and a sagging settee. Behind a curtain there was a double bed, and under the window, a Baby Belling cooker and a sink.

  It did not take my mother long to realise that, once again, she had married a wastrel. One who expected a meal on the table and no questions asked as to his whereabouts when he staggered home long after dark. That, she decided, was not the life for her and she refused to give up either work or her pay packet. Come payday the bars called to him, and this time my mother was not going to be left in that small, cheerless flat. The nicely brought-up young girl, who never touched hard liquor, had been left in Ireland, along with her dreams. She, like her husband, went to the places where drinks were cheap and the company raucous.

  It was on one of those drunken nights that I was conceived. I believe my mother loved me the moment I was placed in her arms, for that is what she told me. Sadly, though, the strain of caring for a baby in a home that was almost too small for a couple, and the constant shortage of money, proved too much for my parents. They drank, they fought, they screamed and cursed until a neighbour, fearing for the safety of the three-month-old baby, called the police. Confronted by two drunken adults and the wailing child, lying in a makeshift cot, they arrested my parents and charged them with drunk and disorderly behaviour.

  One month inside was the magistrate’s sentence, with scant thought to my welfare. I was taken into care.

  On her release, my mother begged for my return. ‘Not until you have a proper home,’ said the state, without telling her how, on their low income, she and my father could achieve that. Social housing was given only to those who had been resident for ten years and flats were out of my parents’ price range. So I remained in care at the Westaway Crèche.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  2008

  ‘Well, Madeleine, if the state didn’t see your mother as a criminal, it certainly saw her as an unfit mother. Every one of her children was taken away. Now, you seem to think it was somehow the fault of the welfare system, that what happened to you was caused by the state. But let us just recap on what really happened.

  ‘You went to Westaway Crèche when you were just three months old. Do you know why that was, Madeleine? It was not because Jim had left her, was it? After all, he was not your father. That might have been the reason her sons were taken from her, but not you. She had married again and your parents were still together when you were born.’

  It was the policewoman who was talking, and although she was only calmly reciting facts, to me her words felt like barbed weapons. And each one found its mark and hurt. Tears prickled behind my closed eyelids. I swallowed them, determined that those people were not going to see me cry.

  ‘But why did you put me in Haut de la Garenne?’ I wanted to ask. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was only five.

  ‘Now, Madeleine, I believe you were well looked after in Westaway, were you not?’

  She was right. The memories of my early years might be indistinct, buried under the layers of what came later, but her questions brought images of that time back into my mind. The young nursery nurses who came and went and were kind to us, read stories out of large picture books, played games, built sandcastles on the beach, hung daisy chains around our necks, bandaged cut knees, wiped tears, blew small noses and tucked us up in bed before bestowing goodnight kisses on rosy cheeks.

  The one constant in our lives was Mrs Peacock, or Mummy Peacock, as I called her. She was the one who was strict. She was also the one who let us play with her dogs and looked away when we were given a sweet too many by a younger member of staff. There was never any shortage of toys either: many were donated to the home, as were clothes and books. With thirty children in the crèche there was a birthday party nearly every week. Jellies, cakes and ice cream were set
out, and tiny children were asked to blow out candles, though there were never more than five.

  Apart from Christmas, when generous local residents arrived with individual parcels, all toys had to be shared and at the end of each day were deposited in the large toy box that sat in a corner of the playroom. Small children, who had yet to learn the concept of sharing, snatched and pushed and cried when told to wait their turn.

  Even worse were the howls of protest when they wanted to ride on the rocking horse that a smiling benefactor had brought. I had loved it, and smiled now as I remembered my small self, screaming when told to give another child her turn. A nursery nurse had firmly lifted me off. I think that, by the end of the horse’s first day at the crèche, she was finding it more than taxing to try to instill some degree of generosity into tiny pre-school children. Certainly that horse was responsible for a lot of tears and quarrels.

  ‘No,’ I said, uttering the words they wanted to hear. ‘We never wanted for anything. I was happy there.’

  There had been one thing I had wished for, though, but it was not something I would share with the police. I had wanted a home, one with a mother and a father, where I would have a room of my own, where my own rocking horse waited for me to ride it, and I had toys I wouldn’t have to share. I knew other children went to such places. That was when they were adopted. I knew what that word meant. All of the children of about my age did. It was when a well-dressed couple came, looked at us, gave us sweets and picked up small children to cuddle. A few weeks later, a child, if old enough to understand, would be told they were going to live with their new mummy and daddy. There they would have everything I dreamt of: someone who loved just them and whose attention did not have to be shared with thirty other demanding little souls.