My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (10 page)

I started to tremble when I heard Dad’s car pull up outside. The angry crescendo of voices downstairs. His footsteps approaching.

My door burst open.

‘What is this about a sister? What do you think that makes
me
?’

I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t understand. I must have done something very bad.

‘I didn’t mean it, Daddy, I didn’t mean it,’ I cried again and again.

He slowly removed his two-inch belt from the waist of his trousers and wound it round his hand. He stepped closer and bellowed at me like a warrior as he held back his arm and began the onslaught. I squeezed into the corner of the room and made myself as small and as safe as I could, but the thrashing went on and on, lash after lash. I couldn’t turn away enough. My back and my bare legs were cut and bleeding. I buried my face for protection, and because I didn’t want to see his evil expression. At first, the pain burned me more with each stroke of his belt, but after about ten or twelve lashes, I seemed to become more distant from the physical sensations, almost as if it was happening to somebody else. He attacked without pause as I wailed and pleaded for him to stop, which seemed only to goad him all the more. He threatened me, as he did so often: ‘If you tell anybody about this . . . you will never live to see another day.’ I believed it and lived in fear. Finally, suddenly, he was gone. I did not move. I didn’t dare.

Downstairs I heard the angry feud, the raised voices, but I felt so distant now from the present, as if in some sort of cocoon, that I couldn’t hear what they screamed at each other, and I didn’t care.

However, to my horror, he ran back up the stairs, flung open my bedroom door and slammed it against the wall. The dent in the plaster stayed there for years. I peeked out from underneath my arms. His eyes were bulging.

‘You see. It’s all your fault again. If it wasn’t for you, this wouldn’t have happened. You have always been trouble and you always will be!’ He turned abruptly and raced down the stairs. The front door creaked open, then smashed against the jamb.

Curled up in the corner, blood oozing from my wounds, I heard his car engine start, rev up and roar away. I remember the relief as the sound faded into the distance; the silence that followed. I remained for quite some time without moving. No one came to comfort me, to tell me it would be all right, or to give me a hug. I knew I would be left alone now.

Cold, stiff and sore, I could feel the caked blood pull and tighten over my wounded skin. I tiptoed silently to the bathroom, ran the tap and used my flannel to clean my injuries. The water ran red.

That night, I sobbed myself to sleep. How long would it be before my father returned? And what would happen to me then?

CHAPTER 8

Jenny

The Water Baby

My father was tall and slightly built, always happy and full of jokes. I don’t know how he was so slim – he ate for Newcastle. And he smoked almost non-stop. I don’t think I have a single photo of him without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Dad loved doing magic and card tricks for me, and he was always telling me stories. I especially remember his tales about the fairies who lived in the basement of Woolworths.

He worked hard – always a full day. When I was old enough, I used to meet him at the station every night with my cocker spaniel, Janie. I loved my dad – he had a smile for everyone he met and was a friend to them all. He adored me. Absolutely adored me.

In fact my cousin and now my very close friend Wendy said to me one day when we were grown-up, ‘I wondered sometimes if your mother resented the close relationship you had with your father.’

‘You could be right,’ I had to agree. ‘She never showed it, mind.’

‘You were very much a daddy’s girl.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

I was a daddy’s girl and we all knew it. If I had a lot of homework and didn’t meet him at the station, he came home and said, ‘Where’s my love?’

‘Well,’ my mother replied. ‘I know it’s not me he wants. It’s either Jennifer or the dog!’ She adopted an offended expression for a moment, then broke into a smile. She didn’t mind really. We all shared the joke.

Mam was a happy person too, most of the time. She was always busy working in the house or going out to do clients’ hair in their own homes. A natural redhead, with a vivid mop of orange hair, she always stood out in a crowd. My hair is red too, but a darker shade than hers – more auburn, like in Titian paintings. Mam was as short as my dad was tall – there was more than a foot in height between them, so they made a striking couple. But her small stature belied the strength of her character.

Dad had his own workshop at work and he often used to stay on there to make things for us. One Christmas he gave me a fabulous dolls’ house he’d made. To keep it secret, he’d been working on it all year in the kitchen at Wendy’s house in the next street to us. It was a wonderful surprise. Dad really loved designing and making things, and he was a talented artist too. I have kept one of his sketch books – a possession I treasure.

My father was an only child, but my mother came from quite a big family, one of six children. We all lived in the same area, most of us only a street or two apart, and we saw each other a lot, always getting together at Christmas, New Year and on family occasions. I had cousins a street away on each side. Wendy was the nearest – her house was only fifty yards away from ours, across the back lane between our yards. Most of the cousins came to stay with us at Embleton at one time or another in the summer. We once had ten people sleeping in our two-bedroom bungalow, all top-to-tail in bed. That was fun.

Because one of Mam’s sisters, Gladys, was seriously ill and bed-bound all her life, and Mam’s mother had to look after her, Mam worked all the hours she could, sometimes in two or three jobs at the same time, helping to provide for her extended family. They were all very close-knit, always helping one another, and it felt good to have a happy family around us.

As well as hairdressing, sometimes door-to-door to gain new customers, my mother had a part-time job at the Tote, working on a race-track nearby. But her most unusual job was selling Pul-front corsets. She took them round all the pit villages, selling them where she could. She had quite a few customers in Seghill and around that area. Sometimes, clients would come to her, and other times she would fit the corsets in customers’ own homes.

She told me a story once about a phone call from a new customer who made an appointment to be measured up for a corset. As soon as the customer arrived, Mam suspected the ‘lady’ was in fact a man – the stubble on ‘her’ chin was a big clue – so she made an excuse that she had to go into another room to get something and ran out of the back door to a neighbour and asked her to come and knock on our front door saying there was an emergency at my school and she had to go. Our neighbour saved the day, Mam reported the man to the police, and he never did get his Pul-front corset!

Mam had never played golf before she married dad at the age of thirty-six in 1940, when he was on leave. After the war, he took her along to an exhibition match where Henry Cotton was playing. Henry won his first British Open Championship in the year I was born and Mam was hooked on golf from that day onwards. She learned to play on the Dunstanburgh Castle course at Embleton and became quite a good club player.

Although golf was a keen pastime at Embleton, we children spent much of our time on the beach or in the water, though I did skip off to play golf with my dad quite a bit. I learned to swim very young, without being taught. I remember the day – there was a mother with two daughters, a posh family, watching over us and she called up to my mother.

‘Connie. You have to come down. Jennifer is swimming. She is actually swimming!’

My mother looked down. ‘She can’t possibly be swimming. She’s probably just walking along the bottom, you know, just pretending she’s swimming.’

‘No, Connie. She is swimming!’

Mam came down the steps and was amazed to see this was true.

‘So she is.’

‘Yes,’ replied the other lady. ‘She’s a natural.’

I was probably about seven or eight. I’d just picked it up by watching the others. I do remember the North Sea water was freezing that day, absolutely freezing!

Soon I was swimming so confidently, I could join in all the swimming games with the older children. I became a strong and competent swimmer after my summers at Embleton, and back home at Jesmond I started spending a lot of my spare time at the Jesmond Baths, which were within walking distance of our house. Seeing how well I was doing, my parents sent me for extra swimming lessons two days a week, which I loved, and very soon I was entered for competitions in various locations. Mum and Dad drove me to all the galas and gave me huge support – I think they enjoyed watching my progress. I just loved swimming.

I was a born competitor, but I didn’t realize it then. That carefree summer, all I was doing was having fun with my friends.

When I was a little older, several of us had canoes, and I often went out canoeing with others across the bay, usually taking the dog with me. Sometimes the boys tipped me and Janie out on the other side of the Emblestones. Occasionally, on a calm summer’s day, some of us ventured further out to sea and tipped each other out in the deeper water, but always with our life-jackets on, of course, and we always made sure we were all safe. In the bay, seals swam around our canoes, playing with us, barking with excitement. It was all great fun and we often had the bay more or less to ourselves.

On the sunniest days, visitors from a wide area around us would drive up to the clubhouse and make the trek across the dunes and the golf course to our beach. It was sufficiently remote that it never got crowded, but I have a memory, aged seven or eight, of standing at the top of the steps and looking down on strangers, small family groups settling in for the day with their picnics and their striped wind-breaks, carefully arranging them to shelter their deckchairs on the warm sands. Some of them were building sandcastles, some were playing bat and ball as it was a calm day. One girl, about the same age as me, maybe a bit younger, was sitting alone in the shallow water playing with a spade, poking at worm holes on the rippling sand. A man, presumably her father, was trying to persuade a woman to stand near the child. She took a lot of coaxing. I watched with curiosity and a mild sense of discomfort. The girl ignored the woman, who seemed very reluctant to go near her, though eventually the woman came close enough for a photo, but it struck me as strange that she didn’t smile or hug the girl or play with her in the water, like my parents would have done.

At that point, my dad called and I went off to caddy for him on the course. When I got back I looked out for them, but they had gone.

When I was ten, my dear grandpa died. It was the first time I lost someone close to me. He had become gradually more poorly, and of course I knew he was old, so I think it was expected, but I’m not sure what he died of. I just remember how sad I felt and how much I missed his warm smile whenever I came in from school. Now his room was empty, which was how I felt inside without him. I don’t remember a funeral, so it must have been on a school day, when I couldn’t go. Or perhaps they didn’t want me to go.

The winters were always icy cold in our house at West Jesmond. There was no heating other than the coal fire in the lounge, and I used to sleep in my clothes on the coldest nights. I made a game of breathing out long warm breaths and watching them freeze in the chilly air. In the mornings I scraped ice off the windows in my bedroom and the bathroom, which was the coldest room in the house. Thank goodness we now had an inside toilet, which Dad had put in, so we didn’t have to brave the low temperatures outside.

It was a particularly bleak winter’s day when Auntie Edna lost Bobby, her budgie. He flew out of the open window, and Auntie Edna was inconsolable because Bobby wasn’t just any old budgie. He could say a lot of words. He could even say his name and address. She was so upset that all the family had to rally round, regardless of the weather – the snowdrift on our front doorstep was so deep that we had to dig our way out of the house. Local kids were sledging in the street and throwing snowballs at each other and I wanted to join in, but all the family were detailed to go out and hunt for Bobby the budgie. We went down all the local streets, calling out his name, but there was no sign of him. We asked around, but nobody had seen him. We all trudged home that night through a blizzard, tired, freezing and disappointed that we hadn’t found him.

Auntie Edna put a lost budgie notice in the
Evening Chronicle
the next day, but had no calls. She was devastated. It seemed hopeless. But a week later, somebody rang her doorbell. It was a family from the other side of the Town Moor, several miles away, with Bobby the budgie in a box. They had found the bedraggled bird in their garden, thin and cold, but alive and relatively well, considering his ordeal.

‘When we saw him,’ the man told Auntie Edna, ‘the budgie just kept saying, “Bobby Scott. 28 Fairfield Road”.’

CHAPTER 9

Helen

Home Alone

Schooldays were the best because I was out of the house and with other people. I loved school and made lots of friends, but they would never come back to my house. Later I discovered why – they were all terrified of my father. School holidays, therefore, were lonely. Each day Mum left early, telling me, ‘Stay in bed till I get back.’ She went off to work in the farmhouse, where she did all their domestic chores, including their laundry, hating it. She never let us forget how much she hated it.

Those mornings were long in the empty house, sitting in bed with only colouring books to keep me company till her return at lunchtime, when I was allowed to get up. I wasn’t even allowed to go down and watch the television that my father had bought when we moved to Murton village, but I suppose there would only have been black and white westerns to watch in those days.