My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (18 page)

I trembled as I obeyed him. He tore them from my hands, dragged me outside by the arm, and made sure I was watching as he threw my precious white kitten-heels into the bin, right into the ashes and embers from the fire. He brushed his hands against each other, to rid himself of contamination from the shameless shoes. ‘That’s the last time you will wear anything like that!’

Not long after their wedding, George had to go away to sea again. They had rented a flat in the next street to us, so I went to see Joan as often as I could. We were always close. She taught me how to do my hair, use make-up and do my nails, but of course I had to scrub it all off before I went home. Every week she came round for Sunday lunch, which cheered me up. It was such a relief to have a day without rows.

I’ll always remember one particular Sunday with a smile. My parents were, as so often, not speaking to each other. I can’t remember what it was about – I was so used to it. On this Sunday my father had been on an early shift and arrived home at two o’clock. We had already eaten, and put his meal in the oven. When he came in we were sitting in the living room, so I fetched his dinner for him. He put his plate down on a chair, in front of the television, and went to the kitchen to collect a knife and fork. When he came back through, he turned on the television and sat down on the chair . . . on his dinner.

Joan and I were wide-eyed. We didn’t dare move, or speak, let alone laugh. When he realized what he had done, he stormed back into the kitchen in a rage. Our last view of him before he turned and slammed the door was the Brussels sprouts and Yorkshire pudding stuck firmly to the seat of his pants. We could hold out no longer and collapsed into fits of giggles. He charged out of the house and didn’t return for the rest of the day. He didn’t speak to me for another six weeks. Bliss.

Soon I had my first ‘boyfriend’, John. We were in the same class at school and we used to walk home every day holding hands. We went to his house and had tea with his parents. They were lovely people. I was ashamed and embarrassed that I couldn’t invite John to tea at our house. I didn’t dare tell my parents about him; my father would have forbidden it. In fact, at the age of thirteen, I had to be in the house by seven-thirty every evening and in bed with the lights out by nine. However, my friends and I used to spend time together down by the sea at weekends and in school holidays, swimming for hours in the natural seawater bathing pool on Table Rocks, having fun together amongst the fish and crabs.

I loved my years at the secondary school. I was selected for the school netball, gymnastics and hockey teams and travelled all over the country to sports meetings with the netball team. I was also a member of the school choir and joined in the recitals and concerts. That was very special to me as it was another way to feel part of a big group – an important part of something. Everyone else’s parents came to watch these events, but mine never did.

The next boy I went out with was Terry – my first ‘young love’. I met him one Sunday afternoon and he asked me to go out with him. I was almost fourteen by this time, and he was sixteen. We walked together for hours along the Whitley Bay seafront. I never had any pocket money and Terry had no money to spend either, so we just walked. A few weeks after we met, he got his first job on a trawler. He was away for days or weeks at a time, and I never knew when he was due to come home.

One day, when I got back from school, my father was waiting for me. I could see something was wrong. He held a letter in his hand, addressed to me from Terry. It was to tell me when he was due to come home. I could see the envelope had been torn open and my father had obviously read it.

‘Who is this Terry?’ he demanded.

I told him. It was no use trying to lie about him. It must have been obvious from the letter that he was my boyfriend.

For the next few hours I was closely interrogated. He wanted to know every detail.

‘Where did you meet him? How old is he? Where does he live?’

I answered the first two questions truthfully, but I didn’t tell him where Terry lived.

‘You listen to me, lass,’ he said, raising his voice and wagging his finger in my face. ‘You’ve got to tell me where he lives, so I can go round there . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied, in an attempt to protect Terry and his parents from my father’s wrath.

‘How long have you known him? What does he do?’

And so it went on – so many questions. I answered them all as best I could, but most of my answers were monosyllabic. I knew what was coming next.

He waved my letter about. ‘Any mail addressed to you,’ he shouted in my face, ‘belongs to me. I’m head of this house. You have no right to any private mail. Go to your room and stay there. You will not be allowed out for the next six weeks.’

I knew this would not be the end of the matter, and I was right. He rampaged downstairs like a caged gorilla, roaring and crashing things in the hall. Finally I heard him stamping up the stairs. I felt sick with fear, terrified, like a cornered animal. As soon as I saw his popping eyes I knew what would happen.

‘How dare you walk down the seafront like a prostitute, wiggling your tail?’ he yelled. I was so naive I didn’t know what a prostitute was. He threw me onto my bed and wound his belt round his fist. This time he used the buckle end. He swung it from above his head down onto my bare legs again and again and again, with the greatest force he could muster. Then my back and my arms, each lash a searing pain. I had changed into my baby-doll pyjamas, a birthday present, so I had no protection from this onslaught. After a bit, everything went into slow motion and I stopped screaming. The pain somehow receded as I developed a kind of detachment from it in my mind. The terror overrode it. I tried to make myself as small as I could, and sobbed and whimpered as he flogged me again and again with his buckle.

As he lashed me, he bellowed, ‘You will never see that bugger again. If he ever comes to this house I will kill him.’ I knew he would.

The verbal abuse slowed as he became breathless from the flogging, until finally he had to stop. As he left, he slammed my bedroom door and locked it from the outside.

I don’t know how long I was there, completely still, my lacerated legs and arms oozing blood onto the bedcover. My back burned with the pain. I think I must have passed out. It was several hours before I came to, retching with nausea. More mess for me to clean up. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Then suddenly it was morning, the door opened and my mother came in with a cloth and a bowl of water.

‘I had to wait till your father went out to work,’ she said through tight lips. I was astonished. She had never before come to help me. She bathed my wounds, but by this time the bleeding had formed dry crusts over the lacerations and my pyjamas had stuck to them.

‘You’re too badly marked to go to school,’ she said. She made me a cup of tea and left me to sleep.

I can still remember those baby-doll pyjamas – the palest blue with tiny cornflowers strewn across them. I loved them, but they were so badly blood-stained that my mother had to throw them away.

True to my father’s word, I was not allowed to go out anywhere but to school for six weeks, and I never saw Terry again. Apart from the household chores, I was banished to my bedroom. Alone again, with no one to talk to. I did think about trying to run away, but I could not get out of my head what he had said to me that day as he interrogated me.

He had pushed his face up close to mine.

‘You will never get away from me. Wherever you go, I will track you down. I will never give up until I find you. I will make you suffer for the rest of your life, you and whoever else has helped you.’

I knew he meant every word. I would never be free of his tyranny.

CHAPTER 15

Jenny

A Shock Discovery

The moment that is branded on my memory started out as a very ordinary squabble between three teenage cousins – Auntie Dorothy’s daughters Marilyn, Barbara and Andrea. I was at their house for the day and the four of us were in their bedroom when a dispute broke out about a misplaced book. The argument raged about who had moved it. Finally, the other two rounded on the middle sister, Barbara. I had remained a silent onlooker till then, but I rankled at this injustice.

‘It’s not her fault,’ I interrupted.

They all three turned round to face me.

‘Well, you can just stay out of this,’ Marilyn, the eldest cousin, snarled at me. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you. What are you interfering for?’ She paused for effect, then produced her killer-blow. ‘You’re not even part of this family. Your mam is not your real mother.’

There was a sharp intake of breath from the other two and a long silence as they watched me with anxious faces.

I couldn’t say anything. A gaping hole opened up inside and my life imploded. I was fourteen and I’d never had any clue of this before. Obviously they all knew about it. Everyone knew about it except me.

The anger boiled inside me, but I couldn’t speak. It was as if I’d turned into stone and couldn’t move. There were no words, no thoughts, just an echoing howl of emptiness within.

I can’t remember anything else of that day until I was in the car going home with my mother. That was when the questions started to crowd my mind. Was it true? I wanted to see her reaction, needing to gauge her response. Would she try to explain it away? Why had I not known anything about this? What actually happened and, most importantly of all, who were my parents?

I couldn’t wait. As she was driving along the dark country lanes back to Embleton, I told her what my cousin had said.

Even in the darkness, I could tell her face drained of colour.

‘Is it true? Am I adopted?’

‘Well . . . er . . . we chose you . . .’

‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

She paused and took in a gulp of air, then composed herself. ‘Well, you know, I have told you. I told you the story . . .’

‘What story?’

She pulled over to the side of the road by a gateway, then turned to face me. ‘I told you that we chose you. Remember?’

‘No.’

‘We went to the town and it had a castle on the hill. We went up the hill, up a winding path. There were blue cots on the left and pink cots on the right, and we chose you and brought you home.’

What a way of telling me I was adopted! I was stunned. I did have a vague memory of this story, but I’d thought it was just that – a story. It was a kind of fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty. A story about a young couple choosing a baby. I couldn’t believe that my mother really thought she had told me I was adopted when she’d told me this.

I felt as if my whole childhood had been a lie. I had never had any thoughts about being adopted, or any idea that the people I had known as my loving parents all this time were not my parents. Who were the parents who had given birth to me? Where were they and why had they rejected me? I felt I’d been duped. By not telling me I was adopted, the very people I thought loved me best had betrayed me.

‘Who were my real parents?’ I asked her.

Silence. She turned her head to look down the moonlit lane into the middle distance. I couldn’t tell whether she intended to answer or not.

‘Who was my mother?’ I persisted.

Another pause. ‘I’m your mother. I’m the one who chose you, who looked after you. We brought you up, your dad and I, and we’ve done everything for you. We’re your real parents.’ She had a look of genuine anguish. ‘We chose you. You must have known you were special to us.’

The rest of the journey was silent. She refused to say anything more on the subject.

From that point on, my mother stuck her head in the sand and that was that. If I ever asked her a question about it, she became agitated and upset. She gave me no answers. I knew now that she wasn’t my real mother, but I did accept that she had given up so much because she loved me and wanted me to have all the opportunities she could provide.

Having no one in my family to talk to about this revelation had a profound effect on me. More than ever before, I wished I had a sister or brother to share this burden with, or at least to talk it through with. I felt very alone, having nobody to help me and no one to confide in apart from my spaniel Janie. I had so many one-sided conversations with her about it. I told her my woes, my fears and insecurities, and she tilted her head to listen, one ear cocked and her brown eyes full of sympathy, then wagged her tail to cheer me up.

I didn’t feel ready, at that stage, to tell any of my friends I was adopted. Not yet. The wound was too raw and I needed to sort it out in my own mind first, to come to terms with it all somehow.

Although my father had died two years before, I missed him more than ever, now that I knew. I wanted so much to discuss it with him. There were times at night when I did talk to him. I lay in bed and whispered to him in the darkness. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you leave me like this?’ I believe he would have answered my questions if he’d been alive; told me all I wanted to know. I’m sure he would have. But he wasn’t there. He’d gone, my mother was in denial, and I had to cope with this shock on my own.

For several days I couldn’t concentrate on anything. As a teenager building my own identity, it was the worst time for me to find out. Suddenly I wasn’t the person I thought I was. Who was I? Who were the people who’d given birth to me? What had they passed on to me? Surely
that
was who I was, but how could I know what that was when I didn’t know who they were? Everything had been taken away – my heritage, my genetic make-up, my origins – and I had nothing else to put in its place. The part of my life that was being the daughter of Mam and Dad was over, and I restarted as somebody else.

CHAPTER 16

Helen

All Work and No Play

The early sixties were a fun time to live in the north of England. The area teemed with new young pop bands, some fast becoming famous, whilst others were not so lucky. We had the best local band – the Animals. They were well-known in Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, our side of Newcastle, and my friends and I regularly saw them drive past in their battered old psychedelic Ford Transit van, driven by their road manager, Tappy Wright, who was our milkman. He used to run up our back stairs every Friday evening for the milk money and demand a cup of tea.