The House Across the Street Page 25

  ‘Interrogating you?’ she said. ‘I was just interested in hearing about your past, how you met Dad. How you were as a girl. We need to talk about these things, Mum. They all affected you, made you the person you are now. The horrible experience I had with Reilly would probably affect me badly if I didn’t talk about it.’

  ‘Why do you assume I had a horrible experience?’

  ‘Because you’re hiding something, Mum. People don’t hide good things.’

  ‘You think you are so clever,’ Hilda snapped, getting to her feet and looking down at Katy with a look almost of hatred. ‘You always did think you knew it all. Well, you don’t, and some things that happen to people are best left in the past.’

  ‘Mum, I only want to understand you,’ Katy said quietly. ‘I prayed a great deal when I was locked in that cellar. I thought about you, Dad and Rob a lot, too. Because I thought I wasn’t going to live, it made me see that if God spared me, then I must get through to you. That I must find out what makes you so unhappy sometimes, and maybe then I could make it better for you.’

  ‘No one could make it better, and if I was to tell you about it, you’d hate me.’

  ‘Did you kill someone? Did you rob an old lady, or hurt a child?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Hilda said angrily. She sat down again but remained on the edge of the seat.

  ‘Well, those would be the only things I could hate you for,’ Katy said. ‘I wouldn’t care if you’d robbed a bank, drowned a cat, or danced naked on Hastings Pier. Everyone has done something that they think people will hate them for. And they are usually wrong.’

  She put out her hand to take her mother’s, but Hilda pushed her hand away. ‘Leave me alone, Katy. You don’t want to know this; it’s terrible.’

  Katy saw that her mother was crying. She wasn’t making any sound, but huge great tears were rolling silently down her cheeks. ‘I do want to know. I don’t care how bad it is. I promise I will still love you just the same,’ she said, and put her arms around her mother and drew her to her chest. ‘Now come on, whisper it, if you can’t bear to say it out loud.’

  Hilda said nothing for some time. Her shoulders were heaving and Katy could feel the wetness of her tears on her jumper, but there was no sound.

  ‘I was raped!’

  It came out as a whisper but, as quiet as it was, Katy heard it clearly.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Just explain where you were, who you were with. I expect I’ll understand the rest without you going into any detail.’

  There was a long silence. Katy waited patiently, as she sensed her mother needed to tell this story.

  ‘Four of us went to a dance in Aldershot,’ she said eventually. ‘Nancy, one of the girls, had a boyfriend stationed there and she arranged with someone for us to have a lift there. I had made a new dress, it was pink with white flowers on it, and the girls said I looked pretty. I felt good, too. It was a warm night, and I thought something good was going to happen.’ She paused.

  Katy didn’t attempt to prompt her because she sensed her mother was reliving that night.

  ‘It was good, too. They had decorated the hall with paper garlands and balloons, and the band was first class. I danced with lots of men that night and I drank a fair bit, as we’d taken some gin with us. I thought I’d finally stopped feeling awkward and I was really happy. But it got very hot in the hall, and I went outside for some air.’

  She broke away from Katy and sat up, looking into the distance as if she was back at that hall.

  ‘The hall was on a country lane and, of course, it was all dark because of the blackout. But the moon was bright that night and I walked away from the hall. I could hear ducks quacking, even over the music inside. There was a pond, and the moon shone right down on the water and the white ducks swimming around, making it as clear as day.

  ‘Then suddenly this man was there. He wasn’t in uniform, he was wearing an open-necked shirt and dark trousers. He said how bright the moon was and asked me where I was from. He had a very posh voice, and he was nice-looking, with fair hair that shone in the moonlight. I flirted a bit with him. He suggested we went for a little walk. I don’t know why I agreed, I didn’t even know his name, but I suppose I thought it would be something good to tell the other girls, like a little adventure.

  ‘But it wasn’t an adventure at all. He took my hand and he drew me away from that lane into the bushes. He started kissing me, and I got scared then and said I had to go back. Then he punched me right in the face. He hit me so hard I fell back on the ground.

  ‘He had one of those scarf cravat things round his neck and tucked into his shirt. He whipped it off and tied it round my head, gagging me. Then he did it to me. It hurt so much, and I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong and he hit me again and again.

  ‘When he was finished, he got up and kicked me really hard in the stomach, then disappeared into the bushes.’

  Katy could hardly believe what she’d heard. It would be shocking to hear this had happened to anyone, but knowing it had happened to her mother – a very private, particular and restrained woman – made it even more devastating.

  ‘Oh, Mum, that is terrible!’ Katy was crying now, too. She pulled her mother back into her arms. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I managed to get the scarf off and I called out. I tried to get up but I couldn’t seem to get my balance, my stomach was hurting so much. Then suddenly this soldier was there; he came running into the bushes and helped me up. I didn’t need to tell him what had happened. My knickers were on the ground where the man had torn them off. He helped me put them back on.’

  ‘So did you get the police?’

  ‘No, I knew how they’d be. They’d think it was my fault, because I’d gone into the bushes with the man.’

  ‘But didn’t the soldier who helped you want to get the police?’

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t let him. I told him it would just be worse for me. I might even lose my job if it got out.’

  ‘Lose your job! A man rapes you and suddenly you are the bad person?’

  ‘That’s how it was, back then,’ Hilda shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it’s much better even now. Anyway, the soldier went back into the hall and told my friends he was taking me home, and he did – in an army jeep. He was so kind.’

  ‘So did you ever find out who it was that raped you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell anyone else what had happened. I was in bed by the time the others got home.’

  ‘But how could you live with such a dark, horrible secret?’

  ‘I had someone who knew about it. The soldier who helped me. I talked to him about it and he came back to see me again and again.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Corporal Albert Speed.’

  Katy thought for a moment that her mother was mixed up.

  But Hilda repeated the name and looked pointedly at Katy.

  ‘Dad?’ Katy exclaimed. ‘That’s how you met him?’

  20

  ‘Dad!’ Katy whispered his name, deeply shocked that something as awful as this had brought her parents together.

  ‘Yes, Albert. But for him I would almost certainly have killed myself. Believe me, Katy, I was the most innocent of girls. I had no real understanding of anything to do with that!’

  Katy knew her mother meant sex. She had rarely spoken openly on the subject, just vague innuendoes, usually uttered through pursed lips, as if even the thought disturbed her. Katy had got all her knowledge of human reproduction and male–female relationships from books and her friends. Jilly’s mother had filled in any gaps in a cheerful but blunt manner.

  Now Katy understood why her mother couldn’t speak about it. Yet surely having had two children since then should’ve helped her?

  ‘So did Dad take you to the police?’

  ‘He wanted to, but I wouldn’t let him.’ Hilda cocked her head up in a defiant manner. ‘I could
n’t talk to a man about such things. And anyway, I was afraid they’d say it was my fault. I’d been drinking, and I’d let him lead me away from the dance.’

  Katy could understand that. A friend of hers from school had gone to the police after being raped, and the police had said she shouldn’t have accepted a lift home from the man. They had shown no concern, either.

  ‘When was this, Mum?’ Katy asked.

  ‘The end of June, 1940. The reason we went to the dance in Aldershot was because my friend’s boyfriend was one of the many soldiers, along with Albert, who had been in the retreat from France and were rescued from the beach at Dunkirk. They were both lucky to get home unscathed.’

  Katy hadn’t even known her father had been at Dunkirk. But then he only ever made jokes about his time in the army.

  ‘So what did you do? Did you just carry on as if it hadn’t happened?’

  Hilda looked at her daughter with bleak eyes. ‘I tried to. But there are some things you just can’t forget. It was Albert who kept me going. He wrote to me, and three times he caught a train to come and see me.’

  ‘Was England being bombed then?’ Katy asked.

  ‘Not then, we’d had what we called the Phoney War, when nothing really happened. But after Dunkirk the Germans swept through Europe. Holland, Belgium and France all fell. Then, at the beginning of July, we had the first daytime bombing in England. The London Blitz began on August 23rd, but our worst time in Southampton was from the end of November.’

  ‘Did Dad remain stationed in Aldershot?’

  ‘No, his mob were sent out to North Africa. At the time, I didn’t know where he’d gone – they couldn’t tell you stuff like that – but he wrote to me. I went back to work, and it was very scary when the bombs fell on Southampton. It was a major target, not only because of the ships and the harbour, but because the factories were making everything from guns to tanks. We all lived in a constant state of anxiety. I suppose that was why I didn’t cotton on that I was expecting.’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ Katy exclaimed. ‘The rapist made you pregnant?’

  ‘Well, I certainly hadn’t done it with anyone else,’ Hilda retorted with indignation.

  Suddenly, like a lightning bolt striking her, Katy knew the truth. She had been born in March 1941.

  She was the child of the rapist.

  It felt like falling down an unseen hole. Fragments of childhood memories flashed past her, as if she was being given one last glimpse of things she’d held dear before they were snatched away forever.

  ‘So Albert married you out of pity?’ she said in horror. ‘And you’ve let me believe all these years that he was my father? How could you do that?’

  In the heat of the moment Katy forgot her broken ankle and, wanting to get as far away from her mother as possible, she got up off the sofa. But as soon as she took a step, she fell back on to the cushions. She began to cry then. She couldn’t escape, and her whole world had come tumbling down.

  ‘I’m sorry, Katy. I was too blunt; I should never have told you what happened to me. But in telling you part of the story, I had to tell the whole of it. You said you wanted the truth about me. Now you’ve got it.’

  ‘All these years! All that pent-up nastiness I had to deal with, you watching me like a hawk, criticizing every move I made. So you saw all that’s man’s evil in me, I suppose?’

  Hilda was crying now, tears streaming down her face. ‘No, I never saw any badness in you. I didn’t even think of him being your father – not once you were born, and I held you in my arms. Albert has always been your father in every way that counts. He wrote to me all the time, wanted to know what you were like, and when he came home in July of 1941 he asked me to marry him.’

  ‘So what did he get out of the marriage?’ Katy was so angry with her mother, she wanted to hurt her. ‘A cold, bitter woman with a rapist’s child. For as long as I can remember, you were always picking on him, nothing was ever good enough for you. Why on earth did he want you?’

  ‘He said he fell in love with me as he drove me home that night after the dance. But I didn’t believe him. How could any man want spoiled goods?’

  ‘So you just used him? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Katy. I fell for him, too. He was so kind, so gentle, but strong too. If I’d never been raped and I’d met him first and fallen in love with him, that would have been wonderful. A dream come true. But the rape spoiled everything. But please don’t think I used Albert. I did lean on him, because I had no one else, but I loved him then and I still do.’

  Angry and hurt as Katy was, she could hear the truth in what Hilda was saying. But she wasn’t prepared to let her off lightly.

  ‘All those times I asked why I had red hair and green eyes when you, Dad and Rob were all brown-eyed with dark hair, you could’ve told me the truth.’

  ‘You tell me how you tell a child her daddy isn’t her daddy? Or make a distinction between a brother and sister? Don’t you think it felt like a sword in my side? You are Albert’s daughter in every meaningful way. He changed your nappies, he helped you take your first steps, taught you to swim and ride a bike, helped you with your homework. Don’t tell me you don’t know that he loves you; he has shown it every day of your life. I often feel jealous that he loves you more than me.’

  ‘I wish I could get out of this house and away from you,’ Katy snarled and turned herself round on the sofa so she couldn’t see Hilda. She could hear her mother crying but she wasn’t going to turn back and apologize.

  After a while, Hilda got up and went into the kitchen. Katy pulled the wheelchair nearer to her and hoisted herself into it with the aid of her crutch. Then she wheeled herself to the stairs, got out and shuffled on her bottom up the stairs.

  She slammed her bedroom door behind her, locked it, then crawled on to her bed to cry.

  It seemed to Katy that her whole life was one big lie. If her real father had been killed in the war, and then her mother had met Albert and married him, she could’ve borne more easily the pretence that Albert was her father.

  But to be conceived by rape! How could she ever get over that? And who was this nameless man who had raped a young woman and abandoned her in a wood? What traits had she inherited from him? How could she ever feel comfortable with Rob and her father now she was only a half-sister and stepchild.

  This devastating news hurt so much. She had believed, once she’d got away from Reilly, that all her troubles were over. She wished now that he had killed her. Nothing could be as bad as knowing your real father was a rapist and your mother was a liar.

  At half past five her mother came knocking on the bedroom door and begged Katy to come down for supper.

  ‘Your father will be in soon, and he’s going to be so upset that you are locked in here,’ she said. ‘Please, Katy. I am sorry about what I told you, but you said you wanted the truth.’

  Katy ignored her mother and put the pillow over her head. She felt too miserable to think of eating anything, and she didn’t want to see Albert, either.

  Albert came home around six. Katy heard muffled voices, Hilda’s voice growing more shrill as she told her husband what had happened. Then there was silence.

  Katy wondered if they could’ve gone out. The house wasn’t normally ever that quiet.

  Then, just after seven, she heard Albert coming up the stairs. His step was plodding and weary, which told her how troubled he was.

  ‘Open up, Katy,’ he said firmly at the door. ‘I’ve got tea and sandwiches here for you and we must talk.’

  ‘Go away, I don’t want to talk to you or eat sandwiches!’ she shouted back.

  ‘If you don’t open the door and behave like an adult, I’ll kick it down. There are two sides to every story and you are going to listen to mine, even if I have to restrain you to keep you listening.’

  He only ever used that fierce tone when he was very angry. Katy knew she must open the door or he would carry out his threat. Reluctantly, she
hopped to the door and turned the key, before slumping down on her bed again.

  Albert shut the door behind him and pulled up her dressing-table stool to sit down on.

  ‘All our married life Hilda knew she must one day tell you the truth,’ he began, his face tense and his eyes troubled. ‘Keeping it locked inside her has made her miserable, but she found it impossible to tell you. I would’ve told you myself, but it isn’t my story to tell. But seeing as you’ve reacted so badly, I am going to tell you my side of it.’

  ‘What did you both expect? That I would say goody, goody, how great to have a rapist for a father?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Katy,’ he reproved her. ‘But how about trying to look at what happened from a different viewpoint – your mother’s?’

  Katy crossed her arms and looked defiantly at the ceiling.

  ‘Hilda had a hard, miserable childhood. She endured things you, with your privileged childhood, can’t even imagine. Finally, she is set free by her parents’ death and she goes to work in a factory in Southampton, and for the first time in her life has fun with other young women in the same boat as her. The war is a threat, but in late June of 1940 it isn’t on the doorstep, and she and her friends travel to Aldershot to a dance. Nearly all the soldiers there that night, including me, have been rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk, and are in high spirits because of it. I remember spotting Hilda as she came into the hall. She looked a bit scared, but very pretty in a pink dress, her chestnut hair tied back with a pink ribbon. I sensed she wasn’t used to dances, that she was shy, and was probably wishing she’d never come. But just as I was about to go and ask her to dance, I was called away. Two men from my regiment were fighting outside, and as a corporal I had to sort it out before the MPs turned up.’

  Katy sniffed. Albert was always so bloody reasonable, telling a story so well he could change anyone’s mind. She was determined he wasn’t going to weaken her resolve.

  ‘As it turned out, I was gone for nearly two hours; one of the men had sustained quite a bad injury and I had to get him back to base. By the time I got back it was dusk, but I looked for Hilda. She was with a man I knew quite well, Roy, a good bloke, and she was drunk. It transpired her girlfriends had brought gin with them and had been lacing the orange squash. But I told myself I’d missed my chance, and Roy would take care of her. I started dancing with another girl, and it was some time before I noticed Roy was alone and Hilda had gone. So I went outside to look for her.’