I Won't Forgive What You Did Read online

  I WON’T FORGIVE

  WHAT YOU DID

  First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2010

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  A CBS Company

  Copyright © 2010 Faith Scott with Lynne Barrett-Lee

  This book is copyright under the Berne convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Faith Scott and Lynne Barrett-Lee to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84983-156-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-157-4

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and Bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading RG1 8EX

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Though he was only in his sixties in 1963, when I was eight, Grandpops always seemed old to me. He had a bald head with just a little white hair remaining, which ran in a semicircle round the back of his head. He still had enormous black eyebrows, however, which sat above round tortoiseshell glasses.

  He was short, and he always dressed the same – waistcoat, white open-necked shirt, no tie, battered black boots and baggy trousers. He also had a peaked cap that he wore everywhere. Even indoors it rarely came off. For some reason Grandpops always wore a suit jacket, often with another jacket over it. The pockets were filled with all manner of things: screws, pens, washers, filthy hankies, betting slips and, most importantly to me, sweets.

  His hands seemed large, but then, when I was little, most men’s did, probably because when they touched me that was what I noticed. Pops’ were dark brown and dirty, just like his teeth, which were rotting and broken, with several missing. He had horrid breath, and fingernails that were broken and snagged. He always smelled of alcohol when he came to our house, because he’d spend several hours in the pub before he visited, intermittently leaving to visit the betting shop, to gamble on the horses. It was from here that he used to either stagger down the hill or catch the bus to our house, invariably laden with flowers and vegetables from his garden, which he’d bring for my mother. Sometimes, he was so drunk that he fell over on the pavement and at least once had to go to hospital for stitches to his head. Despite his appearance and manner my mother was very close to him. My father, conversely, seemed to hate him.

  Pops always visited on Saturday; had done for as long as I could remember. We’d sometimes have to get the bus to see him in the week, too, more often than not at his house. Pops’ house was just the same as Pops – filthy and full of junk, it smelled of wine and dirt, and inside the walls were covered in black mould. The huge table in the kitchen was always covered in dirty, half-drunk tumblers of wine, similarly half-consumed bottles, gone-off food – usually cheese, bread and fried eggs – and, on the Rayburn, there was often a saucepan of some unpleasant-smelling stew. There were various buckets, in which all kinds of things fermented: dandelion, rhubarb, parsnip, carrot, and every type of hedgerow fruit that could be used to make alcohol.

  He had been a sniper in the war and was a good shot, and would stand by the door to his kitchen shooting blackbirds with his rifle. I couldn’t bear seeing the poor blackbirds fall from the sky, fence or tree. He also had a menacing-looking handgun, which he kept under his pillow, and I always used to think that, if I upset him, one day he would use it on me. Ironically, he always used to try to stoke my fear, but in an entirely different direction. Keep away, he used to tell me, from ‘bastard Ken’, who lived next door. ‘He can’t be trusted around little girls.’ He’d often shoo me indoors, and lock us both in for good measure, which scared me almost as much. Even if we just went down the garden, he’d lock the door, because he said Ken was a thief and would go into his house and steal his things. Pops also told me Ken would go into his garden, when Pops was out, and dig up his vegetables and flowers to give to women he fancied, pretending he’d grown them himself. And according to Pops, sometimes he put poison in Pops’ garden, which was why his crop was poor at times. It was confusing listening to what Pops believed about Ken, and scary. Nowhere and no one felt safe.

  I watched his arrival now, from behind the kitchen door, the place I habitually stationed myself on Saturdays, when he came to visit. My mother being her father’s daughter in most ways, meant our house, only the second I had lived in, was every bit as filthy as his. It was bigger than our first home, quite large in comparison; if it hadn’t been quite so full of rubbish – it had a sitting room, dining room and kitchen, all connected – I could have run around it in a circle. As it was, the dining-room doors always remained closed because it wasn’t a room we could use. There wasn’t any space left in it, because it was full of clothes and newspapers and crockery.

  Back then, I didn’t know why Pops frightened me so much, only that I felt the familiar anxiety well up as he tried to coax me from where I was standing. One Saturday, I remember, he was in the kitchen talking to my mother, who was making him his usual cup of tea. In his hand were the sweets, several packets, which he would have bought on the way. Sometimes it would be Fruit Pastilles, or maybe Love Hearts, and at Easter, an Easter egg, made from cheap, odd-tasting chocolate. But Fruit Gums were the ones I loved best, because I could hold them tightly in my hand to warm them up a little, which made them tastier and easier to chew. I could see one of the packets today was Fruit Gums.

  ‘Come and get them, then,’ he said. Pops never used my name. ‘Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.’ As was always the case, I felt crushed by indecision, unable to make up my mind. I couldn’t work out what was the matter with me. Why did I hesitate? Why did I feel so much fear? I was only being offered sweeties, for goodness’ sake. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He said this a lot. But I needed to work out from the tone of his voice whether, this time, he actually meant it; whether he would ‘get me’, because if he did – and he mostly did – I felt panicked and trapped because I couldn’t get away and, much as I was desperate to shout ‘Help! Stop tickling me!’ no sound would come out of my mouth.

  I stood rooted to the spot, unable to act, and frustrated with my small self for being in such a state. On the one hand, I wanted to be with my grandad, enjoy his attention, have him laugh at me – something no one else did. And yet it also felt bad. I felt bad. But how could that be? He was Pops. Why on earth would he want to hurt me? He loved me.

  I simply couldn’t understand why I should so mind him tickling me, and wished I was not so pathetic and small. If I was bigger, I thought, it would all be all right. I glanced, as I always did, at my mother. Why was I so silly about Grandpops touching me? She knew what he was doing – she could see it for herself – and if she thought it was okay, why didn’t I? This is what grandads did, didn’t they? They tickled you, all over, until it hurt. I felt upset when I thought about it, wanted to burst out crying, but I didn’t. I felt bad that I didn’t like it, and also sad about my mother. How badly I wished I could explain how I felt or, better still, that she somehow just knew what was happening and stopped it, without me having to say anything. But once again I reminded myself, this was what grandads were for. Grandads tickled, and all children liked being tickled. So it must be my problem, mustn’t it? Must be me that was the problem. Why on earth did it make me feel so strange and bad? br />
  Eventually, my anxiety overcome by my reasoning, I edged out from behind the door and walked to where Grandpops stood by my mother. I stretched my arm out as far as it would go so I didn’t have to go too close.

  ‘There,’ he said, holding the sweets out. ‘That’s it. Come here, come on, that’s it. Come closer so you can reach. Which one would you like? This one? Come on, that’s it.’

  I moved a little closer with my arm outstretched, keen to maintain my distance, already aware that the sound of his breathing was changing. But I was too late in noticing, and before I could escape, he had grabbed hold of my wrist and pulled me against him, hard between his legs, crossing one of his legs over me so that I was clamped and couldn’t get away. The precious sweets, suddenly, were returned to his pocket, and his hands were now all over my chest, the stench of his breath wafting all round me. He was also now making the horrible scary noise he always made when he was tickling me, a sort of humming or buzzing, between tightly clenched teeth.

  Within seconds I was lifted up and carried into the sitting room, to the chair he usually sat in, and placed upon his lap. Now his hands, always dextrous in containing my attempts to escape him, were moving all over me – up inside my skirt and then down my top, back up my top, and then down and then back up my skirt, as he continued to make the awful scary noise.

  Sometimes, my mother, who was almost always there – either still making tea, or standing watching in the doorway – would say tiredly, ‘Oh, leave her alone, Dad, for goodness’ sake.’ But she never said it in a way that convinced me she meant it, and he never took any notice of her anyway.

  Right now, she said nothing, and he lifted me up and turned me round, so that we were now face to face, my legs between his legs, pressed tightly against him, my feet hardly touching the floor. He began tickling me, again and again, all over, his touch, always firm, became rougher and more frantic, his face close to mine, his eyes never leaving my bewildered face.

  And then suddenly, just as I thought I was going to suffocate, it stopped. Pops looked breathless and was hot. The horrible noise had stopped too. He pushed a hand into his pocket and sweets appeared again.

  ‘Go on,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Which ones do you want?’ And I duly chose the Fruit Gums, took the packet, and walked away, feeling a terrible sadness and a great need to cry. I didn’t know why, I just did. My mother brought him his tea then, and they continued to chat, as if nothing of importance had taken place.

  I ate the sweets, because the sweets were the thing I most wanted, yet I felt sick and hungry, but full at the same time – as if something solid was lodged at the back of my throat.

  I looked again at my mother, but she had nothing to say. She’d just stood there watching him, laughing.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nowadays I take the view that my biological parents are only my parents because I chose them. Chose them to conceive me, to prevent anyone else having to have them – though I use the term ‘parents’ loosely I was never ‘parented’ as such.

  I also now know that my life probably began as a result of my father raping my mother. When I was older, she told me she didn’t care for sex, but that my father, as in all his dealings with the world, wouldn’t take no for an answer. If she didn’t want sex, and most of the time she said she didn’t, then he’d simply shout and threaten until she submitted. I was conceived in this fashion when my brother Phillip was six months old and my sister Susan – their first-born – just two. If my conception was inauspicious, the pregnancy was worse – at some point before my birth my brother developed gastroenteritis, was hospitalized, and nearly died. Naturally, the very last thing my mother wanted, she later told me, was another baby. Particularly a girl.

  My brother survived, but the circumstances of my arrival were further complicated when my father was dismissed from his job as a farmhand. This was because it emerged that he’d been having an affair with the farmer’s teenage daughter. As the family’s house went with the job, they’d lose that as well, and when I was born they were about to become homeless.

  He did eventually find another job that came with accommodation, working as a lorry driver for a haulier, ferrying farm animals – sheep, pigs and cattle – to market and to slaughter, with a little furniture removal on the side. The accommodation that came with this new job was in a tiny village close to where my father had grown up. It was rented by his employer, along with some land for his lorries, from a local aristocrat.

  The village had about forty houses, two shops, a pub, three farms and a telephone box. It consisted of one through road, about two miles long, which could be accessed from the busy country roads at either end. Nobody ever came there. Why would they? Apart from the pub, which was really only for the locals, there was no reason to. Its inhabitants were either wealthy, and treated with awe by the locals, or old country folk, some of whom were dirty old men, who scared me, and who were employed by the farmers and upper-class people.

  Like any other isolated rural community, everyone – superficially – knew everyone else’s business. Enough, at least, for everyone to know we were poor and treat us accordingly. This sometimes meant a freshly baked roll for my siblings when they were on errands, or, more often, it seemed to mean that because we were poor we were unable to understand how to behave and had to be spoken to in a particular way. The villagers were kind to me, almost too kind, in some cases – to the point of leaving me feeling humiliated. It often felt as if they were patting me on the head and saying ‘there, there’, almost as if I belonged to a different species.

  Most of the village homes were huge private houses with massive gardens, and their owners were rich and influential. We had a solicitor, a magistrate and a successful author, among others. Most of the other dwellings were tied cottages belonging to the big houses and farms.

  Our new home was one such, a tiny mid-terrace dwelling, almost derelict and virtually uninhabitable. It had two small rooms upstairs and two small rooms downstairs, and no electricity, heating, hot water or bathroom. The narrow, unkempt garden sloped downwards towards a river, and the toilet was in a shed halfway down. There was a tin bath my mother occasionally carried into the house and filled, so we could all take turns to have a bath. By the time the youngest got in it was invariably cold and dirty, and there it would stay until my mother could be bothered to move it, which was usually hours, or even days, later. The house was filthy when we moved in and grew even filthier, and was also damp and very dark. The only real source of light was the picture window at the front, where I could watch the horses and hounds go through the village. It was the only home I knew in my young life and it was an unpleasant prospect. Aside from the physical manifestations of squalor, my home, whenever my father was in it, was a place I inhabited in fear.

  My father was a terrifying person. A giant of a man, well over six feet tall, he had masses of wavy dark hair, a long face with a pointed nose, and both his hands and feet were enormous. He seemed to always wear the same clothes, a blue or green cardigan, checked shirt, navy trousers and brown shoes. He worked seven days a week, and from a very early age I felt enormous anxiety and fear when he was due home. Where I didn’t understand why Grandpops made me so uncomfortable and distressed, with my father it was simple. I was terrified of him because he was a terrifying man, and I dreaded his arrival, all his shouting and swearing, the unthinkable prospect of upsetting him without meaning to, and so becoming the focus of his furious temper. My father frightened everyone who knew him, man, woman or child. Even Grandpops mostly avoided him.

  Throughout my childhood, when he took off his shoes straw and hay would fall from his socks and trouser turn-ups. He always smelled of farmyard dung, and he’d doze in front of the fire with his feet on the mantelpiece – the steam rising from his wet socks smelled dreadful. He sat so close to the fire he gobbled up every last bit of heat, leaving just the sofa behind him, which is where I would sit, cold, and too afraid to make a noise in case I woke him up.

  H
e also seemed to hate my attempts to clear up, which, as I grew old enough to try to make my environment nicer, was something I did all the time.

  ‘Fucking little bastard,’ he’d say to my mother. ‘She’s been fucking tidying up again, where’s she put my fucking stuff? Fucking tidying, the fucking little bitch,’ he would roar. ‘Why can’t she just fucking leave things alone!’

  I was so terrified of him that, by the time I was eight, I realised the best thing to do when he threatened, called me names, raised his hands as if to wallop me, saying, ‘Aah, I’ll give you a fucking doughboy in a minute!’ was to stand stock still and say absolutely nothing.

  I took care, once I’d grown a bit, to never be undressed anywhere near him. If I was ever less than fully dressed – even if I was in a dressing gown – he’d shout and swear and demand I get dressed at once. As a child, I had no idea why he was like this. All I knew was that if he came into a room and I wasn’t fully dressed, his reaction made me feel as if I’d done something terrible, and something equally terrible was about to happen, if I didn’t immediately get out of his way.

  My mother’s physical form was the opposite of my dad’s. She was short, and very tiny sometimes – a modern-day size 8 – but sometimes as large as an 18. She was always on diets, and either bingeing or starving, and knew the calories in every single foodstuff. She had very long, dark, wavy hair, and long fingernails, and seemed to exist in a parallel world, one that was impossible to penetrate. In the real world, at home, she seemed an almost ethereal presence, and as a consequence we lived in chaos. Every room was filthy and full of junk. The floors and the furniture were littered with dirty clothes, dirty nappies, dirty baby bottles and dirty crockery, and strewn with broken toys and rotting food.