They Stole My Innocence Page 4

  ‘They don’t get any, miss.’

  ‘That’s right, Frances. They don’t get any. So you had better start now.’ She marched to the door where, with a glance over her shoulder, she added, ‘I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had my morning cup of tea, so get started, girls.’

  It was not until her steps faded that Frances spoke. ‘Come on, Madeleine, give me a hand. We want to spoil her fun, don’t we? That rotten cow really gets off on sending girls out for the day with an empty stomach. So let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to us.’ To my relief, her mischievous grin sliced through any annoyance she might have felt at being given a double workload.

  ‘Sheets first,’ she told me, tossing the bottom one into the air and letting it float onto the bed. ‘These are what we have to get right first, see?’ She showed me how to make envelope tucks at the bottom corners. ‘Stops your feet sticking out,’ she added, as she tucked the rest firmly under the mattress, ‘Do you know why that’s important?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘If the night warden sees a bare foot she hits them with a torch. So unless you want to hobble for a week, make sure the sheets are firmly tucked in. The secret is to pull them tight – any wrinkles and that cow makes us do it again.’

  Deftly she pulled and tucked until both beds were finished. ‘Now we stand and wait for the inspection,’ she said.

  No sooner had we placed ourselves by the beds than the warden was back. She walked up and down, letting some girls go and stopping at others, where she voiced her displeasure and yanked off their bedding. It was a regular occurrence.

  ‘Remake it and this time make sure you do it properly,’ she snapped, before continuing on to the next. Three girls were told to remake their beds. Their shoulders slumped when they heard the words. They knew there would be no breakfast for them.

  Oh, please say ours are all right, I repeated in my head, as I watched the warden go from bed to bed. I was hungry and the thought of having nothing to eat until lunchtime made me feel dizzy.

  ‘Mmm,’ the warden said, when she finally came to us. ‘You’re learning fast, Madeleine, but I think you had a little help. Maybe tomorrow I’d better watch you and make sure you’re doing everything yourself,’ she added, with a malicious smirk. ‘Now you’d better go and get washed before you get dressed. Off you go.’

  Needing no encouragement, we raced to the bathrooms, splashed water on our faces and brushed our teeth, with the horrible pink paste, then rushed back to our lockers and scrambled into our clothes.

  It was my hair that was the problem. It was still long and I had been told that I must have it tied back for school. Seeing my futile efforts, Frances seized the brush, ran it through my curls, then fixed them into a ponytail.

  ‘All done, Madeleine,’ she told me, but her wide smile failed to wipe out the memory of Colin Tilbrook’s office and what had happened there. Heat scorched my cheeks as it slid into my mind. If Frances wondered why I had looked momentarily disconcerted, she passed no comment.

  ‘No time for plaits,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope no one decides that’s what they want. Now, come on, you’ll miss breakfast often enough, but not on your first day at school, kid.’ She squeezed my hand, then pulled me after her, down one flight of stairs and up another, into what looked like a church hall furnished with wooden benches and tables.

  This was my first morning.

  Before, I had eaten with the other pre-schoolers in a much smaller room. What struck me as we entered that hall, which was full of boys and girls of all ages, was the overpowering silence. No one spoke. They queued up for their food quietly, took their plates back to the tables and, eyes down, they ate. No talking during meals I had been told, but it was the first time I had experienced it.

  This time, unlike the other days when I longed for the coddled eggs that I had had at the crèche, I gobbled down the lumpy porridge and cold toast. The knowledge that it had almost been denied me made it more appetising. Hardly had I swallowed my last mouthful than the bell rang. It was time to meet in the hall and be taken to our schools.

  A warden I had not met before was escorting the younger children. Unlike the ones I had already met, she was friendly. Although the years have eroded her name, I remembered that she asked me mine, introduced herself, smiled warmly and told me I was going to enjoy school. It turned out she was in charge of the younger children. ‘I’ve been on holiday,’ she said, explaining why we had not met before. She was the first person in authority I had met who seemed kind and I wished that she was the one inspecting our beds. I was sure she would see that my hands were too small to make it up by myself.

  ‘Now, Madeleine,’ she said, as we walked in the direction of the school, ‘I know that you’re the only one who is starting today, but here are the twins, who are only a year ahead of you.’ She called two little girls to her side. ‘Mandy and Ann,’ she said, ‘this is Madeleine, and I want to hear later that in the breaks you looked after her. You remember what it was like on your first day, don’t you? Though I am sure it won’t take Madeleine long to make friends. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ they piped, and two pairs of brown eyes in round freckled faces looked into mine and two rosebud mouths smiled at me. I wondered why I hadn’t met them earlier.

  Later I found out that they had been chosen for adoption and, as soon as the formalities were finished with, they would be leaving Haut de la Garenne. While they were waiting to go to their new home they had been left in the younger children’s section.

  ‘Good. So you won’t be alone at playtime, Madeleine.’

  I remembered what Mrs Peacock had told me – that school was where I would make friends.

  Once we arrived at the pale grey building, I was handed over to a teacher, who seemed more preoccupied with greeting the parents than taking any notice of me. All around there were well-dressed young mothers with small children clutching their hands. Little faces turned up to receive a flurry of kisses, ‘Darling, enjoy your first day,’ and little waves. A last word to the teacher and assurances that the mothers would be there to meet their children as soon as the last bell rang: that was what I remembered, as I stood there alone.

  When the parents had left, some brushing away a tear, the teacher ushered us into the classroom, which was light and airy, the walls decorated with pictures of stick figures wearing bright clothes. I cannot remember what we did that first morning. But I do remember the snub-nosed boy I sat next to. ‘Please, miss,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to sit next to her. My mummy told me not to mix with naughty children.’

  The teacher looked at him over her glasses. ‘Well, Alan,’ she said, ‘there is no other seat, and Madeleine is not naughty. She is just not as fortunate as you. Now, enough of this nonsense. And on your first day, too.’

  I heard muffled giggles, felt glances coming my way and, with burning cheeks, I studied the top of my desk, wondering miserably if she would have been so firm if there had been another empty seat.

  Break came, and I watched other children playing. School, I had been told, was where big girls made new friends. But no little girl came up to me. Where were Mandy and Ann? They, I discovered later, had been kept in. Someone had thrown a ball of paper. ‘It’s always us who get the blame,’ they told me.

  It was, in fact, as I was to learn, anyone who was at Haut de la Garenne.

  ‘Naughty kid! You are a naughty kid!’ yelled my classmates, when we were outside.

  I watched Alan with his friends. He seemed bigger than the other children. Dressed in grey shorts with a blue blazer over a crisp white shirt, he strutted in front of me. ‘Naughty girl,’ he sang, while I looked at the ground.

  Mrs Peacock had been wrong. School was not where big girls made new friends.

  CHAPTER TEN

  2008

  I was in a room devoid of furniture. Against the glass walls, twisted branches of a bare tree tapped a stark message. ‘Get out, get out, Madeleine,’ they were telling me. Where
was the door? I had to find it. I needed to escape. I could feel a malevolence, an invisible force in there with me.

  My hands pressed against the cold glass, and it was then I saw, beneath the tree, people gathering. Faces turned up, steamy wisps of rising breath, mouths moving.

  I couldn’t hear the words, just feel the waves of fury directed at me.

  ‘Move,’ I told myself. ‘Move where they can’t see you.’ But a cold, damp fog wrapped itself around my limbs, pinning me to the spot.

  One man, seeing my small figure, raised his fist and shook it. As though that was the signal they had been waiting for, the crowd of men, women and children rushed forward, their clenched fists proclaiming their hatred. The sound of breathing behind me made my spine twitch with fear. Someone had got in. It was too late.

  Slowly I turned and I started to cry.

  A wet nose nuzzled my side. It was Joey, one of Mrs Peacock’s Labradors. As my hand moved to stroke him he changed, in front of my terrified eyes, from my old friend, with the warm soulful eyes, into something quite different: a demonic creature with foam-flecked lips curled back over yellow teeth. Coat bristling, a growl rumbling deep in his throat, eyes tinged with red – and, dangling between his legs, a huge red thing.

  Oh, God! It was going to attack me with it. ‘No, no, no,’ I whimpered, pressing myself harder against the glass. Outside I saw, with a clutch of fear, that people, their eyes fixed on the windows, were climbing the trees. I knew that once they got to the top they would break the glass and come in. My head turned as I searched desperately for escape, but there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Then, as I heard the glass breaking, Joey sprang.

  I was screaming. My arms thrashed, my feet kicked and then a terrible pain shot through them.

  ‘Mum, what is it?’ A soft hand touched my shoulder. ‘Wake up, Mum. It’s only a bad dream.’

  Groggily, I opened my eyes. My two children were there, concern stamped on their faces. A hot drink was made for me, my sheets smoothed and my pillows plumped. ‘It was only a dream, Mum,’ my daughter said.

  But it wasn’t. It was the one I thought had finally left me.

  The one I had had when I was five.

  The memory of that first time came flooding back. My small five-year-old self, throat constricted with fear, clutching her bedclothes, looking up into the cold gaze of the warden. My five-year-old self had not been woken by gentle hands or given a warm drink before being tucked back into bed. And the adult me wanted to weep for her.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, making such a disturbance, Madeleine?’ a woman’s voice had asked.

  I was shaking as I woke, the tail end of my night terror still lingering, and looked into the dazzling white light of a torch. It was grasped in the hand of the warden – and the pain I had felt in my foot was the remembered pain of the frightened five-year-old who had been struck by the warden’s torch.

  ‘Out you get, Madeleine,’ she had said. ‘You know what happens to children who wake everyone up.’

  I crawled out of the bed on wobbly legs. I knew what the punishment was for making any sound after the lights were out: standing in the corridor for as long as the warden left us.

  I felt the dampness of my nightgown at the same moment as the warden saw the tell-tale wet patch. ‘Look what you’ve done, you disgusting little girl. You’ve wet yourself. Well, you’ll have to wash your sheets in the morning. I’m not looking for clean ones now. You’ll just have to keep that stinking nightdress of yours on until then as well. Now, out you go. You can stand in that corridor until I say you can get back into bed.’

  Her hand took hold of my arm, the tender part above my elbow. Her fingers dug in, making me wince, as she dragged me out of the dormitory into the dimly lit corridor. ‘You can stand here until I come back for you. No sitting on the floor or leaning against the wall either. Do you hear me, Madeleine?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I whispered.

  The corridor was dark. A faint light from the staffroom cast shadows, which, in my befuddled head, became shapes shifting and creeping towards me. I stood there shivering, my damp nightdress clinging to my body, my foot throbbing. My head nodded, my eyes closed . . . then, with a start, I jerked awake. Just when I thought I couldn’t stand any longer, that I would be unable to stop myself sliding to the ground, she appeared. ‘Right, Madeleine, you can get back into your smelly bed now.’

  I crawled in, tried to curl my body away from the damp patch. It seemed that no sooner had I fallen asleep than I was being shaken awake. This time, when I opened my eyes, instead of the warden’s face it was Frances’s.

  ‘Come, Madeleine,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up and your sheet washed. That fucking bitch told me that as I’d helped you the first time I could do it again.’

  Tears leaked out of my eyes. It was the kindness underneath her rough tone that made me want to sob. Her hand brushed my face. ‘Don’t cry, Madeleine, we haven’t got time. You’ll just have to be brave a little longer.’

  Outside, the moon had faded to a pale lemon crescent while streaks of red showed in the almost black sky. In the dusky dimness of the hour between night and morning, we stumbled to the laundry room. There, we scrubbed the sheets by hand and hung them on the wooden clothes horse that Frances pulled down from the ceiling by its rope.

  ‘Arms up,’ she said to me, once the clothes horse had been hauled back up. She pulled my nightdress over my shoulders. I stood there meekly while she helped me into my clothes and did my hair. Then she put her arm around me and gave me a little squeeze. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘I’ve seen you have visitors. Is there no one outside who could take you?’

  ‘My mummy,’ I said. ‘I’m just waiting for her to find us a home.’

  ‘Well, then, I’m sure she will.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My being a well-behaved child at school ended a week later, just after the Monday when I nearly missed supper.

  I was sitting in the common room when a boy came in. ‘Madeleine,’ he said, with no effort to keep his voice down, ‘Mr Tilbrook wants to see you in his office.’

  I felt everyone looking at me and my face burned with shame. They knew, I thought. They knew about that horrible thing he kept in his trousers. They all knew what he made me do with it.

  My fingers clenched the sides of my chair. I didn’t want to go.

  ‘Run along, Madeleine,’ said an adult voice.

  Without looking up, I knew which warden it was: the one who smirked whenever I was sent for. My hands lost their grip. I knew I had no choice. I stood up and followed the boy to Mr Tilbrook’s office.

  A licentious smile, a brush on my arm, a taking hold of my fingers, a quickly muttered, ‘Good little girl,’ and Colin Tilbrook was ready for me.

  Maybe it was being called ‘good’ by Mr Tilbrook that made me decide I no longer wanted to be good. Maybe it was because I was so tired. Maybe it was because my nightmares didn’t come only when I was asleep.

  Whichever it was, that was the beginning of me antagonising my teacher. At school, too often, my eyes could hardly stay open.

  ‘Madeleine, pay attention,’ the teacher kept repeating, a note of exasperation creeping into her voice. When she asked the class to recite a nursery rhyme, one that I had often heard, I was the only one who couldn’t get it right.

  ‘Oh, Madeleine, you’ve heard that so many times,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re trying today. Now,’ she said brightly, ‘can anyone tell me what story I read to you yesterday?’

  Alan’s hand was the first to shoot up, quickly followed by the rest of the class. I alone sat with mine in my lap. ‘It was about Jack and Jill, miss.’

  ‘Indeed it was, Alan. Very good.’

  He smirked, more at my discomfort than her praise, I knew.

  Pictures were held up. A for apple but the letter was blurred, as was the next one: B for banana. ‘D?’ I said hopefully, when asked, and another sigh left the teacher’s
mouth.

  ‘Madeleine, it’s the letter after A.’

  Simple arithmetic was no better. ‘Two times two, Madeleine?’ she asked, but all I could see in my head was a jumble of numbers.

  ‘Stupid,’ hissed Alan, and tears flooded my eyes.

  It was during break that anger suddenly replaced fear. ‘Stupid girl, stupid girl,’ my tormentor sang as, to the merriment of his admirers, he circled me. My hand lashed out, caught his shoulder hard, and down he went. His howls, more of outrage than pain, brought the teacher rushing over.

  ‘Madeleine, that was very naughty,’ she said.

  I was the naughty child after that and put on the naughty chair to prove it.

  The next morning I heard Alan’s mother talking to the teacher on playground duty. One who looked much sterner than the one in charge of our class. ‘Just not right that our children have to mix with these rough children,’ she said, indicating our little group.

  ‘I agree with you, but our hands are tied. This is the only school near them. I tell them to leave the other children alone. They can play with each other in the breaks.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve told my son to keep well away from them after yesterday. Well, they’re not in that place for no reason, are they? I mean, look at that child who attacked my son,’ she added, nodding in my direction. ‘She looks so sweet, doesn’t she? As though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’

  ‘Yes, but what a temper. I thought she was going to kick me when I pulled her and your boy apart. Completely unprovoked, too. No, she’s already a problem. I told her teacher that she needs watching, all right.’

  ‘It was a good thing it was you who was there. That one in charge of their class seems rather soft to me.’

  They must have felt my eyes on them for they suddenly ceased talking and stared at me. What I saw reflected in their eyes made me want to curl up and disappear. Instead, I looked straight back at them.