Doctored: The True Story of Abuse and Survival

By Polly A. Magena

This is a true account about a woman surviving life-long abuse, eventually leading to the kidnap of her two small children by their father. They never came home. Her former partner launched a terrible campaign of revenge, isolating her with no family support and a damaged reputation.

Alone and traumatized, Polly turned to her doctor for help but he exploited her vulnerability, sexually abusing her secretly over a two year period. Later she was almost blacklisted following the quick expulsion from two doctors' patient lists for surviving Dr X's misconduct. Hospital social workers supported custody to her ex, knowing of his domestic abuse, with dire consequences.

Fighting back, Polly attended the medical court but they cleared him to return to work. After the cover-up, she lost her career and her home as well as her children as the toxic fall-out almost destroyed her life. Using her spirituality and love for her children and nature, she escaped the place of abuse to become an adventurer, writer and poet.

Despite her ex partner's cruel tactics to destroy the relationship with her children, she survived, kept her faith, started singing and finally reclaimed the once lost role of mother. Today, Polly is a proud grandmother of several beautiful children: the buds in the rose garden over the wall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788030939

Book preview

DOCTORED

Polly A. Magena

Copyright © 2018 Polly A. Magena

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

All names and identifying details in the memoir have

been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

All royalties from the book are donated to a charity working with survivors of abuse.

Dr X featured in the story was acquitted by the medical court.

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ISBN 978 1788030 939

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To all survivors of trauma who live with courage each day.

For my two sons and their families who never leave

my heart and have taught me the true meaning of love.

For our Creator, who makes beautiful things.

A big thank you to my healers and teachers

who showed me the path to the rising moon!

Contents

Growing Up

An Alien World

Starting To Unravel

Emotional Holocaust

The Home Visit

Iatrogenic Medicine

Closer To The Edge

Ex-Mother, Ex-Patient

Predators

Therapies

Lonely Times

Earthwatch

Heavenly Visitors

The HMA

Aftermath

In The Mountains

Too Late For Goodbye

Doctored Ad Infinitum

Clouds With Silver Linings

Never Too Late

Re-Trauma In The Emergency Room

Context Is Everything

Evil Habits Die Hard

Still Surviving

Trying To Put The Record Straight

Epilogue

Native American proverb:

Truth does not happen – it just is.

1

Growing Up

Outwardly, we came across as a happy, professional family, clothed in typical middle-class values such as private education, polite behaviour and encouragement to enter professional careers once school was behind us.

My earliest recollection was when I was just the tender age of two. We lived rurally in the mountains where my parents always seemed to be knee-deep, digging drifts of thick snow from the front door in bitter winds blowing in from the wild Atlantic Ocean. They were both trained geologists.

That particular day I remember a tall woman entering our house wearing a smart, tweed skirt and carrying a navy-blue carrycot. I saw a small baby with a head of full, thick, dark hair looking blissful in her sleep. Beside the baby’s head on the pillow, was a lovely necklace made of mint-green beads. The woman bent down, retrieved it and gave it to me as a present from the new baby. Being a baby myself, I did not question where the infant had come from or why, just that it was wonderful to hold a pretty necklace. That precise moment, capturing the arrival of a baby, remains very vivid. Unfortunately I have no recollection about what happened after that – one minute I was an only child, the next minute there was a baby sister.

We were both adopted from different biological families and it would be many years into the future before I could fully understand what this meant. As I was growing up in my primary school years, I recall feeling very annoyed that I didn’t look like my sister or our parents. All my friends did resemble their siblings, so this made me feel alienated from everyone else. I could sense strongly that there was something different that set us apart from other families. However, I was too young to be able to put my finger on the explanation that would elude me for so long.

I must have been around three years of age when I bring to mind long, golden sunsets, ennobling the silhouetted figure of my father turning a big wheel across the playground. I think it was the generator supplying our electricity. Our milk was fetched in sturdy, metal bottle-shaped containers with handles at the sides.

When I was a toddler, my mother stayed at home, returning to work when I reached five. It is strange how our olfactory senses summon powerful memories: what drifts back to me from that time, is the sweet, biscuity smell of Farley’s rusks and the stink of my sister’s dirty nappies which my mother flushed out in the toilet. We must have had a black and white television in the house, because I can clearly review the ‘Mom and Me’ programmes, especially the one with Teddy. What stands out is the fact that my mother did not watch with me at all – I was alone, feeling sad when the female presenter with the ‘maternal’ voice said goodbye to the young viewers. I thought the soothing voice sounded kind, experiencing a terrible feeling of real desolation when the show ended. Looking to the past, I now realize the remarkable irony of a show specifically intended for mothers and children viewing together as a cosy family unit, starkly contrasted with myself as a little girl left to watch in a motherless void. Little did I know then, in my natural innocence, that this would set a pattern for the rest of my life. My mother seemed to busy herself with more important things.

As I grew to school age, my mother explained, sitting on my bed one evening, that I was adopted – I had come from ‘another woman’s tummy’, so that she was now my new mother. Her intention was well meant, but I’m afraid my juvenile mind didn’t understand this strange sequence of events. I simply could not comprehend why two mothers were involved: why on earth was I not kept with the first parent?

We were educated at private all-girl schools, the education bug continuing when we moved south where my adoptive father accepted the position of lecturer at a local university. My sister and I were very excited to find ourselves living in a large stone-built house with a beautiful big garden beside a forest. Towards the back of the lawn area, an orchard thrived, boasting apple, plum and damson trees which the two of us would later climb. The house had been empty for some time, allowing the grass to grow very tall, becoming a breeding ground for a myriad of daddy-longlegs. That first night, proudly settled in our separate bedrooms, we both spent time screeching in horror as dozens of the pesky insects danced persistently up and down the walls. In the end, our father had to come upstairs to patiently remove the creatures before we would dare climb into bed.

Dad was the more accessible parent. His warm personality was laid back, affectionate and funny. He was the eternal clown in the family and derived great pleasure impersonating an assortment of colourful characters in our community, leaving us reeling with laughter. He always had a twinkle in his eye as he roamed through life, seemingly without a care in the world. Dad didn’t come across as worrying about anything, just going with the flow, enjoying life as it presented itself. He was very much involved with the community, happily organizing social events outside work hours. Being an extrovert, socializing came naturally to him – he was well liked, a popular man at ease with most people and situations.

Music was an important part of our family life and one of my most cherished memories of dad is of him singing ‘One Enchanted Evening’ from the hit musical, South Pacific (1958). The song is an enchanting one and he sang every note with such depth of feeling with his rich, baritone voice. He knew no shyness, bursting into song spontaneously wherever he happened to be, from the landing, to a chair in the dining room or the bathroom. The sitting room was only used if friends visited for tea. We would all automatically retire there following a meal in the dining room. I spent a lot of time alone in that room because I loved playing the piano, composing my own music or playing songs by ear. It was a beautiful instrument, a baby grand piano made of polished mahogany wood with smooth, cream keys. Apparently, from the age of three, I gravitated towards it, keen to get my small hands on the parts which would create magical sounds.

From early childhood to adult life, I was horribly emotionally abused by my adoptive mother. Thinking about our past relationship now, it seems so sad that once I called this woman ‘mommy’. As a helpless child, I depended on her for my very survival because that was all I knew. In my head, I didn’t know I was being abused – I told myself that she was ‘nasty’ to me, the only word I had to describe her treatment. Another contributory factor to my secret life, was the era in which I grew up. No one spoke of abuse then and of course emotional abuse bears no outer scars, so there is no immediate evidence of its activity. Also, alternative interpretations can be applied in response to signs of distress in a youngster, often blaming the victim.

My mother provided the physical essentials in life, as in education, food and clothes, all evidenced visibly to the outside world. Tragically, she neglected me emotionally; she failed to supply comfort, affection or reassurance my entire life, unfortunately totally invisible to outsiders. As time went on, it became obvious that she could not be considered a tactile person, yet she found it easier somehow to show great physical affection to our family pets: three cats and a dog. As we sat in front of our coal fire during long cold evenings, I would be infused with envy as mom lovingly massaged the dog’s belly, cooing profusely over her with undying love.

Mom came from an upper-class family, whose origins were the north west of France. She was the first born to a mixed social status couple. Her father was a university-educated linguist at the top of his profession, while his wife could have been described as an uneducated, tiny woman, less than five feet in height. It was the classic conjugal norm in those days; the academic man choosing a mate mismatching his intellectual rank but compensating in the looks department. My adoptive mom’s mother was considered rather a beauty in her time.

They owned a beautiful mansion with olive-green shutters around the windows on the French coast, complete with a team of servants to help with the smooth running of a busy household. My adoptive grandfather had a grand yacht birthed there to support his main passion outside his paid work. However, although it sounds initially like a fun-filled life, it wasn’t as far as my mother was concerned. Her dad was a strict disciplinarian who had the enduring habit of beating her across her back with a heavy stick if she was out of line.

Instead of enjoying a carefree adventure out at sea, her whole time was filled with apprehension, fearful that she would make the wrong move when her father barked orders on deck. Old photographs of him reveal a very handsome man, classic film star looks.

When I was still a child, mom confided to me that she had been rejected outright by her mother, having been told that she was unwanted. My adoptive granny apparently had a yearning for another son. Photographs actually show her looking like a young male, complete with shorts and short boyish sun-bleached hair. Smiling photos taken in a haze of a marine utopia can be deceptive, belying the pain hidden beneath its gleaming surface.

When mom was dispatched to a prestigious Spanish boarding school, instead of bemoaning her fate about being parted from her home, she greeted it with relief, escaping a difficult domestic background.

Social standing, along with good education was terribly important to mom. She placed great emphasis on letters after someone’s name, usually ignoring the individual character, the relentless snobbery aspect taking precedence over everything else. She taught us that we were a middle-class family that required middle-class companionship, automatic gravitation to the professions and blinkered thinking as well. These narrow-minded attitudes would transpose themselves later on in my young adult life, culminating in disaster for me via legal proceedings.

Apart from verbal admonition in response to any misdemeanor, my mother would quickly remove her slipper then use it to spank my backside which would sting for ages afterwards, thanks to the thick rubber layer on the sole. We ended up chasing each other round in never-ending circles, me trying to run away from the impending, hard whack and mom spinning around in a mad dance, attempting to catch me. Sometimes either of us could be sent upstairs to bed with no tea for being naughty. After a while, becoming bored with the bedroom punishment, my sister and I frequently used our beds as trampolines, bouncing on them with great energetic gusto.

There was a big difference between verbal and physical punishment: the latter to me was temporary, with no lasting bodily marks but mom’s words were her own brand of lethal weapon, wounding to the core of my being. Often, if I had displeased her, the eventual telling-off would end in the final words …my girl. I always felt that those two dictatorial words completed my humiliation. They were old fashioned, out of place for the time we lived in – they seemed to be distant echoes from centuries ago. They certainly didn’t belong to conversations between a mother and daughter. No other parent uttered such harsh expressions. When mom spat my girl, her scary voice would change to a low growl, silencing me for a long time.

I was an artistic, sensitive child but my mother either did not appreciate my individuality or she chose to ignore it altogether, having the effect of irritating her. During these appalling moments, she really enjoyed repeating her pet phrases in a sarcastic, high-pitched voice, to humiliate me. One described me as ‘a poultice’, her other favourite invention squealed at me that I was a ‘spineless object’. Despite my tender years, my understanding of the cruel words taught me that I was worthless, useless and a pathetic wimp. I wasn’t valued, loved or human. These words were regularly heaped on me for many years, whereas my sister mostly escaped such unkind treatment, being paraded as the tomboy who was smart, less sensitive and exuding an endless supply of confidence.

One summer evening, following our family tea, it was one of those moments when I had been humiliated verbally again by mom – I don’t remember the exact argument but I do recall feeling absolutely furious with her, threatening to run away. My mother just smirked, squawking, Go on then! I slammed the dining room door until it shuddered and started running up the narrow, country road outside towards the gamekeeper’s log cabin. Unfortunately, I didn’t get far because I realized there was nowhere for me to go to without cash, food or shelter. I must have been nine or ten years old. After hanging around by the long garden hedge which divided our orchard from the road, I eventually crept back gingerly to the house, tail between my legs, making my way as quietly as I could to the safety of my bedroom.

On several occasions after bouts of my mother’s unpleasant, verbal attacks, dad tried to intervene when he was there, chiding her, Don’t say that to the child – that’s a terrible thing to say to a child! Things would quieten down at that point but it was only a temporary reprieve until the launch of another unpredictable onslaught. Our adoptive mother took up the role of household matriarch, dominating all levels of family life, disempowering dad who simply did not stand up to her bullying in an effective way. He was out of his depth. Clearly, she wore the trousers, with him demoted to a submissive position, even to the point where he handed over the authority in decision- making regarding domestic finance and eventually sending us away to boarding school.

We were fortunate to be taken on several European holidays travelling together as a family. It was probably my mother’s decision, subtly cultivated by her well-to-do background, coupled with the fact that she single-handedly controlled the purse strings since my father apparently put them in the red early in the marriage. Foreign vacations were pretty much alien to him then, originating from working-class parents. (We never knew them as they died long before we were born.) Dad was a senior army officer during the Second World War, employed as an expert in the bomb disposal team. As a child, I clearly remember him telling us that part of his duty in the army involved a lengthy posting to India. All his military work operated in a colony of unrelenting sticky heat, far from home in an exotic culture.

Perhaps past incidents that we thought were insignificant do impact on our adult lives in ways that we would never consider. One such event stands out, taking me back to when I must have been about seven years old – my sister would have been five. Our family was taking a long, arduous train journey across Europe – we were making our way to the north of Italy for an Easter holiday. We seemed to be on the move all day, with lots of stops, herding crowds of people on and off the train as it progressed through ever-changing landscapes.

Our parents had lain down across the seats to sleep, leaving the pair of us to play outside in the long, dusty corridor. Rather than gazing out of the window at the scenery shooting by, we amused ourselves, darting in and out of some now empty carriages, on a high with childish excitement. My sister and I discovered an empty carriage some distance away from where our parents slept. We were having great fun sliding the door open and shut. After a while, I was alone, inside, lying down on the seat, enjoying the soothing movement of the train as it got closer to our destination.

Suddenly, the door opened. In came a foreign-looking, middle-aged man. Smiling, he sat down opposite me, staring all the time. Then he came over, bent down, placed his large hand on my cheek and told me in a broken accent, to go to sleep. Puzzled, I found myself rooted to the spot, unable to flee as the dark stranger massaged the tops of my inner thighs, then in between my little girl’s legs. My sister must have seen something because I heard her say, Run run!, as she ran away from the carriage, leaving me with the predator.

It didn’t last long because the train approached a station, snatching the strange man off into the crowd outside.

Returning quickly to our parents, who were preparing our bags to leave the train, I described what had just taken place. I was asked if I could still see the man but it was too late to take action – the jostling multitude outside had swallowed the human evidence without a trace.

Decades have passed since that incident on the train but I find that I now see it through an analytical lens – comparing the responses of the two of us as sisters, arriving at a conclusion about our traumatic reactions. Even today as adult women, the same entrenched, emotional patterns remain intact. As a rejected child, I believed I was worthless, finding it difficult to assert my needs, to build boundaries around myself between me and the needs of others. My sister, on the other hand, had the opportunity to enjoy greater freedom psychologically, developing healthy self-esteem to maintain personal protection. Today we live apart as strangers. I live with the traumatic legacy of a broken life, while she, like all those years ago, hides away from the truth, looking after her own needs at my expense. Jan is not particularly self-aware emotionally.

There were other situations which I found very difficult apart from direct emotional abuse from mom. Early on, I learned that my natural biological needs were a terrible nuisance. These turned out to be my stomach, bowels or bladder. On long car or bus trip, my sister and I sat in the back of the car, leaving our parents in the front sharing driving shifts. I often felt travel sick through out the entire journey and tried to cope by winding the window down on my side, gulping in fresh air to keep the dreadful waves of nausea at bay. I learned to suffer in silence to avoid my mother’s scolding tirades. Once, after a bus ride, I had been sick then kept it dammed up in my mouth to conceal my discomfort, secretly spitting it out later in a bush. There I was, a little girl, trying to be lady-like during a moment of obvious anguish, not to mention embarrassment in public.

I can look back in time to when I was around six years old, sitting forlornly on the toilet, straining badly with constipation. Feelings of deep humiliation washed over me because instead of being allowed to have my privacy at such a personal time, my mother was perched stiffly on a bathroom chair opposite with a po-face. My bowel condition made her very impatient, so that she snapped the order for me to hurry up. Naturally I couldn’t grant her that wish. Later, in the bath with my sister. I was mortified to discover that my bowel had emptied into the warm water, its contents floating around with the soap bubbles. Horrified, I pretended not to notice to avoid confrontation but mom saw it, proclaiming I was a dirty girl. The retention then the unexpected expulsion emanating from my bowel had caused me to feel ashamed of my normal bodily functions which soon fostered ideas to keep these events secret.

Still very young, I must have decided to go undercover, quite literally, in order to empty my bladder without annoying my mother. The idea was out of sight out of mind, so I ended up urinating onto a pile of old curtains which lay in my bedroom cupboard. It was a shallow space with a built-in wooden shelf constructed of slats running horizontally. The curtains were dumped there in a crumpled heap. I used the shelf as a makeshift seat, doubling as a primitive toilet. Everyone was downstairs when the deed was done, so at least I had some privacy.

At that young age, I wasn’t aware of the consequences in the future about the changes in odour or the dampness in the material. It is possible that our poor cats got the blame as they had freedom to wander through the whole house. I harboured no feelings about guilt or that it was an odd thing to do – the important part was that I had concealed the entire episode from mom successfully. It was my own undercover exercise, invented for survival reasons – the beginning of an epic journey in overcoming psychological warfare which was to take me well into mature adult life.

Gradually I was introduced to Enid Blyton’s books of adventure for children by mom: stacks of books about The Secret Seven followed up with a range of boarding school stories for girls, like Fifth Form At Malory Towers or stories about St Clare’s. I would have been ten or eleven when I absorbed these books, influenced by the fun inside their pages, innocently unprepared about the reason behind it all. My sister was probably too young to participate in the literary indoctrination so was blissfully ignorant about a future around the corner which would change our young lives for years to come.

We were both happy at our convent day school for girls. The school, poking majestically out of the river mists, looked like an elaborate medieval building – it was seventeen miles from our country home. A car ride dropped us off at a bus stop in a small, local town from which a bus continued the journey to the school. This was repeated to return home so we became seasoned travellers at a tender age.

I remember my primary school teacher with affection because she always treated us with gentle kindness, encouraging her pupils to discover that learning new things was fun. Friday afternoon was a time to look forward to as we participated in what was known as ‘Singing for Fun’ presented on radio for active learning. Every child was provided with a song book on her desk so that the whole class could sing along to the cheerful music. Those were gloriously happy moments, like our animated skipping games outside at morning break time in what seemed like endless sunshine.

Lunchtime felt like an oasis in a sea of strict order.The school dining room was fairly basic but practically organized with plenty of plastic-topped tables where we shared food with our friends. A group of smiling dinner ladies filled our plates with generous portions of hot food, complimented later with an array of steaming puddings. What sticks in my mind about these is the lovely chocolate sponge and chocolate custard or spotted dick with custard.

Mom’s continuous quest for us to be well educated evolved into the eccentric habit of encouraging us to converse in French at the table. This wasn’t a permanent state of affairs, but seemingly a transient phase in which I had to request various table ingredients in the alternative language. I have no idea what lay behind the decision. It could have served as preparation for a future holiday or simply satisfied her academic interest in languages. If my mother had not studied for her original English degree, then reading languages at university would have been her chosen path. It appeared to have been only myself who was picked out as a potential French speaker while we ate – I have no memory of my sister taking part at all. That seemed to establish a pattern for years because my mother constantly had high expectations of me academically, but not for her.

When mom described me as her daughter to other people, I was presented as ‘shy and quiet’ while of course, Jan was the outgoing tomboy. This seemed to be part of the family script which I have frequently read about in books involving dysfunctional homes. Consequently, I absorbed the label automatically, covering it over me like an old, false overcoat. The maternal amateur diagnosis in situ, it clung to me for decades like unwanted sheep tics that creep unnoticed under the skin.

Our family life encapsulated other foibles within its confines, ones which could happen anywhere to anyone – those smaller indefinable moments that are strangely neutral but interspersed with strands of colour hidden somewhere where it is least anticipated. One such memory grew in the darkening evening when tea was out of the way and we relaxed with our pets around the coal fire. I loved the sight of the brilliant, orange, dancing flames choreographing the musical crackling sounds caused by old damp wood as it was gradually consumed under a blanket of heat. My mother always seemed to be busy in her seat with some activity – usually she was engrossed with her knitting. Dad had the habit of removing his socks and shoes and extending his legs confidently out in front of him so that our little dog, Boo, could lick his feet greedily. This intense, washing frenzy went on for ages, as if the animal thought of his feet as a living bone. This didn’t annoy mom particularly but later on she would ask him to tidy away his dirty socks off the carpet.

Another kind of washing ritual came to be a regular occurrence at home which was not entertaining, which in fact disgusted me: the haphazard cleaning up of our dog’s rear end. Excrement clogged her curly hair around the back. The revolting task fell to my mother, who chose to undertake the chore in our dining room, leaving it stinking like a farm byre. I could never understand why she did not perform the clean-up upstairs in the bathroom where the windows could remain refreshingly open. It was just another peculiar family habit that took place without any of its members questioning it. Lesser mortals lacked the power to challenge the matriarch, although I didn’t think with such clarity as a child or as a teenager. However, I was aware that mom’s word was law – I always thought that she knew best. My father usually reinforced the erroneous concept by frequently referring all manner of decision-making elements to her, submerging his own opinions at his expense as well as ours.

I was treated with a cruel maternal psychology: much of it consisted of dark combinations of humiliation, rejection, emotional neglect and abandonment. The latter was to reappear dramatically in my early adult life but being humiliated was a devastating dimension that could materialize suddenly without any warning. As I wrote earlier, mom stockpiled some favourite phrases which she would enjoy directing at me if I disappointed her. Other times could produce general humiliation tactics like not being believed about something specific or if I made a statement my mother adopted the horrifying habit of mocking it, word by word, in a high-pitch rant while rocking her head from side to side like a demented pendulum. The body language was as powerful as the nasty words, the pendulum-like head motion increasing the dreadful parody of my then degraded voice.

When any of these mockery gymnastics abounded, I was stunned into silence with shock and then absolute fury that was disallowed outer expression. I had to learn to swallow the constant anger which bubbled up inside me. During these times, I was certain that I hated her. I loathed feeling violated in that way by an adoptive mom claiming to love me. Worse still, it was never witnessed outside the family. This is why I loved it if we received visitors to our home. As I grew older, I noticed something: my mother did not demonstrate a single trace of abusive behaviour towards me but put on a good show of the nice, smiling mom as she produced tea and offered pleasant conversation. The transformation was truly amazing. As a young person, I was always trying hard to win her love but nothing seemed to work. What stands out is the post-visit time. As her mood had changed gear from nasty to nice, I would innocently continue to try to communicate with her on the ‘nice’ wavelength. As quickly as the visitors disappeared back to their world, so would her pleasant mood, evidenced in her snappy words to me. I found this abrupt metamorphosis immensely hurtful and confusing. Why couldn’t my mother remain nice as she had been two minutes before?

My mother’s personality was an ongoing mystery. However, there were just two topics which appeared to inspire a small spark of temporary warmth: food or bath time. When I was a child, I frequently thought of my stomach, enquiring what was for tea while we ate lunch. Mom’s icy exterior melted slightly when she teased that my stomach was a ‘bottomless pit’. Also when I was a teenager, she seemed almost human, asking me nicely if I wanted a bath. It was only a short-lived reprieve during these moments but I basked in their fleeting glow.

Sharing important personal information with a family member or friend brings with it the unspoken rule of loyalty or support – the sharer expects the recipient to believe what he or she imparts. Over and over again, I tried to tell mom things which meant the expectation of a lifeline, taking big risks about her response. There was never a day when I encountered her maternal support – she would make a string of sarcastic comments, or her other popular cutting reply, I don’t believe it, I think you’re just saying that. Even my body seemed to recoil at the venom, my mind hurt, angry and shocked coming up against a brick wall every time I spoke the truth, a truth that was vital to my survival in the world.

She was also terribly narrow-minded, living with stereotyped ideologies. When my sister dated an Irish boy later on, mom threw up her hand in despair to her head, exclaiming Oh Lord, the IRA! Just one man originally from Ireland via his parents, heralded her assumption that he must have belonged to an extreme political group. The other well-worn phrases were It’s not the done thing… or What will the neighbours think? Living in the middle of nowhere, our only neighbours were busy farmers or flocks of sheep across the road, chewing nonchalantly at the fresh, verdant grass.

My hunger for adventure, I’m sure, was generated in that house, with its decades of memories, families and emotions percolated in its stone walls. Being the artistic child, it came naturally to me to invent all kinds of fun, using whatever was available. We had miles of beautiful countryside to explore by day but when we were inside, I dreamed up a new sport, using two sleeping bags from our bedrooms. My sister and I had a fantastic time ‘sledging’ down the staircase from top to bottom in a zipped, folded sleeping bag. Our parents were cocooned in the dining room, probably oblivious to the wild goings-on round the corner. Those rare pockets of time remind me that the two of us did once play as sisters, just as we spent many carefree hours down by the river pretending that we were shipwrecked or wading across to the other side in our wellies, despite the many islands of slippery stones.

It is those liberal days I often think back to now – sun-soaked moments where time ceased to exist, where our experiences were measured by our bright innocence, where our minds soared from the seductive sight of the sparkling, mother river with its heavenly scents of wild flowers, banks of damp moss, forests of wild garlic and fat, earthy cow pats. I had no idea that it would all soon be taken away, or rather, that I would be deported from the place that I loved.

2

An Alien World

Summer had arrived, bringing with it mixed weather and mixed feelings. Several weeks of school holiday lay invitingly in front of us, during which our family was to embark on a foreign cruise. We were both very excited at the unusual prospect of living on a large, vibrant ship with its planned visits to Portugal, Madeira and the Canary Islands. However, the intoxicating thrill of the impending, exotic break was to be the lull before the storm in our young lives.It was almost an offer of unspoken compensation for what was to overwhelm us in September at the start of the new school term.

There had been general talk, in hushed tones, at home between our parents of new changes about to come to our convent day school, changes which meant that the school was to begin accepting male pupils through its doors. I can remember being puzzled at their reaction of horror, about the new proposals – I couldn’t understand why boys would pose a threat to us or our studies. I am sure that my mother had a lot to do with the adamant decision to remove the two of us from the local school, to farm us out to an all-female boarding school two hundred miles away on the east coast. The parental philosophy seemed to state that mixed education blocked concentration in learning, with distraction scuppering academic outcomes. In short, they believed that children could conduct themselves better without the opposite sex present.

Mom broke the news to us about attending a boarding school for girls before our lovely cruise in July. The school, she informed me one evening as I lay innocently in bed as an eleven year old, would be a wonderful experience, providing me with endless fun with all the other girls there. My sister and I would return home again during holiday times and every third Saturday, known as ‘outing day’, when parents could collect their daughters, take them out for a few hours, returning them to the school at tea time. As mom described this new life we were destined for, all I could feel was crushing sadness and anxiety.

It came as a terrible shock. We would be losing contact not only with our home but with our school friends as well. Our lives would be turned upside down, never to be the same again. It seemed that our familiar life was to be sacrificed for the sake of a male-free learning zone – a choice that wasn’t ours.

The compulsory habit of keeping my emotions in check was sustained now, including the suppression of sorrow about being packed off to a scary, nun-infested institution. My sister and I were both very aware of the financial burden for our parents in funding this new education, resulting in us feeling pressured to remain uncomplaining. I recall a long list of uniform requirements arriving in the post, leaving the effort to mom to buy entire uniforms to suit us both. This included fancy, straw-coloured panama hats for summer wear, with the remaining clothes supplied in navy blue with matching ties. Our school pants were decked out in the same colour and woven in thick cotton, the sort that could be used to wash windows with. The bulging elastic running along the top was stitched in a generous ovoid shape, guaranteed to last for years.

Then there were dressing gowns: a lilac, quilted garment finished neatly with a high, ornate, mandarin collar. Mom bought all the miscellaneous items to provide for washing, letter-writing and studying. The outstanding item which always gave me the creeps was the large school trunk assigned to each of us. It affected me for years – that voluminous, navy-blue box that came to symbolise so unceasingly the human cargo to be expelled unwillingly from home every school term without fail. I hated catching sight of it, even if it was carefully shoved away under the bed, that man-made reaper that made me feel like an orphan. Little did I know, in my young life, that this was to be the catalyst setting in motion a permanent state of banishment, haunting me in my adult years.

Once we had returned home from our sun-drenched cruise on the Annabella, the stark reality of our exit to boarding school hit me very hard. I began experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety halfway through the summer. The worst part of this predicament was the immense loneliness as I got the message indirectly that negative emotions were strictly taboo – only nice things were to be discussed.

I don’t remember my father having much input at all concerning our new education, the travel there or getting the essentials necessary for boarding.

A petite, quietly-spoken nun called Sister Angela was the headmistress of Green Towers. Mom taught us how to curtsy politely before her, in preparation for our arrival there. It came across to me as very old-fashioned, but then my mother had performed a whole fleet of curtsies to adults at her Spanish boarding school decades earlier. I suspect that she was trying to relive her teenage experiences through us, assuming that because she enjoyed life away from home, then we would as well.

Family friends – a couple with their young son – visited our country home for tea every so often and one such visit was scheduled just before we were dispatched as school boarders. The morning before they were due to visit, my mother would have a cleaning blitz on the house from top to bottom, frantically brushing down the staircase carpet, step by step, with a brush and pan. Everything was a whirlwind dash to make our home presentable for the visit. Dad’s main task was cutting the boundless grass area outside with our heavy petrol lawnmower, all executed in straight vertical lines. I loved the rich organic smell of newly cut grass. I always thought it was a shame that the colourful carpet of buttercups and daisies growing in the grass were cut down in their prime to shrivel in the heat. At primary school, I passed many hours outside at playtime; sitting happily with my friends making daisy chains as bracelets or holding a buttercup under a friend’s chin to see if she liked butter or not. If we could get them, we would pick a certain kind of tall grass stem so that a sweet, honey-like juice could be chewed from its base.

Having finished tea, we went through the usual family ritual of retiring to the sitting room to socialize, while sipping tea. Everything was fine until mom started describing their plans to send us away to school. At eleven years of age, I felt embarrassed about all her boasting of private education to a couple whose son attended a state school, whose concept of our non-state education was obviously alien to them. On and on my mother talked, on an emotional high, showing off about it to my father’s friends. Suddenly, mom gave the command for the two of us to go upstairs, dress in our various school outfits and to return downstairs again to pose as models for our visitors’ entertainment. I became extremely uncomfortable at the insensitive suggestion but didn’t dare challenge mom.

It would have been bad enough showing the clothes to them in their assorted plastic bags but modelling the clothes was something far worse. Up and down the stairs Jan and I trotted, twirling around shyly in all different clothes in front of everyone, feeling awkward and embarrassed but attempting to conceal these emotions in order to control ourselves.

Control yourself, was the other favourite phrase my mother used to growl persistently at me during times when I felt distressed. To mom, emotions were weak, inconvenient mental states that should be straight-jacketed at all times. We were not allowed to express sorrow, fear or anger, even when a loved one passed away. As little girls of around five years of age, if we were lucky enough to be invited to a birthday party, we were made to lie down on our beds to stop us from feeling excited. In my mother’s mind, excitement or joy was to be prevented too – it was as if our humanity had to be eradicated, replaced by non-entities lacking emotion.

Living in the heart of the countryside served to reinforce my love of the natural world, from insects to dumpling-shaped hills, especially when they were illuminated with the passing shadows of scurrying clouds. I spent much of my time at home exploring the rural lanes on my bicycle, drinking in all the different earthy smells drifting in from our surrounding farms.

I was not always alone with