Jane Elliott: The Little Prisoner: How a childhood was stolen and a trust betrayed

Richard was about four years younger than Mum and only eighteen when I was taken back home, but to me he was still a fully grown adult and I knew that to answer him back or disobey him in any way would be to endanger all our safety. Children know these things instinctively, just as they know which teachers they can play up at school and which ones will never tolerate any bad behaviour. Even though I’d hated being made to take tablets at the children’s home, I’d never been frightened to fight back against the staff administering them, but something about this man told me that if I fought back or protested in any way, things would become a thousand times worse.

He didn’t look like a monster, although he was over six feet tall, slim and muscular. He had ginger hair and pale snakelike eyes and always dressed casually but smartly. He took great care of his appearance, just like his home. I ironed his clothes so often over the years I can remember exactly what he owned: the neatly pressed pairs of jeans and polo shirts, the v-necked jumpers and Farrahs trousers. When I got older my friends sometimes used to tell me they fancied him, which made me want to be sick because to me he seemed the ugliest thing in the world. He had a tattoo of Mum’s name on his neck to show the world how tough he was.

The moment I was swallowed up into the house and invisible to the outside world, he made his hatred of me plain. Every time he passed me when Mum wasn’t looking he’d slap me, pinch me, kick me or pull my hair so hard I thought it would come out at the roots. He would lean his lips close to my ears and hiss how much he loathed me while his fingers squeezed my face painfully like a vice.

‘I hate you, you little Paki bastard,’ he would spit. ‘Everything was good here until you came back, you little cunt! You are so fucking ugly. You wait till later.’

His hatred for me seemed to be so powerful he could hardly control himself. To call me a ‘Paki’ was the worst insult he could think of, since he carried his racist views proudly, like badges of honour.

He took to spitting in my food whenever he had the opportunity and I would have to mix the spittle into the mash or the gravy to make it possible to swallow, since he would force me to eat every last scrap.

‘You ain’t leaving the table until you’ve eaten every mouthful,’ he’d say, as if he was merely a concerned parent worrying about his child’s diet, but all the time he would be grinning because he knew what he had done.

When my brother Pete was old enough to talk he saw it happen one time.

‘Er, Dad,’ he screeched, ‘why did you spit in Janey’s food?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he snapped. ‘I didn’t.’

When I saw that Mum’s attention had been caught, thinking I had a witness in little Pete, I found enough courage to say, ‘Yes, he did. He always does.’ But she couldn’t believe anyone would do such a disgusting thing and so from then on Richard was able to turn it into a double-bluff, making loud hawking noises over my plate and then dropping even larger globs of phlegm into it when my mother looked away, tutting irritably and telling him ‘not to be so stupid’, as if it was no more than a joke that she no longer found funny.

I think she must have known how much he hated me, though, because she never seemed to like to leave me alone in a room with him for any length of time when I was tiny. If she could see he was in a mood and she had to go to the toilet, she would call me to come with her, a bit like calling a dog to heel. When we got inside she would make me sit down in front of her with my back to her knees while she did her business. I can’t think of any other reason why she would have done that, but we never spoke about it and I was always happy to go with her, knowing that it was saving me from a slap or a kick. What she never realized, however, was that Richard didn’t have to be in a mood to hit me or punch me or hiss insults into my ear – he did it all the time.

The house had three bedrooms, so I had a room of my own from the start and it was beautifully decorated, just as a little girl’s bedroom should be. To begin with my wallpaper was ‘Sarah Jane’ with pictures of a little girl in a big floppy hat, then it was changed for a Pierrot design, and later a pattern of horses. I had loads of toys, too, but I was never allowed to play with them unless I did Richard some ‘favour’ in return.

These favours became my way of life. If Mum let me go out to play while Richard was out somewhere and he came home and found me outside, then I would ‘owe him a favour’. If I wanted to eat a sweet or go to a friend’s birthday party or watch The Muppet Show, he might say yes, but would let me know that I would be paying him back with a favour later. In the end I stopped asking for anything, but he would still demand the favours or call them ‘punishments’ for some ‘crime’ instead, like being rude or sulky. Looking back now I realize that he was going to make me do the favours anyway, so I wish I had got more in exchange for them, but I wasn’t able to see so clearly what was happening at the time. He managed to make it all so confusing and frightening. My favourite toy was Wolfie, a giant teddy with a dog’s head, which was almost as big as me. Wolfie had braces which I used to slip my arms through so he would dance with me and walk around the room. He was my best friend.

If Mum was in the house when Richard wanted to punish me he would whisper in my ear, ‘Watch this.’ He would then start shouting at me about something and shouting at my mum about what a moody cow I was. Seeing the sort of temper he was in, Mum would agree with him, tutting sadly at what a tiresome girl I was. Richard would then kick me and slap me and drag me upstairs by my ponytail, making me lose my footing so that I was literally being dragged by my hair. He would tell Mum that he was going to put me to bed and give me ‘a good talking to’ and would then beat me even more viciously once we got there.

‘Wait till your Mum goes out,’ he’d tell me as he crushed my face between his fingers, ‘then you’ll get it.’

In the beginning when he used to hit me with his hand, a slipper or a stick, I would always cry. Quite soon, however, I decided that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction any more. I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering up with the pain, but I found that if I just clenched my teeth and stared at him I could stop myself from actually crying. It was the only little bit of defiance I could find the courage or strength for, and it often made the beatings worse.

‘Not crying?’ he would say. ‘Isn’t it fucking hurting enough then?’

But then when I had cried he would become even angrier and tell me he was going to ‘give me something to cry about’. I guess he was always going to do whatever he wanted, regardless of what I did or said.

I think Mum knew that he was going too far sometimes, because after he had put me to bed she would sometimes creep into my room to check that I was still breathing. I used to breathe really shallowly, just to give her a fright and to punish her for letting him hurt me. It was a mean thing to do, but I was cross with her.

‘Janey, Janey,’ she would whisper and I would open my eyes suddenly, as if I had been asleep. ‘Breathe properly,’ she would scold me, angry that I had frightened her. She never raised her voice because she didn’t want Richard to know that she had come up to check I was alive. Although I was angry with her for not helping me, I was also relieved that she wasn’t getting beaten up herself.

Other times Richard would tell me what he and I were going to do later and if I didn’t look pleased, or turned away or cried, he would say, ‘Right, you ungrateful bitch, now look what I’m gonna do. I’ll teach you.’ He would then start rowing with Mum and beat her up in front of me.