Deliver Me From Evil (8 page)

And not only was the house beginning to be messy, it was dirty, too. This is something that would simply get worse and worse over the years to come.

CHAPTER 8:

I soon learned at George Dowty Drive there were so-called ‘Good Books’ and ‘Bad Books’ which we children could end up in, depending on our behaviour and attitudes. It wasn’t clear exactly what the rules were, as they were deeply embedded in Eunice’s strange mind, but they were usually to do with how she perceived us. Thus, if she had been watching us, vigilantly, as usual, and we had done something she didn’t like or approve of, we were in her Bad Books. Looking back on my first visit to George Dowty for Sunday dinner I realize that Sarah was clearly in Eunice’s Bad Books that day; she was not allowed to come downstairs or eat with us and remained hovering timidly at the top of the stairs, almost afraid to breathe.

Being in Eunice’s Bad Books meant punishment and it could take ages before you were able to get back into her Good Books. It was very arbitrary, too, and could flip in a moment from being Bad to Good and back again. I wanted to be in her Good Books to avoid punishment but, over the years, I learned that I was in her Bad Books from the outset (being the Devils child), so there was almost nothing I could do to clear my evil slate. If you’re bad from birth, what can you do?

So what sort of crime would put me in her Bad Books? And what punishment would be meted out? And how could I get back into her Good Books?

I often found it hard just to drop off to sleep at night, as my mind was quite active. You have to remember I was still a small child and back home, as I mentioned earlier, I would often get out of bed and scoot around the room, just to wind down so I could get to sleep. I also sometimes had nightmares and needed some sort of comfort to settle down.

Eunice, however, expected me to go upstairs and straight to sleep. Just like that. If I didn’t go to sleep, I was in her Bad Books. We girls had been given one nightie each, an old-fashioned one, made of winceyette, fleecy material. Mine was pink with long sleeves and puffy shoulders, and it was well worn already. We always had secondhand clothes, probably from Eunice’s own daughters as she never threw anything away. Sarah’s was green and Charlotte’s blue.

One night, fairly soon after I’d moved in, Eunice came up to my bedroom and stood in the doorway watching me. I was probably prancing around the room in my pink nightie.

‘Right. You’re obviously not tired. I’ll make you tired,’ she said, and yanked me roughly out of the room. I was utterly shocked. Where was I going? Without speaking, Eunice pulled me to the top of the stairs. Was she going to push me down?

‘You’re to walk up and down these stairs all night. I mean all night. Right the way through.’

I looked up at her mean, hard face. She had to be joking. It was dark and cold, I had bare feet and no dressing gown. Charlotte was in bed, as were Robert, Thomas and Sarah. But now I came to think of it, I’d seen Sarah walking up and down the stairs one night just after I moved in and had wondered then what on earth was going on. I hadn’t asked her as I was too scared, and she would have been too scared to answer me, anyway.

‘Go on, what are you waiting for?’

I started walking down the stairs to the bottom, Eunice watching my every step. At the bottom I turned, I suppose half hoping she’d relent. I looked up at her, pleadingly.

‘Come back up, this instant.’

I went back up the stairs, my little legs already aching. At the top Eunice simply gestured silently for me to go back down again. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I carried on walking up and down, up and down, up and down until Eunice eventually went to bed and the house fell silent.

As I walked up and down like a tiny robot in the dark, I could hear the house noises. I cried pretty much most of the night. What would my mum and dad say if they knew? What would my teachers say? It seemed so utterly unjust. My legs felt leaden and my feet and ankles ached. My eyes grew heavy and I just wanted to lie down. I was cold, shivery and thirsty and I desperately needed to sleep.

As the night wore on I started to trip up because I’d lose concentration, even consciousness, from time to time. I started to hallucinate with tiredness. I’d suddenly see an image of Eunice in my face snapping ‘Go to bed’ at me. Then I’d come to, having fallen momentarily asleep, and find myself standing up in the hall, wondering what on earth I was doing there in my nightie in the dead of night? Then, with a jolt, I’d remember my instructions and start heaving my little legs up and down the stairs again, over and over, getting more and more exhausted, more and more confused, and feeling desolate inside.

This happened on many occasions. One time I found myself back in bed – I must have climbed back in automatically in the middle of walking up and down stairs all night. Suddenly, I was wide awake and aware of Eunice’s huge face, inches from mine. She grabbed my arm, pulled me up by the hair and put me back at the top of the stairs, telling me to start walking. Confused and half asleep, I nearly fell down the whole flight.

Eunice’s other night-time treat was to make me stand up all night. And I mean stand up. All night. Without moving. This was worse than going up and down stairs. Eunice would sometimes stand me in the hall, next to a weird heater system that blew out hot air when it was turned on. At night it was turned off, but it would still make strange and creepy clicking and whirring noises. I’d get very dizzy and disorientated standing up all night and would begin to hallucinate, imagining things, seeing weird images. Sometimes I’d think someone was there, then I’d blink, and they weren’t.

Eunice would go off to bed and leave me there, shivering in the dark, all alone. But every so often she’d appear, checking that I was still standing there. Sometimes I would have curled up on a pile of washing in a laundry basket and she’d pull me roughly awake and onto my feet again and snap that I had to wake up and stand there to get back into her Good Books. So I’d go back to standing in the hall, listening to the clicking and whirring noises of the heater – I suppose it was something of interest – desperately trying not to fall asleep. After I’d fallen asleep a couple of times on the job, Eunice upped the stakes and made me stand at the top of the stairs, rather than at the bottom. That was terrifying because if I fell asleep I would obviously fall downstairs. Sometimes I just wanted to let go and fall because at least then I’d probably be knocked out and I’d have a legitimate reason to be asleep. But I would have to strain to keep awake, swaying at the top of the stairs, fearing what would happen if I fell down or moved.

One time during the first eighteen months, Eunice took us away for a short camping break to a folk festival at a place called Towersey Even though it was a kind of a holiday, her punitive regime continued and we still had to strive to be in her Good Books.

We were staying in a big blue tent with two rooms in it – one room for Eunice, one room for all of us children – so there were obviously no stairs available for walking up and down. Instead, she made me run round the field three times in the pitch dark in my nightie. She was always very creative when it came to finding an alternative or extension to one of her barmy punishments.

We didn’t have lilos to sleep on or anything like that – they were too expensive (and we weren’t worth the expense, obviously). So we lay on roll-out bed mats, which were a bit hard and cold to sleep on. Anyway, it didn’t really matter, as I was a very heavy sleeper and once I actually got to sleep, it was very difficult indeed to bring me back. I wonder now if sleep was a kind of escape from the ghastliness of being awake. I was told by the others that I would talk in my sleep, so even then, I must have been quite disturbed.

Anyway, during this stay there was a very heavy storm one night. The tent leaked and soaked my bed. When I woke up, I was wet through. I was now in her Bad Books as a consequence. Eunice said I was a stupid idiot for not waking up when the rain came in so my punishment was to stand up all night, every night in the tent for the rest of the holiday. But this happened to all of us on that trip, in turn, so each of us would have to stand up all night at some time. While I was standing up in our tent in the dark, trying to make the hours pass quicker, I would notice when Eunice had gone to sleep herself. Sometimes I would sneak back into bed, curl up and doze, but the minute I heard any movement I would spring to my feet and pretend I’d been standing there all the time. I had to be vigilant even through a dark night in a tent on a so-called holiday.

Back at George Dowty Drive another incident ‘taught me a lesson for being such a heavy sleeper. One night I fell out of bed and landed on top of a plastic toy garage. I liked playing with cars and the garage was a special thing to me. Being fast asleep, I must have hit the garage with my full, dead weight and I chipped off the plastic, which snapped, and a big chunk of it ended up embedded in my bottom. However, I must have climbed back into bed without really surfacing. In the morning I awoke, feeling very achy, and was amazed to find myself in a bed soaked with blood. The sheets were crimson and I was completely terrified. It was as if I’d been stabbed in the night.

I went to find Eunice and I said I’d cut myself, expecting her to know what to do. She looked at me with barely suppressed irritation and lifted up the back of my nightie, which was soaked through with blood. ‘Oh, you fell out of bed,’ was all she said. I automatically said ‘No’ because I was used to denying things I was accused of, just in case I got immediate, senseless punishment. It was always best to deny anything and hope for the best. However, we went back to the bedroom and Eunice pointed to my now damaged garage. She said I was stupid for not feeling anything, as if it was all my fault. Falling out of bed and cutting myself like that wasn’t normal, she said coldly, while pulling off my blood-soaked sheets to change them. I was decidedly in her Bad Books and she did not tend my wound, which hurt like hell.

By then I should have known better than to expect any sympathy from Eunice when I was hurt. I was so used to being hurt by her that when I hurt myself it was just another example, in her eyes, of how inherently stupid and bad I really was. She never missed an opportunity to repeat her mantra of how evil, naughty or stupid I was, so no matter how hard I tried to be in her Good Books, I inevitably ended up in her Bad Books, which, for many years to come, meant violent punishment.

CHAPTER 9:

That harsh tap on the lip, when I was shooting my mouth off about seeing Charlotte’s brothers and sisters at the swimming pool turned out to be the first of many. But soon these escalated into clouts, then regular beatings.

What was Eunice’s aim? To shut us up? To create total, instant obedience? I think it was to break our spirits, to tame us, as a ringmaster does with wild animals. Or maybe it was to stop us thinking at all. To prevent us from being individuals or from having any personal power.

One of Eunice’s favourite things to do to all the ‘Bad’ children (Sarah, Thomas and I) was to press her heavy, adult hand on our lips so that our teeth cut our mouths on the inside. My lips would bleed and swell up, but it was a fairly effective way of shutting me up. She would also throw things at our faces – aiming particularly for our mouths – like cans of food, books or anything that came to hand. Eunice actually knocked out Sarah’s front teeth with a tin of baked beans, and then lied to the dentist, saying Sarah had fallen over.

But more commonly she would just lash out, quickly and effectively with a smack across the mouth, splitting the skin. I have many little scars around the mouth from these everyday, common assaults and one particularly visible one from having a full tin of baked beans thrown at my face. I also have a kink in my nose (which looks as if it was probably broken at some point) sustained in one of Eunice’s heavy-handed clouts around the head. The first time this happened it hurt a lot and I obviously cried and protested. But I learned very quickly that the more I protested, the worse things got. She would double her efforts and hit you even harder to shut you up.