Escaping Daddy. Maria Landon

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СКАЧАТЬ during the week, when the other kids were at school or back with Sue, I would take Brendan with me when we went to work, and he and I would play together in the cab of the lorry while Rodney laboured outside. Rodney liked to have us around for company and to keep an eye on me. He always liked to be surrounded by friends or family wherever he was. Sometimes, when there was a lot for me to do at the job site, I would leave Brendan with a babysitter if I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him while I was working. Although I loved him to bits it was still nice to have the occasional respite from continuous baby talk.

      In the summer months most of Rodney’s jobs were to do with gardening, especially laying out patios and driveways; he was a skilful craftsman whenever he got the chance to show it, always doing a good job for his customers. My jobs would usually be to drive the van or mix the cement, or do any odd chore he asked of me. Sometimes we would be clearing away scrap, like the old vehicles in Dick’s yard, and my first job would be to get the wheels off. I grew strong from the physical labour of it and I liked how that felt. I felt as though he needed me, as though I had a role in his life, and it seemed like useful, honourable labour, not like the furtive, grubby work that Dad made me do with the men he made me sell my services to.

      A couple of times a year Rodney and I would go to the horse market, held in the cattle market in Norwich, where all the old boys like Dick would be sitting around drinking and singing in the same way their ancestors must have been doing for centuries. It seemed very different to the sordid, claustrophobic little world of hookers, drunks and ne’er-do-wells that my dad used to live in. Dad liked nothing better than to be thought of as ‘a bit of a character’, always showing off and trying to attract a crowd in whatever pub he was in, but Dick didn’t have to try that hard because everyone was automatically enchanted by him. After the sale had finished everyone would gather in the pub, The Norfolk Dumpling, and have a singalong and a good old drink. Quite often one of the little Shetland ponies would be brought into the pub to share in the fun. The children loved it.

      Dick battled for years to get permission to build on the site of the Buxton scrapyard, even taking his case to the Court of Human Rights, claiming that he was being discriminated against because he was a gypsy. His perseverance paid off and he was eventually successful, but the deal didn’t finally go through till after his death in 1989. Now they’ve built bungalows on the site and named it Drake’s Loke in his honour. It was a shame he didn’t live to see the fruits of his labours.

      Dick’s funeral was an amazing event, with travellers and relatives arriving in lorries from every corner of the country to pay their respects, partying long into the night to celebrate the life of a man who everyone seemed to have loved. No one could find a bad word to say about him, living or dead. According to the traditions of gypsy law, Dick’s caravan should have been burned after he died but it never happened for some reason and Rodney’s younger brother moved in and took over running the yard. Phoebe moved into a house in Buxton and Rodney and I got on with our own lives and our own family.

      Anyone meeting me during those years would have assumed I was a full-blooded gypsy wife. I jangled with the gold jewellery and sovereign rings that Rodney would give me. I would be tanned from working in the outdoors and I hardly ever bothered to wear shoes when we were out and about, enjoying the freedom of bare feet, feeling like I was being a bit of a rebel. Rodney didn’t allow me to do anything that might attract other men, like wearing make-up or skirts, but that didn’t bother me too much as I had no sense of personal identity at that stage anyway. I only really existed as his woman and the kids’ mother. I also liked the fact that it was very different to my days with Dad, when he used to make me get all dressed up in his prostitute friends’ clothes and heels, and paint my face when I was as young as twelve. He would take me to parties like that to show me off, flirting with me as though I was his girlfriend, paying me compliments, pleased to see other men eyeing up the goods that he was soon going to be selling, or helping himself to as soon as we got home. Because Dad spent so much time telling me how fat, ugly and unlovable I was, I partly enjoyed it when he seemed pleased with the way I looked, but at the same time I already knew it was wrong and spooky for him to be paying me that sort of attention.

      With Rodney it was completely the opposite and I liked that protectiveness to start with. I felt pleased that he loved me enough to be jealous of other men, instead of being happy to sell me to anyone with the price of a few drinks in their pocket, as Dad had been. Despite my low self-esteem I had always been good at putting on a brave face to the outside world and was always happy to chat to other people. Although I was pleased that Rodney was protecting me, I began to get confused when he was angry with me for talking to other men in normal social situations like pubs or shops. If I even put on a bit of lipstick when we went out together he would immediately accuse me of having an affair and would turn it into a big argument.

      ‘I saw the way you were looking at him,’ he would shout once he got me back home. ‘You were leading him on, flirting with him.’

      ‘I was just talking to him,’ I would protest, completely unable to understand what was going wrong between us and why he didn’t trust me.

      As time went by it started to make me mad because I had never given him the slightest reason to think that I would ever be unfaithful to him. I hated people who messed around like that because I had seen how unhappy Mum and Dad had made each other. Although it was intimidating sometimes, his possessiveness did in a way make me feel secure, but this self-confidence that I was beginning to build was badly shaken one day when I discovered that Rodney had slept with the babysitter, Tina.

      Tina and I were friends and used to take turns babysitting for one another. I first felt uneasy about her relationship with Rodney one evening when we went round to collect Brendan, and Rodney commented on some semi-naked photos of her that were stuck on her fridge door. They had quite an intimate giggle about them and a few days later Rodney picked a fight with me and stormed out, saying he was going to stay at his caravan.

      Walking past Tina’s house a bit later I spotted his truck outside, which was odd because I’d talked to her earlier and she’d told me she was going out for the evening.

      I let myself into the house as I normally would when I was picking up Brendan, and there were Rodney and the children sitting round the table having a meal. The kids were all in a state of undress, having had a bath, so it was obvious they were planning on staying over. Rodney and Tina made no secret of the fact that they were having a fling and I felt doubly betrayed, by my man and by my friend.

      This was exactly the sort of pain that I had been hoping Rodney would protect me from and it brought back a million memories of my time with Dad, reminding me of all the reasons why I hated the way he and his friends behaved so casually about sex. We had an incredible row and from then on I kept Brendan with me nearly all the time rather than hiring another babysitter and putting temptation in Rodney’s way. There was never any question that I would take him back–I needed him too much–but once someone has betrayed you, however, you can never feel quite the same about them again. Trust in a relationship, I believe, has to be an absolute; you either have it or you don’t; there are no degrees in between.

      In my heart I knew he had been unfaithful to me at other times too and I realised that since I didn’t have the courage to leave him I’d have to put up with it and try to ignore it. He didn’t even seem terribly concerned about hiding it from me after that. Perhaps he felt it was his right as a man. It certainly wasn’t a subject he was prepared to discuss with me. All the confidence that had been building inside me, when I thought I had found a knight in shining armour to protect me, was draining away, leaving me feeling vulnerable and worthless all over again.

      Despite whatever he might be up to himself when the opportunity arose, Rodney wanted to have me somewhere where he could keep an eye on me every hour of every day, and he would become more and more possessive if he thought I was even passing the time of day with any other men. Although I was still mistaking his behaviour for a kind of love it СКАЧАТЬ