RAPE OR PASSION - Chapter 9

The truth is I had no firm idea of where I was going.
My brains were mince.
Sleep deprivation is quite a trippy experience, not that I had ever tried drugs at that time but I can now recognise what I was going through.

I toyed with going to my Dad's but didn't want to hear "I told you so" not yet, anyway.
As the train passed Brentwood I thought of going to the pub I had lived in during my teenage years but I didn't move to the doors in time to get off the train.
I stayed semi-conscious right to the end of the line at Liverpool Street Station in London.
I almost walked, or rather wavered, to the underground connection.
I looked at the map on the wall and saw Mile End almost jumping out at me.
My Mum lived in a large flat not far from that station and she was working full-time as an accountant.
I could probably have more peace staying with her than any other place.

Mum and I had never had a good relationship.
She was certain that she had given birth to a red-haired white skinned child, a lot like herself.
However, due to her slight hole in the heart, the staff at St Pancras Hospital in London had taken me away from her because they insisted that she needed to rest.
When I was returned to her, washed and wrapped in a white blanket she became hysterical, swearing that this was not her child, this was a Pakistani baby! I had dark skin, gold hair and violet eyes. Nothing like she remembered. My hair and eyes later turned dark chestnut brown which seemed to confirm her suspicions.
All through my childhood I referred to her as a "wicked woman" because from the birth of my brother Roy, a mere eighteen months later, I could see clearly that he was favoured.
When I reached thirteen I was taller than my Mum and very fit. I was a swimmer, a dancer and doing well at school, but at home I was deeply miserable after my father left us when I was about 10 years old.
My Mum had been given valium by her doctor to cope with the stress of her divorce but she worked as a book-keeper in a large public house in Romford and soon added gin to her diet.
She became frequently violent.

Finally when she had hit me in the face with a hot iron I had lost my temper completely and I had decked her, hard. Sitting astride her body and pinning her arms to the floor I had stated "That is the last time you will ever hit me!"

I had to take up lodging in a friend's public house with the invaluable support of my school Headmistress., who gave me full access to the swimming pool, library and sewing room after school hours.
I stayed living over the public bar, paying my way by cleaning the pub before school in the mornings and with part-time work in Woolworths on Saturdays, a laundrette on Sundays until I was seventeen.
The first time I had seen my Mum again was for my wedding day.
Obviously I had to invite her and she had surprised me by accepting.
We had kept in touch throughout my short marriage; the odd visit, a few long phone calls. She loved Tony, Dan, Dylan and Nicki. She seemed to be very much more relaxed that she had ever been when I was young.

All this played like a film in my head as I made my way through the underground system to Mile End.
When I finally arrived at my Mum's doorstep, facing Victoria Park she was not there.
I sat down on my suitcase and waited.
I was so exhausted by that point that I must have dosed off because I remember the anxiety in her voice piercing my consciousness "Frances! Frances! Wake up!"

Once inside and refreshed with a hot drink she listened as I told her the bones of what had happened.
Her face was showing me that she knew how much it hurt.
She had, after all, been through a similar scenario herself many years before.
At bedtime we went up the stairs of her two storey apartment and I was completely taken aback to see, upon entering her spare bedroom, the suite of furniture that had been in my childhood home.
My old dressing table, chest of drawers and matching wardrobe, still bearing the ink blobs and familiar scratches was waiting silently there for me, all those years.

Over the following days I slept a lot. I cried a lot and I worked hard cleaning my Mum's home while she was out at work to keep myself from going insane.
Eventually she said "When will Tony be going back to the oil rig?" I calculated the date and we agreed that I should return to Clacton for Dan and Dylan. Nicki would be alright in the care of Adele.
My Mum contacted my brother Roy and asked him to meet me at the station. Roy didn't want to be involved and said so quite sharply. The story he had heard was quite damning.
Tony had told him that I had run off with a shopfitter and that he had taken Dan and Dylan to live with his brother Pete and his new girlfriend. They had a toddler called Christopher.
My Mum told him that he had been misinformed and I was in a terrible state at her house.
Eventually he relented and the necessary arrangements were made.

Just after Tony left to return to the oil rig I arrived back in Clacton on the train.
I used my key to quietly gain entry to the house.
It was a mess, which shocked me quite a bit.
It looked as if Tony, rather than being in any way unhappy, had been partying like there was no tomorrow.
I collected a couple of bags of clothes, my sewing machine, the pushchair and lots of Dan's toys and spare clothing. All this was piled into the back of Roy's van before we set off to collect Dan and Dylan from Pete's house.
When we arrived Pete too had been told I had run off with a shopfitter and was not willing to let me take Dan away from him.
An argument developed and resulted in me grabbing Dan and diving in the van with Dylan scrambling to get through the door as I closed and locked it.
"Drive!" I ordered Roy and he pulled away, yelling at me.
"Now look what you have done! You always mess everything up!"

He was shouting and driving erratically until I screamed at him to stop.
I made him listen to me or dump us on the street right there and then.
He listened and finally we drove to London in relative peace.

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The stress and drama of having to kidnap Dan and Dylan was the final straw for my nerves.
I became neurotic.
Nothing seemed clean enough for me.
I began to bleach and disinfect everything at my mothers house.
I couldn't stop cleaning.
My poor Mum would come home every evening to a sparkling home, stinking of Detol, a meal cooked for her and a daughter biting her nails until they bled. She tried giving me things to do like making new curtains for her lounge but I was whizzing through everything in no time. I walked for miles around the park with Dylan and Dan. I visited my grandparents and even they remarked to my mother that I was fidgety and shaking.
I was losing weight at a tremendous rate.

I claimed single parent benefit and I dissolved in tears when I had to explain the circumstances to the officer handling my case. I was inside the benefits office for such a long time that Dylan made his way back to my Mum's flat by himself and when I found that he was missing I was once again hysterical.

My grandfather decided that London was not suiting me. I had no friends there and the dirty environment was clearly adding to my distress.
He gave me enough money to put a deposit on a tiny flat in Clacton and drove me there together with all that I possessed.

Lady Luck gave me one glimmer of hope when we arrived in Clacton.
I saw a young woman that I knew who lived in a house that had been divided into bedsits.
I asked if there were any vacancies and she immediately confirmed that one flat was empty.

She gave me the landlord's phone number and when I called he arranged to meet me outside the property in ten minutes.

The vacant flatlet was two small rooms on the second floor, filthy and hopping with fleas.
I paid the deposit and a week in advance in exchange for the keys.
There was a shared bathroom on the first floor, also filthy.
My grandfather was mortified.
I assured him that it would not take me long to clean the place up and to go home, I would be alright.

Two weeks later I remember waking up on the kitchen floor with my paintbrush stuck to the leg of a chair I had been painting.
I don't remember much else about that period.