I Won't Forgive What You Did (4 page)

My teacher was called Mrs Hope. She had glasses with semicircular lenses stuck on the end of her nose, was stern-looking, and wore her hair in a bun. She showed me to a cloakroom which had a peg with my name written by it. I didn’t want a peg with my name next to it. I wanted my mother and I burst out crying.

Everything about school made me cry that day. The classroom was so bright it blinded me. After the darkness of my home there was just so much going on. There were books, pencils, crayons, paper and building blocks everywhere. I was afraid to touch anything and felt totally overwhelmed.

I dealt with my anxiety by not speaking to anyone, either adult or child. While the other children chattered and ran around noisily, I closed in on myself, feeling completely out of my depth.

I continued like this all day. Not knowing what to say, or how to be or what to do, I just sat or stood up or put my hands together, according to what I was told. I didn’t know the words to what we had to say before lunch, and I couldn’t eat my lunch because I was afraid of making a mess and didn’t want the other children to look at me eating. I felt clumsy and awkward and different from the other children, who all seemed to know what to do and how to do it and who I thought must think I was stupid. One of the older children put a bit of food on my plate and all I wanted to do was throw the plate at her, push over the table and run away.

When the time came for going home I was so relieved, because it felt as though I’d been there for ever. We had to put our chairs upside down on the little tables and were told to put our hands together again while Mrs Hope had us repeat words such as ‘Dear Lord, thank you for keeping us safe today . . .’ I didn’t know who the Lord was and I didn’t want to know. I’d already decided not to go again.

When I got home, having come back on a coach with my siblings, my mother didn’t seem at all pleased to see me and just carried on peeling potatoes. I didn’t expect a hug, because she never, ever hugged me, but I didn’t think she’d even missed me at all, and I felt bewilderment, sadness and complete confusion, as if by going to school I’d lost all sense of myself, and couldn’t work out where, or to whom, I belonged. I felt completely alone – expecting at any minute someone would suddenly appear and take me to where I was really supposed to be. That was reason enough not to go to school.

After the shock of my first day it took no time to confirm school was as bad as I’d imagined. This was, in large part, due to the fact that I was simply not prepared for it at all. What I realize today is that this was for obvious reasons – the only people allowed in our house were family, so I had no meaningful concept of what the outside world was like. And even had my mother been the sort who liked to socialize and hold tea parties for her children, it would still never have happened, because my father hated anyone being in the house. He’d be very aggressive and vocal about it, telling callers either to ‘Piss off or ‘Fuck off and slamming the door in their faces. The concept of having a ‘friend round to play’ was not something I ever thought about while my father behaved as he did.

Not that at five I had any notion of the word ‘friend’. Because neither of my parents had ever shown any interest in me, I couldn’t even speak properly. I didn’t need to. I wasn’t expected to have thoughts or opinions. I was just ‘there’. On the rare occasions when my father did address me directly, it was always a scary business, fraught with stress. One Christmas, when I was small, I remember him holding out a tin of biscuits, and though I only hesitated for a second before deciding which one to take, he snatched the tin back angrily, snarling at my mother that I was an ‘ungrateful little bastard’ and could ‘fucking go without’ if what he was offering wasn’t ‘fucking good enough’.

I was also, as my mother liked telling everyone, ‘cack-handed, left-handed and stupid’. Before school I can’t remember ever having a book or pencil, and now I was expected to use such things every day, not knowing what to do with either. I didn’t even know how to hold the latter in my hand, let alone how to write with it. I’d never had a book read to me, at bedtime or any other time, so when I encountered them, I used to start at the back and work backwards. When I did begin to write I was similarly confused. Being left-handed, it was natural for me to start on the right and work my way leftwards towards the middle. Straight away this reinforced just how different I felt. As did my mother. She told me, and anyone else who’d listen, she’d spoken to my teachers, and the school had informed her they couldn’t teach me; they’d just have to ‘leave me to sort myself out’.

Which I did try to do. But such was my panic when I was asked to copy out even the simplest words, I would make an appalling mess. Being left-handed
did
feel like a handicap. The only way I could hold a pen was with my fingers wrapped around it and as I wrote my left arm moved across the page, and the ink from the fountain pen – which every child had to use – smudged all the words I’d just written. The pages of my books were therefore covered in long blue lines and smudges, leaving my writing unrecognizable. The side of my left hand was always stained blue as well, and this would often end up down my face, and on my clothes.

It may well be that the school understood my difficulties as a left-hander – a significant minority of people are left-handed, after all – and, perhaps, had my family been like other families, it wouldn’t have mattered very much. But I hated being left-handed. For me, it was yet another visible and humiliating reminder of how useless I was.

My sense of terror at being made to go to school – and therefore parted from my mother – did not diminish. I was in a constant state of anxiety about being away from home, and had been from my earliest years. I couldn’t bear my mother being out of my sight, let alone having to leave the house without her. The enforced separation filled me with intense fear, reinforced, as it was daily, by her indifference to where I’d been, what I’d done, who I’d met, how I’d fared. I really thought if I went to school, that one day I would not have a home to return to. This thought, which was present throughout my childhood, caused me a sense of extreme dread. I thought I’d disappear, not be missed, and be replaced by another child without anyone even noticing I’d gone.

As a consequence, every morning I’d cry uncontrollably, filled with the most awful apprehension. Often I would run away, down the road, and hide behind the telephone box. If I breathed in, I could just about wedge myself into the space behind it and the wall and although it was dark, dirty, spidery and wet, I didn’t care. It was from here that my father would drag me out and pull me along the road to his lorry, all the time shouting over his shoulder at my mother, ‘I haven’t fucking got time for this, the little bastard, fucking hell!’ He’d then open the door, drop me inside the lorry and slam the door shut, while my mother stood on the doorstep saying nothing. By the time my father had climbed into the driver’s seat she would have already gone back in.

He’d always make sure he locked the cab door. If he didn’t I’d try to climb out and run away again. He’d then drive the three miles to school in silence, while I sobbed, often picking up Mrs Hope if she happened to be walking as we passed. If she joined us, he’d immediately become someone else; charming, quietly spoken, laughing. The contrast was extreme. He was a completely different person, who didn’t swear. But I was so used to his behaviour changing I didn’t think to question it. I just thought that must be how all people were, and that his behaviour towards me must be my fault.

Once at school the routine never varied. He’d throw me over his shoulder again, and walk laughing across the playground, while all the children stopped running about to stare at me. Once I’d reached the classroom, and he’d deposited me, the children stopped staring and resumed their running around, as if nothing had happened. This behaviour seemed not in the least strange. I’d been told for so long I was silly, stupid Faith – why wouldn’t they think I was?

Because we were poor we didn’t have to pay for school dinners, so when the dinner register was called and the children had to pay their money, my name, of course, was never called. I felt the humiliation of this keenly. I always thought the other children would realize my name hadn’t been called and that I was having a dinner I hadn’t paid for.

Differences such as this were piling up. At dinner time I began to notice the children around me were fussy about food and left vast amounts on their plates. I desperately wanted to be like them, but I was always hungry, and grateful to have nice food to eat, that I couldn’t ever help but eat it all. I ate very slowly though, hoping no one would notice. I couldn’t bear the thought of them watching me eating. I didn’t have any likes and dislikes; the concept didn’t exist for me – but after the meal all pleasure in it was replaced by always feeling greedy and bad. Later I realized this was because I wasn’t supposed to have any needs, even hunger.

My sense of difference grew at the same rate I did. The school was in a middle-class area, and many of the children attending were from nice, well-off families. Having nothing to offer and never feeling good enough, my behaviour was submissive from the start, and, having picked up on this, several children bullied me.

Looking back, it seems obvious my appearance didn’t help. My hair was dull and untidy-looking, because it was washed with cheap washing-up liquid, proper shampoo being too expensive. And because the water at home was cold, it was hard to rinse out, plus there was only one hairbrush. Toothpaste was also too expensive so my teeth were discoloured. The only thing to clean them with was a saucerful of salt that my mother would put by the kitchen sink for us to use. It was brown most of the time – I didn’t know why. Did salt go rusty? I usually had to force myself to use it because the taste of it made me retch and retch.

But, for all that, my appearance wasn’t the main problem. For all the privations, I still looked tidy and clean – especially if the school photographer was coming, when I’d be kitted out in the best clothes possible. It was clear I’d come from a large, poor family – my clothes and shoes were sometimes too big, or too small – but practically, in terms of kitting us out well when she needed to, my mother could often be industrious. At such times, she’d sew and darn, knit and crochet, and there were always huge piles of clothes on the floor by her chair that she was going to mend at some point. There were also boxes and boxes of knitting patterns and needles, plus half-knitted teddies and dolls’ clothes. There were piles of clothes from jumble sales and heaps of old knitted jumpers, waiting for her to unpick them.

But very little ever got finished. It was as if she lacked whatever it was she needed to see most of these tasks through and was simply stuck in this endless cycle of starting. She’d also, at such times, make piles of cakes. Many more than could ever be eaten.

Some things, however, did get done. During these phases she’d always, it seemed, knit pink cardigans, in several sizes, to be handed down to each daughter in turn. My younger sister, therefore, spent a large part of her time in a pink cardigan, and looked as if she’d worn the same one for many years.

But my physical difference was nothing compared with my emotional one – the one those in authority couldn’t so easily see, which is perhaps why no one ever picked up on it. Had I turned up in rags, perhaps they would have. As it was, internally, whatever the clothes I was in, I was not at all like any of the other children at school. I was very withdrawn – today, the word ‘depressed’ might be used – and terrified of saying anything wrong in case it ended in a situation where I wouldn’t be able to stick up for myself and so end up getting hurt. I also feared people would either laugh at or ignore me, which they often did, both at school and home. After all, what could I have to say that anyone would want to listen to?

I didn’t have friends because I didn’t know how to make any, and no one asked me, and I would have to make up things when we were all asked to share our news, and everyone else talked of days out and holidays – things that were completely alien.

They also talked of parties – another alien concept – and the girls in my class seemed to have them all the time. As a party date drew near, they’d talk excitedly about what they would wear and what present they were getting and I’d long to be included, to be noticed. To be accepted by someone. To be
seen.
I’d stand there, thinking sadly, ‘What about me?’ and wish and wish my real family were not my family – that I belonged to a family who were happy and had parties, and one day I’d wake up and my life had all been a dream. That I was really a little girl from a happy, loving family, who’d let me have parties and invite all my friends.

So ignorant was I in such matters I didn’t even understand how being invited worked. One day, in the playground, when I was older – about nine – I saw a girl called Joan, who was in my class, discard an envelope. I gave it back to her, unsure if she’d really meant to drop it, and she explained she didn’t want it because it was an invitation to a birthday party from a girl she no longer liked. She told me I could have it, and I couldn’t believe my luck because I couldn’t understand anyone ever throwing away a party invitation.

I carefully filled in the section where you had to say if you could go and gave it to Jenny, the girl whose party it was. She looked puzzled, and just stared at me, so I explained what had happened, and that Joan had said I could go in her place. Looking back, I feel such sorrow for my nine-year-old self, but at the time I’d no sense this wasn’t how things worked. Of course, Jenny, and her mother, probably stunned by my lack of social grace, agreed I could go to the party. Which meant I had something to look forward to, like all the other girls, but also that I failed to learn anything of use. I subsequently didn’t understand that that
wasn’t
how things happened, and remember following another girl’s mother (she worked there) around the school, letting her know I could go to her daughter Linda’s party. I only understood after Linda’s friends kept on telling me that no, I
couldn’t go
, because I hadn’t been invited. This hadn’t registered with me at all. Not, that was, until Linda’s mother approached me, and explained gently that Linda didn’t want me at her party, which meant she was sorry, but I couldn’t go. Not going was obviously upsetting, but knowing I wasn’t welcome was so much more so.