Maria Landon - Escaping Daddy

After I got out of hospital following the overdose I met Rodney for our first date in a pub in Norwich. He told me he came from a big gypsy family, who were all very close-knit, and that he came as part of a complete package, with a ready-made family of three children. There was Shiralee (more commonly known as ‘Fred’), who was eight, Roddo, five, and Billy, who was two. To complete the family unit Fred also had a Jack Russell terrier called Midge, who had been with her since she was a baby and seldom if ever left her side. I told him about Brendan and about the fact that I had no contact with his father any more. We’d been chatting like this for a while when who should walk in but my Dad, now released from jail.

I introduced them and they got on like a house on fire, Rodney doing his best to make a good impression with the father of the girl he was interested in. It was only when we got back from the pub that night that I plucked up my courage and confided in Rodney about everything that Dad had done to me as a child, how he had raped me constantly and then started selling me when I was just thirteen. Even for someone as accepting and worldly as Rodney my childhood stories were a terrible shock. I told him about the first time Dad sold me, before he took me up to Ber Street, and how he had actually helped to hold me down.

‘He had a friend called Peter,’ I explained. ‘A big, fat, smelly Irishman who was always working away from home and always had plenty of cash in his pockets when he came back.’

I could see that Rodney was becoming tense, as if trying to control his anger so as not to frighten me, forcing himself to listen to something that he knew was going to be horrific.

‘They took me out drinking with them one night. At the end of the evening we went back to Peter’s flat, picking up a Chinese on the way. It was a horrible, filthy place but I didn’t care because I was happy to be with Dad. We were sitting on the settee, eating the Chinese when Peter started making a pass.’

I could still remember the whole night with horrible clarity, even though I had been very drunk. I remembered how I felt all excited to be treated like a grown-up when they took me out, like one of them. Peter’s flat was a horrible, filthy place, where you’d expect to find winos living, but I didn’t care because I was happy to be with Dad.

When Peter reached over to grab me I tried to get his hands off without making a fuss, thinking that Dad would punch him if he wasn’t careful and wanting to avoid the evening turning into a brawl. The next thing I knew I was thrown on the floor amongst the scattered Chinese food cartons and Dad was pinning me down by the arms while his friend did what he wanted to me. I was struggling and shouting and Dad was telling me to ‘shut up and relax’ because it was going to happen either way. I knew at that moment he had sold me and I remember staring at the overturned cartons on the carpet around me while it was going on and thinking that was all I was worth to my own father.

As I told Rodney the story I noticed that he was clenching and unclenching his fists, his lips tight and his eyes narrowed. Part of me was ashamed to let him know such terrible things about me, but the other part was relieved to have someone who cared and who was willing to listen.

‘You mustn’t see him any more, Ria. That man doesn’t deserve the name “dad” after what he’s done to you. I can’t believe I was chatting away to him earlier. I’d have taken him outside if I’d known.’

He made me promise that I would stop seeing Dad and I was happy to agree. Even on our first date I realised that Rodney was different, that he was a man who seemed to know what he wanted from life and how he was going to get it, and I liked that. It felt like this might be the start of something important.

From the beginning Rodney was eager to start a relationship and it seemed to me as though he was the answer to all my dreams. I had always said I wanted to get married and have four children and now it looked as though my prayers had been answered in the most dramatic way.

Rodney immediately took charge of my life, moving into the flat with Brendan and me. I asked why we couldn’t move to his but he explained that he lived in a caravan, and that there wouldn’t be room for all of us. He was proud of his travellers’ roots and was often disparaging of those of us who had been born and brought up in houses, calling us ‘Gorjers’. But he seemed more keen to get into my flat, and any other house that I might be able to arrange for us as a family, than he was to live in a caravan or on the road. But that was all fine with me.

The next step was for me to meet his kids, and that all went perfectly. He saw them every weekend and during the school holidays, and so they would come round to stay in my flat at those times. Almost overnight I had gone from being suicidal, alone and frightened to being at the centre of a social whirlwind. Not only did I now have a man in my life, I also had four children, just as I had always imagined I would–plus a dog. Ever since I could remember I had wanted to be part of a proper family. I had no real idea what that would consist of; I just knew that I had never had one in the past.

At eighteen I probably seemed more like a friend or a big sister to Rodney’s kids than a new mum, and all three of them accepted me immediately. I’ve heard lots of horror stories about the difficulties new wives have with their stepchildren, but I never had anything but friendliness and support from any of them. They also accepted Brendan as their new little brother without seeming to give the matter a moment’s thought, happy to share their family with both of us. It was wonderful to watch Brendan’s little face lighting up when they played with him and made him feel loved. They must have been so secure in the love of their dad and mum that they didn’t feel remotely threatened or resentful about Brendan and me suddenly turning up in the middle of their lives.

My flat only had two bedrooms but we would all squash in somehow when the kids were there. Brendan had a cot and sometimes Billy would sleep in that and they would all swap and change around as the mood took them, usually ending up in the double bed, so that Rodney and I had to have the couch in the living room or a mattress on the floor. It didn’t bother us; it was all about mucking in together as a family. I liked the times I had on my own with Brendan, but both of us always looked forward to the weekends and the other kids arriving, bringing a rush of excitement and distraction in through the door with them.

Brendan became just as keen to be around them as they were on him and he would cry inconsolably when Rodney dropped his new brothers and sister back to their mother at the end of each weekend because he would want to go with them. The others felt the same way, not liking it when they were separated.

The main reason why childhood had been such hell for me and my brothers was because both our parents always put their own feelings before everything else, never thinking of the effect their actions were having on us. Mum left Dad because she couldn’t bear to have him forcing her onto the game all the time and, it seemed, without thinking what he would do to us once she was gone, and he used us as punch bags and ultimately turned me into a source of income in order to make his own life more comfortable. I was determined not to be like them. I wanted to always put my children first.

If there was one thing that made the idea of being with Rodney irresistible it was those children. With them around the house I could recreate the life that my brothers and I had never been allowed to enjoy because we had been split in half, with Terry and me staying with Dad and being kept apart from Chris and Glen once they were fostered out. We never had the chance to be one big noisy, chaotic, happy family. Even when we had all lived together in one house with Mum and Dad I had never had a chance to get to know Chris and Glen because they were locked upstairs in their bedroom.