My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (11 page)

My bedroom was an empty space. I was never allowed pictures or posters. I had no furniture, except a cardboard box for a night-table. Even my light bulb lacked a shade. I slept on an old pipe-framed hospital bed my dad had found in a scrapyard and painted white to hide the rust. It was a spring-base with a hospital mattress, full of lumps the size of tennis balls. Fortunately, it didn’t occur to me then to wonder how many people had died or were incontinent on that mattress. I was aware of the contrast between my barren bedroom with its cold lino floor and my parents’ elegant boudoir, carpeted and decked out with a ‘Swedish design’ suite and frilled soft furnishings.

Mercia never lit a fire in our house till lunchtime when she got home, so it was often bitterly cold while I waited. I spent long hours wrapped in a blanket with my nose pressed up against my bedroom window, drawing pictures in the condensation, watching the farm workers drive their tractors to and fro in the farmyard opposite our house. At least with my parents both at work there was no friction during those times. Alone was always the safest place for me.

During this period, when I was about seven or eight, my father’s practical jokes, always bizarre, developed a cruel quality. Indeed, the worse they were, the more he enjoyed them. One day, after he came home from work, he called me into the kitchen. He had a matchbox in his hand which he held up towards me.

‘Look, I cut my finger off at work today. Here it is.’ He slid open the matchbox, into which of course he had pushed his finger, covered in red paint to look like blood. I flinched in horror at the sight of it and a terrible wave of nausea welled up inside me. He collapsed with laughter – it put him in a good mood all evening. I had nightmares for weeks.

Another day, when I was sitting on the floor in the living room with my sketch-pad and pencils, drawing, my father leaned across to look. ‘Give that to me,’ he said. ‘I’m going to draw your portrait, so sit still.’

I sat as still as I could for a long time. I knew I’d be in trouble if I didn’t. I hardly dared to breathe. It seemed like for ever.

Finally he stopped, triumphant. ‘There you are. That’s you!’ He passed the sketch-pad over to me and I took it and looked, unable to hide my dismay. The drawing that was meant to be me was a picture of a monster with huge buck teeth and protruding eyes, a fat, spot-strewn face and hair like wild string. I stared at this horrific image.

‘Can’t you take a joke?’ he guffawed.

Much as he expected to be in absolute control of everything and everyone, my father met his match from an unexpected source one afternoon. He always had unreliable cars, and his latest one needed a lot of work, so he spent all his spare time on it. Every time we looked out of the window, all we could see was his feet sticking out from underneath the car.

The nearby pig farm had a huge and vicious boar that often escaped and rampaged through the village. Tommy was working under the car as usual when this boar broke free and came down our street. It stopped still and stared when it noticed my father’s feet. Oblivious, Tommy slid out and to his surprise came face to jowls with this slobbering monster. The boar snorted and pawed the ground, then squared up to charge. My father squealed and shot back under the car. The boar stood there waiting for him to emerge again, while my mother and I watched from the window, too scared to do anything. We didn’t have a phone, so couldn’t raise the alarm, and it happened to be a quiet day in the village when nobody came by, so Tommy was trapped under the car for several hours until the boar was recaptured and returned to the piggery.

It was quite a revelation to me to see my father dominated by a mere animal.

At about this time, my parents received a letter to say polio vaccinations were now available and would be carried out in my school. All parents received the note, requesting a signature of consent for their child to have the vaccine. This started a huge row in our house. Predictably, my parents disagreed. My mother wanted me to be vaccinated. My father was adamant that I should not be.

‘It’s a government plot,’ he said. ‘Children’s lives are cheap to experiment on. It’s never been done before, so it’s bound to be dangerous.’ There was an angry exchange, their voices rising in turn.

‘She’s mine,’ protested my mother. ‘I want her to have it.’

‘And I don’t.’

This accelerated throughout the evening, until Tommy tired of it and my mother eventually got her own way.

‘Well, just do as you like,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t care.’

With the consent form signed, I returned it to school and was vaccinated as arranged.

The next day I woke up with a temperature of 104 and the doctor was called out. He checked me over with a puzzled expression. He prodded and poked me, then stood back and scratched his head. ‘She’s clearly ill . . . from an indeterminate cause.’ I didn’t understand that. He gave instructions and said he would come back the next morning.

My mother, for once, followed his orders and put a wet cloth across my forehead in a vain attempt to cool me down. However, muffled up with layers of blankets, I sank into a delirium. I was in the midst of a weird scenario of green and brown snakes that crawled up my walls and across the ceiling to the light fitting, right above my bed. As the snakes coiled down the light fitting and reached out their snapping fangs towards me, monsters broke through my wallpaper and spoke in distant, hushed voices, words I couldn’t quite hear.

When I came to later in the day, confused, my parents were in the middle of a row, trading insults downstairs. Through the fog of my illness I could hear them arguing. It was obviously my fault and I feared another thrashing.

‘You see,’ taunted my father, shouting loud enough for me to hear. ‘I told you! It’s the polio vaccination that has done this! She is probably going to die,’ He was triumphant because I had proved him right.

I lay in my darkened room and pondered those words, repeating them in my head over and over again: ‘She’s probably going to die . . . going to die.’

Next morning the doctor returned. ‘It’s measles,’ he said. ‘The worst case I have ever seen.’ He stood over the bed with a gleeful smile and peered at my eyes. ‘Keep the curtains drawn at all times. Do not expose her to any light as her eyes are badly affected. You will need to bathe them three or four times a day. This little girl is gravely ill.’

So that’s it, I thought. I will surely die and go to my grave. Then I must have lost consciousness.

In and out of delirium, I was not aware of days merging into nights over the next ten days. Every morning Mercia went to work as usual. I was left alone, ‘gravely ill’, at home. I don’t know how carefully my mother followed the doctor’s instructions – I was too ill to notice. Gradually I improved a little. Soon I was allowed downstairs for lunch and spent the afternoons wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, the coal fire roaring up the chimney, dozing in the warmth, with nothing else to do. Sometimes, when my father came in, he would bring me a packet of Maltesers or a tube of Smarties, but I had no appetite for them yet.

I recovered from the measles, but I felt weak and couldn’t regain my usual energy. I developed another high temperature and the doctor was called for. This time it was chicken pox. Once again, my life was ‘Stay in bed until I get back.’ I sat for hours on end, itching and scratching as I watched the world outside my window. When my spots went I was allowed downstairs. A few days later, I was hit by another fever – mumps.

This period of childhood illness created a lifelong memory of isolation and loneliness. For a large part of each day I could only sleep, go to the bathroom, look longingly out of the window and try to entertain myself. Nobody was there to see if I was all right, whether I needed anything. With no exercise and little food I weakened further for a time. There was no human warmth, not even a sympathetic smile. They attended to my physical needs, but did not in any way
care
for me. I just accepted this. I don’t think I realized then that other parents hugged their children.

All in all I was at home for three months, which was a big chunk out of my learning. Finally the day came for me to return to school and I skipped through the fields till my pulse raced. I missed my friends, as none of them had dared to come and find out how I was, so I couldn’t wait to see them all.

When I arrived, they all gathered round, curious about my absence and pleased to see me again. We went into the classroom and started the day’s lessons.

Then I realized that something was wrong. Everyone else had their heads down, doing their sums or answering questions in their books, but I couldn’t do it. I had always been quick at schoolwork before. Now I didn’t know how to do it – it was too hard for me. I felt adrift, frightened. I’d had no teaching or tutoring for three months and my peers had leapt ahead of me. The previous year I had been top of my class in English and mental arithmetic. I was a class monitor and excelled at PE. Now I was bottom of the class, not yet strong enough to do well at PE, and I couldn’t do the work. I had always enjoyed school – it had been a happy place for me; but not now.

One day, the teacher announced to the class, including me, that I was being transferred to the ‘B’ stream. I was horrified. Nobody had warned me. I shrank in my seat and prayed to disappear, while the teacher gave a long talk to the children explaining that not every child could manage the ‘A’ stream. ‘I want you all to understand and be kind to Helen.’

They all turned to look at me. I closed my eyes and turned away to hide my embarrassment.

At the end of the lesson I joined the ‘B’ stream class. I didn’t know anyone there. I began to hate the school I’d once loved, and the ‘friends’ who now shunned me because I was no longer one of them. While I was away I had become a stranger to them. With my demotion, that was how they wanted to keep it.

Then another problem arose. I was tall for my age, quiet and well-behaved, so I was put at the back of the class. I didn’t mind, but something about it worried me.

One day the teacher asked me to read a sentence out from the blackboard. I had been dreading this. I was an excellent reader and I loved reading, but I couldn’t read what the teacher had written on the board. All the other children turned around to look at me, some of them sniggering and some laughing aloud, and when the teacher asked me to come to the front of the class, I flinched because I thought I was in trouble.

But it was all right. She asked me again to read what was on the board, and this time I read it out loud without a problem. I was so grateful to that teacher. She understood that I couldn’t see the writing clearly from the back, and sent a note to my mother: ‘Helen needs an eyesight test.’ My mother read the note and gave her martyr sigh.

I was taken to the optician. ‘I’m afraid your daughter’s vision has been affected by the measles,’ he said. ‘She needs to wear spectacles.’

Six weeks later, my glasses arrived, with thick Buddy Holly frames – hardly feminine! For a nine-year-old girl, at this difficult time in her school life, this was another hurdle to face. Several of the children laughed at me and my spectacles and called me names, so I avoided wearing them whenever possible, but in time everyone got used to them, and they came into fashion soon after that, so I didn’t mind any more.

My grades began to improve dramatically. I was moved back to the ‘A’ stream where I regained my place in the top three of the class – thanks to my pop-star glasses.

A few months later, while walking home from school one day, a man with a bike stopped and approached me.

‘Hello. I’m a police detective,’ he said. ‘Your teacher sent me to take you back to school because you stole some money from her purse.’

I burst into tears. ‘No I didn’t.’

‘Well, I’ll need to search you. Your teacher said you’d put the money in your knickers.’ He lunged forward and grabbed me, and before I could get away he pulled down my knickers and started to touch me.

I screamed and screamed as loud as I could – fortunately very loud, which made him hesitate and look around. I think I had unnerved him. Then he picked me up and threw me high into the air to the side of the road and into a pile of nettles, got on his bike and rode away.

I sat on my bare bottom in the nettles, stung all over, hurting like hell, then scrambled up and ran home, crying hysterically. My father was home early from work that day, so he took me to the police station and a very kind policeman sat me on the counter.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

I answered his questions – very shy because of what the man had done. I was nervous about mentioning my knickers to a strange man, or even to my own father, but the policeman wrote it all down in a statement and Tommy signed it. There was no doctor, and no medical examination. That was the end of it, and I never heard any more about it. I don’t even know whether they caught the man.

After this, my parents bought me a bike to ride to school. I suppose they thought I would be safer that way. I was thrilled, of course, to have my own bike. It was two-tone blue. I polished it every day until it sparkled.

Every summer we went out at weekends with Uncle James, Auntie Gladys and my cousin Malcolm. Uncle James was always my mother’s favourite brother, and the only one my father got on with. He and Uncle James both had old cars which constantly broke down. Once when we were on the way somewhere, following each other, my father changed gear and the lever came off in his hand. He stuck it out of the sunroof and waved it about, Uncle James stopped behind us and we all dissolved into fits of giggles. On another trip, my uncle put out his indicator flap to turn right but drove straight on. My father followed him as he slowed down and stopped.

‘What are you playing at?’ said Tommy. ‘Why didn’t you turn right?’

Uncle James wound down the window. ‘That’s why,’ he laughed as he handed my father the steering wheel.

We used to picnic wherever one of the cars broke down, and the men would spend the rest of the day fixing the cars so that we could get home again. Those were fun days – the rare occasions when my parents were almost normal and there was little threat of a row because the others were with us. The greatest joy was the occasional rides in my uncle’s car, surrounded by laughter, singing and sandwiches.