What Daddy Did (20 page)

I'm not exactly sure when the abuse started up again after Helen left, but I know there was a fair bit of time when there was no abuse going on. My days then were all about making sure Karen was all right and that the housework was done. I know that when I was 13 and truanting, I was being sexually abused by a man who was sleeping on the settee. I'm vague about when it first happened and who perpetrated it. What I remember most is that, when it happened, it was almost as if I expected it. It was the same pattern repeating itself. I just used to freeze and let it run its course. I had been there so many times in the past that I felt powerless, that there was nothing else to do. I think I was so conditioned to accept sexual abuse that it was almost as if it was a normal part of my life.

There were some specifics I remember though.

There was Doggie, whom I mentioned in
The Step Child
, and who had the audacity to talk to me at my Dad's funeral as if we were old friends, and there were a couple of others.

One man was a regular in Middleton's pub, and became a frequent visitor to our house after the pub closed for the night. He was a bit older than my Dad and very smarmy. Like many of my Dad's drinking friends, he was nice to me. This man (whom I'll call Peter) was married and lived not too far away from us with his wife and young family. He always had a mouth organ in his jacket pocket and he'd bring it out and give everybody a tune. He looked a bit like Hughie Green and he was keen on singing when he wasn't playing the mouthie, even although he wasn't too good. If I was ever there when Peter sang, he sang to me directly.

It took a long time for him to get what he wanted from me.

I thought he was just being nice, and I so desperately wanted someone to be nice to me and give me attention. Peter did just that. He would bring me little gifts, pay me compliments and sometimes give me a hug just like I thought a Dad would. It all changed one night when he asked me to meet him outside at his van. I did, thinking nothing of it, and then he asked me if I wanted to go for a drive. I jumped at the chance; I always welcomed any opportunity to get away from where I lived.

We went for a drive down to Portobello and then up to Holyrood Park – and at some point we stopped. I can't remember where now, but it was a quiet place. Peter was a great joker and a charmer, and he always kept me talking and laughing. He'd often given us some out-of-date food as he worked for a grocer. He knew we had very little, and the tins he gave were always welcome. On this occasion, he said he had some in the back of the van and asked if I'd tell him what I wanted. 'Take your pick,' he said to me. So, I did. I went into the back of the van to see what charity I could get this time from this nice man who wanted to help out.

I don't know how it all happened, but he started kissing me and kissing me. I was really uncomfortable and scared and kept saying that I needed to get home. I was so unprepared for this change of direction from this man I had begun to trust. I tried to push him off and get away from him but I couldn't.

Before I knew it, I wasn't with a man I could trust any more. It felt as if I was back in my boxroom and it was all happening again. So, I did what I had learned to do, what I had been groomed to do – I just froze and let it happen.

Peter successfully raped me and, as he did, I wondered what had happened to the sanitary towel I was wearing. I also wondered whether this was just what all men do, and what I had done to deserve this.

Afterwards I was too embarrassed to think about anything except getting away from him. On the way home he tried to talk like he did before but I couldn't hear him; I couldn't hear the words or the lies. When he dropped me off, he complimented me, but it sounded pathetic now. I ran into the house, scrubbed myself in the bath and went to bed where I hugged my knees and cried and cried. My face was stinging from his stubble, I was very sore and I was mortally embarrassed because I had my period.

Most of all, I was hurting inside. What was wrong with me that men wanted to do this to me?

Helen was right – I was evil.

I HAD ONLY TWO FRIENDS IN
my teenage years and a bit of a social life via the local youth club. However, I did manage to persuade my Dad to allow me to go on two weekend trips with this youth club – one to Iona and one to Eddleston in Peeblesshire. How I treasure the memories of those times! The youth club gave me a little outlet from my home life, which was almost unbearable.

Karen was the only good thing about life at home. I would read to her, play with her and bathe her. I would take her to the park and the nursery. She needed me and I loved being with her, but I was sad and moody a lot of the time. I was always frightened because I never knew when I would next be asked to do something I didn't want to; I never knew who my Dad would ask to stay over and what they would do to me.

My Dad never noticed anything was wrong with me. He just put my moods down to my age, but the truth was I was angry with him. I was angry with him because he hadn't seen what was happening to me when Helen was there. I was angry because the very people he called friends were abusing me. I was angry because he was always at the pub, and when he wasn't he just sat in his chair feeling sorry for himself.

I was still a child but I would soon be a woman, and I was beginning to see that I could get away from all of this. My only concern was little Karen. My Dad was incapable of looking after himself, let alone being responsible for a little girl, and I was filled with horror thinking that she might end up being abused if I left. Looking back, I can't believe what possessed the Social Work Department to allow this vulnerable little girl to remain in the house. By the time I was 15, she had started primary school and, up until this point, had been my main focus because she needed me so much. I really was her mother from the moment Helen Ford left. Her brothers had been seeing quite a lot of Helen, and Karen had been to see her a few times too, but she was always unhappy when she returned. It was a terrible environment for a little girl in both places but Karen was happier at my Dad's as it was all she knew.

I knew that, as far as I was able, I'd never let any harm come to Karen. I loved her so much, and I think Karen felt that, but I knew that I was going to have to leave at some point. Karen loved my Dad too, and he loved her back. I remember her climbing onto his lap and hugging him. She was such a lovely, happy, cherubic little girl that it would have been hard not to love her. She was the only pure thing in that whole house, in my whole life, and it breaks my heart even now to realise what she had to put up with unnecessarily, because it was Karen who was left to care for Don Ford when everyone else had flown the nest. She wasn't abused in the way I had been but she was neglected. The house was a mess, my Dad was crippled and she was still just a little girl in the middle of it all. For many years I felt wretched and guilty for leaving her. I had mothered this baby and done my best, but I just couldn't live in that environment any longer. I was dying from it all and had to get away.

Looking back on my childhood, you might think there would be absolutely nothing I'd want to recall from those days. I have recounted how people like Helen and her friends exploited me; how my father failed in his role to protect me; and even how the people who were supposed to be overseeing the care I was receiving at home, such as the social workers, failed to act on the obvious warning signs of my suffering. But there were also those who had a positive influence on me, such as Auntie Nellie, and because of that I was able to come through a desperate time with at least some sense of right and wrong.

The world in which we lived was a poor one – not just for us, but for many others living in the area. My immediate environment – the houses in Edina Place and Easter Road – are places that hold too many bad memories. But I do have fond recollections of times spent away from the home, of places and sights I saw back then. When I wasn't at home, apart from the times I was sent on errands by Helen, I was free to think and look and enjoy the sights and sounds that many people may take for granted. And I did. I feel proud to be a citizen of Edinburgh because it is a very beautiful city. It has changed dramatically since my childhood days but it remains elegant and familiar, albeit within a more cosmopolitan setting.

The Easter Road of the 1960s was a very different place from how it is now. Most people stuck to their own street. Someone living in Edina Place would rarely venture further than their own front door; and going 'up town' to Princes Street was quite an occasion and warranted wearing Sunday best clothes.

On a Friday afternoon, Easter Road and its environs were reminiscent of a painting by LS Lowry as the printers and crystal works closed shop for the weekend. At the sound of the hooters, people would spill out from the factories clutching their brown paper wage packet, happy for another week of work to be over.

Children would play in the street – hopscotch, British bulldog, Levoy 21 (a catch-and-find game), elastics, skipping – and mothers would chat on doorsteps. Now the streets are filled with cars vying for parking spaces and the shops are wholly unrecognisable. There are now Polish delicatessens and smart coffee shops where there were once family butchers and grocery shops selling mince by the pound or tea by the ounce. The bookbinders on Bothwell Street is now smart flats, and what were the whisky bonds on Commercial Street are home to restaurants.

Sometimes a glimpse of some aspect of Edinburgh – a sight or a sound – can transport me back to when I was very young. Walking up Easter Road one day recently to visit my niece Hannah, I caught a glimpse of Arthur's Seat, jutting up and scraping the sky between the buildings at the top of Easter Road. For one moment, I was returned to a second in time when I was sitting on the street corner outside Miele's, the chip shop at the top of Edina Place. I would often sit there if I was allowed out to play because it was warm and because I could see Arthur's Seat. I would sit and dream that if I could just get to the top of that majestic hill then I could maybe fly away from all my troubles. It would fill me with wonderful warmth. Seeing it again made me smile because I realised I
did
get away. I didn't fly but I did escape.

Edinburgh at Christmas time has this effect on me too. The multicoloured twinkling lights in the city centre in December can easily whisk me back to my very first Christmas at Leith Walk Primary School. It was the only magical Christmas I can recall from my childhood because I'd been back home for only a matter of months and was allowed to enjoy the moment. I even had a party dress – it was so pretty, and there were little slippers, like ballet shoes. The party was held in the school hall where there was a big Christmas tree with brightly coloured baubles and shiny streamers that twirled and spun. We played games such as ring-a-ring o' roses, the grand old Duke of York and dusty bluebells, and Santa Claus visited when we sang 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'. It was magical and innocent, and for that moment in time I was a happy, normal little girl.