Daddy's Little Earner (5 page)

When the social workers arrived at the house that day,
Dad was out with Terry and me but they must have broken
in because they found Chris and Glen, who were two
and three years old by then, abandoned in their locked
bedroom as usual. Neither of them reacted to the
strangers who suddenly appeared beside them. They just
stared straight ahead with deadened eyes. Chris was
rocking rhythmically back and forth in his cot and Glen
was so hungry he was actually eating the contents of his
own soiled nappy.

It was that scene, discovered by social workers, that
sealed Mum’s reputation as a terrible mother, giving Dad
the opportunity to make out he was some sort of local
hero by default. Even though the state those babies had
got into was as much his fault as hers, he somehow managed
to make himself seem like another victim of her
neglect and cruelty rather than the cause of most of her
problems. Mum says she was having a breakdown during
her final years with us and I imagine that must have
been what happened. There’s no other explanation why
a mother could neglect her own children to that extent.

I don’t remember coming home that day to find Mum
gone. Because she’d disappeared before, I probably
assumed it was like the other times and she’d be back
eventually. It was only gradually, over time, that I realized
she wasn’t coming back this time and that Terry,
Dad and I were on our own now. I was six years old, nearly
seven, and I had to become the woman of the house. A
cold knot of panic formed in my chest when I thought
about it.

The social workers took both Chris and Glen into care
but, for some reason that no one has ever been able to
explain to me, they decided it would be all right to leave
Terry and me at home with Dad. Perhaps at that stage
they thought Mum was the bigger problem; after all she
was the one who was on the game, a lifestyle that carried
so much stigma and suggested she couldn’t possible be a
decent parent, and she was the one who had deserted us.
Perhaps they thought that with such a shameless woman
gone from his life Dad might be able to do a better job for
us. Who knows what he told them at the time to make
himself look good and her look bad. Dad could convince
anyone of almost anything when he put the full weight of
his charm into it.

When Mum heard from her parents that Terry and I
had been left with Dad she boarded the first train back to
Norwich and went to see social services, to plead with
them to do something. It must have been a nerve-racking trip for her, constantly looking over her shoulder for fear
of being seen by someone who would tell Dad she was
back in town. Both of the social workers she had dealt
with in the past had been moved to other areas and she
had to explain her whole story all over again to someone
new. She pleaded and begged, telling them again about
Dad’s drinking problems, his violence, his involvement
in prostitution and his promise that he intended to put me
on the game as soon as possible. They refused to take her
warnings seriously. Maybe they hear stories like that all
the time and thought Mum was exaggerating to get back
at her estranged husband.

‘All your children are subject to care orders,’ they tried
to reassure her, ‘which will stay in force until they are
eighteen.’ This was supposed to mean that social services
took responsibility for us and made decisions about such
things as where we lived and what schools we went to.
No doubt they promised to keep an eye on us and to
remove us if they thought we were in any danger, but
I doubt if that would have put Mum’s mind at rest.
She knew how clever Dad was at manipulating people
and making them believe whatever he wanted them
to believe.

Although I have all my social services reports from the
time, it is hard to work out from the things they have
written why they made some of the decisions they did. I
always felt hopeful in the following years whenever I knew that a social worker was due to call on us, because I
thought each time they were bound to realize that something
was wrong and would try to help us. But the main
social worker who was allotted to us in the early years was
so terrified of Dad she refused to come to the house unless
she had a police escort or one of her bosses with her. Her
visits were very infrequent and were over as quickly as
everyone could manage. Her fears were not unreasonable,
of course, since Dad had already served six months
in jail for beating up that other social worker. But if they
knew he was capable of that level of violence, did they not
guess he was capable of being violent to us? What made
them think it would be all right to give us straight back
to him as soon as he finished his sentence?

Even if they had come visiting more often and asked
us more probing questions it probably wouldn’t have
done them any good. I would never have spoken up to
anyone in front of Dad, or even talked honestly about
him if he weren’t there. It would be years before I found
the courage to do that. Sometimes I would sit silently staring
at the social workers who did make it into the house,
trying to talk to them with my mind, trying to send them
messages, hoping they would be able to hear my telepathic
cries for help, but of course they didn’t. I have vivid
memories of being asked questions like, ‘Are you getting
enough to eat?’ and my stomach was rumbling but I didn’t
dare to say we hadn’t had any food at all that day and only a few chips the day before. They took my silence as
meaning that I had nothing I wanted to complain about. I
would try to drop hints and clues but they never picked
them up; maybe I was being too subtle or maybe they just
didn’t want to hear. It was bound to be easier for them if
they could feel reassured that we were OK.

I was as terrified of Dad as anybody else, but I still
adored him and wanted to be living with him. I just
wanted them to make him be nice to us and to tell him to
stop doing some of the things he was doing, such as beating
us. I hated Mum for deserting us because I could see
how devastated my brother and father both were and I
despised her for abandoning them when they loved her
so much. Hating her brought me even closer to Dad, giving
us something else in common.

His broken heart was a terrible sight to behold, and I
began to feel I had a responsibility to look after him. The
worst times were always when he’d had a few drinks and
the melodrama of his own self-invented life story would
become heightened beyond anything any country and
western songwriter would have dared to write. Time
after time Terry and I would find him on the sitting room
floor on his hands and knees, weeping and praying for
‘his Jane’ to come back to him, screaming hysterically at
the gods in his abject misery.

He always became furious whenever Terry or I cried
about anything, shouting at us to shut up, hitting us, seeing our tears as a sign of weakness, so I couldn’t understand
how he could be so willing for other people to see
him cry so openly. For him it seemed to be like a badge of
honour, a way to show everyone how wicked Mum was
to have broken his heart and how much pain he was in.

‘I can understand your mum leaving all the other children,’
Dad would say to Terry, ‘but not you because you
were her favourite. How could she leave you? A mother
is supposed to love her first-born child more than anyone.’

I would be able to see the pain in Terry’s face as the
words sank in, and feel my own pain at hearing someone
confirm out loud that Mum had loved Terry more than
me, even though I knew it to be true. Terry rarely cried
but the tears would swell in his eyes at those moments and
I was upset with Dad for being so cruel and for continually
rubbing salt into my brother’s emotional wounds.

However much I hated the way he behaved, Dad
always managed to convince me of his undying love and
favouritism towards me, as if to compensate me for the
fact that my mother hadn’t loved me enough to stay. He
would assure me that as long as I stood by him everything
would be OK.

‘All mothers love their first sons and all daddies love
their little girls,’ he would say, as if merely saying it was
enough to prove it was true. He never backed it up with
displays of affection or kindness but these few crumbs
were enough to keep my loyalty and adoration intact.

All the same, he managed to inflict maximum damage
on both of us in his outpourings of misery. Terry would be
heartbroken to think that his mother had done that to him
and I would feel crushed to think that I hadn’t been of
importance to her, that only Terry would have mattered
to her. Why would Mum have loved him more than me? I
would wonder, deciding that it must be because I was such
a bad person. Then I would decide not to care, telling
myself that it didn’t matter what she had felt for me
because I was Dad’s favourite and he was still there for us.

He had a particular skill at making other people feel
so bad about themselves that they actually believed he was
their hero, the only one who cared about them, the only
one who was there for them when their lives fell to pieces.
More often that not he would be responsible for reducing
people to needy wrecks in the first place, then when he
had them hooked and dependent on him he would
remind them how useless they were, making them all the
more grateful to him for being the one who looked after
them. He did it with Mum and every other woman he
ever went out with, and he did it to us children as well. I
would go to him constantly, trying to climb onto his knee
and telling him how much I loved him, but he would
always push me away in disgust.

‘You’re too fat and ugly,’ he was always telling me. ‘No
one will ever love you except me. Even your own mother
left you.’

Looking back now I know I wasn’t fat, just a normal
healthy child, and I don’t think I was ugly. But he convinced
me of both at the time. Dad liked overweight
women because they would be insecure about themselves
and that would give him a chance to dominate and taunt
them, calling them fat, useless whores.

Sometimes Dad would cuddle me, but it would only
last a few seconds before he would shove me away again.
I hated the feeling of rejection and eventually I stopped
going to him. I still loved it when he told me I was his
favourite, although it would make me feel sorry for Terry,
but I didn’t believe I deserved such an honour.

We weren’t with Dad all the time because he quite
often got taken off to prison for thieving or beating
someone up. Whenever that happened Terry and I
would be put back into foster homes and children’s
homes for a few months, or however long the sentence
was. We were taken to visit him in prison sometimes and
it was always a terrifying experience. Even sitting in the
waiting room amongst the other visitors was intimidating.
Everyone appeared to be so angry and aggressive
and there always seemed to be the sounds of shouting in
the distance, as well as the banging of the big iron doors
and the clanking keys on the wardens’ belts. It all added
to the atmosphere of fear for small children who didn’t
understand half of what was going on or what was being
said around them.

Once we were taken through to where he was waiting
for us it was distressing to see our dad, who was normally
so smartly turned out, reduced to baggy prison clothes,
looking so vulnerable. We were used to him being the
powerful one, the one in control of everyone around him,
and it was unnerving to see him being forced into a subservient
position, being bossed around by the wardens.
He would become very emotional when he talked to us
on those visits, promising that everything would be different
once he got home, that our lives would be wonderful
and that he would get a job so he could buy us all the
things we needed. It was as though he was playing some
hard-done-by character from a country and western song
– one man struggling bravely to bring his children up
right in a hostile world. I always wanted to believe him,
even when he kept on letting us down and breaking his
promises, and I would always stick up for him in front of
other people, even when I finally realized just how bad a
father he really was.

As soon as he got out of jail, I would find a way to get
back to Dad from wherever we were staying at the first
possible opportunity. I felt I owed him my loyalty because,
whatever he was like, at least he hadn’t walked out on us
like Mum had. He had stuck by us and so we belonged to
him, we were his and it felt right that we should be with
him. ‘No one else will ever want you,’ he’d say. ‘Only me.
You’re fat and useless but at least you’ve got me.’

He couldn’t stand the idea that Terry and I might be
taken permanently into care because he didn’t think it
was anyone else’s business how he brought us up, and
because he didn’t like to lose the benefits that he got as a
single dad. We were his devoted little followers, part of
his entourage, and he resented any attempts to part him
from us.

He did try for many years to get Chris and Glen back
as well, even though he had never known what to do with
them when they were babies and wouldn’t have been any
better with them once they were older. He went round to
the foster home where they spent their whole childhood a
few times to try to see them, but thankfully for them he
was never allowed access. I heard he even made a pass at
their foster mother. I suspect she might have had a bit of a
soft spot for him because virtually everyone did when he
decided to turn on the charm. He was good at convincing
people that his children were the most important things
in his life; that he was a dutiful dad who had been
wronged by a bad woman and a heartless state.

Although Terry and I didn’t get to speak to Chris and
Glen again until we were all adults, we did see them a few
times just after we were all split up when they were
brought to visit the people who lived next door to us. I
suppose their foster parents must have been friends of our
neighbours. Our front doors were inches away from one
another, only divided by a tiny fence, and we could see them coming and going, but we were still ordered by
social services not to speak to them. I remember peering
out the window, seeing how cute they looked in the nice
new clothes their foster mother had bought for them, and
just feeling sad. After a while someone must have realized
how cruel they were being to all of us by allowing
these visits because they suddenly stopped. I didn’t see
Chris and Glen again after that until I was twenty years
old.