Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe

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СКАЧАТЬ Jack was very proud of them. All of them, except Mark, had excelled academically, and Mark was now being successful in his own business. ‘I couldn’t ever believe I could have such bright kids,’ said Jack. ‘Right from the beginning they seemed older than me.’

      What did he mean, they’d always seemed older than him?

      Gradually we put together an answer to this question. When the children were tiny he did not see them very much as he was working so hard, but once they started at school he became aware of how bright they were and how much they knew. He could not discipline them, but only, in Joy’s words, ‘quarrel with them’. He felt inferior to them, and frightened of them. There was only one area of experience where he felt his knowledge was superior to theirs - sex - and so he thought he could teach them about this. All the time he could not see anything wrong in doing this. Of course, sometimes we teach children something because we feel that it is important that they know it, and other times we teach them something so we can demonstrate our superiority over them. Sometimes we need to demonstrate our superiority because we envy them.

      Joy had brought along letters from her daughters Jenny and Alice. Jenny was angry with Alice for speaking about the subject to Joy, causing Joy hurt. Jenny said she had spent years trying to forget ‘the experience’ and did not want to discuss the matter now. Jenny’s letter implied that something very unpleasant had happened. Jack said he could remember very little, but he insisted that whatever had happened was nothing more than when he was ‘fooling around with her’, playing the childish games Jenny had always enjoyed. He admitted he had touched her breasts. ‘I didn’t expose myself or ask her to touch me,’ he said. ‘It was her body I wanted to see.’ He was distraught with remorse. ‘I didn’t realize how much I had hurt her. I wouldn’t want to hurt her ever. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am and ask her to forgive me.’

      Jenny had always been extremely good as a child. Alice had been argumentative, and she and Jack had often clashed, but Jenny never argued with him. Jack was puzzled as to how Jenny could be so upset now about what had happened; as a teenager she had always been very friendly to him. She had won a scholarship to a boarding school of great repute, and he had often driven her to and from the school, several hundreds of miles away. Moreover, at home she would often go from bathroom to bedroom quite scantily clad. Why would she do this? I guessed that Jenny throughout her teens was trying to prove to herself that these painful events of her childhood had never happened or, if they had, that they had no untoward significance.

      As Jenny was coming for Christmas I suggested that Jack write her a letter, saying what he had just told me he wanted to say to her. We spent some time discussing this proposed letter. Jack was worried that if he did what I suggested giving Jenny the letter soon after she arrived home this might spoil Christmas, and the family’s ritual celebrations of Christmas were very important to Jenny (and to Jack). ‘She likes everything to be exactly the same every year,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it to her just before she leaves.’

      ‘That won’t give her time to discuss it with us if she wants to,’ said Joy. She went on, ‘We have to show the children that we are able to bear all this, because if we can’t bear it, then they’ll find it hard to bear what they have to bear.’

      When they came back to see me on New Year’s Eve they agreed that they had had a good Christmas. Jenny, Louise and Ray had come home, and there had been a family celebration. Jack had written the letter to Jenny, saying how sorry he was and asking for her forgiveness. He had put the letter on her bedside table on Boxing Day morning. Later Joy had looked in and seen that the letter had disappeared. Jenny did not mention it for the rest of her stay. ‘Her manner didn’t change at all,’ said Jack. ‘She was just like she’s always been, all the time she was with us. Perhaps she’ll write to me when she gets back home.’

      Mark and Alice, spending Christmas with their own families, had phoned over the holiday. ‘They didn’t want to talk to me,’ said Jack. ‘This is my punishment.’

      Joy told me how she and Ray had talked together about the sexual approaches Jack had made to his son, which Jack did not remember. They had not included Jack in this conversation because they both wanted to spare his feelings. Now, in her gentle, precise way, she told me what Ray had told her. Jack sat with his head down.

      Ray described three events. The first was a simple enquiry from Jack as to whether Ray got erections. Ray had not sensed there was anything wrong with this until Jack, leaving Ray’s bedroom, had said, ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ The next time Ray and Jack were playing, just fooling around, Jack put his hand down Ray’s trousers and touched his penis. Ray pulled himself away. The third occasion was no more than a look which Ray, undressed, found hard to distinguish from the close looks which parents give to children when inspecting for unwashed faces and adolescent pimples.

      Jack still could not remember these events. ‘Jack doesn’t bother to sort things out,’ said Joy. ‘Something happens and he just covers it up with something else. It’s like our attic. When we moved to that house he just piled things up there, just a higgledy-piggledy mess. That attic always reminded me of Jack’s mind. I hated to go up there. But now I’ve got everything in it sorted out. We put up some shelves and changed the glass in the window to let in more light.’ She smiled. ‘Now we’re getting his mind sorted out getting things clear and in order.’

      The reason that the attic, like all the cupboards and shelves in their house, was crammed full of things was because Jack couldn’t bear to throw things away.

      ‘We weren’t allowed any possessions at the orphanage. If you had something you had to carry it with you to keep it or it disappeared. When I went into the orphanage it was just after Christmas and I had all my Christmas presents. They soon disappeared. I had a billiard table and cue. The cue was the first to go. One of the masters took it and used it as a cane. He often belted me with it. I soon learned how you had to get things. You were always on the lookout for something you could exchange for something else. But it always had to be something you could carry with you. It wasn’t until you were a work boy that you had a locker, just a small one, about eighteen inches square, and you were allowed to buy a lock to put on it. But even then someone would break the lock and take your things.’

      Jack talked about the beatings and indiscriminate cruelty in the orphanage. The matron, he said, wore a large ring, and as she walked past a boy she would slap him across the head, often cutting his face with the ring. Even today Jack cannot bear to have his head touched.

      ‘We would get belted for anything and nothing,’ he said. ‘Every fortnight we had boot inspection. We had to stand holding our boots upside down. The chap who mended our boots would allow us to lose just one stud from the sole. For every other stud missing you’d get a belting. We’d do anything to get studs for our boots. If you found one you treasured it like gold. Sometimes you’d manage to get hold of a new one and then you’d have to scratch it for ages to make it worn like the other ones. If he thought you’d put a new one in, well, you’d had it.’

      The boys were beaten and whipped for all kinds of offences and often for nothing at all. ‘I wet the bed every night from the time I went into the orphanage until the time I left. There was a group of us that did this, and we were always punished, every time. We’d be beaten, or wrapped up tight in the wet sheets and made to stand out in the cold. All the other boys knew what you’d done. We always had to wash our own sheets. The staff never did anything to help us.’ There was no one to whom the boys could turn for help. ‘No one would have believed us,’ he said, ‘and my mother, even if she had believed me, which she wouldn’t, wouldn’t have done anything anyway.’

      As Jack described at length the cruelties that had been perpetrated on these helpless boys, he smiled and occasionally laughed. I asked him why he did so and he said, ‘Well, it’s a long time ago, and there’s nothing I СКАЧАТЬ