The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [28]
Richard stopped beating me, threw me down on the bed, straightened up and walked out of the room, still shouting abuse.
Mum came in and sat on the bed, laying me across her lap and rubbing my back to comfort me. I must have been winded because I was having trouble getting my breath. I kept watching the door, knowing he would be back, that he wouldn’t be able to let her have the last word like that.
A few minutes later he was there again, exploding into the room, picking up my chest of drawers and hurling it at us. It hit me full in the back, knocking me off Mum’s lap, and she leapt up, screaming, the carving knife back in her hand, and stabbed him in the side of his stomach.
I curled up into a ball by the bed, trying to make myself as small as I possibly could. They both began to shake as they saw the blood oozing out and Mum started to apologize to him over and over again as he stood there, looking at her, his hand over the wound, the blood seeping through his fingers. Suddenly it was as if they’d never been fighting at all, as if they were a united force.
‘I’ll drive to the hospital and get it stitched up,’ he said matter-of-factly.
He left the house and Mum put on her nightie and began using towels to mop up the trail of blood which led from my room down the stairs, working like a robot.
‘Go and wash your face and sort yourself out,’ she told me.
When I limped back from the bathroom she sent me down to the kitchen to make her a cup of sweet tea for the shock while she tried to get the stains out of the carpet with soap powder and washing-up liquid. Then she came downstairs, pushing the bloodied towels into the washing machine and rinsing the knife as if removing evidence of her crime. She tidied up my chest of drawers, put all my scattered clothes away neatly and told me to go back to bed once I’d made her tea.
‘You’re not to say a word to anyone about what’s happened,’ she warned me, although the whole street must have been able to hear the screams that night. It was to be just one more secret amongst the hundreds that were already cluttering my head and my conscience.
As I climbed back into bed I sent up a prayer that Silly Git would bleed to death on the way to hospital or would become so weak he would crash the car and be killed on impact. I was really excited at the thought of him not coming back. Even if he did try to come back, I reasoned, surely Mum would leave him after all this.
The carving knife wasn’t the only weapon that Mum kept handy for when he attacked her. She had other knives around the house and a pair of shears that she kept hidden behind the drainpipe outside the back door. The funny thing was Richard knew all these weapons were there but never did anything about removing them (apart from the brass soldiers), before starting an argument with her. It was as if he enjoyed the danger.
Whenever their fights started, Mum would be screaming at me to call the police and Richard would be shouting at me not to dare. Once or twice I was so frightened he was going to kill her that I ran next door and asked them to phone for help. They did that for me a couple of times, but he made their lives such a misery afterwards that they refused to become involved after that. Eventually, they wouldn’t even open the door to me, though no doubt they could hear what was happening through the walls.
Sometimes, when Granddad wasn’t living next door, Mum would shout at me to fetch him and I would run up to his house as fast as I could. If I managed to get there in time he would arm himself with a piece of wood and come back with me to break the fight up. Usually, however, Richard would catch me before I got there, carry me back and give me a good hiding for daring to involve other people in a family matter.
In the end everyone had been alienated or intimidated and there was no one left to run to for help, so my brothers and I would