What Daddy Did (23 page)

I remember beaming from ear to ear when Robert kissed me as we were declared man and wife. As I looked around at that moment, I saw Robert's Mum and Dad, his two sisters and their husbands, my two-year-old nephew Matthew, my little niece Hannah, who was only a couple of weeks old, and our mutual friends. I felt full of love and belonging for the first time in my life.

From the registry office we were driven to the hotel in Humbie where we had our reception. It was a beautiful Scottish baronial mansion set in its own grounds with wonderful gardens. At the end of the day Robert carried me over the threshold of our house, which was next door to his parents' home. This was the first night we spent in this house together. Up until that point we had lived with Robert's Mum and Dad. Through respect for them, we'd slept in separate bedrooms, even though we were enjoying a healthy and happy sex life by this point. I was in love and I really belonged somewhere.

As we honeymooned in Corfu, we made plans for our future. How could I fail to be happy in a world so very far removed from the one I'd known as a child? I was loved and protected, but I was also young and, at last, I was allowed to enjoy the wonders of my youth.

I LOVED THOSE EARLY DAYS OF
married life, of making a home. I painted and decorated our little cottage and made all my own curtains. I cooked lovely meals for Robert and we went out with our many friends. For the first time I was a homemaker in the real sense of the word as I was making a home for me just as much as I was for Robert.

Our life was a little eccentric, I guess. Robert loved animals and we had a menagerie which included a parrot, some lizards and a golden Labrador called Sally whom we would take for long walks up the Pentland Hills. We travelled a lot, holidaying in Greece during the summer of our first year together and going on weekend trips to Amsterdam or over to St Monance in Fife with Robert's Dad.

The pair of us would often babysit for Robert's older sisters, Fiona and Andrea. I loved my nephew and niece, Matthew and Hannah, from the moment I met them. I painted a wardrobe for each of them – Matthew had a brightly coloured jungle scene all over his. He was fascinated watching me paint, and leaned on my shoulder as I covered the wardrobe with snakes and monkeys, lions and tigers, all hidden in green tropical foliage. Hannah's, in complete contrast, was painted with butterflies and flowers. They are grown-up now, and we all laugh at the stories I still like to tell them of my nappy-changing exploits. They love to hear of the times when they were little, and I am so happy to be able to give them some of those memories knowing that they were safe and protected as children within a loving family. These were happy, wonderful times and it seemed as if nothing could ever spoil the joy I was feeling.

Robert left his job in the Social Work Department and set up his own business in the grounds of a garden centre, selling both tropical and pond fish. This was the business that was intended to set us up for life. He sold ponds too, and would fit them into people's gardens, full of plants and koi carp. I still worked in the Social Work Department. I had moved from the children's home just before we got married. Word had gone around that they were going to close this big home, and many of the staff were being moved to smaller units throughout Edinburgh. I decided to move before that happened and managed to get a position working in an adolescent unit in the Southhouse area of the city.

This transition was quite strange for me. I was happy to be moving, even though the move brought with it a certain amount of trepidation. I was settled in the place where I'd been working; I had lots of friends there, and was a little worried that I wouldn't find this in my new environment. Luckily for me that wasn't the case, and I soon made friends with the staff in the unit and the young people who were resident there.

The only blot on this new landscape came in a confrontation I had with someone else who worked there. This man was an older member of staff in a relatively senior position. I didn't take to him from the word go because I saw in his character something I didn't like, something I recognised from my childhood. Very soon, I could see that he intimidated many of the young people there. He was a bully and extremely threatening, quite a loathsome man.

The unit was small, with around 12 young people living there. Usually, there were two members of staff on shift at a time. One evening when I was working there with him, I witnessed at first hand his bullying behaviour towards the young people. I just couldn't stand it. I was outraged – he was misusing his position of authority, and being abusive to the very people he was supposed to be protecting. All my sense of injustice and unfairness about my own childhood flared up at that precise moment, and I challenged him. He obviously saw me as a young person too. I was only 20 at the time and looked very young for my age. He then started bullying me and threw me out of the unit, saying I'd been sacked.

He had no authority to do this, so I went to a phone box and called a very senior member of staff at the Social Work headquarters. It ended with me taking out a grievance procedure against this man for his conduct. He was demoted and put under supervision, but continued to work in the unit. A few years later, he was finally sacked over another incident. This time I wasn't involved. Why he was ever given a job in the first place is beyond me. What I did take from the incident was that my sense of there being bad in people was heightened, no doubt due to my childhood abuse, and that I should be aware of this part of me.

While this business was going on, it was a difficult time for Robert and I because it threw up things for me from my past. I still didn't tell him anything. I just couldn't. I was very stressed during this period, and for a while I was unable to be as intimate with Robert as we had previously been. We did argue a little about it but I refused to even consider that it might have any connection with my childhood. At that point, those years were buried for me – or at least that was what I thought.

We did get over things and our life sailed along as normal. I helped him with his new business when I could and we went back to having fun together. I liked my job but was beginning to look to the future, and took various night classes in art, English and history. I passed all of my exams in these subjects and felt good about myself. I also started to learn to drive. Inspired by the fun we had with our niece and nephew, Robert and I began discussing when we would start a family.

We were looking to the future, but my past was still there, waiting to creep into my life again.

WHEN I WAS IN MY TWENTIES
, my father was admitted to hospital. He was suffering from emphysema, as he had done for years, but now he had also had a stroke so things were looking particularly bad. With enormous trepidation I went up to Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary to visit him. I say with trepidation because I hadn't had any contact with him for a couple of years as I had decided to get on with my life with my new husband and put the past behind me.

I was shown into the big ward where he was and pointed in the direction of his bed. Don Ford, my Daddy, lay there in a big hospital bed. He looked like a very weak and broken man, surrounded by hospital paraphernalia and struggling to breathe. Looking up at me through his thick glasses, in a laboured way he said, 'Hiya, hen!' as if it was only yesterday that I had seen him.

On that first visit, we made small talk; he asked me to get him cigarettes and I refused. He had hospital pyjamas on that were far too big for him and, as I stood there uncomfortably, I cringed with embarrassment at the thought that this was my father. I'm ashamed to say that I just wanted to get out of there.

After being on the ward for 10 minutes or so, I was taken aside by one of the nurses who, knowing that I was his daughter, asked me many questions about his lifestyle and suchlike. I answered as best I could; I couldn't really give her any information as I hadn't seen my Dad for such a long time. I was uncomfortable, but I couldn't leave just yet as the nurse wanted to explain a few things to me. She said that he was malnourished, and that they were having difficulty getting him to eat. She paused and then asked if I could maybe coax him to have a few mouthfuls of something. I reluctantly said I would try. So the nurse went off and returned quite quickly with a bowl of scrambled egg. Handing it to me, she said: 'If he doesn't eat, he'll die.' To be perfectly honest, that comment didn't bother me as he meant so little to me. When I look back, I find it very sad that this was all there was between a father and daughter. I knew by then how good father and daughter relationships worked because I saw how my sisters-in-law had caring, loving relationships with their father; but here I was in this hospital with my own, desperately ill Dad, and I resented every minute of it.

I approached him, clutching the bowl of scrambled egg. He looked up through his glasses and said, 'What are they saying? What are they saying about me? Did you get me some fags?' I said that he wasn't to smoke and that he was to eat. 'Look,' I said, avoiding calling him Dad, 'I've got some scrambled egg here. You need to eat if you want to get better.' I put the bowl down on the table in front of his bed, beside the used tissues and little paper cup that he spat into, and tried to coax him to eat.

The smell from him was awful, as if he was decaying, and the pallor of his skin confirmed it. He swizzled the eggs around in the bowl with the spoon but didn't eat. I picked up the spoon and, filling it with egg, started to feed him. I didn't really want to – I felt sick doing it, caring for him – but I did have a feeling of obligation. What for, I have no idea.

I got him to eat a bit then I left, saying that I'd be back soon and that he'd better eat while I was gone if he wanted to get better and go home. As I walked back through the green fields of the Meadows, the tears streamed involuntarily down my cheeks. I knew I would have to go back and visit him but I really didn't want to. To see him reminded me of so many bad things in my past and I didn't want to look at those things – or at him for that matter. He was not the person I wanted for a father.