SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 15)

Another barrage of shocks....

Dan was the kind of child who talked in a stream of consciousness.
In other words, he did not think in silence. He spoke out loud whatever was in his mind regardless of whether someone was listening or not and I found it absolutely fascinating.
Being his mum was the joy that kept me from despairing on a daily basis and I always sought his opinion about a multitude of things. "What shall we have for dinner, Dan?" or "What do you think of this dress, Dan?" would always elicit an utterly honest response, some of which was superb for putting a big grin on my face.

I asked Dan why he had gone to see his dad without telling me and the answer was very honest and interesting. He declared that he missed his dad very much and he simply wanted to see him more often. I bit my lip and nodded silently.
Then he stated that he did not like living in the poky flat and wanted to go home.
Once again, I kept my counsel and did not argue with him.

Every day we spent on Clacton beach was such a blissful scorcher in the summer of 1976 that I had a golden opportunity to swim to my heart's content. Dan was becoming super confident in the water but preferred to spend a lot of his day finding holiday maker children of his own age to play with. He was often to be found under the pier creating forts, castles and roadways for his toy cars in the damp sand.

Picking up litter and placing it in the beach bins was something that many local people did automatically. Many of us loved our seaside town and were very offended by the day-trippers leaving cans, bottles and chip shop wrappings behind them at the end of each day.
I was doing the usual thing, cleaning the beach at around 5pm one afternoon, when I came across Alan, Jai and a stranger sitting on the sea wall, knocking back a few cans of lager.
I was dressed, as usual, barefoot in denim shorts and a bikini top and I was, by July, a very deeply tanned individual. I stopped to chat with Alan and Jai. They introduced the man that was with them but I didn't catch his name. They said he was down from Glasgow for a few days holiday and I greeted him with the usual politeness "Oh lovely! I hope you have a good holiday!" and I wandered off continuing with my voluntary beach cleaning activities.

Around midnight that night a loud and cracking storm was dominating the sound from my record player, causing me to jump out of my skin with the roar of the thunder and wind. There was a loud knock at the door and I opened it. I was surprised to see the Glaswegian visitor standing there soaked to the skin.
"Is Jai here?" he asked, wiping the water from his dripping hair.
"No, I am sorry!" I said a bit confused.
"Oh!" He said, looking shifty, "Can I wait for him please? It is a wild night out there!"
I had no idea why he thought that Jai would be in my flat, nor how this man had discovered where I lived but I grabbed a towel from the sink nearby and offered it to him.

He came in, closed the door and roughly scrubbed the towel over his head.
I offered him a coffee but he declined that and did not take his eyes off me.
It was eerie, like being examined as potential food by a hungry predator.
Suddenly he reached behind him and pulling a large and very menacing knife out from his belt he swung it towards my throat, roughly grabbing at me. Using his large muscular body, he slammed me to the bed with his full weight pinning me flat.
He set about cutting my kaftan from the neck down and he breathed a heavy alcohol stink into my face. I was paralysed with fear as the knife progressed down my body, scraping my skin very slightly. I begged him to stop, but he just slammed one forearm across my throat, cutting off my voice and breath instantly.

The weather reached a mighty crescendo outside the rattling window as this man brutally raped me. He rose to his knees and lifted my legs onto his shoulders. He let the knife fall onto the bed and grabbed my hips to pull me in towards him hard.

At that point, I swung my left knee into his face and knocked him off balance so that he fell on top of the knife. Naked, I scrambled out of the room and fled to the kitchen, engaging the Yale latch to lock the door. Dan was blissfully oblivious and even Dylan was sound asleep. The crashing storm was slowly abating and I wondered at how the pair of them were able to sleep through the flashing lightning and booming thunder which was right overhead, followed by torrential rain battering the uncurtained window.

The dirty washing basket was under the window in the kitchen and so I rummaged through it for some clothes to put on. I slithered down the wall, shaking and shuddering with revulsion. I wish I could forget that night, but it is etched deep in my soul, with every detail in vicious Technicolor.

A sharp knock at the door brought me back to reality from a frozen, rabbit in headlights place where I must have sat semi-sleeping for the rest of the night. It was daylight, a clear blue sky told me that it was about 8am. I heard Alan's voice anxious, loud and demanding, "Fran, for fucks sake will you open this door?"
I crawled across the floor and, reaching up from my knees, I fumbled with the lock until it released the door.

"Oh Jesus Christ, no!" Alan cried as he gently lifted me up. "Alan, oh Alan... is he gone?" I squawked but my voice was all wrong and my throat was swollen shut.
He put the kettle on, assured me that my bedroom was empty, but a complete mess. He had freaked when he had seen the door wide open and a wild disarray within the room. Once I had managed to hold the coffee cup and get a cigarette into my mouth without missing it, he asked me quietly and earnestly, "Who did this, Fran?"

I explained who and how it had happened as best I could. My voice was just not co-operating but I managed to convey the details clearly enough. Alan was a dark eyed, black haired swarthy looking guy. His reputation was huge. He was loved by women and respected by men. Nobody argued with Alan, he was liable to become extremely aggressive and he had back up via his crazy violence-obsessed brother Jake, who was living with him at that time.
As a team Alan and Jake were regarded as invincible.

We finished our coffee, Dan and Dylan were awake and playing on the floor. Both needed their breakfast so Alan hugged me and, looking at his watch, made the excuse that he had to go to work.

Three days later Alan returned looking dirty, unshaven and very, very tired.
He had a small paper bag which he emptied on the kitchen table saying solemnly, "That is the contents of his pockets, Fran."
I stood staring at the jumble of keys, notes, coins and half smoked cigarettes. I was confused.
"He won't be raping anyone again. I have kneecapped him! "He stared intently at my face and I reeled with shock. He went on, "You didn't lie to me Fran? Did you?"
"Are you NUTS?" I croaked, having snapped out of my horror.
"Good" affirmed Alan. "We will keep this between us, OK?"
I marvelled at the depth of Alan's love for me for a few seconds. I asked him how the kneecapping had happened and he said that I did not need to know the gory details, but suffice to say that Alan had driven to Glasgow and found the guy. He had stalked him until he was able to ambush him.
The rapist would never walk again.

—0—

The boys huddled around in my bedroom, talking low between themselves as I put Dan to bed, one evening shortly after the rape. They had all arrived together and I was doing the full hostess thing, making coffee and sacrificing my last pack of biscuits as usual.
The loud music they had put onto the record player prevented me from hearing the conversation, so I assumed that this was another one of their post mortems or a plan of some sort being hatched.

Once the tray full of cups had been laid on the bed between them, I perched upon my dressing table with my legs crossed and gazed down at these denim clad, long haired tough guys. There was Alan, holding court with his usual unspoken authority. Jai was sprawled half on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. Dougie was standing, animated and talking through a clenched jaw. Big gentle Chas was sitting with spread knees. His head was hanging down and, when he looked up at me, his eyes glimmered with tears.

"We have decided that you will not be spending another night alone." said Dougie, directly to me. I watched them all nod in agreement with this solemn vow. They did not ask for my opinion or permission. I had no say in the matter. I crumpled up in silent sobbing, words completely failed me as they reassured me that nobody would ever rape me again.

Every single night from then on, one or the other of them would appear cheerful at my door around pub closing time. They treated me as if I was a crystal champagne glass.
I treated them as if they were heroes, champions and superstars because to me, they truly were.

My voice remained husky for years after the rape. My larynx had been crushed by that forearm across my throat, but I did not know that at the time. I just thought my throat had closed up because of the terror.

Dougie was the one who spent the night with me most frequently and I knew that I was deeply in love with him, but I never once told him so. I didn't think I needed to.

Tony returned from the oil rig on a Thursday usually and this time he had a plan hatched ready to execute. He had observed, or had been told, that Dougie and I were in a relationship. I never did find out how he knew, but he certainly did.

On the first Sunday of this particular fortnight onshore, Tony arrived unannounced at my flat around noon and made a huge fuss of Dan while I stood in my kitchen, unimpressed with my arms folded.
I was praying that the boys had not told him about the rape. Tony would have murdered the guy and I did not want Dan to suffer the indignity of a father in prison for the rest of his life.
Tony smiled, he was sober, clean and his eyes were that intense blue that they became when he was excited about something. He was dressed in an old pair of denim jeans which bore many patches I had lovingly sewn there for him. It was symbolic to me, because I knew he had not worn this pair of jeans since I had left him. They were ironed and spotless - just as I had left them eighteen months before.

I sensed a big change had occurred.
"Start packing!" he ordered. "You are coming home!"
Dan squealed with delight and ran to start dragging his toys out from under my bed.
"Have we got a box, Mum?" he was shouting.
Tony went down to his open backed truck, which was parked half on the pavement outside the front of the building. He returned with lots of big boxes and a roll of black bin liners.
He was fucking serious! He didn't say another word and, as I watched, completely stunned, he started loading my dishes and pans into one of the boxes.

I did not move.
Everything was a rushing jumble in my head.
I could not think straight at all.

Working at an incredible speed, Tony packed and removed from the flat load after load of my personal possessions. Dan was helping him with everything. They were almost conspiratorial in their behaviour.

Later, I discovered that, during Dan's visit to his father, he had made it very clear that he wanted to live with his Dad. He had gone on and on about it for the whole day while he had been playing with his Dad in the garden. This had played on Tony's mind as he worked on the oil rig for the following fortnight. Tony said that he could not get it out of his mind. Dan was right, he had decided. We had to be a family again.
Neither of them even thought to ask me what I wanted. It just didn't seem to occur to either of them that I might not want to go back to my former home.

By 4pm the back of the truck was full of my possessions and Dan was happily sitting in the passenger seat, keen to get going. I was standing helplessly on the pavement when Tony ordered me to get in the truck. I stubbornly refused and turned to go back upstairs to my empty flat. Tony’s van roared away and took the corner at speed.

I was tidying up the resultant mess that greeted me in the flat. I was in a state of brain numbness that defies description. Suddenly, the door opened and Chas came in, grinning, with his girlfriend Babs. They were carrying bags and suitcases.
Tony was right behind them carrying some heavy boxes stacked in front of him.
"Chas and Babs were staying at the house. They are NOW moving in here." He firmly announced without a glimmer of doubt that he was going to get his plan executed, even if it meant carrying me, kicking and screaming, out of the building.

I had no options left to me.
I was going home.