大象传媒

This story hasn't been easy to write - but it may make a contrast to some of the other War stories. I don't want people to feel sorry for me - on the whole I've led a happy life and have a strong faith in God.

My mother had always been nervous and neurotic, but the Second World War exacerbated her condition. She was so terrified. I was an only child, and after the period when we'd sat in our Anderson shelter, which had a tendency to flood, and grovelled under our steel Morrison table topped shelter, (very cold and draughty), while Pas was out with the A.R.P., Ma and I went into the countryside, staying in a variety of rented places, mostly not far from Ledbury in Herefordshire, to get away from the bombs. Eventually we came home to 232 Hole Lane, Northfield on the fringes of the Bourneville estate. I was quite content to go out in the mornings picking up pieces of shrapnel with my friends - children are so accepting. Ma and Pa had ceaseless rows in those days and I'd sit on the stairs and listen when I should have been in bed. One sunny Friday afternoon Ma put on the gas fire in their bedroom without lighting it. She tried to get me to lie down beside her and 'go to sleep'. The blackout boards were up at the windows and I soon decided I'd had enough. The stink of gas was awful. I must have been about eight years old, but I managed to get away and went out to play. I was too scared to tell anyone about it. Thjat evening during one of their rows I wandered into their bedroom and saw something wrapped in a big of rag under the bed. It was a one-sided razor blade and I cut my finger on it. I was frightened and put it back. Again I told no one. The next morning, which was a Saturday, my father came and woke me up. He said he was worried about Ma and asked me to stay indoors with her, while he had to get to work in Selley Oak and open the bank where he was manager. Then he would come home. Ma came in soon after he had gone and made me dress in clean underwear and put on one of my best dresses, which was pink linen with little white seagulls embroidered on it. She then went downstairs. When I came down, with a cold feeling in my stomach, Ma asked me to hold out my hand. I did so and she cut my wrist with the razor blade. I stared at it in disbelief. Then she cut her own wrist and tried to drag me upstairs, gibbering about how it would all soon be over, and we'd just go to sleep. I instinctively said something, which I didn't realise was a cliche, "I'm too young to die." She continued to hold on to me and tried to pull me up the stairs. There was a ringing noise in my ears, but I was slippery with blood and managed to wrench away from her. I tried to open the front door but the catch was too high and too stiff for me. I ran through into the kitchen, that door had a large key and I could turn it. I pushed my way through the bushes, which separated our house from the next sem-detached and knocked on the door. I saw a man ride past on his bicycle and when he saw us he just picked up speed and rode on... Mother was just shaking and moaning. Mrs Plant, our kind neighbour, opened the door and gaped with horror. She pushed me into her posh front room and took Ma into the kitchen. She bandaged Ma tightly with a clean tea cloth and then came and did the same for me. Shortly afterwards a nurse came and took off all my clothes and sponged me down. I hated that. She didn't speak to me. The doctor told Pa to take me to the hospital, shich was probably Selly Oak, and I had some stitches put in. Ma was taken off to Rubery Mental Hospital and stayed there about eighteen months, I think. I'm still trying to locate her old records, but finding it difficult. I was very happy staying with my Dad, but he couldn't look after me by himself. A blond Welsh woman with glasses came in to see to me, feed me and send me to school. It all proved too much for Pa, who must have been short staffed at the bank, so eventually I was packed off to stay with my Aunt May and Uncle Paddy in East Retford in Nottinghamshire. They were very kind but had no children of their own. I was sent to a school in Retford. It was a Convent school evacuated from Yarmouth. The children picked on me because I had a relative to live with. Aunt tried to get me to write to Ma, but I didn't want to. I was so close to Pa and it was misery not to see him. He couldn't visit at weekends because of having to work Saturday mornings and also on account of petrol rationing. When I arrived I put all my soft toys in a cupboard and didn't take them out at all. Here is a quote from some Creative Writing I did in 1993 for my Tutor Chris Sykes in Warwick. It lanced the abscess and helped me to learn to forgive Ma. "I hated you for the shock and the pain of the blade. The gaping grinning mouth that was my wrist. The spurting stink of our hot blood. I feld contempt for what you had done. I wanted to live. I wanted you to die. They took you away and I didn't want you to come back. But you did." I wanted to write this piece because it shows how much some of the middle-aged women suffered. I know there was another woman across the road that had a nervous breakdown and another in the next street that hanged herself from her front porch. Suicide in the family, particularly when compounded by child abuse leaves a wretched feeling. I can still feel the rejection, first by my mother, and then by my father, for I perceived his sending me away as rejection, though of course it wasn't, he just wanted to keep me safe. At eight years old the minds of adults are a total mystery to children. The end result was that my education was disrupted, though finally I won a scholarship to King Edward VI in Edgbaston. I have felt insecure inside and have had several breakdowns during my seventy-four years. However, mostly I've adopted a cheerful mien, which seems to fool many people. Some of the worst scars are the mental ones.

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