I Won't Forgive What You Did (28 page)

The pretence – that I was coping – was becoming more difficult to maintain. Consciously, I was desperate for affection, to have a voice, but unconsciously I was harbouring secrets too big to push down, and I was becoming increasingly aware that my distress was destroying the people I
really
cared about – my children.

After Pops’ death, I couldn’t bear to be in the house and immediately insisted we move. We continued to move house – twelve times in eleven years – always driven by my need not to find something I was seeking, but just because I needed to escape. I couldn’t, of course, because the thing I was escaping was any notion of us being a family and, ultimately, probably myself.

Phrases such as ‘living in a loveless marriage’ are bandied about all the time. That I knew I was living in one had never been in question – I’d known from even before we’d married there was no love between Gary and me. It was the ultimate marriage of convenience; though he would, over the years, have all sorts of questionable relationships with other women, what he most seemed to want in me was an obedient ‘trophy’ wife and the domestic comforts of home. I wanted a rescuer – from my grim situation, but mostly from the terrifying alternative – that of being alone and destitute, trying to raise two children I could barely cope with. That I now lived in a house that wasn’t a home, with a man who didn’t love me, in an atmosphere of chilly dominance, touched with a permanent overlay of anxiety – none of these actually felt abnormal. Where some might scream, ‘Why on earth DID you marry him, then?’ my answer, had the question been asked, was simple. Almost
every
man in my life, for
all
of my life, had taught me this
was
normal. That I had no right to expect anything different. This was what men were like and what I deserved; my experience with Joe – initially my salvation – had rammed home a point already made.

But I felt heartbroken for my children. They hadn’t asked for this, and didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve the harsh words, the threats, the air of menace, the knowledge that whenever I wasn’t there they’d be in a house with a man who treated every small transgression (putting out the bins, Alfie’s chore, for instance) with violence, either threatened or, oftentimes, actual – he would regularly hit my children around the head. A man who’d insist on absolute silence at every mealtime as if neither children nor wife had a single thing to say that wasn’t annoying in some way. Who fostered an atmosphere of miserable meanspiritedness, that meant nothing they could do was ever right, ever good enough, ever able to meet his expectations.

They hadn’t asked for any of this and I hadn’t wanted it for them. This had been the miserable story of
my
childhood, and it haunted me that the legacy of that childhood had made me shackle myself to misery, and was making them endure miserable childhoods themselves.

And it wasn’t just my own marriage that was a sham. My parents’ relationship, always so one-sided and antagonistic, had become one in which one party – my father – appeared to have given up being part of a ‘family’ of any sort, as I was eventually to find out.

It had been happening for decades, of course, and looking back it now started falling into place. There’d been a woman, for example – much older than my father – when I was eight or nine, whose house he took me to on two or three occasions. I’d be told to go and play with her daughter, who seemed to know my father really well. But I hadn’t minded because, when my father and the woman returned from doing whatever they were doing, she’d make us lunch, with mash she served from a scoop, giving me two perfectly formed rounds of potato.

As the years had passed, there’d been no diminution of my mother going on about my father and ‘his whores’. Now I could drive, and had use of a car, I’d often drive my mother around. One day, after nagging me endlessly, she persuaded me to follow my father. I couldn’t bear to think about my parents’ relationship; the other women, the lack of love. All I wanted – still wanted, even knowing it would never happen – was to be part of a normal happy family. It made me feel profoundly uncomfortable to be doing it but, as ever, I couldn’t bear to see my mother upset and I reluctantly agreed to go along with it.

I followed my father in his lorry on a number of occasions, watching glumly alongside my mother as he entered houses she said he had no reason to be visiting. One house was of particular interest, being that of a woman with whom he’d been having an affair for years. My mother said he had two children by her, a boy and girl, and the latter had the same name as me.

In the end, I couldn’t stand listening to this any longer and, embarrassed and anxious, but feeling unable to say no, I climbed out of the car and walked up to this woman’s front door. By the time she opened it, my anxiety had increased to the extent that I could barely string a coherent sentence together. I accused her of having an affair with my father, told her how much it was upsetting my mother, and made it clear that unless she stopped seeing him forthwith, I’d come round again and ‘sort it out’.

I left her doorstep feeling angry and useless. Useless for failing to speak more eloquently – I must have sounded, after all, like one of the bullies who used to taunt me at school – and angry at my parents for putting me in the situation where I had to do such things. Would there ever be a time when I wouldn’t feel I needed to be a mother to my own mother?

Naturally, my father found out a few days later having presumably been to visit his ‘whore’ and been told of my outburst. His response was entirely as expected.

‘What the fuck has she been up to?’ he demanded of my mother, while I stood there. ‘She should learn to mind her own fucking business! Fucking interfering bastard!’ he added, for good measure, once again without once addressing me directly.

My mother, however, did address me. Having nodded her head along with every word, she turned to me and said, ‘Your father’s right, Faith. You really must stay out of what’s not your business.’

To say I was astounded would be such an understatement as to render the word useless. But what was the point of taking them on? It had always been this way. So I dug in and got on with the business, like my parents, of just living, unhappily, day by day.

If there is virtually nothing in these pages about the decade I was married to Gary, it’s because that’s exactly how it was. The word ‘nothing’ is deeply significant. Gary was so cold, so emotionless, so unlike a living, breathing human being, that it was almost as if a part of me just withered away, the part that still had the capacity to love. I knew that I loved my children, but I also knew my mothering of them was, then, deeply flawed. We moved house so many times they could never settle and on top of all they’d faced in losing Joe, and enduring Gary, they were constantly having to make new friends. They also had a mother who was struggling with mothering them. I didn’t know how to cuddle them, cherish them, fill them with confidence and laughter. I couldn’t even say the words ‘I love you’ to them. Because those words had never once been said to me, ever, I couldn’t force them, however fervently I did love them, to actually come out of my mouth. How profoundly a lack of love from those you depend on when small corrodes so much that follows as an adult.

That I can never forgive those in my family who damaged me so deeply is in great part because of what they did to my children, in causing me to fail them when they needed me. I have always felt deeply sad and distressed that I failed to give my children the care they so desperately needed and deserved. It’s a child’s birthright, this entitlement to love and nurturing, and being
my
children denied them this right. They didn’t even have freedom of speech in their own home. I couldn’t teach them the basic things, like how to protect themselves from harm, how to be confident, self-assured, to know that they mattered – to know they had a right to be here, that they were loved; all things most other children take for granted. That I didn’t experience an iota of joy in being their mother breaks my heart, but is still as nothing to the pain they were put through.

* * *

But the vast and chilling void I had thought I must drift through for ever, was to be eventually, and dramatically, filled. Unexpectedly, in 1990, after eleven years of marriage I was invited out for a drink by the most amazing man.

I knew Warren already – had done for three years. He’d been chairing the panel that had interviewed me in 1987 for my first management post. His voice, I remember, was particularly mesmeric. He spoke quietly and in tones that couldn’t help but command your complete attention and respect.

I’d been overwhelmed by him the first time I saw him, as was I think every woman who met him. He was so handsome, so fascinating, so knowledgeable and so, so sexy he took my breath away. Ironically, in the three years we worked together, I was never truly comfortable around him; his charisma and charm were so disarming that together they had the effect of rendering everything I said to him a self-conscious, clumsy, garbled mess. He was also mysterious; his personal life – about which he barely said a word – attracted constant speculation from the staff.

Warren had gone on to become my mentor. Two years after I’d started working in my management position, I applied to train as a social worker. I had long been forming a desire to do such work and though I didn’t yet understand why I felt as bad as I did, I’d always felt I wanted to work at something where I could help others be treated both fairly and with respect. I was very committed to justice and the concept – alien in my own family – that we were all responsible for one another.

However, I was told that because there were others who’d been waiting longer than me, my application couldn’t be considered. Unhappy, and feeling I must present my case more fully, I called Warren to discuss my application.

I was so sure it was the right thing for me, and I also desperately wanted a qualification. Being qualified at something was my route to being regarded as a person with something to offer. Also, though the thought wasn’t conscious at the time, I suspect some element in me saw it as a way out of my situation – properly paid and qualified, I could support my children, form relationships, stand up for myself.

Thankfully, Warren agreed, and after he’d spoken to whoever was responsible for accepting students I was told I’d been offered a place on the reserve list, and would be accepted if someone dropped out.

Once this happened, I was so excited I telephoned Warren to thank him and, completely impulsively, to ask him if he’d become my mentor. We had all been told we would need mentors, but choosing Warren was a little ambitious. So I was naturally both shocked and elated when he agreed – and so proud to be able to tell people who my mentor was. Yes, he was exacting, confrontational and intellectually demanding, but I was so bewitched I didn’t care.

Not that there was anything untoward going on between us in those years. Far from it – it would never have occurred to me. At the time of our first meeting, desperately unhappy and feeling myself unravelling, I’d begun, following the advice of a colleague in whom I’d confided, to undergo a course of psychotherapy. I had no idea whether it would help but, with the ambitions I had to help others in difficult circumstances, I thought addressing my own problems would make sense. I wanted to do the best I could for them, help them to feel understood, more informed, and to assist them in finding a way to better lives. I didn’t want my own problems getting in the way of that, and by now one thing I did know was that things were far from right in my head. The care courses I had already been on had shown me that clearly, as they had caused conflicting thoughts I couldn’t reconcile. At last I was beginning what would be the very long process of questioning why I was like I was and what was wrong with me.

But perhaps in being so focused on my career and therapy I couldn’t see how my relationship with Warren had changed. By the autumn of 1990, we’d known each other professionally for three years. I was on my social work course by now and also working as duty manager in a residential home, when Warren turned up in my office unexpectedly one day. He looked uncharacteristically despondent and I was overcome by a powerful desire to make him feel better, a feeling the intensity of which scared me. I made tea and we talked for an hour about work, but by the time he left he hadn’t given me any idea about why he seemed so gloomy.

The next day was a Saturday and though I was working I knew that Warren wasn’t. So his call that morning took me by surprise, even more so when he asked if I would consider going out for a drink. Once again his voice was like a kind of drug. It was the very antithesis of Gary’s – warm like melted chocolate where Gary’s was like ice: emotionless and cold. I couldn’t get it out of my head. And now he had seduced me further by calling me on a Saturday.

I knew Warren was married with three young children, so I naturally convinced myself that it must be work-related. After all, why else would he want to spend time with me? Besides, he was my mentor, so it was reasonable.

We arranged to meet at the Blue Dragon, a pub in the next village. I had thought it would be a location where no one I knew would see me; despite my reassurances to myself, I think deep down I knew something was going to happen and I was already feeling uncomfortable.

As it turned out, I arrived before Warren, only to find Gary’s friends from the darts team there – they were playing away to the Blue Dragon team. I quickly pointed out that I was meeting a colleague regarding a work matter, my heart all the time pounding in my chest. But my fears that our assignation would seem furtive were unfounded. At no point did Warren so much as hint at a relationship; he just blew me away with his charm. He spent most of the evening asking me about myself, and doing something I’d virtually no experience of – listening to me and seeming fascinated and interested by my answers. He was disarming, kind and very sensitive, which was the most captivating thing he could have been.