The Step Child Read online

  The entire day was a joy, but it was also an education. The ex-headmistress in Auntie Nellie never stopped, never went off duty. She taught me all about table manners, about how important it was to talk ‘properly’, the need for proper pronunciation and the evil of ‘slang’. As we walked along Princes Street, bellies full of cake and arms full of shopping, I learned with every step. ‘Just remember one thing, Donna,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do in life – just make sure you do it well. It is important to do unto others as you would have done unto you.’

  Did Auntie Nellie suspect anything? At the time, I was so scared of her finding out that I was evil, that I had inherited badness from Breda, that I couldn’t even have considered telling her what Helen was already making me go through. She would surely blame me, or perhaps warn me not to name-call or tell tales. How could I sully what I had with Nellie by verbalising the horrors of Edina Place? When I look back on it, I find it hard to believe that this intelligent woman wouldn’t have suspected something. But, why then, didn’t she take me away? Perhaps Auntie Nellie chose to remove me at specified times, to do what she could on our days out, because she recognised the power of Helen. Maybe she didn’t want to engage in an all-out battle with her for fear of being excluded from my life for ever, for I am in no doubt that Nellie did love me.

  At times, I struggled to understand the meaning of Auntie Nellie’s words, but the sense of it all went into my very bones and now, as an adult, I can recall it perfectly. She gave me my love of reading, my love of travel, and she made me realise that I could be loved. But I do wish she had saved me.

  Our trip over, it was time to head back to Auntie Nellie’s house in Colinton. On the bus, she told me of her trips to Canada, of the great lakes and snow-covered mountains. It was all so far from my ‘real’ life and yet I so desperately needed to hear it. ‘Settle yourself down there, dear,’ she said as soon as we got in. I went over to her big, stuffed armchair by the open fire and prepared for an afternoon of watching BBC programmes. Auntie Nellie set the table, placing cutlery and china carefully over a huge lace tablecloth. As she taught me table manners, the cuckoo clock on the wall made its comforting noise. A man appeared on the left if there was rain, and a woman on the right if there was sunshine. It didn’t matter to me – rain or sun, Auntie Nellie’s was a haven.

  These visits with Auntie Nellie started when I was about five years old. Forty years later, they are still engraved on my mind and my heart. I wanted them to go on for ever, but I should have known better. That wonderful woman was the centre of my world for those years. She was my one ray of light, my only hope. She treated me as a child, and as a human being. She was everything to me. Of course Helen couldn’t stand that. Of course Helen had to stop it. But the cruelty and unfairness of what was to come still makes my heart feel as if it is breaking, even to this day.

  Chapter Eight

  GORDON’S REVENGE

  1967

  I HAD NEVER HAD TO share Auntie Nellie with anyone – she hadn’t shown any interest in Simon or Frances, who weren’t related to her, so I got her all to myself.

  Until one day.

  It was time for my monthly trip to Auntie Nellie’s, and I was eight years old. I was almost ready to believe that these days out with Nellie were real, that they weren’t going to be snatched away, when Helen snapped: ‘You. Take Gordon with you today when you go to see that old cow.’

  Gordon was five by now. I didn’t have much to do with Andrew, who was almost two by this time, because I had learned my lesson. I had invested some hope in Gordon when he was a baby – I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. When I had first arrived at my new life with Helen and my Dad, the existence of Gordon had given me some hope. I had watched how my stepmother was with her first baby when she visited me in Barnardo’s. She was warm and loving. She cuddled him and kissed him, and I always hoped that she would be like that with me. As time went on, and she started to make her hatred of me all too apparent, I was confused. She didn’t hate all children, so why me? And I knew she had turned Gordon bad. I saw what he got up to – the stealing and swearing, the backchat and the naughtiness. He rarely got punished, and yet I was always being beaten, always sore. Why were things so different? Of course, Helen’s constant reiteration that she wasn’t my Mummy, and I was never to think of her as such or call her by that name, made it clear that blood – not circumstance – mattered. However, it still made me ache. Over and over again, it was made clear that Gordon was her flesh and blood, and he was the product of a ‘proper’ marriage. Even allowing for that, however, I thought I must be incredibly unlovable if she could hate me so much when she was obviously able to show love to another child.

  When Gordon was little, I remember she would dandle him on her knee, singing nursery rhymes and basically just enjoying him. She had that capacity to love a child – with me, she chose the other route. I can hear her voice to this day – she would sing to him about ‘Fatty Malatty, King of the Jews, sold his wife for a pair of shoes.’ I was never dandled on her knee, I never had songs sung to me, and yet Gordon did not blossom with all this adoration – she turned him into a right little shit. Ironically, while I was the one given the names and labels, Helen’s evil had managed to twist him into a child who really did seem like the Devil incarnate – at least to me.

  During those early days in Easter Road, Gordon was a central part of what I see as the whole ‘scene’. I would watch him with his mother and absolutely ache for some of what he got. The love and attention were tangible, but I was always excluded. In those first months, I was sometimes given a ‘treat’ of being allowed to play with Gordon, and I also learned that if I spoke about him, asked questions about him, showed an interest in him, then Helen would talk back. She just couldn’t resist.

  ‘Why is Gordon called Gordon?’ I asked her one day.

  If I’d asked such a basic, normal question about anything else, I would have got cold silence, but with Gordon on the agenda, Helen was soon in full flow. ‘He’s a very special boy,’ she would tell me, ‘and he needed a very special name. He’s called Gordon after his Dad’s eldest brother.’ (No mention was made of the fact that this was also my Dad, and that Gordon’s uncle was also my uncle.) ‘He’s called Andrew after my brother, and Chalmers because that’s his Granny Ford’s maiden name.’ (Again, my Granny, my Granny.) ‘Then, of course, he’s called Ford, because that’s the name of his Mummy and Daddy.’ (My name, my name too.) At weekends, there would be a steady stream of visitors all there with one purpose – to fuss over Gordon Andrew Chalmers Ford.

  Even by drawing attention to Gordon and asking questions about him, I couldn’t manage to deflect Helen’s hatred of me for very long. The first day she hit me is clearer than a lot of the things that followed, and Gordon’s presence is so very clear in the middle of it all. I had said the word ‘bloody’ and that changed everything. I said it almost under my breath. I didn’t say it to Helen. No matter that I was a child barely out of toddlerhood who had repeated a word she had heard a million times before. To make things even more laughable, I was only telling her that precious Gordon was a bit bloody where he had hurt himself while playing.

  And I got smashed across the face for it.

  The floodgates had opened.

  Over the next year, I learned a lot of things. I learned that I was not important. I learned that I could be hit at will. I learned that she would never be a ‘mother’ to me. And I learned, time after time, that Gordon was special.

  ‘Look at him!’ she would scream at me. ‘He is so, so special. And you’re nothing. Nothing! Do you know why he’s special? Do you? Do you know why Gordon is so special and you’re not?’ Sometimes I’d shake my head, sometimes I’d squeak ‘no’, but I could never guess the response she wanted. What she would be after one day would be enough to get me a slap the next. One thing never changed – her justification for the ‘specialness’ of Gordon. ‘Gordon was born PROPERLY!’ she’d screech. ‘He was mad
e in a proper, loving relationship with a proper Mum and Dad who are married. Not like YOU, you little BASTARD. You are a bastard child and you will always be a bastard child.’

  It never altered. Gordon was perfect. He was an angel. He was loved and cared for and I wasn’t. All because I had been born wrong. The fact that none of it – the lack of a marriage licence, my absent mother – was my fault, couldn’t have mattered less to Helen. Her words were stuck in a groove and she never deviated from them.

  Gordon was three years younger than me – and he was quick. He learned at the feet of a master and soon got the upper hand over the pathetic, trembling child I was becoming. His forte was telling tales – or ‘clipping’ – and nothing gave the special boy more pleasure than making up stories to relay to his mother. She’d love him even more when he could take her tales about what the bastard child had been up to – truth rarely came into it.

  By the time we moved to Edina Place, Gordon was a full-blown bully. He took great delight in physically attacking me – punching, nipping, kicking and hair-pulling were all daily rituals. He’d also moved on to stealing things, knowing that I would be blamed. Gordon would frequently come into the bathroom when I was on my punishment (usually standing semi-naked, always freezing). He’d smirk and laugh at me, but I would always end up being blamed for that too if he was caught. I couldn’t say anything – it was useless to even try. I was powerless to say anything to, or about, this golden boy of Helen’s because I knew I’d end up even worse off. He could do no wrong.

  Gordon was much bigger than me, even though he was younger. He glowed with health next to me – my scrawny, terrified little self couldn’t compete with the golden boy and his regular meals, lack of beatings, and a mother who doted on him. They say children learn what they live – that didn’t apply just to me but to Gordon as well. He watched his mother whack me every day, hit my head against walls, starve me, torture me, lavish me with nothing but neglect and abuse. And he learnt to do exactly the same. He could bully me into doing virtually anything he wanted. He’d get me to steal tanners or shillings from Helen’s purse, which I would then have to hand straight over to him, or he would tell me I had to pinch some biscuits or crisps from the scullery. I did these things – things I didn’t dare do for myself – because I was so petrified of this child that Helen clearly adored. If I didn’t do what he said, he’d tell his mother some story and I would be beaten anyway. It was easier to risk doing what Gordon demanded in the hope that Helen wouldn’t find out and I would at least avoid his wrath temporarily.

  When Gordon started at the same primary school as me, any respite I had stopped. He was everywhere now. I used to love going to school, even though I was hungry and in tattered clothes, even though I had such a strict timetable to get home which was almost measured out in seconds. When Gordon followed, even that little bit of enjoyment was taken away from me. I had to look after him in the playground as, ironically, Helen was afraid he might be bullied. I had to take him to school and bring him home again, always knowing that he could see me at any point of the school day – that there were always eyes watching me.

  I was already having to spend more time with him than I wanted, but the thought of him imposing on my time with Auntie Nellie was unbearable. I had to summon up the courage to plead with Helen, to beg her to allow me to keep this one thing for myself. ‘Please,’ I began to stammer, ‘please, does Gordon have to … I mean, is it okay if he doesn’t … maybe Auntie Nellie wouldn’t want …’ I couldn’t even get the words out.

  Helen’s face came closer and closer to me. I tried to see if she had anything in her hand, because if she did, it would surely hit my face soon. But, instead of belting me, she laughed. ‘Why do you want to keep that old bat to yourself?’ she asked. ‘If she’s that great, why shouldn’t Gordon get to go along? Get to stuff himself with cake like you, you greedy little bitch? Get things bought for him by some daft old mare with more money than sense?’ At the mention of money, it suddenly became clearer. Of course, Helen would never pass up the chance of getting time to herself, especially if it made my day more miserable, but she had also been arguing more and more with my Dad about finances. I would hear them any time he was home, her screeching that we were always ready for the poorhouse, him saying he couldn’t work any more than he already did. Helen was well aware that Auntie Nellie had no children of her own, and that she wasn’t short of money, so her main concern was Nellie’s legacy. On top of this, I had overheard a conversation one day between my Dad’s aunt and my stepmother in which Nellie told Helen she had high hopes for me, and that she would do all she could to make sure I excelled academically. In Helen’s eyes, that just wouldn’t do – Auntie Nellie buying me clothes was one thing; taking me out for the day once a month could even be tolerated but the thought that I, not precious Gordon, might be getting long-term attention was just not an option.

  So, Gordon started coming along on the visits. I should have known it wouldn’t take long for him to wreck it all, but I was still naïve enough to think it couldn’t get quite as bad as it did.

  I hated taking him to Auntie Nellie’s. I didn’t want him there, soiling what we had together. Gordon brought the stench of Edina Place with him and he reminded me of Helen every time I looked at his ugly face. When he slumped into one of Auntie Nellie’s armchairs or messed up her ornament collection or guzzled his tea, I despised him so much for taking the one thing I had in my life. One Sunday while we were at Auntie Nellie’s, Gordon motioned over to me while she was in another room. ‘Have you seen this?’ he whispered conspiratorially. I looked over at him from my chair. ‘I’m not interested.’ His eyes only ever sparkled when he was up to something – and they were like diamonds now. ‘You don’t even know what it is! How do you know you’re not interested?’ I knew that I was running quite a risk as Gordon’s anger was like that of his mother – quick, unprovoked and generally aimed at me. ‘Get over here, Donna,’ he snarled. ‘Come and see what Auntie Nellie has for us.’ I didn’t want him nosing about in Nellie’s things. He was over at the sideboard where she kept all her china and crystal, her headed notepaper, and lots of other precious things which made her my own. I should have known Gordon wasn’t interested in any of that. He’d found a purse full of change – that was all that had grabbed his attention. ‘Take it, Donna. Take it.’ He jangled the purse in front of me, rattling the coins inside. This was different. This wasn’t like stealing from Helen, whom I hated, to give to her son, whom I also hated. This would be taking from a woman who had only ever given to me. Nellie had given me her love, her attention, her mind – all of which were more important than the money she had lavished on our high teas and my school clothes.

  I tried to tell Gordon I just couldn’t, but the look in his eyes made me realise it was useless. He may only have been a child, he may only have been five years old, but he had learnt so much from Helen. Some people question what children are capable of, what they can do – but over the years I’ve come to believe that those who are brought up as Gordon was can be incredibly manipulative and clever as children when it suits their ends, or the ends of those they are linked with. Helen pushed him to be what she wanted, her firstborn had to live up to her expectations – give a child the ammunition for what you want them to do and they can flourish. And that is what this boy did. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

  ‘Take the stupid purse and go into the stupid old woman’s toilet,’ he hissed. ‘Take the stupid money out of the stupid purse and throw it out of the window into the garden. When we get home, you give me the money. All of it. And you do it now, Donna, you do it now.’

  I was eight years old. I was so scared and numb, and anticipating such bad things, that I did it. I turned my back on all the good things Auntie Nellie had done for me and did exactly as Gordon said. My heart was sinking from the moment I touched the purse. Giving the money to Gordon didn’t take away the guilt. I knew it was the end. I had betrayed Auntie Nellie. I had ruined things again.


  A few days later, Helen called me through to the living room. She could hardly contain her delight. ‘Well, you dim-witted, evil little cow,’ she began. ‘What nasty things have you been up to now?’ As she started on me, she waved a letter in front of my eyes. ‘Auntie Nellie has been telling me all about her perfect little Donna. Donna with the high hopes and big dreams. Donna with it all ahead of her.’ Helen read from the letter. We were no longer welcome at Auntie Nellie’s house – and, according to the words my stepmother read, my great-aunt was heartbroken.

  Helen was torn between the glee she felt at having finally split us up and the opportunity she was now presented with to beat the living daylights out of me. Before I had even entered the room, Gordon had easily convinced his mother that the theft had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Get into the bathroom, you little bitch,’ spat Helen. I knew what was coming to me – she didn’t even have to tell me the drill any more. I took off my clothes and waited in the freezing room, clad only in my threadbare underwear. I waited and waited. Shivering. Dying inside at the thought of losing my precious, wonderful Auntie Nellie. ‘Over the bath,’ snapped Helen as she came into the room. ‘Bend right over. And shut your fucking face.’ As the tawse railed down on the pathetic bits of flesh stretched over my bones, I knew the outside of my body was aching – but it was nothing compared to the ache I felt inside. Helen left me there, with a list of warnings. ‘You’re on “no rations”. Don’t even think of food. You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. You don’t move unless you have permission. In fact, you don’t even fucking breathe unless I say you can.’ She also informed me that a couple of weeks had been added to my ‘sentence’. This was a strange notion of hers which allowed her to maintain the pretence that this was all about basic discipline, not child abuse. Those days, I was under a constant sentence from Helen. Whenever she claimed I had done something else ‘wrong’, another week or so would be added. I never knew what the total sentence was and I would never dare ask.