They Stole My Innocence Page 8
It was when I realised that he was not going to leave me alone that I talked to my stepfather. I was scared of George, I told him. Could he make it stop? Speak to the boy that I so was afraid of?
‘What exactly are you asking me to do, Madeleine?’
‘Scare him like he does me?’ I answered hopefully.
‘What? You expect me to beat up a kid who’s not even ten yet? No, that is not going to happen,’ he said, ignoring my entreaties for him to do just that. ‘Nor am I going to go round and talk to him. I know who you mean. And I agree he’s a miserable little sod. Father’s in and out of trouble all the time. His mother says she falls down the stairs nearly every week. So he’s got a rotten home life, all right. Not that it’s any excuse for what he’s doing. But no sooner will I have scared off one bully than there’ll be another to take his place. No one respects a child who runs to their parents every time they’re picked on. You have to learn to fight back.’
‘But he’s bigger than me.’
‘That he is, Madeleine, but being small will make you faster.’
‘But . . .’ I began, thinking of the trouble I had got into when I had fought back.
As though reading my mind, Frank patted my shoulder and gave me a conspiratorial smile. ‘Now, Madeleine, biting is not on. But punching back is all right, as long as you don’t start it. He’s never going to say that a little kid, and a girl at that, hit him. So, I’m going to teach you how to fight. You have to learn to plant your fist somewhere that hurts. You only get one chance to surprise them.’
In the garden, Frank gave me my first lesson. He made me stand, legs slight apart, and wait for him to throw a punch. ‘Now, listen, girl,’ he said repeatedly, when I flailed clumsily, ‘never have your thumb sticking out. He can take hold of it and twist you to the ground. Tuck it behind your fingers.’
I did.
‘Aim here.’ He pointed to the part of the body between the ribcage and the stomach.
As he was so much taller than I was, he made a mock body out of some old cushions. ‘Imagine that’s George,’ he said, laughing as my fist sank into the centre of it. ‘Attagirl! You got him just right then. That’s where you want to hit – knocks the wind out of them quicker than lower down.’
He closed my fist with his large hand. ‘Now keep it neat like that, Madeleine,’ he instructed. ‘And remember what I told you. Speed wins over size. He won’t be expecting it. Going to get the shock of his young life, he is.’
Placing my feet where Frank instructed, and using one arm as a guard, I worked at my punches until I could place them just where I wanted.
‘Might be better,’ said Frank, when he was satisfied with his pupil’s progress, ‘if you tackle him outside school. Don’t want any more problems, do we? Until the weekend, I’m going to take you to school and either I or your mother will pick you up. Until then, you keep practising while he thinks you’re just too scared of him to go out on your own.’
That Saturday, half-scared and half-excited, I made my way to the corner shop across from the church. There, for the first time, I was pleased to see George with his habitual smirk and the gleam in his eyes. He swaggered towards me, no doubt thinking of the sweets he was going to buy with my money.
Out came his fists, he drew back his arm and, quick as a flash, I swung under it and hit him. One punch just under his ribs, as Frank had told me, then another for good measure on his chin. With a yell of surprise, he went down.
The look of absolute disbelief, combined with horror, on his face made it all worthwhile. ‘Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,’ I chanted, ‘isn’t going to make the little girls cry.’ Then, imitating his swagger, I walked away.
After that, he vanished.
Later I learnt that he had been taken into care. I was not the only child he had stolen from. His father had told him to do it – he used to wait at the bottom of the road to collect the money George took from other children. So I’d been wrong: it hadn’t gone on sweets.
When I ever felt sorry for him, I thought of the pleasure on his face when he knew he had hurt me. It might have been his father who had suggested stealing but inflicting pain was George’s own idea.
Beating George changed me. I wasn’t going to give in to bullies. I practised in the garden and defended myself in the neighbourhood.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
2008
The police sent for me again.
This time someone quite different was waiting for me. He was a chunkily built, dark-haired man, wearing a well-cut dark suit, and had warm, deep-set eyes. He shook my hand and thanked me for coming. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Graham Power. I asked to meet you today.’
My mouth went dry. Graham Power. Of course I knew who he was. The chief of police. Why did he want to see me?
‘How are you bearing up, Madeleine?’ he asked, with genuine concern on his face.
‘I’m fine,’ I replied, although that was untrue. I was not fine at all. My hands were damp with perspiration, my head ached and the butterflies were back in my stomach. I hoped he couldn’t smell last night’s alcohol on my breath.
If he could, it didn’t show on his face. He simply offered me tea, then asked the young policewoman if she would arrange it. ‘Oh, and ask for some biscuits, too,’ he added, before turning back to me.
He had heard the many complaints, he told me, had read the reports compiled from the interviews, and now wanted to talk to the people concerned.
‘Do you believe us, then?’ I asked, with a lump in my throat at the thought that I was finally speaking to someone who did.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I do, and I’m not the only one.’ As he spoke, I saw in him sadness that such things could have happened to so many children; children who had grown into broken adults.
‘Madeleine,’ he said, ‘I’m sure that this investigation is taking its toll. And I worry that what we’re asking of all of you must sometimes be unbearable. Things that you never wanted to think about again, far less talk about, are being dragged out into the open. Do you think you can cope with it for a little while longer?’
‘Yes. I can.’ I was determined that nothing would sway me from helping us all get justice, I told him. I did not admit that the investigation had invaded my brain and eaten away any thoughts of everything that should be even more important: my marriage and my family. A picture of my daughter’s hurt face, and my husband’s disappointed one when they had come across me with a tumbler of wine flashed before me and I felt a sharp twinge of guilt. I pushed it aside. ‘But,’ I added, summoning my courage to say what he might take as criticism, ‘there are times when I get despondent. So little seems to have happened.’
‘It’s an ongoing case, Madeleine. And I’m not going to let up on it. The whole world will be watching Jersey soon. The investigation into Haut de la Garenne is about to break in the news.’
‘Does that mean some of the perpetrators will be punished?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘But it won’t bring back our childhoods, will it?’
Again I saw sadness cross his face; sadness at making me relive a past that, for so many years, I had put behind me.
He had a file in front of him and, opening it, he ran over some of my early life. ‘Tell me, Madeleine, how it was that you were sent back to Haut de la Garenne? Was it something you had done? Had you become too difficult at the tender age of seven?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I answered, though a smile played on my lips when I thought of the tough little character I had been.
‘But you were taken away from your mother and stepfather and sent back to Haut de la Garenne. Why was that?’
‘My mother was ill with glandular fever.’ Faltering, I started to explain what that last year had been like, believing that I was talking to someone in authority who cared. And as I talked, the memories of things I’d forgotten about resurfaced. The things that were not part of my happy memories.
It had been hot that summer, flies hovering
over food and buzzing around my head. I hated the fat bluebottles. The persistent buzzing, their hairy little legs and those red eyes searching for any crumb they could find to squat on. We covered milk and food, batted them away with rolled-up newspapers, and hung sticky brown fly-paper from the lights. Every day it was splattered with the corpses of tiny winged creatures, but not, I noticed, with one bluebottle.
‘It’s the cows in the yard over there that bring them in,’ my mother said, as though her explanation made them more bearable.
I didn’t care why they were in our home. I just knew that I detested them. I had learnt at school that they laid their eggs on dung and fed off it. The thought of their filthy feet walking on anything that was going into my mouth made my stomach turn. I had only to see one descend on the table to become hysterical.
Before the unbearable heat that had turned my home into a furnace came, I had looked forward to the summer holidays. On the day we broke up, I listened for the bell announcing we could leave. As soon as I heard it, I gathered up my school books, rammed them into my satchel and left as fast as I decently could. Goodbyes were called out, then I was outside, rushing towards home.
Six weeks of doing nothing. Six weeks of not agonising over the fact that I still couldn’t read. That the letters danced in front of my eyes, impossible to catch. They had sent me for tests. Maybe it was my eyesight, but I knew it wasn’t.
‘Can you see the letters?’ the optician had asked.
I could, but even then I couldn’t say what all of them were. I just didn’t know. But I had been right: there was nothing wrong with my vision. Now I remembered my embarrassment at being told that.
Graham Power raised his hand to stop my flow of words. ‘They never thought to see if you were dyslexic, did they?’
‘No. That was never talked about then. They just thought I had difficulty learning. That I didn’t concentrate and was too lazy to do my homework. Of course, the teachers became impatient and the children in the class pulled faces and giggled each time I got a word wrong. I mean, we were given homework – we were supposed to learn spellings every night but I could never get them right. They simply didn’t believe that I had tried.’
Once again I saw my seven-year-old self in her charity-shop clothes, her cheeks burning with shame at her inability to keep up with the class.
I wasn’t to know that when the bell rang for the final time before the holiday it was announcing the last summer holiday in which I believed I was secure.
‘We’ll go to the beach,’ my mother had promised. ‘Act like tourists, sit on our towels, make sandcastles and eat ice cream.’ Her bright smile flashed as she described her plans for the summer. ‘I’ll take you to the castle as well, show you more of our island. After all, this is your home. This is where you’ll grow up. Now, what do you want to see first?’
‘Elizabeth Castle,’ I answered, thinking of the stories my teacher had told us of beautiful princesses being rescued by handsome princes. ‘Will we see the Queen?’ I asked.
‘No, Madeleine,’ replied my mother, laughing. ‘No one lives there any longer.’ Seeing my face drop, she added, ‘But there is an ice-cream shop nearby.’
She kept her promise. The day after my holiday began we packed some sandwiches to eat on the beach and walked across to Elizabeth Castle. Scrambling over rocks and sand, simply enjoying the warmth of the sun, the sound of the sea and being with each other. As my mother had promised, there was a small kiosk with pictures of the ice-creams sold there. The sun promptly melted the two scoops of chocolate piled into a cone, making it run over my hands and dribble down my chin.
My mother laughed and dabbed it off. ‘Better eat it quicker,’ she said, taking a lick of hers.
We carried on walking along the front until we reached St Aubin. Stopping to lean against the sea wall, she pointed to the little white egrets with their long black legs and slender black beaks wading in the shallows. When we reached the giant stepped sea defences, we sat, watching the speed of the incoming tide and eating our sandwiches.
She was happy that day. We both were. I felt so close to her. The sun had turned her face and shoulders a pale gold and, with the sea breeze blowing her hair, she looked young and carefree. That is the picture I try to keep shiny-bright in my mind – her standing on the rocks, eyes sparkling, hair loose, laughing at something I had said.
How she was before it all went wrong again.
‘You loved your mother very much,’ Graham Power said gravely.
‘Yes, I did. I loved both of them.’
I don’t remember how long it was after that day that my mother became ill. Less than a week, I think. I could hear her in the morning, vomiting into the bucket placed by her bed. I looked after her because Frank had to leave early each morning for work. Each day she seemed to grow weaker. Her face glistened with sweat and her hair clung damply to her neck. Dark shadows formed around her eyes and I seldom saw her bright smile.
I wrung out cloths in cold water and placed them on the back of her neck. Brought cool drinks to where she lay limply, either on the settee or in bed. All I was able to do when it came to feeding us was to pour milk over cereal and butter slices of white bread.
Every day it grew hotter and she more tired.
We had to open windows and doors and, through them, came the flies, followed by mosquitoes. I had itchy lumps all over my body. I longed to go back to the beach, have my hair ruffled by the breeze, and cool my feet in the water. But, after that first day, she was never well enough.
Her face lost colour and became wrinkled while her figure thickened.
The holidays ended at the same time as the heat left the sun. It was then I learnt why she was so tired and why Frank looked worried. She tried to sound bright when she told me that by Christmas I was going to have a baby brother or sister. ‘Won’t that be lovely, Madeleine?’ she said.
I didn’t think so.
With the departure of summer, draughts crept under doors, windows ran with condensation, and then, instead of being hot, we were cold. The roof leaked at night and I could hear water dripping into buckets. The small black stove gave out a thick, pungent heat that didn’t penetrate our bedroom. And, oh, how I hated going to that outside lavatory in my nightclothes.
It was nearly Christmas when my baby brother arrived. A tiny, red-faced scrap, who cried loudly. My mother was too weak to feed him, and at night it was Frank who heated the bottles and gave them to him.
The nurse came, her sharp eyes glancing round the room at the bucket filled with nappies, and at my mother’s wan face. ‘You have to see the doctor,’ she said firmly.
He arrived the next morning and his diagnosis was that my mother had glandular fever. ‘You need to eat fresh eggs, plenty of fruit and green vegetables. Drink lots of fresh milk. Good nourishing food, that’s what you need.’ From the expression on his face when he looked around our home, he had little faith in it happening.
The welfare people knocked on our door within days of his visit. I don’t know what was said, only what the outcome was. It was my mother who told me, her face a twist of anguish, that I was being returned to Haut de la Garenne. ‘Just for a few weeks until I’m better,’ she said, but the words had a hollow ring. The last of her confidence had been ripped away by her illness and I sensed that she did not believe in the ‘few weeks’ story.
At this point Graham Power asked, ‘And was she offered no help?’
‘None,’ I replied, ‘and Frank worked so hard and earned so little.’
I remembered my mother’s bitterness when she told me why we were so poor. ‘Because he’s not a Jersey man, the bosses don’t pay him fairly. They look down on us. “Poor white trash”, that’s what they call us. But we’re all right to work for them.’
‘But you weren’t returned to your mother when she recovered. It was much longer than that. You stayed in Haut de la Garenne for more than a year before you joined her again. And it doesn’t take that long to recover from glandular feve
r, does it?’
‘No. The place she lived in was not suitable for two children. They accepted the baby sharing their room, but not me.’
‘And she didn’t protest, knowing how unhappy you’d been there?’
Thinking of the fleeting expression of doubt I had seen on my mother’s face when my suitcase was returned, I said, ‘Children aren’t always believed, are they? I mean later on, how often did we try to tell adults? We even told the police, you must know that, but we were just laughed at.’
I remembered the social worker who had made the decision that I was to be returned. I begged not to be sent back there. ‘Your mother isn’t well enough to look after you,’ was her only response.
With tears coursing down my face, I promised I’d help her look after my baby brother. I wanted to stay with my family, I told her, but she didn’t listen.
‘As soon as your mother is a little better she’ll come and visit you there,’ she said, trying to placate me. ‘She’ll take you out at weekends.’
‘But when can I come home?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I’ll come and see you,’ my mother kept saying. ‘You won’t have to stay there long.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
It had been, as Graham Power reminded me, more than a year.
‘When she asked for me to be returned, the authorities just said that the house wasn’t suitable. And did they really believe that Haut de la Garenne was?’ I asked sadly.
‘Well, it’s become clear that it wasn’t,’ he replied.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I watched Graham Power’s expression change subtly. A tightening of the jaw, a slight frown. Now, I realised, he wanted to ask me more questions, which would be painful. I understood that, up to now, everything he had persuaded me to talk about had been a preamble. He had wanted to put me at my ease and he had.