What Daddy Did (12 page)

Auntie Nellie was a good person. Auntie Madge was a good person, and my memories of my Dad's mum – Granny Ford – are also good. These are the important things to me. They were my Dad's family and they were good and kind people. I had small glimpses of this kindness and goodness in my Dad in the very early days, and I know that Karen – Helen's youngest child – saw a goodness in him too. With all this knowledge I am able to see that possibly, without the influence of Helen in his life, he was like his family – basically decent. However, he was also a misguided person who was heavily influenced by Helen's evil. It is heartening for me to know that my side of the family is that way.

I can't say the same for Helen.

My birth mother and her family don't come into it because they don't really care – if they did they would have found me long before now. I shudder to think what would have happened to me if I hadn't had the influence of these people in my terrible childhood. I am eternally grateful to Auntie Nellie, Auntie Madge and Granny Ford for giving me some of their goodness in those terrible dark painful days. These are the important legacies, the legacies I can hand on to my children – not the twisted, perverse ways of Helen and her pedophile friends, and certainly not the legacy of a mother who abandoned me when I was just a baby.

I DON'T KNOW HOW
the minds of other people work. Do they have flashes of memories coming through when they least expect or want them? I do. Especially now. Since the court case, since I faced Helen Ford and watched as she was found guilty, then sentenced, more and more is coming through and forcing me to look at what happened to me. I don't go for counselling. I don't have a team of psychiatrists and psychologists there to help me through every thought. I really only have myself.

How can I know everything that was done to me? No-one remembers every single day of their childhood. Even when that childhood is filled with horror, there are ordinary days and times when life just goes on. But then, of course, come the things that no-one ever wants to think about. There are many episodes of my abuse that I have only glimpsed fleetingly – I assume that the power of my mind blocks things that are too awful, or prevents too many incidents being relived at once.

I remember Blind Jimmy. I remember the stench of the old man I was sent to 'help'. He was a disgusting creature with never a nice word to say to anyone, and on the day Helen sent me to him to 'help', I was horrified just to think I would have to clean and tidy up for him, horrified to even spend any time in that filthy grey flat. I should have known. Looking back, when he started to abuse me – holding my hand to masturbate him while he stuck his fingers into me, laughing and wheezing all the time – it was almost to be expected.

I remember the barber. I remember the red-and-white striped pole and the bowl of sweeties for kids who got their hair cut by him. Helen sent me to him with a note – and a warning not to read it. As with Blind Jimmy, as with all of my abusers, Helen didn't just know what was going to happen; she facilitated it. As I sat on the swirling barber shop chair – enjoying the sights flying past, enjoying
fun
for once – Helen would have known why the barber locked the door after reading her note, why he smiled at me in a different way to any other time, why he pulled the blinds down, why he felt it would be absolutely danger-free to stick his hands up my skirt, and force them inside me.

She also sent me to the homes of men she considered 'friends'. I remember some of those instances clearly. Too clearly.

There was always a created reason behind these trips. I do wonder why. Everyone involved seemed to be so sure of themselves, as if they would never have to account for their actions. Yet there was always a pretence, whether it was a note, a chore or an errand. One day during the summer holidays when we were living in Edina Place, I was given one of the dreaded folded-up notes.

'You!' Helen screamed from the kitchen through to me in my dark little bedroom. I'd been hoping that she'd forget about me and that the worst thing I'd have to deal with that day would be boredom. As soon as I heard her voice, however, I knew that was a pipe dream.

I scrambled off my bed, hiding the book I'd been trying to read in the mattress hole where I kept my treasured fiction from Auntie Nellie. I scurried through to the kitchen where Helen stood, holding a wet tea towel in one hand and a bit of paper in the other. Every word that came from her mouth was accompanied by a slap of the tea towel at my face and head: 'Take – this – and – get – across – the – road.' I took the note and left the room. 'Don't you dare fucking read that, witch!' she shouted at me, as always.

I ran out of the door and across to the flat in Easter Road where I knew a man (whom I'll call Johnny Smith) lived. The whole community around that area at the time knew most people – if not by name, then by sight – because everyone could get pretty much everything they needed in terms of shopping and services without ever leaving the area. There were a lot of people with small minds and no ambition who would never go beyond Easter Road for their entire lives. I knew that Mr Smith was a friend of Helen's. Even though I had never seen him at any of her parties, she always spoke to him if she bumped into him when we were shopping, and their conversations left her in a good mood as the pair of them enjoyed a laugh when they met.

I walked over to where the tenement flats were and opened the heavy door which led into the stone stairwell. The note was probably about a party Helen was planning, I reasoned. There was a feeling of dread in my stomach as I didn't know whether it would be the next day or next week, but I knew that I would be part of the 'entertainment' whenever it did happen. I went up the stairs to the second-floor flat which I knew belonged to Mr Smith. He must have been waiting for me because he opened the door before I'd even managed to ring the bell.

'Come in, come in,' he said, pulling me by the wrist into his flat. He had horrible teeth – more gums than anything else – and he smelled as though he didn't even know what a bath was. Helen didn't keep me clean, and I was never allowed free access to the bathroom to wash myself (that was a place for punishment), but I seemed to have a heightened sensitivity to the stink of others too. He started to pull me through to what must have been his living room. 'I have to go,' I stuttered. 'I have to get back or Helen will wonder where I am.' I'd tried that line many times before with many of Helen's friends, and it had never worked. It wasn't to be any different today. All of these men knew – as did I – that Helen had sent me to them. Helen couldn't care less what they did to me once I was in their homes or shops.

'No, no,' he answered. 'Don't you worry about that, Donna. Helen says you can stay here as long as you like.' I didn't 'like' to stay there for another second. His attempts to pull me towards the living room were becoming more successful. When we got there, he pushed me down onto an old, smelly easy chair and leaned over me. 'Now, Donna, can I get you anything?' he asked, as if we were having a perfectly normal conversation. I wanted lots of things – mostly an escape route out of there. I shook my head. 'Ah well, now – maybe I'll be able to think of something,' he leered.

He stood up and moved his hand towards the front of his trousers. As soon as he started to unzip them, I made a dash for it, pushing past him and running down the hall. I heard him coming along behind me, calling my name in an almost sing-song way, as I finally got to the safety of the front door.

The locked front door.

He put his arms above me as I stood there. 'See? See what a silly wee girl you are?' he asked. He moved his hands down, grabbing me by the shoulders. I closed my eyes, but he told me to open them. 'Don't you want to, Donna?' he said. 'Don't you want to lick my lollipop?'

He stood there smiling with his trousers and pants around his feet, and shoved my hand onto his horrible, inflated penis. 'There you go,' he said. 'I knew you'd like it. Now, go ahead – lick my lollipop.' He kept saying it over and over again, more to himself than to me I think, as he pushed my head down and forced me to do what he wanted.

Finally, it was over. That scene – that moment – was over at least, but it's only very recently that my memory has allowed me to visit that chapter again. I know that there are many, many more episodes all too similar to that one, still locked away. Whether they will come out – when they will come out – isn't something I have any control over, but maybe you are only given what you can cope with. I hope so.

ON THE BACK OF MY BIRTH
certificate is written, 'baptized at London Road Church, Edinburgh on June 9th 1966 by Rev W Scott Reid'.

I wasn't a baby when that baptism happened, nor was my mother present. In fact, it occurred almost two years after I was 'restored' to the care of my Dad and his new wife Helen.

Reading through my files – particularly those that relate directly to my time in the Barnardo's institution – there is much mention of religion, or the lack of it, within our family. My mother is referred to as a 'lapsed Catholic', and it is stated that, 'the children have not been baptized'. On my return home it was a prerequisite that I would be given a religious education, so, every Sunday without fail, I attended Sunday school. My Dad and Helen didn't go, but my older half-brother and half-sister came with me when they too arrived 'home'.

The memories I have of attending Sunday school are bittersweet.

I can recall some nice times such as singing jolly children's hymns. I also loved the Sunday school picnics where, for one day of the year, I would get the opportunity to travel on a bus with all the other kids, and we'd arrive at a park where I could play like a normal child. On top of that, I'd be fed! I'd receive a little paper bag with a cold meat pie, a biscuit and a homemade bun. On those days I was truly in heaven.

At Sunday school I would listen to the Bible stories related to us by our teacher, about the miracles that were performed by a mystical person called Jesus. I didn't know who Jesus was but He sounded good and kind. I loved these stories – the birth of the baby Jesus; the parting of the waves; the Ten Commandments; and how Jesus fed so many people with a few fish and loaves. However, one story that sticks like glue in my mind and seemed terribly apt to me is the verse from Matthew – suffer the little children.

If there is one clear image in my mind, it is the day that I heard these words. I was around nine years old and we had been living in our new house for a matter of months. The week of this sermon was the week that I had, for the first time ever, been sexually abused.

I was sore all over that Sunday morning – bruised on my body from the beating I'd received on one of the days that week, and sore down below because that week I had been sent on an errand to one of Helen's friends. The man I had been sent to had stuck his fingers 'in there'. He told me I would like it, but I didn't, I truly didn't.