Free I Did Tell, I Did by Cassie Harte Page A

our vicar, a lovely man who had been a missionary in Africa, asked if I wanted start confirmation classes so I could become a full member of the church. I said yes straight away, hoping that if I became a proper member of God’s family I would be protected. Hoping that these classes would provide at least one more night a week when I was safe from unwelcome attention.
    There was no one else to protect me. I’d told Mum what he did with me, that he touched me between the legs and hurt me, and still she waved me off gaily when he came to pick me up.
    ‘Go on, my love,’ she’d say. ‘Have a nice time.’ She never spoke harshly to me in front of Bill. She was all smiles and sweetness and light around him, but I knew that it was more than my life was worth to argue back. I’d tried that when I was seven and my life wasn’t worth living for months afterwards.
    And if I ever tried to resist Uncle Bill and stop him doing what he wanted, he would say that he had the right to do it, which puzzled me a lot. What gave him that right? Did all menhave a right to make little girls hold their ‘love toys’? Did all men have the right to touch them inside their panties?
    ‘You know you like it,’ he’d say. ‘I can tell you do. Men know these things.’
    But he was wrong. I hated it more than anything else in the world. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it kept happening week in, week out, all year round. All I could think of was to keep myself as busy as I possibly could so that there was less time when I could be with him.
    My eleventh birthday came and went and it was time to sit the Eleven Plus exams that would decide whether I was bright enough to go to the local grammar school or whether I had to attend the secondary modern. My mother was determined that I had to go to the grammar, not because she cared about my future prospects but because she wanted to be able to boast about it to the neighbours. Having a clever child would reflect well on her. Tom had failed the Eleven Plus because he never worked very hard at school but Mum couldn’t stay angry with her precious boy for long. The pressure transferred to me. I had to be the one who was an academic success.
    My grades at school had been slipping, though, with all the trauma and insecurity of my life. I hardly ever felt safe. I found it hard to trust anyone. I tried to study for the exams but my thoughts were elsewhere, constantly worrying every time there was a knock on the door that it would be Bill coming to pick me up and take me out for a drive, or that Mum would find some reason to pick on me for a household chore I hadn’t done to her satisfaction.
    I sat the first part of the exams, but before the second part came along I caught a cold and became very run-down. I couldn’t seem to shake off a bad cough and sore throat, I was having trouble getting to sleep at night and I didn’t have any appetite for food. On the day of the second part of the exams I struggled in to school and sat at my desk staring at the exam paper, feeling more and more weak and dizzy. Then I began a coughing fit and couldn’t stop. One of the teachers came over to help me out of the room for a drink of water, and as I stood up the world went black and I collapsed on the floor of the exam hall.
    I was taken home by my worried form teacher and a doctor was called, who listened to my chest and told me I had pneumonia. I’d have to take antibiotics and stay in bed for several weeks to get my strength back. If it got any worse, he said, I’d have to be admitted to hospital.
    Mum was furious when she heard the news. She managed to act the concerned mother for as long as the doctor was there but as soon as he left she screamed at me: ‘Typical! How am I supposed to look after you? As if I’m not busy enough.’
    And then another thought occurred to her. ‘I suppose this means you’ll fail the Eleven Plus and you won’t get in to the grammar school. You’ve done this