Conspiracy of Secrets. Bobbie Neate
came to give me a goodnight kiss, his footfalls evident from the protesting floorboards outside my room. More undesirable were his ‘other’ visits. Mum would have gone downstairs to prepare his supper, as he eased the door softly open. The hinges creaked, but only quietly, and his footsteps made the ornaments quiver, not shake.
He found an excuse to talk and, after cocking an ear, he would reach down under my blankets. I didn’t like it. I did not know why I couldn’t confide in Mum. I just knew I couldn’t.
The abuse progressed. He started showing me his penis and how it grew to be a different shape. He never wore underpants. He demanded I touch it and I was pleased when he allowed me to escape this task by turning the other way. It all seemed very eerie and unnerving. He would grunt a little and then get his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket to clean himself up. I was desperate to keep my eyes closed because all the action seemed very close to my face.
I tried to shut down my brain, but then the nightmares began. I was possessed by a recurring dream. I had a passion for Matchbox toys. Every Saturday I looked forward to buying a new vehicle with my two-shillings-and-sixpence pocket money (12.5p in decimal money), but in the nightmare instead of dreaming of the Matchbox containing a miniature steamroller, I woke with a deep apprehension that it might have a tiny living baby inside.
The visits kept getting worse. Even though I was innocent of even the most basic facts, he started to talk about watching Mum and him doing something in their bedroom. The depth of my nightmares increased and with a heightened sense of survival I knew I had to stop him.
Then one night he said he would arrange for me to be hidden in one of the cupboards in their bedroom. This sounded petrifying and I was rigid with fear. I kept thinking and scheming: there must be a way of stopping him. My final plan was simple: I would shout as loud as I could. It was something I could do. Once I had my plan I was full of resolve and keen to put it into action. But, the next time he walked furtively across the bouncing floor, the resolve ebbed out of me. I was furious with myself for my inability to stick to my scheme.
I don’t know how many times I let myself down. Each failure created more self-doubt and frustration. When I opened my mouth all I could hear was my breathing. I decided practice was needed, so I went down to the bottom of the garden and let rip.
The next time he entered my room I screamed and screamed and screamed. He turned to leave, only to meet Mum rushing towards my room with her apron awry and her hands covered in flour. She looked aghast.
‘What on earth has happened? Are you alright? Have you had a bad dream? What’s happened to you?’
Her words came tumbling out. I sat bolt upright up in bed, looking out of the window, with the orange street light falling across my covers. I had tears in my eyes but I wasn’t crying. I had done it. Mum never asked me again why I had made so much noise. But, from that night on, the abuse stopped.
The morning after my mother suffered her stroke, a cheerful district nurse came through the blue gate. She had organised a rapid-response team of nurses to call at various periods in the day and night, and she went off to find Louis to tell him the good news. I worried about the series of nurses finding their way around the rambling house in the dark. So, despite leaving my two younger children to fend for themselves, I declared I would be staying another night and busied myself with jobs around the house as I waited for each new set of nurses. I allowed myself to lie down and wait for the team that would arrive between two or three in the morning. I listened for the familiar bell above the blue gate to warn me they were here. When it jangled I looked down from the landing window as the team hesitated in the yard, I flung open the narrow window with its blue shutters but they failed to see me as they bent their heads low to avoid the wisteria branches. I had never leaned out of that window before. Mum or Stepfather had always used that upstairs position to wave goodbye to each other if either was leaving the house for an hour or two. Stepfather did not like his wife to go out without him. She went only when she was buying essentials for our schooling. Standing at my mother’s back door welcoming the nurses was even stranger. I had replaced my mother. I prayed it might be only days before she could reclaim her role.
Relief spread through my tense body as I welcomed the two smiling nurses, one male and one female. I admired their cheeriness at such an hour as they chortled their way up the stairs. It did not seem kind to break their relaxed mood but I felt it important to warn them that Stepfather could be difficult.
‘Oh, don’t worry. We’re used to that. Nothing fazes us. You wouldn’t believe what we have to face,’ the fresh-faced young man replied, catching the eye of his colleague.
As I pointed out the door to my mother’s room, he sent me to find a suitable basin, which could be filled with hot water. When I returned they were still standing outside the bedroom door.
Stepfather’s domineering voice came from within. ‘I expected a nurse, not some namby-pamby who calls himself a man. Get out and leave us alone.’
I looked at them nervously. The youth was the first to recover his composure. ‘I’m the only qualified nurse. My assistant has not even done the basic training.’
‘I’m not having a man in this room. Just keep out.’
I poked my head into the doorway to start to negotiate but Louis pointed his thick fingers at me. ‘You can go away.’
The male nurse was not going to give up so easily. He kept up a continual chatter through the doorway, eventually negotiating that his unqualified assistant and I should be allowed in the bedroom with the door being left sufficiently wide so that we could hear his directions. The water I had collected was now cold, so I went to fetch more.
There was more trouble on the following morning and I hung my head in shame when the cheery district nurse was sent packing. She had dared to suggest that Mr Stanley had to accept the nurses who were on duty, whichever their gender. Things were looking grim.
The consultant in geriatrics arrived at the house the following afternoon. His prognosis: my mother’s swallow reflex was weak and in three days’ time she would be dead. She would drown in her own mouth fluids. Stepfather reacted calmly.
I was in utter shock. She appeared to be making progress but I had to accept the expert’s verdict. I thought of my first night in the house. How had she managed to swallow the painkillers with our drops of water? As the consultant had ordered her to receive nil by mouth, I worried whether our helping her swallow paracetamol had done her damage.
The district nurse took me and my siblings aside. She said the words I hoped I would never hear: ‘If your mother was to start to fail would you want her to be kept alive?’ The words were hard but the decision was easy. We told the nurse about my mother’s living will.
I wanted to help Louis as much as I could. I knew it would be hard but my mother would have wanted me to be by his side. I rushed home to my own family and grabbed some essentials, sorted out my children’s arrangements and was back on the road within minutes. As I drove back to Cambridge, I thought soberly of what a tough few days it would be.
Two days later I had another shock. On the stairs I met Pauline, one of the nurses, and asked if I could help her, but she backed down the steps away from me holding a tray covered by a teacloth.
‘Can we go somewhere quiet?’ Puzzled, I took her into my old playroom. ‘I found this under the bed,’ she said, and she lifted the teacloth and showed me a menacing pistol.
‘Oh, it’s the gun!’ I responded, trying not to sound as shocked as I felt.
‘Did you know about it?’ she asked. ‘I was going to show it to my managers.’
‘Oh, Mr Stanley always told us he had an air pistol. He told me he kept