They Stole My Innocence Read online

‘No shame,’ said the mother.

  They were wrong.

  That was the day when I came to believe that the only reason I was at Haut de la Garenne was because I had done something bad. The only problem was that I simply could not remember what it was.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Each day when school ended, there was the nice warden, ready to collect us. The highlight of my day was the walk, where she chatted to me until we reached the home. If school bored and depressed me, then so did Haut de la Garenne. I had been used to a large garden to play in, friendly carers wiping small hands before teatime, warm baths and bedtime stories before the lights were turned out so I found the regimental routine suffocating and oppressive.

  It was a regime Colin Tilbrook ran with a military precision that he and the wardens enforced by browbeating and bullying. We didn’t dare to disobey them, or ignore the bells, much as we wanted to. Fear was instilled in us from the moment we walked through those doors. Worse, beyond fear, apathy set in once we had accepted the behaviour of those in control. Within a matter of days most of the younger children became cowed, nervous little creatures, who knew that any moment someone was going to hurt them. But there was something in me, even then, that refused to give up. I snatched moments of happiness whenever I could and dreamt of leaving that place.

  The routine at the home seldom varied.

  On our return from school, coats were hung up, bags placed in lockers and we were free to play, but not for long. In no time at all the bell was ringing to summon us for our five o’clock supper. An unappetising meal it might have been, but it was the only one until breakfast, so every scrap was eaten. Once we had cleared away the dishes and been given permission to leave the dining hall, we made our way back to the common room.

  There, we were allowed to amuse ourselves for less than an hour, for at six o’clock the wardens, eager to finish work, marched all of us younger children to the bathrooms. Leaning against the walls, they watched as we brushed teeth, washed hands and faces and pulled on night clothes. As soon as we were ready, we were marched to the dormitories and clambered into bed. Lights were turned off promptly at six thirty, although a dim light in the corridor was kept on.

  The older children, who had homework to complete, were left to their studies, and often we were asleep before they came in.

  ‘No talking,’ the stern-faced wardens told us every night. ‘You know what happens if we have to come in, don’t you? You disturb us, and you’ll find yourselves standing in that corridor for so long that you’ll wish you were asleep.’ Faced with that threat we lay stiffly, the sheets pulled up to our chests.

  Of course, not being sleepy, we were tempted to whisper, but each time that happened, the perpetrator was caught. Those wardens must have crept along the corridors, held a glass to the walls or had extrasensory perception, for they would suddenly appear, claiming they had heard us talking.

  In bed, engulfed in sadness, my thumb would slide into my mouth. I had been told that only babies did that, but I needed comfort. Every night I would curl up tightly and hold my breath as I listened for the night warden’s footsteps. When I heard them I prayed that nothing about me would draw her attention.

  I tried to stay awake, but what if, in my sleep, my feet showed through the bedding? There would be that terrible pain again. Or if I had another nightmare and cried out in my sleep? Then I would be made to stand on that dark, cold landing. Even worse, what if my dreams tormented me so badly that I wet myself again?

  No, I couldn’t bear it.

  The air around me was full of small sounds. The deep breathing of those lucky enough to be sleeping peacefully and the small moans of those who were not.

  There were other sounds, which, then, I didn’t understand. Footsteps tiptoeing into the dormitory, a startled cry of protest, a voice deeper than those of the wardens, uttering indistinguishable words. There was menace in its tone and desperation in the cries. On hearing that, I tucked my head under the blanket. I didn’t want to see the shadowy form, holding a pillow, creeping past me. I knew who it was but not then what they wanted.

  Lying there in the dark, I tried to picture something happy, something I could lose myself in. Anything that would transport me away from that terrible place. With my eyes squeezed tightly shut, I took myself back to days when the sun shone, children laughed and I was happy.

  Behind my eyelids I could see smiling faces . . . faces that grew dimmer as the weeks passed and my memories, like old photographs, began to fade. But there was one that I refused to let go. I made it float in my mind until I almost felt I was there.

  It was my special day. I had been chosen to present a bouquet of flowers to a lady I had been told was important. Who she was, I don’t remember. But I do recollect very clearly that I was at an event held at the Opera House. Even more importantly, I had brand new clothes to wear. A pink dress and matching shoes. All morning, nearly sick with excitement, I had practised and practised my curtsy.

  ‘You’ll walk beside me, Madeleine,’ Mrs Peacock had told me. ‘Then just a few steps on your own, before you bend your knee into a curtsy, and as you come up, you hand the lady the flowers.’

  That day I left my friends playing and was whisked away to be got ready. First a bath, then I was sat, wrapped in a fluffy white towel, on Mrs Peacock’s knee, as my hair was rubbed dry then brushed. How content I was then to lean against her and feel her arms around me. I just wanted to nestle up, inhale the familiar scent of soap and face powder and listen to her voice. I wished then, as I had so often, that she was my mother and that I could live with her and her big, friendly dogs.

  In those daydreams I still played with my friends at the crèche, still had the wet noses of dogs nuzzling, but at night I went to a proper home. There I would have my own bedroom and the toys in it would be mine. And in her house her time would belong to me alone.

  ‘Come, don’t fall asleep here,’ she had said, laughing, as she stood me gently on the floor. ‘Time for you to put on that lovely new dress, Madeleine,’ she told me, as she helped me into my underwear. I felt the pink dress slither over my shoulders and her fingers buttoning it up.

  My toes wriggled into white socks, new shoes buckled, a tug of my hem, a smoothing of my collar, and she was satisfied. ‘Now don’t you look pretty?’ she said, as, with one hand on my shoulder, we stood in front of a mirror.

  I stared at the reflection of a slight green-eyed girl with strawberry blonde hair and a scattering of freckles over her nose. I smiled. She was right. I did look pretty.

  ‘Pleased?’ she asked.

  I murmured that I was.

  The next picture of that day was when I was on the stage. I had walked on with Mrs Peacock. She let go of my hand and I took those last few steps alone. My fingers clasped the bouquet tightly and the words, ‘Bend your knee into a curtsy, and as you come up, you hand the lady the flowers,’ sounded in my head.

  The lady gave me a wide smile when she bent down to take the flowers in a gloved hand and kissed my cheek. ‘Thank you, Madeleine,’ she said, as though my appearing in front of her was a huge surprise.

  That she knew my name was the best part. Each time I summoned up those images, the longing to be back at the crèche intensified, but then, as the weeks passed, other feelings arose. Resentment of those in power, sorrow for what I had lost and a sense of unworthiness.

  I didn’t understand why children left the crèche at five, or know that my mother didn’t want me adopted, so I began to believe that I was unwanted.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  2008

  I was not, I had told the police, going to talk only about the Jordans. There was more, so much more.

  With their questions, they had prised open the box in which every therapist tells damaged patients to store their bad memories. The one in the corner of the mind’s storeroom. In mine, the ghosts of murdered childhoods had slumbered for nearly forty years.

  I was twenty when I slammed down the lid on those pictures of s
uffering, never to look at them again, as I told myself when I started my new life – a life in which my past had been washed clean. Now they clawed at my mind, crept into my dreams, slid into my subconscious and haunted even my waking hours. It was as though all those years of creating a new self, all those years of silence, had been for nothing.

  So, in stages, I told my story to my son. He wrote it down and delivered it to the police. And they sent for me, turned on their tape recorders and fired their rehearsed questions. And I let them know that it was the whole story I wanted told, not just a fragment.

  They were, I thought, intent on bringing two people back from Scotland to punish them for their crimes. Two people who were undeniably evil. But surely the police were now going to investigate the others. All right, some of them were dead, but what difference should that make? I and others wanted them named and their memories shamed.

  The question we began to ask was: ‘What about the ones who came from the island? Are their names to be left untarnished? Their deeds hidden so that Jersey can retain its image of being the millionaires’ nirvana?’

  No. It would be the whole story or nothing.

  Another interview: the same policeman, a different woman.

  ‘Now, Madeleine, you informed us that in the July of 1966 you saw a boy hanging from a tree. That it was a suicide. And you know why he did it. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, I remember very clearly seeing him dangling in the tree.’

  ‘And, at the age of six, you knew why he had done it?’

  ‘No, not then, but later I did.’

  ‘All right, we’ll come to what led you to be so convinced that it was suicide and not just some boyish prank gone wrong later. First, though, I have a few more questions for you. I have to be truthful here. I find this part of your statement very difficult to believe. Oh, I’m not saying you’re deliberately giving us false information. I think you’re convinced that everything you tell us is the truth. But, in all honesty, we are not. I mean it was, what? Forty-one years ago? And you were still only six.’ He picked up some notes, glanced at them, then carefully placed them back on his desk. ‘Now, what concerns me about the validity of this particular statement is, according to what we know, you were unable to either read or write. So you could not have recorded those events in some secret little diary now, could you?’

  I looked up at him, trying not to let my anger show. ‘No, but something as shocking as that stays in your mind, doesn’t it? I’d never seen someone dead before.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that. But, Madeleine, let’s be honest here. There are other factors to take into account, such as why your memory might not be as reliable as you think.’

  ‘It’s not something I could forget,’ I said, before he had a chance to bring up the other factors. ‘However many years have passed makes no difference. After all, it was my friends and I who found him.’

  ‘And that, you say, was in the July of 1966. The thirtieth, to be exact,’ he said, fixing me with another of his penetrating stares. ‘You are certain of that date and I find that, well, puzzling, to say the least. You couldn’t even tell the time then, far less read a calendar. That is the truth, isn’t it?’ he said, leaning back on his chair.

  I smiled then, as I knew he thought he had scored enough points on this interview to discredit my statement. So I kept quiet and waited for his next question, the one I knew was coming.

  ‘So, Madeleine, tell us what makes you so sure of not just the year but the month and the day as well?’

  ‘It was the year England won the World Cup,’ I said, failing to keep some degree of triumph from my voice. ‘That’s why I know when it was. I looked it up much later so I could put a date on it.’.

  ‘You remember the World Cup?’ he said, with a grin. ‘You were following the matches, then?’

  ‘No, I was interested in the fact that, for once, the wardens were ignoring us.’

  ‘All right, then. So let’s go over how you found him. I thought you were all pretty much supervised in that place, not allowed much freedom. Well, that’s what you’ve been telling me.’

  ‘As I just said, the wardens were ignoring us. It was the final. They and the boys, the big ones, were crowded together in front of the television. Our group went up to see what was so interesting and we were told to go away. Said we were too young and, anyhow, there was no space for us. That was how come we were free to go out into the grounds to play,’ I told him, with some exasperation, as my mind slid back through the decades to that day.

  One of the girls had found a skipping rope and, giddy with the unexpected freedom, we picked it up and ran giggling outside. Two of the children were swinging the rope and I began jumping over it.

  ‘You know,’ I said, looking at the officer, ‘what was sad about that day was that, for once, we were just little girls playing, with no other thoughts in our minds but enjoying our freedom. And then it all changed. Sarah, who’d only just come to Haut de la Garenne, suddenly let out a piercing shriek.’

  And once again I was back in that field, feeling that tingle of fear, as my eyes followed the direction of her pointing finger.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ we had asked, looking down the field.

  ‘There’s something dangling in that tree. What is it?’

  It was sunny that day and I’d squinted, trying to see. ‘It’s a boy,’ I said. ‘What’s he doing?’ We all looked at each other then, and the skin on my arms was prickling as we slowly walked towards that tree.

  ‘When we reached it,’ I said to the policeman, ‘we all stood looking up at something they told us had never been there. But it had. Can you imagine how terrifying that was for all of us?’

  It was a question he chose not to answer as my mind replayed those events.

  Before we got there we kept trying to tell ourselves that it was a game, just some boy trying to frighten us. After all, they were always playing pranks on us younger ones. But standing underneath him, we knew that something dreadful had happened. His head was bent sideways, but it was his eyes we couldn’t tear our gaze from. They were red, so red it was as though his blood was seeping out of them.

  As young as we were, we knew he was never going to pull the rope off his neck, swing up onto the branch, laugh and yell, ‘Got yer!’ before bursting into wild laughter.

  Other details came into focus as I spoke to the police. How I had seen that the crotch of his trousers was stained with piss, and my nose was twitching as I smelt him. He had shat himself as he died, that boy. That boy of only ten.

  I think now of just how scared he must have been of his life at the home to leave it in that way.

  ‘Did we try to lift him by his legs? I’d like to think we did, but my memory’s blank as to what happened next. I have no recollection of us leaving the field. Just of being back in the house, screaming, crying and shouting.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  I told them that the wardens had torn themselves from the black and white picture on the screen and rushed out. Our group was swiftly taken into another room before we had a chance to tell anyone else what we had seen. It was one of the female wardens who sat us down and talked to us. For once, kind words came in our direction while we sat tearfully in front of her.

  I remember her saying she was getting us a drink that would calm us down and each of us was given a glass half full of some dark liquid, which we were told to swallow straight down. It burnt my throat making me splutter, but I felt my body start to relax as the warmth hit my stomach.

  ‘Now I know you’ve seen something that distressed you,’ the warden said, ‘but it’s best if you don’t talk about it. Do you understand?’

  We might not have understood why, but we recognised a command when we heard one and nodded.

  ‘But something must have happened after that?’ This time it was the policewoman who spoke. ‘I mean, surely you must have been given some explanation, if what you say is correct?’

  ‘The only other referen
ce to the whole incident that I can recall was all of us being ordered into the big hall where we had our meals,’ I replied. ‘“An unfortunate incident” was how Colin Tilbrook referred to a boy’s death before leading us in prayers. And that was the end of it. It was never mentioned again by any of the staff.’

  ‘A boy hanged himself, a terrible thing, but sadly a few messed up kids do that.’

  I forced myself to appear calm, as I waited for the policeman to elaborate on his remarks.

  ‘Could have been any number of reasons that he did it,’ he went on. ‘Even, as I said before, a prank that went wrong. I just don’t know how a little girl of six would know what his reason was.’

  ‘I have another memory of that boy,’ I said. ‘A very clear one. There was a man who came to the home. A man who liked little boys. He was a friend of Colin Tilbrook’s. I saw the boy with him.’

  ‘And?’ he said impatiently.

  ‘We all knew, even us little ones, what the men who came to the home wanted,’ I replied.

  As I spoke, the picture of what I had seen came into my mind, not blurred and faded as old snaps are, but as sharp and clear as though it had just been taken. With my eyes half closed I looked at it, careful that I described every detail exactly as I had seen it that day.

  The man had his back to me. His belt was undone, his trousers were around his knees, and I could see those pale, flabby buttocks quivering. One hand was against the wall steadying him, his legs were spread and between them I could see another pair. Skinny ones in short trousers.

  Then I saw that the man was clutching something with his other hand. It was the top of the boy’s head. He was moving that little head back and forward, back and forward, faster and faster, as he quivered and grunted before giving a shout, not of pain but of pleasure.

  I knew what he was doing. That thing he kept in his trousers had swollen and it was in the boy’s mouth, choking him, making his eyes stream and his stomach churn. I saw the man’s body shake, then he zipped up his trousers and pushed the boy away.