That’s what makes all this so disappointing, that he tolerated me being sexually abused. I can’t really forgive him for that.
It came about because of a mild little dad-like inadequacy. School was three miles away and the school bus went nowhere near us. The public buses were the other side of the park and Dad wouldn’t have me crossing that, especially not on dark evenings, which is ironic given the alternative he came up with.
There was his cousin. Actually his cousin-in-law. He was married to Dad’s uncle’s daughter, I think. But you don’t really concentrate on those family connections when you’re young. They lived on the other side of the park and he worked at a shoe wholesaler out on a light industrial estate the other side of school. So he’d pick me up and drop me at school in the mornings. Then he’d usually pick me up at whatever time I finished. I did wonder how he could finish work at my school times; sometimes it was 4.30, sometimes six or seven, if I had activities or the occasional detention.
They call it abuse and it was quite serious abuse. But I used to think it didn’t mess me up, then or afterwards. I know it sounds stupid, but I did feel in control. I’ve always felt in control.
He always said I looked nice in a smarmy way, and then – I can’t remember when it changed exactly – he seemed to concentrate on my legs, always going on about my black school tights, how “shiny” they were and how “shapely” my legs were, which made me sound like something out of my dad’s old magazines. I don’t think they were shiny at all. We weren’t allowed shiny tights at school.
I just stared out of the window most of the time, not really looking at the overfamiliar route home. The first time it happened, we were stopped at the traffic lights, his hand left the gear-stick and he ran his knuckles up and down my leg, between my knee and the hem of my skirt. I thought later that this was how I’d have described it, the vocabulary that I’d have chosen, with a prissy degree of exactitude, to a sympathetic but clipped woman police officer, if it ever came to that. I guess I’m meant to say now that my stomach knotted and I was scared and wanted to get away from him. But actually I just felt this strange sense of detachment, simply watching, while listening to his stupid mutterings as if from a distance, as if he was in a different place.
It became a routine. No touching on the way to school. Then the hand on the knee, moving to the thigh on the way home. After a while of this, he’d stopped talking as much and seemed as bored as I was. It was just a habit. I even wondered if he really knew he was doing it, staring out through the windscreen and idly stroking my right leg between gear changes.
Then suddenly it got worse, when I switched from art to woodwork for exams. The Head, a bouncy little freak called Pander in the way that we had to have at least one teacher who had a silly name, was very keen for her girls to do woodwork and metalwork. I welcomed the opportunity to get away from books and classroom and do something practical at last. I liked the curl of the shavings and the smell of glue and resin.
Cousin Derek had a shed in his garden, on the back of his garage, and was into lathe-turning. It was suggested by the weedy but kind man who took our classes that I might turn a couple of chair legs for my project. The rear legs of my chair were to be curved but squared, but the front legs could be turned, under proper supervision. Well beyond what was required by the syllabus, but there’d be a good grade in it.
I had a strong sense that I was performing an act of acquiescence in going to the shed. In truth, I wanted to do the carpentry. But I knew it looked like “consent” for Dirty Derek, even if consent doesn’t work for the under-sixteens. Sure enough, as I held the chisel to the lathe to get the feel of marking wood on the turn, he would run the palm of his hand down my bum. If I was in my school skirt, he lifted it and stroked through my tights. If I was in trousers, he was firmer, dipping down for little raids between my legs. The conceit, I suppose, was that I was concentrating and so didn’t notice – busy with my hands, I had abdicated ownership of the rest of my body. This happened a couple of times or more, an absurd routine in which the upper halves of us conducted carpentry tuition, while apparently entirely unrelated sexual activity developed under the bench. Then his breath shortened and his words cracked and faltered as he told me where and how much pressure to apply to the wood.
Derek made his move. His right hand left my bottom and reached over my shoulder and took the chisel from my hand. He turned me by the shoulders towards him and I realised he’d taken himself out. “Exposed himself,” I’d have told that kindly and imaginary police officer. He directed my hand downwards and I’m afraid
