My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (25 page)

I hoped things would improve, but I was wrong. The only positive was that my father recuperated enough to work again and he found another job in Johannesburg. This boosted our finances, and Tommy’s mood. He regained some of his old strength . . . and all of his dominance. That was the challenge. Out in the car one evening, Simon and I discussed our future. We’d talked about it often, and now we decided. We would return to England as soon as we could. To be fair, this was not only because of my parents. We did not want our child to be brought up under the apartheid regime.

Our beautiful baby was born in August 1970 – a boy we called Scott, with the finest blond hair. As the midwife handed him to me I burst into tears, completely overwhelmed with joy. I had never understood how fierce maternal love would be, but the urge to protect him was overpowering. It was our moment – my son and me. I looked with adoration into his deep blue eyes and he looked back at me in puzzlement. Simon, beside me, was now in floods of grinning tears, desperate to have his turn. I handed the baby to him, the most beautiful baby in the world. He was now the number-one priority in our lives.

Simon and I talked almost every day of our plans to return to England. We would have to save up to pay for our tickets. We worked out that if we saved a little every week, we could be free by the time Scott was a year old. That was our goal. It was what kept us going through all the tensions of life with my parents, now that they’d taken root in our house, and regained control of our lives.

I expected that my mother would take an interest in her new grandchild and was happy for her to dote on him, as grandmothers do. We wanted her to be involved, but from the beginning, my mother overstepped her role and interfered between me and my baby. She became fiercely possessive of him, disregarding our feelings and wishes completely. This situation was overbearing, but we could see no way to end it without causing a huge row, and maybe worse. We wanted a calm and peaceful home to bring our family up in, and we dared not do anything that would threaten that.

Every time Scott cried, she rushed and picked him up before I got there. She took him over – he was her baby now. I was both devastated and bewildered. I fumed inwardly with indignation and fear. How could this happen? How could we stop her?

If we three could have left then, we would have done. But we had only one salary between us, and still paid most of the household bills for five people. It became a struggle to save, so we would just have to be patient. We had no choice.

One Sunday, I wanted to make a cake. It was so hot and airless in the kitchen that I took the mixing bowl into the dining room and sat down. I beat the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon.

Tommy stormed in. ‘Stop making that bloody noise!’

‘I’m just making a cake.’

He glared at me, grabbed the glass bowl, complete with mixture and spoon, and threw it out of the window. It landed upside down in the garden, unbroken. I could see it on the lawn. If the atmosphere hadn’t been so tense, I would have laughed to see blobs of the thick mixture slowly fall onto the grass.

Stunned and fearful, I said nothing. He was back to his old self, as if possessed, raging and stamping around the house.

‘I am master of this house and you
will
do as you are told.’

‘But I was only making a cake.’

He poked me hard in the chest with every syllable as he said, ‘I am sick of the sight of you!’

A torrent of verbal abuse rained down on me. His face went red, then purple, and his eyes stood out like organ stops. I sat still, transfixed.

‘You’ve always been a bloody slut. A slut and a leech. A pit-yacker, just like your mother. That’s all you’ll ever be. All this is your fault. You made all that bloody noise on purpose, to annoy me. You can’t do anything right. You will regret it – I’ll make sure of that. I’ll make your life a misery.’

I stood up to get away from his anger.

He waved his arms wildly as he shrieked. He poked and prodded me in the chest again and again, pushing me across the room.

‘I’m sick of the sight of you!’ he carried on goading. ‘Get out of my house. Get out and don’t come back.’

I had remained quiet and that hadn’t worked, so I calmly replied, ‘If that is what you want, then we’ll move out until we return to England.’

‘Just get out of this house.
Now
.’

Simon had heard all this. He called a good friend and arranged for us to go and stay with them for a while. We packed our things and piled them into the car. He left with the first load. ‘I’ll be straight back for you and the baby,’ he promised as he pulled away. ‘As quick as I can.’

Tommy screamed, ‘I’m going to end all of this.’ He ran into the bedroom and rushed back with a gun in his hand.

I was in the living room when he ran past the door towards the kitchen, where he thought I had gone. This gave me just enough time to pick up the baby and run, barefoot, out of the house. Petrified, I ran as fast as I could down the road, my breath rasping. Panic gripped me. My heart thumped so hard it hurt. I had to get Scott away from that madman. Simon would be back in a minute and he would save us. I stared into the distance, but the road was empty. I continued to run, stumbling, my breath halting, the baby crying.

I heard sounds behind and glanced over my shoulder to see my father reversing his car out of the driveway. Panic. I tried to speed up, sobbing in terror. The gleam of that gun was all I could see now. I knew my father would catch us and shoot me – maybe kill me, and the baby too.

It was no use. He came up alongside me and slowed to my pace.

‘Get in the car!’

‘No.’ I kept running.

The car came up parallel again and I took a sideways look. The gun was lying in his lap, ready for use.

‘Get in the bloody car!’ His voice more urgent now.

‘No. Go away. Leave us alone.’ I was sure he was ready to shoot me. Why didn’t he do it? I was close enough. I looked for an alleyway, some way of escape, but there was none. I ran on again. He cruised by and slowed once more.

This time he leaned out of the car. ‘I’m not going to shoot you. Look.’

I saw him put the gun in the glove box. I lurched with relief.

‘I beg you, Helen. Get in the car. I am not going to hurt you.’

I couldn’t escape, so I slowed down and stopped. He opened the car door for me. Defeated, I climbed in, desperate to catch my breath, Scott still whimpering in my arms.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just can’t help it. When I get like this, I just can’t control myself.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘My head is hot. It feels like my brain is on fire.’

I said nothing. It was the first time he had ever spoken to me like this; the first time he had acknowledged his own weakness.

After a few moments, he looked up at me. ‘Please don’t move out,’ he pleaded. ‘You know your mother will never let me hear the end of it if you move out.’

I thought about this, confused by the sudden change in him. I was still hardly able to breathe normally, let alone speak. He waited like a schoolboy needing reassurance after some misdemeanour.

Finally I found my voice. ‘I’ll have to speak to Simon.’

We went back to the house just as Simon returned. We were all met at the door by my mother.

She stood directly in front of me. ‘How can you move out and leave
me
?’ she screamed. ‘I will not let you take my bairn away from me.’

Simon stepped forward. ‘He’s
our
baby, not yours.’

I walked into the bedroom with Simon and explained very briefly what had happened.

‘We can’t stay here. It isn’t safe,’ he said, gathering some more things up. ‘I can’t trust him.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘We’re moving out – now!’ He picked up a case. ‘This is dangerous. We have to move out.’

“He’ll come after us wherever we are. We might as well stay here until we can go back to England.’

‘Let’s at least stay away for a few days.’

‘I don’t know.’ I wavered, the memory of my father’s plea fresh in my mind. ‘If we leave, my mother will make Tommy’s life hell and he’ll never be allowed to forget it.’

Simon was crestfallen. He just stood there. His instinct to take us away and keep us safe warred with his desire to support me in what I felt was right that day.

‘We must go to England as soon as we can,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ He put the case down, ‘If you really think we have to stay, I’ll support you, but I’m not happy about it. He’s an evil man. Your mother’s not much better.’

‘I know.’ I nodded. ‘It’s a no-win situation. But it won’t be for a day longer than necessary.’

So we agreed to stay on. As so often in the past, my parents settled into a cold silence and neither of them spoke to me for weeks. It was quiet, but that suited us fine. We had our baby to protect. Scott was my focus and I didn’t care if they never spoke to me again.

We usually ate our main meal at about five o’clock. One day, while Simon was still at work, my father made an announcement.

‘You must wash the dishes at six o’clock every evening. That’s your job.’

‘I can’t do it then.’

‘You will do it then. You’ll do as I say. If you want to continue living in my house.’

So it was his house now, was it? The rent book was in our name.

‘But six o’clock is when I feed Scott. I’ll do it after I’ve finished feeding him.’

‘I want the dishes washed at six o’clock. Not a moment later. Your mother will take over the feeding.’

So that was the reason. My mother sat there triumphant.

From that day on, I stood in the kitchen at six o’clock washing the dishes. Simon helped me to make it quicker, but we were never finished soon enough. Meanwhile, my mother sat in the living room, smiling like the Cheshire cat. She fed my baby and put him to bed for the night before I could finish. When I did go up to say goodnight, it was always too late. He was asleep. Too late for him to know my lingering kiss.

My mother became his mother more and more each day. She was determined to push me out, and I could do nothing to stop her without rocking the dynamics of our household. Tommy still had that gun. The consequences would be unthinkable.

I can’t understand now why I was so passive. I just coped one day at a time, as I always had, to keep a tenuous peace. It must have been a nightmare for Simon. He was wonderful. He supported me through each day, staying against all his instincts.

Fearful for Scott’s welfare, for our bond with him and our sanity, we got through it together, determined to leave at the earliest opportunity we could find.

CHAPTER 22

Jenny

The Eighteenth Hole

I finally got used to wearing shoes whenever I played golf. At nineteen, I partnered Neil Moir to win the Hoylake Open Scratch Mixed Foursomes. I joined the Ponteland Golf Club the same year. At this stage I still had only four golf clubs, and one of those was a conversion job.

One day, when I was playing in the Ponteland championship, a lady member turned to me.

‘My dear. Don’t you think you ought to get yourself a decent set of clubs?’

I ended up playing her in the final . . . and I beat her! That felt good. Then of course I did buy myself a set of clubs.

After that, I joined Gosforth Golf Club. It was nearer home, and everybody there was so friendly and encouraging. They all came to watch me when I won the Northumberland Championship. That was fantastic. There was a big celebration for me in the Gosforth Clubhouse that night!

My game just kept getting better. Of course I practised a lot, whenever I could, and worked hard – but I loved it. I loved the challenge. I think that was down to the utter determination I learned from my mother and the enthusiasm I caught from my father. When I was young, I had always thought I had inherited these qualities from them. I now knew that wasn’t true. Nonetheless, I recognized that Mam and Dad had both been instrumental in my growing success, and I was grateful for that.

Mam and I settled into a happy, companionable phase. I didn’t mention the adoption, and she remained in denial. I had to accept that I would never coax any answers out of her, though the questions were all still there jostling for attention at the back of my mind. I couldn’t ignore them, but they had to wait their turn, when the time was right.

Richard and I had now been going out for quite a while and spent time together whenever we could. This became increasingly difficult in between my golf commitments and his job, which took him travelling all over the north-east of England so, although we were definitely a couple, it was rather an on–off relationship, with one of us often away when the other was home and vice versa. I suppose we each thought we were in love, though we didn’t really talk about it, or about our future together. It was a convenient relationship for us both. We enjoyed each other’s company all the more whenever we could, and I think we just assumed it would continue that way.

For the next few years, golf was my life. In 1973 I was selected to play for England in Home Internationals, so I played a lot of big tournaments. Then I was asked to join the main team practices over the winter period. The first tournament the following year was the British Championship. I knew that the Curtis Cup selectors were watching me and expecting me to do well, so I was keen to do my best.

I was knocked out in the second round. I assumed that was it.

As I drove home, I thought, ‘What an idiot – the last tournament before the selection. I could kick myself.’ In bed that night, I relived all the holes. In the early hours I woke up with a start, annoyed with myself. ‘How did I miss that shot?’

A couple of days later, a friend rang me. ‘I see you’ve been selected to play for Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the Curtis Cup team . . .’

‘You’re joking!’ I said. I thought he was playing a trick on me.

‘No. It says so in the Football Pink.’

I went straight out and bought a copy of the newspaper, and there it was, right on the front page! This was either a scoop, or a sham, and I didn’t know which as nobody had contacted me about it. I had to wait till the next day before one of the selectors called to notify me officially that I had been selected. I didn’t think it was very well managed, but it was fantastic to know I had a place in the team, especially as the tournament was to be in San Francisco. For a girl who had never been further than Edinburgh Zoo till a few months before, this was a dream.