Bull Running For Girlsl (5 page)

The toast became suddenly all too interesting and Connie thought about what she had learnt when in the presence of adults; that if a child was looking at something intently, adults tended to think the child wasn’t listening and talked about all sorts of things in front of them. Her auntie and her mother were no different.

Connie took her time eating. That’s what ten-year-olds did during the Christmas holidays when they couldn’t get out of the house. Six days until Christmas Day and, hopefully, her new bicycle and some smaller presents. Connie had not found the hiding place for the latter and she had checked the usual places—bottoms of wardrobes, tops of wardrobes and under her mother’s bed.

The previous summer, Connie had wandered the perimeter of the hospital grounds. The boundary of the hospital, or at least part of it, was at the back of her house and skirted the edge of the Clough. She used to try and find ways into the place—unlike the inmates who wanted to get out. Some had been there all their lives because they had a baby out of wedlock, as Connie’s mum called it, and the baby put into care. Ways to get in. Connie wanted to see these women and perhaps get them out.

The day before her sister’s wedding Connie left her house, number thirteen, and ran down the wide pathway into the woods. A little way along, set against overgrown rhododendrons and brambles, were the old toilets. The roof was completely missing and the old concrete framework stood stark against the greenery. Graffiti covered the exposed walls; there were crude drawings of big-breasted women, perched on massive cocks, whilst flat men with goggle eyes looked up. No one used those toilets anymore, the block being as rundown as the Clough with its overgrown pathways and dark, impenetrable bushes. The toilets were boarded up—except someone had prised off a few of the boards. From a distance she watched as a man, one of the hospital patients, ducked underneath the broken boards.

Connie knew that she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself; she crept up to the toilets and climbed the tree that overhung the gent’s side. The old man was crouched low on the ground, for the toilet bowls had been smashed ages ago, and he squatted amid last year’s dead leaves and old newspapers. Connie suddenly felt ashamed and backed away slowly, quietly down the branch. A snap, a snarl, and instantly the same hollow-eyed man looked up at her, a sick smile on his wasted face.

“Do you want to see? Do you want to see?”

Connie didn’t want to see. She scrambled down the tree, legged it up to number thirteen with her heart thumping to the sound of her feet.

“Connie! Connie! Is that you? Tea is ready.”

“I’m not hungry, Mum.”

“Not hungry? Of course you’re hungry. I’ve never known you not to be.”

May felt her daughter’s face but couldn’t decide whether she had a fever or not.

“Can I watch some telly before bed?”

“I suppose, but only a little, then bed.”

The siren-sound of
Dr.Who
met her ears as she switched on the telly and Connie lost herself in another world of monsters. Only these monsters she could deal with; they were safely behind a glass screen, and—unlike the male patients of Prestwich Asylum—they couldn’t get out. Connie couldn’t believe that she was making plans to get
in
—but that would have to wait until after Penny’s wedding, which was the very next day.

The wedding day, a Saturday, was a flurry of activity. Her sister was to be married at Jackson Row in Manchester, the ceremony to be conducted by a registrar, and then back to The Church Inn for the wedding breakfast. The Church Inn was an old seventeenth-century pub where Connie’s family had been christened, married and buried for seventy years. Her granddad had rung the bells there at the end of the Second World War, and her mother had practically given birth there; she had gone into labour over half a pint of Guinness and then been rushed off to hospital to give birth to Connie. The present owner of The Church Inn had a glass display case full of tiny sculptures of animals and little dolls, and he said that Prestwich had something to do with actual witches. Connie knew this to be untrue because she had written about Prestwich at school, and it was named after a priest’s dairy farm.

Not many people paid attention to Connie on the morning of the wedding. Her hair had been cut to a short, brown bob the day before. Connie’s mini dress was a mass of psychedelic blue and lime-green swirls, to be slightly subdued by a pale-blue coat and blue shoes. Connie retreated to her bedroom, away from the palaver that her older sister and mother were making. They were frantically trying to alter her sister’s Biba wedding dress. Everything had been left to the last minute. Connie’s father, Raymond, had been sent off to take the wedding cake to The Church Inn.

The wedding ceremony itself was a hurried, ushered-in affair; the usual relatives whom Connie hardly knew and would not see until the next family occasion, wedding, christening, or funeral. The turnout was small because it was a winter wedding and a few had made their excuses that it was too cold to attend and stand about for photos, and suchlike.

After the brief ceremony, most got lifts or took a taxi to the pub where the real celebration started. Connie was small enough to dodge most of the relatives but the occasional one would catch sight of the swirl of blue and lime-green and ask her if she liked school or perhaps The Beatles. Connie didn’t bother to tell them that she liked Pink Floyd instead, although she had tried to tell her auntie a few months earlier that she used to like The Beatles, only her auntie had changed the conversation to school again. Connie was beginning to think that school was all adults could talk to children about.

After the meagre buffet, and bored by the fact that she was the only child at the wedding (her sister, Penny, was pregnant but Connie wasn’t interested in that), she looked about for something to do. She looked at the silent jukebox and thought about asking her mother if she could put it on but her mother was deep in discussion with two older women, and Connie knew better than to interrupt
those
family conversations. Penny’s new husband, Jim, sat next to his young bride. He looked sheepish and was downing pints as if there was no tomorrow.

It grew dark early at that time of year. Connie stared out of The Church Inn window. If she was going to go across to the churchyard to see the gravestones she would have to do it before it was too dark to see anything. She still hadn’t found the oldest one. Shifting quietly through her relatives and avoiding her father, who was leaning against the bar looking absently in the opposite direction, Connie scooted out of the main entrance across some cobbles, and into St. Mary’s churchyard.

St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church was well off the main road and situated in a cul-de-sac. The graveyard had been her playground for most of the summer. The vicar had told her about one coat of arms that was high up inside the church. She had been attracted to it because on it was a carving of a mermaid and the vicar told her that the motto of the Prestwich family to which it belonged was “In God have I put my trust.” Connie didn’t know if she should really trust anyone, including God.

From her house in Clough Walks she could get straight onto the pathway, through the woodland and up to the graveyard. Her mum trusted her out in the Clough and Connie never worried her mother about the bad men.

The gravestones intrigued Connie. She once found what she had thought to be the oldest, but her brother teased her that it wasn’t and so she was still determined to find it. She thought the oldest was 1665. The family of Thomas Collier had died in that plague year and the youngest child was only a few weeks old. Connie was peering closely at another upright stone for dates and causes of death, when a figure suddenly bobbed up before her.

“Boo!” Her brother’s red face loomed in on her.

“Absolute bastard!” Connie shouted as she reached around the stone and tried to swipe at him.

“Mum won’t be happy with that language—even if you got it from me.” Rog smiled his most mischievous smile. “And that dress—you look a right lemon.”

Rog had five years on her but she still chased him around the graves, slipping on the green moss that covered the stones, until she was exhausted. Pointing and laughing, Rog made his way out of the gate across to The Church Inn. Connie recovered her breath and walked down the slippery path to the far side of the Church, to carry on her search for the oldest date, before nightfall.

Totally absorbed in her task, Connie didn’t notice the fading light until it was almost impossible to see the dates on the stones. She thought she saw a shadow, over near the rhododendron bushes that surrounded the churchyard, but she just assumed it was Rog pissing about again.

Connie gave up. She couldn’t see the dates anymore and her neck was aching.

As she turned, she felt a hand grab her, and another fall across her mouth. With almost supernatural strength her attacker pulled her rapidly back into the bushes and threw her on her back. Some filthy cloth was thrust into her mouth. She gagged at the taste. Connie was terrified by a cold hand fumbling at her tights, and delving into her knickers.

He whispered in her ear. “You’re
my
girl now.”

His full weight fell upon her and suddenly she heard Rog’s voice.

“You dirty bastard, get off my sister. GET OFF!”

There was a rustle of leaves and the man threw himself to one side, fending off the blows from her brother. The man clenched a fist and struck at Rog. It was enough to stun him momentarily and Connie could hear more rustling of leaves as the man managed to get away through the dense undergrowth. She then heard the thud of hard boots on cobblestone, as he made his escape.

Rog gently pulled Connie out from under the bushes.

“Are you okay? Did he—”

Connie’s tights were half way down her thighs. With difficulty, and sobbing a little, she pulled them up as far as she could.

“Connie. Did he?” Rog’s voice was more insistent.

It was hard to see her brother’s face above her in the darkness, but she reached up and bent his ear down to her mouth.

“It’s all right Connie, no one can hear.”

“No.” The answer came with the quietest of sobs.

“Come on Connie. Let’s go and tell Dad. He’ll want to ring for the police.”

Connie pulled at his arm. “No Rog, I don’t want them to know. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have been out here alone, in the dark. I know better too. I don’t want to let them down. They won’t trust me anymore. They’ll
never
let me out.”

“But we can’t let him get away with it. What if he does it to someone else?”

“Rog. Please. I don’t want them to know. There must be another way.”

They could both hear laughter and the jukebox was playing a familiar tune, The Beatles’ “Not a Second Time.”

“Okay Connie. For now I will not.”

Connie was very quiet for the next few days. Rog kept looking at her in a funny way and her parents commented more than once about how silent the house had become. She tried to carry on as if nothing had happened; in her head, it hadn’t. She was careful not to go into the garden. There were no cabbages left in the fields for the patients to gather now, so they wouldn’t be back until spring. She might be safe until then and in spring she would be safe anyway as she would be more careful. Rog had taken to meeting her from school, skiving off after the lunch break for a few days, until the headmaster informed their parents. Anyway, she felt fine now. She was big enough to cope. Both their parents worked full time, so she was on her own until Rog hurried home from the comprehensive school.

She hadn’t seen her assailant’s face but she knew him all right.

Occasionally, May let her go to work with her at the hospital. Her mother cleaned the doctor’s quarters with her Spanish friends, Mercedes, Valbina, and Maria. Connie always wondered where all the women with babies were. The doctors all spoke foreign languages and seemed strange to her. They had strange doctors for strange patients. They didn’t like a child in the hospital. She could sense that.

Doctor Theodore once said to Connie’s mother. “A child shouldn’t be in here, it isn’t right.”

Connie had once walked past a locked ward and peeped through the little window, only to see a bulky man sitting bolt-upright in bed, with his hands under the bed covers. She had quickly backed away from the door, hoping he couldn’t see her.

After a while, Connie’s mum stopped taking her into the hospital.

Then came the day she
couldn’t
run fast enough.

She was walking down Gardener Road, after school, when that same man found her again. She had been to Parson’s corner shop, down a side street, almost opposite the uphill path that led to the war memorial. He had been watching her. The road was quiet and it was getting dark. Connie left the comparative safety of Gardener Road and walked into Clough Walks. The route lay between sparse trees, to the small estate on which she lived.

As he grabbed her she screamed. From out of nowhere, her brother and his friends emerged. Two were carrying knives. Immediately the man let go of Connie and backed towards the iron railings.

Rog put a protective arm around her. “Connie, get off home now and not a word to anyone, right?”

She nodded obediently and ran off towards their house.

The wooden cross is associated with Christ and criminals. In the early morning light Connie got dressed quickly, ran up the hill to the war memorial and entered the high, green privet enclosure that surrounded the cross. She looked up into the hollow eyes of the pallid man and smiled. Rusty nails had been hammered through his wrists and the man’s head lolled onto his chest. His blood stank.

Her brother knew how to look after her, and she liked that.

Hardly anyone went up to the war memorial in winter. It was two days later, when a woman discovered the crucifixion while looking for her dog. She found the animal sitting on the ground, hanging its head, and whimpering beneath the lifeless corpse.