by name & nature.

I came back to the family home after a year in care to find another family in my home.

I’d be three or four.

this family (the beatties) were supposed to look after me but they had four kids of their own & mealtimes became a battleground to get enough to eat, as the smallest/youngest I was to be the loser.

I stammered badly then, if I asked for a sandwich I had to ask without stammering before I could have one, if/when I managed that, all sandwiches were gone.

when my father was around they’d play nice but once he was back to work, life became law of the jungle, survival of the fittest.

I could be punched kicked beaten with impunity, nobody cared, I had no advocate.

being a bedwetter, this upset them having to wash my bedsheets, so punishments followed, the mockery, the shame in everybody being told, in truth I was unconscious of my bedwetting-had no control over it.

first came ‘rat tea’ (in truth a stock tea) that I had to drink as punishment, this was where my running away from home really began as I refused to drink it.

then came the beatings that grew more & more bizarre.

I was forced to stand blindfolded in the hallway, my arms outstretched.

then came weights added to my four-year-old arms if I dropped them I would be punched in the chest, stomach & arms.

weights such as a bag of potatoes (7 pounds) a kettle-cold at first then freshly boiled. an iron cold which then became hot & a hot water bottle freshly filled.

coats would be piled on me until I could hardly breathe, if I fell I was kicked then sent off to bed with no food.

if I spilled the kettle I’d be dragged in the water as a mop as a I was ‘a pissy kid’

that night I’d wet the bed & the whole process would start all over again.

at four and a half I started school, my sister was tasked to take me there, it was only three quarters of a mile away, I howled & fought when there: frightened that this would be another institution that I’d be forever abandoned to.

Mrs Nichols was a tough teacher who hated me as much as I thought I hated her, she’d slap me & I’d kick her, I’d hide under a table trying to make sense of what was happening around me.

the school would tell the beatties of my poor behaviour & I’d be beaten again.

things changed when a kindly teacher sat me on her knee & tried to explain what was happening to me, that was the first hug & kindness I could ever remember since my mother had disappeared.

a truce developed between me & Mrs Nichols: she’d not hit me & I’d not kick her.

(I’d later leave this school having passed the exam there to go to the best school in the area, being seen as the 12^th best in the country.)

meanwhile the beatties made my life hell: rat tea, punishment beatings & lack of food, I’d run away only to be returned by the police as an ungrateful child.

then john met gill & the possibility of a new mum became a possibility, he married her & brought her home to that overstuffed house of six kids & four adults.

then one day we went out for the day to come back to find the few toys I had & the house furnishings all gone (kid priorities) including a toy castle a neighbour had only just given me & my tricycle.

we started over & life was better for a while until gill too found punishment easier to give out than care.

people praised her for her burden: two ungrateful kids who were untamed, she learned early professing martyrdom is easier than actually doing care.

she told me in later life when leaving her husband john to die in hospital: “it’s not that I don’t care, I just can’t DO care” he died after two years lying in hospital, she refused to release him into my sister’s care after she offered to take him home & look after him.

I never saw the beatties again, if I never forgot them.

years later joyce told me they were friends of hers that she’d arranged to ‘look after my sister & me’

I was dumbstruck by this, looking at her horror but she never noticed.

& I never pursued it, too frightened to speak in case I spooked her & she’d run away again, I was right about her running she did run, leaving no forwarding address.

it’d be five years after she was dead for me to find out.

her daughter (mandy) from her second marriage did not tell me.

her brother, (my uncle Malcolm) lives two miles away from me either did not know or could not be bothered to let me know.

if I try to forgive, I do not forget.

©neil benbow