Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I fixed myself a milky drink to calm me down and help me to go back to sleep.  Milk was the obvious answer.  My mum always used to put chia seeds and cardamom powder in it to give it flavour.  When I was feeling low she would warm the milk up and leave it by my bed to cool down.   She would stir it whilst blowing the top of the cup, then let me drink it up in one go.  This was one of her rituals which is the reason why I loved her so much.  I had no spice of course but I had Gerties’ chocolate flakes, so I dropped it into the hot milk, then disappeared to the toilet whilst they melted in the rim of the cup.

When I returned to the kitchen, I could feel a presence behind me but as I turned around could only feel draught from the kitchen window like it had been opened.  Seeing nothing, I proceeded to drink my cup of milk straight up in one go imagining my mum’s spices instead of the flow of chocolate was soothing me.  Little did I realise that the milk was infused with a broken sleeping pill.  My father was back.

I fell to the floor instantly as the room became hazy, my cup fell from my hand and smashed into tiny fragments onto the kitchen tiled floor.  I blacked out.

My mind wandered through the blackness, back to the forest that I remember I saw my mother.  I followed the same journey over the bridge towards the house with the white picket fence.  There I saw a building instead which looked like the same office that Jimmy’s father worked with for the newspaper.  I was led over the bridge into the office quarters where inside several people were hard at work, typing and making phone calls.  They were all working on news stories for the paper.  At the top of the main office was a similar office closed off from all the buzz that was beyond it.  I peeked through the window on the office door and saw my mother dressed smartly in a ladies suit typing away at the desk.   I had never seen her type with such speed, nor had I seen her work with such enthusiasm.  She typed away busily whilst she drank coffee.

The picture in my mind grew hazy again.  With a sore head I opened my eyes slowly to find I was lying in a confined space.  Infront of me were three large leather buckled suitcases piled one on top of another inside the top of a carriage compartment.  I had been left to sleep off my drugged state in the top of a bunk bed.  There was no one else there with me.  Stumbling to reach the door, I managed to get to my feet and slide it open.  People were passing through the narrow corridor that was outside.  Seeing the window ahead, I realised that we were all moving at quite a speed, faster than a car, more like a train.  A TRAIN? A TRAIN?

My heart beat faster once I realised I’d been left on a train.  My father had put me on a train!?  The other passengers were a mixture of French and English speaking tourists reeking of stale body odour and brie cheese.  It could have just been that I wanted to vomit after my sleeping pill cocktail.  I don’t know but it was vile.

There he was coming towards me arm in arm with a lady.  Her frame was tiny, smaller than mine, with bony shaped hips and shoulders.  She carried her self upright, sticking her pointed breasts outwards through a lime green floral A line dress and a co-ordinated flaired green coat.  She had straw hat pulled almost over her eyes.  As they approached the compartment I was in, I backed away quickly and got back in the bed sliding the door shut.  As I waited for them to enter I thought what world was beyond me now.  I had left a secure and happy existence at Gorgeous Gerties to be back with dad.  I started to bite the inside of my cheek feeling scared and nervous with how to deal with it.  Blood suddenly seeped from inside my mouth and dripped outside the corners of my lips.  The door opened.

“Oh look Garjan, she’s bleeding, let’s wipe her up.  She must be in pain”.  The woman took out a handkerchief from her purse and wiped my mouth gently at both sides.  I wasn’t in pain,  I was in shock.

“We’re nearly there.  Let’s gather her things and make our way out to the right exit.  I’ll take these cases one by one.  You stay with her and make sure she doesn’t move”.  My dad felt no emotion for the state I was in and so proceeded to pick up the cases, luring them out of the compartment and into the corridor.  As he disappeared for a moment and I was left with the lady in the carriage, I recognised her from her horse tone to her voice and her mole on her left cheek.  It was our French Teacher from school XXXXX that Bell and Jimmy spoke so highly of.   Dad called her Beau.  I remember having her once as a replacement teacher for science when our teacher caught the flu one winter.  She made our lessons fun by handing out chocolate bars half way between the session.  She thought everyone deserved one after they had recited the meaning of photosynthesis, which she herself thought was hard enough to pronounce.

I remembered her being kind, not cruel.  Why was she with dad?  Without enough time to think, the train came to a halt.  My dad dragged Beau and I out onto the platform to wait with our cases for a lift at a taxi rank.  The whole time, I remained silent.  What more could I do?  I had no way of escaping now.  As sore as my head was, I managed to make sense of the platform name which read ‘Lille’.  ‘Lille’?  Christ almighty we were in France.  I came over all panicky with hot sweats to which Beau noticed so she handed me a bottle of water that was in her bag.  I gulped it down, almost choking.  It was dawning on me that my dream of staying at Gerties had now been shattered.

Whatever drug was in my bloodstream had caused a dizziness to prolongue for the complete journey in the taxi.  It lingered around my head and as the drive wasn’t particularly smooth, I felt my stomach girgling and swirling at the same time.  The water Beau had given was mid way between digestion and working its way back up.  I did my best to control it for fear that my dad would strike me if I threw up in the taxi. 

It must have been more than half an hour later later that we arrived at our destination.  I couldn’t bear to care at that stage for I’d lost the will to live.  The drugs were making me lose the sense of where I was.  Beau held onto me to escort me into what looked like an old farmhouse with a chapel adjacent to it.  They were charcoal grey colour, with rose and aquamarine stained glass windows.  The main door was like a stable door, buckled shut with a large barrier.  Once my father rang the bell outside, the barrier lifted up automatically.  Beau lifted my arms up, as I could bearly feel my feet.  She dragged me through to a main office.

The walls looked like they were closing in on me.  I couldn’t tell whether this was just the effect of the drugs or because I felt trapped.  I wished Jimmy could take me away from this.  I shut my eyes hoping when I  opened them it would all just be a bleak nightmare and I would be back with my friends.  Instead I saw a nun.  Dressed in a loose black dress, pleated at the neck with a woven belt holding a rosary.   She was frightful looking with thick black rimmed glasses, her eyes like black beads poking through the lenses.

“Ah, I’ve been expecting you, how was your journey?” she asked,  peering over her glasses at me.

“Not good for one of us I think.  She’s had a long trip and she’s very tired.  If you don’t mind, we might let her retire home soon.  Can we just collect her particulars then we’ll be off” my father was eager to leave.  Despite the fact that he had created my state but now he was just embarrassed by it.

“Of course, that’s no problem.  I can ask Sister Anne Finnegan to bring your induction papers and uniform for St Antoines”.

The strange looking nun disappeared swiftly from the room like a bat into the night sky.  We waited for ‘particulars’ to arrive and since dad was always impatient, he decided to wait outside.  He evidently wasn’t bothered about he decisions he was making about my life.  How I resented him so much to the point that I decided to bite more of my cheek, taking a large piece of flesh from my mouth.  Blood poured from my lips over my chin.  I was numb from any pain though.  Beau was overcome by what she saw and began to panick at the sight of blood dripping onto my collar.

“What on earth are you doing?, you mustn’t do that, you know your father will see you’ll get it!”  She took the lime scarf from around her neck and began mopping up my chin. 

“This is all for your own good.  Don’t hate us for this.  You’ve bought most of this on yourself young lady” she dabbed the sides of her cheeks quickly, and whilst the scarf got drenched in blood, she tucked it swiftly away into her coat pocket before we were approached by Sr Anne Finnegan.

Sr Anne was a very petit nun with a pointed nose, pimpley skin and strong Irish accent.  Her witch like features put me on edge even more.  She handed over the forms and a bag of uniform to Beau.  She wasn’t the least bit startled by the fact that I looked scared out of my wits.  Was she used to terror-stricken girls being brought to this convent?  I had no idea.  What I did know was that I was expected to act in a certain way.  She outlined a long list of expectations for each pupil at the convent:

Be punctual

No talking during lessons

All break times must be spent studying

Mass will be every morning at 9am

Grace must be said before each class and every lunchtime

Respect must be given to all teaching staff

Bad behaviour will be severly dealt with.

And so my world dramatically changed instantly.  I had been carted off to St Antoines in Lille, a private all girls convent school where nuns lived on the site and taught the girls rigidly to strict guidelines.  I resented everyday I went with a passion.  My father had taken me to stay in the centre of Lille, a grimy indusrial metropolis which had a grey image.  I stayed in a pokey apartment with my father and Beau right in the hub of Lille my sweetie emporium at Georgous Gerties, the relaxed atmosphere, the laughter of Gertie, the sweet melodic playing from Bell and above all my hero Jimmy was no where in this god forsaken world.

The apartment we stayed in again resembled my father’s lack of compassion.  It was bleak and shabby with bare walls.  It was barely aired as my dad didn’t want the windows opened or the main lights on.  He was always like this at home as well.  The had put me in the dimly lit box room at the back of the apartment.  Dad barely spoke to me, I think if he did he would feel he would have to explain why he had dragged me across to France.  Was I really that uncontrollable that I had to be treated like this?

I spent most of my time locked away in the box room trying to find reason with all this insanity.  Months had passed before I could summon the courage to write a letter to Bell in the hope that she would read it.  Hopefully her mum Helen would try and find a way to help me ……..if they could get to me.  I had befriended a girl called Angelica at the school who’s father worked in the post office in Lille.  She offered to take the letter for me to get posted off to Gerties.  As I put pen to paper alarm bells rang in my head.  If I ran away, dad would just come and find me and hunt me down.  He claimed on our journey to Lille that he had followed Belle after school one day and although she had taken various diversions, he stayed with her the whole way and she suspected nothing.  “It was like following Dorothy in her red shoes” he sniggered.  I hoped at the time that he would choke as he laughed.  Poor Belle, how was she to know she’d been followed.

My letter transpired to be a true picture of how miserable I had become.  If I read it through, it have reduced me to tears so I did my best not to.  At least this way I had a way of reaching Bell and Jimmy even though they couldn’t reach me.  Angelica sent my letter without hesitation or without asking.  She was a good friend.  She wasn’t Bell but she was kind to me.

Weeks had drifted past without any news back from my letter.  I had spent my normal time at the convent doing my utmost to ignore what was being taught.  Surely someone could realise that I wasn’t supposed to be there.  I couldn’t focus on any of my lessons but instead spent most of my classes writing chapters in my diary that I hid under my text books.  A day to day account of the monstrosities of my world.  My father had unpredictable mood swings.  Everyday I was treading on egg shells trying anxiously to avoid him.  He was like the cranky troll in the billy goat gruff story.  Day to day he taught English at a local school in Lille whilst Beau taught basic French to younger students that were my age.  But he seemed withdrawn and very distant.  His only contact with me was when he chose to spend an hour with me every day after school grilling me for my incompetence in maths and science.  I didn’t quite reach the ‘A’ standard he required, so he threatened me with strange physical tasks.

Once I had to kneel in a dark corner of the front room facing the wall and recite maths and physics equations.  My knees became so sore that I could barely stand.  He often beat me over the back of my head with the wooden heel of his shoe if I made a mistake.  The trouble was the more he beat me, the more I cried and made more mistakes.  It was a vicious circle.  I couldn’t quite understand what good he thought he was doing my bruising my head. 

I cried for hours alone in my room.  Beau would stay close to my door listening to my sobs, but she did nothing else.  I think she was afraid to.  I never seemed to be able to please him and one day he seemed more upset than anything.  I returned from school one Friday afternoon with my school report.

I remember it being just like a bright coloured small notepad.  Yellow on the outside with pink sheets in the middle almost like tracing paper.  Each nun teacher had written their review of me and placed my grade at the top of each sheet.  I was given my report on the Friday afternoon before I walked home.  How I dreaded opening it up to see what I  had.  Anything close to a ‘B’ and I was mincemeat. 

There was nothing close to a B

C

C

C

B-

B-

C

C

Ah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How was on earth was I going to deal with this now?  What other torchure was I going to be subjected to because I couldn’t reach the grade he wanted.  My head began to pound heavily and my palms became sweaty in my panicked state.  Arriving back at the apartment, I raced straight off to my little hole to try and find a solution.  Taking a thinning tipex fluid I managed to erase what traces I could of Cs and made them into As with a black biro, in the hope that he could not mind the couple of Bs that were remaining.  In my anxious state, I accidently knocked the tippex fluid off my bedside table and onto the carpet.  Getting down on my hands and knees, I tried hard to scrape it away with the tips of my nails, and in doing so nearly made my nails bleed.  I was so scared that my father would return home and catch me.  As I scratched deeper and deeper into the top layer of the shabby carpet, it wasn’t long before I had torn a hole right through it. 

If anyone was listening on the outside of the door, they would probably think it was a rat.  I had the distinct feeling that Beau had returned back from work, and as my bedroom door slowly creeped open, she poked her head through.  Caught red handed on my hands and knees with my report book all in pieces over the carpet before I could clip it back together.  My face went a deep shade of purple.  Why couldn’t have I sorted this out sooner.  Beau marched in and grabbing my wrist, picked me up from the floor.  She gathered the little pieces of tracing paper in a pile and sat me down on the bed. 

I looked down at the floor with a petrified look of despair on my face, waiting for her response.  Clutching the pieces of paper, she began sticking it all back together, folding the creases down.  She then proceeded to take the tippex and carry on forging the remaining numbers.  I watched with great confusion.  Her technique was different to mine and within minutes you could barely notice any of the Bs and Cs on the ironed out tracing paper.  Before she left the room she then offered me a cup of tea and some biscuits.   Did I miss something?  Was she on his side?

And so I believed that I didn’t need to worry about Dad knowing about the report.  He came back from work, had his usual cup of tea that Beau had waiting for him and read his paper.  She waved the report under his nose whilst he peered over his glasses at the pages.  He just moaned and groaned that he thought it had arrived far too late.  I waited to be summoned.

Nothing.

Nothing.

An hour later.

Nothing.

I decided to continue writing in my diary quietly, whilst I waited to hear his shouts and demands.  The diary was in an old exercise book from school that I had ripped sheets out of and tied together with some ribbon.  I held another book closely over the top, hiding any evidence as best I could, in preparation should anyone enter.  The diary was almost a source of treatment for me whilst I stayed with my father.  I had the chance to open up to something I trusted.  My confidente. 

That night I lay in bed staring at the stars in the night sky.  I had found it very difficult to sleep since I had been staying in France.  Staring out at the dark skies, I hoped that Bell and Jimmy could see the same stars that I could and they were thinking of me.  I wished the stars were a mirror that I could look into and they would see how sad my heart was.  I felt like I was being suffocated in this god forsaken world that Dad had put me in.  I just felt so lonely.  As I was about to drift off to sleep, my bedroom door gently swung open.  In walked my father.  I had one eye open from beneath my blanket aware that he was not there to check on my well being.  He was searching around my desk, in my school bag and in the pockets of my uniform.  Luckily I had tucked my diary under the hole that I had made in the carpet that afternoon.  But just when I thought my book was safely out of site and my father was leaving disappointed, his heel got stuck in a loose fibre from the carpet.  He tugged and tugged at this until eventually his shoe became detached.  My body remained still and numb, scared at the thought of him finding it. 

He did.

And so it transpired that my world was turned upside down again.  Not from the fact that I had forged my school report but because he had discovered my diary.  All of my wretched thoughts of him were enclosed.  I had even drawn a picture of him with my red biro as a devil with hairy ears and holding a sharp pitchfork.  It was the only vision I had of him in my head.  Now the devil had walked out of my room with all of my wildest dreams and desperate thoughts laid out.  There was nothing I could do to stop him.  How could I?

Swallow me!  Swallow me! Swallow me up whole right now!  I pleaded to the stars in the sky.  Whatever was out there that could save me from whatever was ahead.  I couldn’t bare to face what torchure he had planned for me now.  Despite the two shabby blankets that Beau had given me, I started to shiver in my bed sheets and my teeth just chattered repeatedly. 

I didn’t sleep that night.

When I awoke in the morning I got myself dressed for school in the distasteful, putrid looking chocolate brown, pleated skirt and blouse that the nuns had given me.  It hung on me almost three sizes too big.  Another oversight of my father’s.  My mother would never have done this to me but of course dad never cared. 

I made my way into the kitchen to fix myself my usual bowl of cereal and taking the bowl out of the corner cupboard, caught the reflection of my dad standing behind me.  He reached over in front of me and closed the cupboard abruptly.  Then taking the bowl from my hand and the box of cereal, proceeded to make my breakfast.

“Right, eat that before the corn flakes go soggy.  I don’t want you to be late for school.  Make sure you come home on time tonight.  We have a lot of ground to cover when you get back.  I hope you get on ok today.  If you have any problems, let me know.  Your report was good.  Well done.”  He said making himself a cup of coffee. 

He was acting strange.  Almost as if, he was trying to be pleasant.  It didn’t suit him.

“ok” I replied.  I really didn’t know what else to say.  I ate my cornflakes as quickly as possible at the dining table, hardly chewing at all.  I couldn’t think straight as I couldn’t quite work out why he was being so nice to me.  So I grabbed my bag and walked right out of the front door.  My father said goodbye but Beau said nothing.  As I left the apartment, I walked a little more confidently down the front path and passed the set of bins that were tucked under the black railing across the front of all the apartments.  Quietly hidden away from site, I rested there for five minutes to catch my breath.  Opening my school bag to take out my bottle of water to cool myself down from all my anxiety, it was then that I noticed  small fragments of paper all over the inside lining of my satchel.  It was like a dog had savaged paper to pieces and dropped it all over my school books.