A House Without Windows (4 page)

Joe starts following the children everywhere.  He knows they’ve found a way to get into town and he wants to find out who is giving them a lift, because there’s no other way to get into town except by car.  The children outwit him and go into the cave and down the secret tunnel that leads back to Craggy-Tops’ cellars.  Joe waits outside the cave for them to return, but instead they escape and go to find Bill Smugs, who agrees to take them sailing out near the Isle of Gloom.

Daddy starts appearing more and more as Mummy and I keep on smiling at him, but I don’t know what to do to outwit him.  I feel as though he’s following me with his eyes, just like Joe was following the children.  The only way I can escape from him looking at me is to sit on the toilet with my book, but if he doesn’t want to creak the bedsprings with Mummy he tells me to come back into the house because he says we’re getting to be a proper little family now. 

I look at Daddy and smile as he brings me chocolates, felt tip pens, jigsaw puzzles and drawing paper.  He brings us a little table and three chairs that only just fits in our house, and now I don’t have to sit on the bed and eat and it’s easier to do my lessons at the table.  Sometimes when he brings us food he sits there with us and eats his dinner at the same time.  I don’t like him sitting with us, but we mustn’t make him cross and so we smile and pretend we’re happy.  He looks at me and tells Mummy that he has a beautiful daughter, that I’m his princess, and that no other man must ever get to look at me or at her.  I want to tell him he’s not my real father, but then I remember that Mummy says he must never know.

Mummy smiles all the time Daddy is there, but now looks sad most of the time when he’s not.  I hear her crying sometimes when she thinks I’m asleep. 

The best time is when we know Daddy has to go to work and we know he won’t be visiting us.  He leaves us our lunch and says he will be back at dinnertime, but now Mummy doesn’t even look happy when he’s gone for a while.  She doesn’t even want to eat much either, and leaves some of her sandwiches on the plate.  She says she feels sick, and sometimes she retches down the toilet and is sick. I worry there’s something wrong with her and that she’s going to die.

Mummy says she is not ill, but she knows she is going to have a baby and she cries because she doesn’t want it.   I ask her how she knows, and she says her periods have stopped, her boobs are sore, and her tummy already feels tighter and rounder. I ask her how she got the baby, and she tells me that Edwin put it in there.

I’m going to have a brother or sister!  If it’s a boy I’ll have a brother the same as Dinah or Lucy-Ann now!  I dance around the house with happiness, but Mummy says the baby will be my stepsister or stepbrother and not a real one, and this is because I have a different daddy. 

I don’t care.  I’ll be able to help Mummy wash the baby in the sink, and dry it with my towel with green edges on, and feed it with all the cheese sandwiches I don’t like.  This is the best thing that has happened since Daddy brought me some new clothes.  I’m too excited to read any more of my book and can’t wait to tell Daddy the news when he comes home from work, but Mummy tells me not to say anything, and that she will tell him all in good time.

I ask Mummy how long I have to wait before the baby is born.  She says it will take 9 months for the baby to grow in her tummy, but she thinks it has already been growing for about 2 months.  She says it will be many days before the baby gets here, but I have already worked out that I only have to wait 7 more months though.

What is a month?  I don’t really understand days and weeks and months, but Mummy repeats that because our house has no windows we then don’t see any daylight, and so cannot see the days going by.  She tells me that a month is about 30 days, but as I’ve never even seen a day I don’t know what she’s talking about.  If it’s only 7 months, then that can’t be too long as I can count up to 7 on my fingers.  She explains that one day is 24 hours, but there are no clocks in our house and I can’t think of what an hour looks like.

Daddy brings us fish and fried potatoes and peas.  I’m bursting to tell him about the baby, but Mummy shoots me a look with her eyes and I know I must smile and keep quiet and to remember that it’s a secret.  Daddy eats with us at the table, but Mummy can’t eat much again.  She tells Daddy she has a tummy upset, and he takes her plate of food away and locks the door.

If the baby is a girl I asked Mummy if we can call her Lucy-Ann, and Mummy said yes because it’s a very nice name.  If it’s a boy I ask if we can call him Jocelyn the same as Philip’s uncle, but Mummy says no son of hers is ever going to be called Jocelyn.

After a while
Mummy stops feeling sick and starts wanting to eat food again.  I can see her tummy is a bit bigger, and she says she will have to tell Daddy soon.  I ask her why she hasn’t told him sooner, and she says that sometimes the eggs that turn into babies come out too early and are flushed away down the toilet.  I’m pleased that Lucy-Ann is still in Mummy’s tummy though, but she says it’s no world to bring a baby into.

Daddy comes home from work and brings roast beef, roast potatoes, broccoli and carrots and gravy.  It’s nice.  I eat and look at Mummy, waiting for her to say something.  Daddy looks at me and I smile at him.  He smiles back.

Mummy tells Daddy she’s going to have another baby.  He stops eating and stares at her and asks if she’s certain.  She says yes.  She says the room won’t be big enough for three people, and Daddy says it will have to be because that’s all there is.  He doesn’t want any more dinner and goes away, leaving us to eat in peace.  He doesn’t come back to take away the plates, and we spend the rest of the time before bed singing with joy because he’s gone. 

I smile my brightest smile when he opens the door and wakes us up with our breakfast, and he tells Mummy it took him a bit of time to get used to the idea of being a father again.  He eats breakfast with us and then tells me to go and sit on the toilet with my book because he wants to talk to Mummy.  I clutch my book and try to read as I hear the bedsprings creak and hear him telling Mummy in a low voice how good it feels without a rubber.  Mummy doesn’t say anything.

The children are all in the boat with Bill Smugs and he teaches them how to sail.  As they circle around the Isle of Gloom Jack thinks he sees a rare bird called a Great Auk, but Bill tells him it isn’t.  He finds an old map of the Isle of Gloom in Uncle Jocelyn’s study, and he sees a possible entrance to the island through a break in the rocks. 

That night Jack looks out from the window in the tower room and sees a light coming from the island going on and off, and another light sending some sort of signal from the top of the cliff near Craggy-Tops.  He wants to find out what’s going on, so he gets dressed and creeps out.

I hear zips being done up and I haul myself back from the tower room at Craggy-Tops.  I’m sitting on the toilet with my book and Daddy’s come to find me.  He asks if I’m looking forward to seeing the new baby, and I nod and smile.  He says our family is growing and it makes him happy.

He goes out and locks the door, and Mummy comes in for a wee.  I ask her what a rubber is, and she says it’s used for rubbing out mistakes if you’ve written something down wrong with a pencil.  I didn’t know Daddy had written anything down wrong, but why did he say it felt good if he didn’t have a rubber to rub it out with then?

I go back to Craggy-Tops while Mummy is in the toilet.  Jack runs along the cliff top towards the light, but then Joe grabs him and asks him what he’s up to.  Kiki bites Joe’s ear and Jack manages to escape back up to the tower room.  He wakes up Philip and tells him what has happened, and says that he wants to use Joe’s boat to go over to the Isle of Gloom.

If I had a parrot I could get it to bite Daddy’s ear, then Mummy and I could escape through the door to the outside.  We would have to run really fast though, so that Daddy couldn’t catch us.  We could then find a boat and sail to another island. 

The boys wait until Joe has to take the car into town to get some shopping, and then they take his boat.  They find the gap in the rocks that was on the map, and sail across to the Isle of Gloom and haul the boat up on the beach.  They don’t find a Great Auk, but before they return to the boat they do find lots of deep holes going down into the earth, one with quite a good ladder, and also old tins of food nearby. 

I get to wondering if our house has a cellar or a hole in the ground that Mummy and I could climb down and escape.  I look at the floor but it’s made of the same grey-green stuff as the walls, and it’s as solid as solid can be.  I stamp my feet on it, but it doesn’t move.  I wonder if Jack and Philip would have managed to find a way out of our house?  They seem so real that I feel I could reach out and touch them in the book.  I know they would help if they could only find us.  If they could manage to get hold of Joe’s boat again they would just have to sail around our island and look out for a house without any windows.

Mummy says if I put my hand on her tummy I can feel the baby move.  I ask if it is Lucy-Ann or Jocelyn in there but she says she doesn’t know, and that no son of hers is ever going to be called Jocelyn anyway. 

Daddy brings larger clothes for Mummy, because her tummy is getting really big.  He doesn’t seem to want to creak the bedsprings any more, and instead he eats his dinners with us at the table and strokes her belly sometimes.  She always closes her eyes when he does that, and I can see that she doesn’t really like him doing it.  He’s also started stroking my hair and wanting me to sit on his lap.  He tells me I’m his princess
again. I hate him and he smells of really strong scent.  Mummy says he uses a lot of aftershave and that’s why he smells funny.  She says I mustn’t make him cross so I have to pretend I like sitting on his legs. 

Lucy-Ann doesn’t have to sit on Bill Smugs’ lap, so why must I sit on Daddy’s?  I don’t want to be his princess; it’s horrible.  He puts his arms around me and says what a beautiful girl I am.  He says he would never let anybody hurt me or make me cry.  I can usually get away though by saying I have to go to the toilet.  If I try and stay in there as long as possible, he gets fed up and goes back to his own house and locks the door. 

While the boys were gone Lucy-Ann and Dinah locked Joe in the secret room in the cellar so he couldn’t see his boat was missing.  Philip crept down to the cellar and quietly undid the lock while Joe was coughing, then ran upstairs again.  All four children pretended they had just come in from a walk when Joe appeared and accused them of locking him in, but Aunt Polly told him not to be so silly. 

Dinah took her Uncle Jocelyn something to eat and stole his map of the Isle of Gloom that showed all the holes leading down to the old copper mines, and on the back was a map of all the underground tunnels on the island that miners worked in to dig out the copper. She thought people might be still working in the mines because the boys had found tins of food.  The children were determined to sail over to the island again and explore the mines.

I wish I could steal Daddy’s keys, lock him in our house, and then run away with Mummy.

Daddy sometimes leaves us tins of food if he’s going to be at work for a long time.  He leaves Mummy a tin opener and spoons, but we’re never allowed knives or forks.  I’ve never seen a knife, but Mummy says it’s sharp and you can cut yourself with it.  She always says she hates eating with a spoon.

I keep waiting for the baby to come, but Mummy says it will be a few more months.  She tries again to explain about minutes, hours, days, weeks and months, but I can’t understand it all very much.  All I know is that I want to see my little baby stepsister Lucy-Ann.  I don’t really want a stepbrother now, just in case he looks too much like Daddy.

If only Edwin hadn’t given Amy that book.  I had managed to keep her virtually unaware of the seriousness of our situation, but now the book has brought the outside in, and Amy is restless.  I see her walking around the room looking for a way out, but there is none.  I know, because I have tried many, many times to find an escape route.  She is becoming older and more aware, and it is becoming harder and harder to keep up the pretence.

I can see she that feels the same distaste for Edwin as I do.  I dread what will happen when she turns into a woman.  She will be stunning.  I see Edwin beginning to take more notice of her now, but I’m not sure if that’s because he thinks she is his daughter
and is proud of her, or because he is starting to find her sexually attractive.  Soon maybe I will not be enough for him.  I pray to God to get us out of here before her breasts grow and she is able to bear children.  I wonder if God is listening to my prayers, and lately I wonder if he really exists at all.  What have I done to displease Him so much?

I feel the baby moving around inside me.  I pray to anybody who is listening that it will be a boy.  A boy will not interest Edwin sexually, and will grow the strong muscles I do not possess that could one day overpower our captor.  With a boy we have a good chance of escaping in maybe 15 or 16 years time, as Edwin grows older and weaker.  Now he is powerfully strong; I feel his strength as he lies on top of me.  He could kill me with one of his huge hands, and there is no point in trying to resist.  I struggled to get away the first time, and I was beaten so badly I nearly lost Amy.  I have learned my lesson.  I endure and stay silent.  It’s the best way.

I see Liam’s face every day when I look at his daughter.  It’s there in her eyes and in the special way she smiles, and she has his sunny temperament. 

Liam; I remember his soft Canadian accent and his habit of turning any statement into a question.  It’s getting harder to remember his actual features, but Amy will always be here to remind me. He was much taller than Edwin; about 6 feet 2inches.  He used to let me clipper his floppy fair hair close to his head in the summer, and he cared not a jot about his appearance. Amy has his mathematical, logical brain.

Edwin only sees her long silky blonde hair, but Amy has her father’s brain underneath that could maybe outwit him one day in the not-too-distant future.  She could be virtually anything she wanted to be, but alas for our present predicament, not a prizefighter.  I imagine she is streets ahead of any state school pupil of the same age.  She knows the names of all the bones and muscles in the body. She’s accomplished at long division and long multiplication and algebra, she reads quickly and with understanding, and she is a pleasure to teach.   I fill my days with teaching Amy or writing in this diary, and there is nothing else I can do to pass the time.

Our prison must only be about 10ft by 8ft, not including the toilet.  How on earth can three people live in it for the rest of their days without going insane?  Even now I wonder if I am losing my mind.  I hear myself snap at Amy sometimes if she asks the same question more than once, but I immediately feel remorse. 

I crave sunlight and fresh air.  I want to know what the date and the time is.  I want to read a newspaper. I don’t know which season it is, how old I am, or on which date Amy was born.  I know it must have been sometime in late December 1996, but when I delivered her myself on our bed I had lost track of the days.  The worst thing is having no idea of time; the only way I can measure it is by Edwin’s presentation of meals.  I know it is a Sunday lunchtime when he brings us a roast dinner, but on other days we have sandwiches to eat while he is at work so we eat when we’re hungry.  The days are endless.