EXCERPT OF REPORT TO THE
COUNTY OF DEVON CHILDREN’S COMMITTEE
I have been investigating an application for these children to be received into care, the mother having deserted. Family have been known to the department for some time because the mother often left home.
I visited Mrs. Puddicombe in her bed-sitting room in Exeter. She was only interested in [her youngest daughter] Jane. Said that Mr. Puddicombe had been getting into bed with her eldest daughter, Gail. Mrs. Puddicombe was advised to tell the police. She was not willing to do this.
Police informed on 15.2.63.
Gail is nearly thirteen, with fair hair and slight build. She has been attending the Grammar School at Riverton, though while she should be of grammar school ability her work has suffered through her family responsibilities. Her mother admits that she has always been more of a sister than mother to her daughter and Gail has been in the habit of going with her mother to night clubs, etc. She has also been the victim of indecent assault by her father for some years. With her mother’s absence from the home she has also had to take more than usual responsibility for her younger brother and sister.
This combination of circumstances has given her a maturity and knowledge beyond her years in some aspects. She is rather highly strung and excitable and liable to outbursts of temper. Her feelings for her parents are ambivalent and in some ways protective.
She has been anxious about her break in education, and would like to continue her music lessons. She also likes sport.
Respectfully submitted
Miss Jean Stinson
Child Care Officer
The doors of the police van slammed shut, sealing us inside. My mother, grandmother and aunt stood huddled on the pavement, their collars pulled high against the cold night air. They waved and blew kisses at us, calling out ‘bye, bye’. Nanny always said it was important to put on a good face, just in case the neighbours were watching – which, of course, they were. Peeking out from behind their curtains, they might have guessed we were going on an outing. But children don’t usually go on outings in black Mariahs, especially not at night, in the dead of winter. Mum struck a match and lit a cigarette, casting an eerie glow over my grandmother and aunt as they stood beside her. I smiled back at them from inside the van and waved with more enthusiasm than I felt.
My brother, Justin, sat beside me, wide-eyed with excitement. He had just turned eight, and had no idea what was really happening. My baby sister, Jane, clambered up on the seat and watched as the figures huddled on the pavement faded into the darkness, then burst into tears.
“Mummy!” she wailed, her little hand clawing towards the rear window, as if trying to pull her back into view.
“You’ll see her later,” I tried to console her, hoping it was true.
Mum had been gone for weeks this time, only reappearing that afternoon outside my school accompanied by a policeman. I had been in my classroom packing my homework books when Janet burst in looking for me. I was often the last one to leave, delaying the inevitable return home to a cold and empty house. Dad wouldn’t get home from work until five o’clock, and Justin and Jane would be at the babysitters. Dad would start up the fire when he got home, or else he’d put a few shillings in the meter and turn on the electric fire.
“Gail, you’ll never guess what,” Janet announced, her eyes glistening with excitement. “You’re mum’s outside looking for you, and she has a policeman with her.”
Janet was the class know-it-all who made everyone’s business her own.
So Mum had come back, just like I told myself she would. I knew she couldn’t leave me with Dad, not knowing what he was doing to me like she did. She couldn’t let it go on much longer - it had already gone on too long. I buckled my canvas satchel closed and headed towards the door. I’d been saving the money Dad gave me to buy a real leather satchel but I didn’t have enough yet. Mum had bought me a canvas satchel as a reward for getting into grammar school but I had had my heart set on a real leather one. I’d tried to hide my disappointment but Mum had seen the look that crossed my face and had threatened to take it back if I wasn’t more grateful than that. Didn’t I know they weren’t made of money, she’d said. Like I hadn’t worked that out already!
Mum was standing at the end of the school driveway, leaning against one of the stone gate pillars smoking a cigarette. She was tall, slim, and beautiful, her short blond hair sporting a recent home perm.
“Hello, Mum,” I said, not sure of how to react under the circumstances.
“Ah, there you are,” she said, “I’ve been waiting here for ages. The police want to talk to you about what’s been going on at home. You know, with your father and all.” She ground her cigarette butt out with the toe of her high-heeled shoe.
The sense of relief that had washed over me when I saw she was back was short-lived. I stared at her, a sense of panic washing over me. Dad had made me promise never, ever, to tell anyone. He told me, time and time again, that I would be in dire trouble if I ever told anyone. It was our little secret, he’d said. And now, here was Mum telling me I had to talk to the police about it. I wasn’t sure I could do that. I just wanted her to come home and keep me safe at night.
A small cluster of students watched as Mum and I climbed into the back seat of the police car. I avoided their gazes, trying to hide the humiliation I felt. I wanted to tell them to get lost and mind their own bloody business. As the car pulled away, I stuck my tongue out at them. Let them talk about that.
“I’ve told the police my side of the story about your Dad,” Mum said. “Now they want to hear your side.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Didn’t she understand that I didn’t want to tell them my side of the story? I just wanted it to end. I didn’t want anyone to know what an ugly, sordid life I’d been living. They might think it was my fault, or that I had somehow wanted Dad to do the things he did. And what would happen if I did tell? Would they take him away? Would Mum come home and look after us if they did?
At the police station we were shown into an interrogation room on the second floor. Sgt. Salter would be right with us, the policeman said. And then we were left alone. The room was large with two windows at one end. They had bars on them. There was a large desk close to the windows with two straight-back wooden chairs facing it. We sat down and waited, in silence.
My initial joy at seeing my mother had quickly evaporated. I was angry at her for leaving us. She’d gone to a New Year’s Eve party and never bothered to come home. She’d even joked as she was leaving that she wouldn’t see us until next year. I’d thought she meant it and got upset and asked to go with her. But she said she was only joking - it was New Year’s Eve and next year was only tomorrow? Didn’t she know that tomorrow was a life time away, when I had to live through another night in the house alone with Dad? But in the end at least he hadn’t left us, like she had. As much as I feared Dad at night, I knew he would be there for us in the morning.
The door opened abruptly and Sgt. Salter came in. He seated himself behind the desk, took out a fresh pad of lined paper, and picked up his pen.
“Right then,” he said glancing between my mother and me, “you better tell us what’s been going on at home, Gail.”
His manner was direct but his tone of voice was gentle. He waited for me to speak, but I couldn’t. No words would come out. I didn’t know where to begin. I took a deep breath and started talking, slowly at first then faster and faster, the words falling over each other in a nervous tangle. I said I was doing my best to help look after the younger children, and trying to get Justin to school on time, but sometimes he was late because he wouldn’t hurry up, and how Dad took Jane to the babysitter, but Graham didn’t even help because he was always up at Nanny’s house, and I wasn’t very good at cooking but I was trying to learn, but Dad was usually home in time to make dinner and put Jane to bed, and that I put Justin to bed after I finished my homework because he was allowed to stay up until eight, and Dad had usually gone to the pub by then and didn’t get home until late. My voice trailed away. I sat there staring at my hands, picking at my cuticles until they bled.
“And?” Sgt. Salter prodded.
I shrugged, unsure of where to go from there.
“It’s all right Gail. You can tell him what happens,” my mother coaxed.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Dad made me promise.”
“What happens when your father gets home from the pub, Gail?” Sgt. Salter asked after a few moments.
I started biting on my cuticles, tearing away strips of skin with my teeth. I could taste the blood but was oblivious to the pain. I was used to ignoring pain. My mother slapped my hand away from my mouth.
“Stop doing that, for crying out loud. Just tell Sgt. Salter what’s been going on and everything will be all right.”
I burst into tears. All right for whom, I wondered. Certainly not all right for me, if my ugly secret got out. Certainly not all right for Dad, if people found out what he’d been doing. And certainly not all right for Justin and Jane if they took their Dad away. Dad was all we had since Mum had gone.
Mum reached over and gently put her hand on my arm in a rare act of compassion. “It’s all right you can tell the sergeant all about it. He isn’t going to hurt you.”
I cried ever harder. “But what will they do to Dad? And what will Dad do to me, if he finds out I told?” I felt like a trapped animal, with no way out.
It was getting dark outside as the weak February light faded. I hated the nights worst of all. I stared at the lone light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling, its green metal shade coated in a layer of dust. The light made kaleidoscope patterns through my tears. I took a deep breath and forced myself to stop crying. Crying never did any good. Babies cry and I wasn’t a baby, I had no time for that nonsense.
“What happens when your father gets home from the pub, Gail?” Sgt. Salter asked again, once I had calmed myself.
“He does things,” I whispered.
“What sort of things,” he asked.
“You know. Grown up sorts of things.” I couldn’t speak.
I started scratching at my arms, distractedly picking at the pimples till they were red and bleeding. As long as I never told anyone what was going on, I could pretend it never happened. I could carry on as if everything was all right. Everyone seemed to love my father, except my grandparents that is.
Dad’s stage name was Rex Royston, and people raved about his trombone playing and the bands he put together. Everyone told me how lucky I was, to have a father like him. I’d seen dance halls full of people clapping and cheering as he played Moonlight Serenade, and pretty women would have tears in their eyes as the sweet melody washed over them. I’d be so proud to say that he was my Dad - until we got home, that is. And now I was being told to push Humpty Dumpty off the wall which would surely crack the shell of Dad’s public image. I was afraid that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put him back together again.
And what if they didn’t believe me? What if, after I told them everything, they made me go home to Rex’s house anyway? What then? Who would protect me then? Would Mum come home? Her violent temper outbursts were almost harder to bear than what Dad did. At least Dad never beat us like Mum did, except once he spanked Justin for breaking a neighbour’s window. But he’d never raised his hand to me, at least not in the daytime, or yelled at us or called us names or pulled us into the house by our hair because he wanted help with something, or slapped us so hard across our ear that we heard ringing sounds for ages afterwards, just because we were making too much noise. I loved my father, most of the time, and I didn’t want them to hurt him. I just wanted him to stop doing those grown up things to me.
“Would you like something to drink?” Sgt. Salter asked, after a few moments silence.
I nodded and gave him a watery smile.
Once we were alone, my mother turned on me.
“What’s your problem, why won’t you tell them what’s been happening?”
“You’ve known about this for ages,” I hissed back at her, “why have you waited until now to do anything about it. Why didn’t you stop him before?”
I dug my fingernails into the flesh on my arms, reliving the utter despair I’d felt when I realized that my mother knew what was happening, but wasn’t willing to stop it. I was eleven at the time. I’d come into the kitchen as my older brother, Graham, was asking for a shilling. He wanted to go to the pictures with his friends. Mum told him she didn’t have any money. Dad’s daytime job as a postman didn’t leave much money left over for treats. We relied on his band jobs for the extras. Graham had grumbled, obviously feeling hard done by. He was two years older than me, with a healthy sense of his own entitlements.
“How come Gail always has money?” he’d asked petulantly.
“Because she’s a prostitute,” my mother said, not realizing I was in the room. “Your father gives it to her.”
I’d gasped, unable to believe what I was hearing. She’d looked up from her ironing when she heard me.
“You know about it?” I asked, incredulous. “If you know about it, why don’t you make him stop? Why d’you let him do those things to me?”
For a moment I dared to believe the nightmare might be over. If my own mother knew about it, surely she would make him stop.
“Keeps him off my back,” she said, shrugging nonchalantly before turning her attention back to her ironing.
A chill ran down my spine. I was drowning in a sea of torment. I realized in that moment that my own mother was holding a life raft that she had no intention of throwing me. The one person in the world that I should have been able to count on had forsaken me. Almost a year had passed since then, and now she was throwing me that life raft. I guessed it was probably full of holes by now.
Sgt. Salter came back into the room and handed me a glass of milk and some biscuits. When I’d finished I looked up to find him smiling at me.
“Well I hope that makes you feel better.” He picked up his pen. “Now do you feel like telling me what happens, when your father gets home from the pub?”
I looked into Sgt. Salter’s eyes and saw compassion without judgment so, taking a deep breath, I began.
“Mostly when he gets home, I’m asleep in bed already. But then he comes into my room, and shakes me till I wake up, and he whispers my name and tells me to come downstairs, and he stinks of beer and cigarettes and if I pretend not to wake up he gets mad, and one time he dragged me out of bed by my arm, and it’s like he’s a different person at night than the dad I know in the day time, and he scares me when he’s like that.” I paused, unsure of how to continue. I sat there, opening and closing my mouth, like a fish out of water, unable to make the words come out. They were stuck in my throat, choking me. I stared intently at the floor, willing myself to continue.
“He puts his penis in my mouth and then he makes me give him horsey rides up the stairs,” I finally blurted out.
There, I’d said it. I’d spoken the unspeakable. The secret I’d been living with for almost two years was finally out. I expected a thunderbolt to strike me dead on the spot, or to hear a booming voice from above chiding me to ‘honour thy mother and father’. But instead there was just an ominous silence. I glanced up at my mother. She nodded imperceptibly as if to say ‘go on’. My shame was almost palpable and I hung my head, unable to look at Sgt. Salter. Tears dripped onto my hands clenched on my lap, and a thin trickle of snot escaped from my nose. I wiped it on my sleeve, watching as the glistening trail soaked into the wool of my school blazer, leaving a dark stain behind.
“How long has this been going on?” Sgt. Salter asked after a few moments.
“Since I was eleven.”
“And how old are you now?”
“Nearly thirteen.”
“And you were aware of this, Mrs. Puddicombe?”
She shrugged, defensively.
Sgt. Salter’s jaw set into a hard line, as he slowly shook his head.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said, and left the room once more.
When he returned he had a police woman with him.
“Gail, I want you to tell this nice police woman everything you can remember about what’s been going on. She’s going to write it down and when you’re finished she’ll read it back to you. Once you agree it’s accurate, we’ll ask you to sign it. Her name is Constable Jones.”
I spent the next hour and a half talking as if I would never stop. The floodgates had been opened, and the pain and torment of the last two years came gushing out. Occasionally I’d break down in tears, only to start talking again faster than before.
Eventually I ran out of things to say, and the energy to say them with. Constable Jones read back my statement and I weakly nodded my assent. But there was so much more to say. I wanted to tell them that even though Dad was the bogey man at night, he was my daddy by day. I wanted them to know that I loved him, and that he loved his children. He’d stayed and looked after us, even if Mum hadn’t, and now I hoped he would be okay. At last it was over. I signed my statement.
Sgt. Salter explained that I needed to be examined by Dr. Foster and that Constable Jones would accompany us in the police car.
It was raining, hard, and the alley leading to Dr. Foster’s office was dark. Very dark. The sign at the entrance to the alley, with the hand pointing the way, swayed on its hinges. It was chipped and faded, but it didn’t really matter. Everyone in town knew where the doctor’s surgery was, and what days he was available, and how many babies he’d delivered, and who he was treating for what. Such information was passed on during hushed conversations over tea in the café down by the monument.
Constable Jones rapped sharply on the door. Regular surgery hours were long since finished. The door was opened almost immediately. A pool of light fell into the alley, lighting up raindrops like fireflies. We were hustled inside.
“Please remove her clothing below the waist,” Dr. Foster told Mum, once we were in the examining room, “and get her to sit up on the table. There’s a sheet here to cover her with. I’ll be right back.”
I scrambled out of my clothes and stood shivering in my bare feet, wearing only my petticoat and blouse. I climbed onto the table and pulled the sheet up under my chin in an attempt to keep warm, but I couldn’t stop the shivering.
There was a light tap on the door. Dr. Foster came in and asked my mother to wait outside. I felt very small in that room, alone with the doctor I had known all my life, but never before been alone with. Mum was always with me, talking about me as though I wasn’t even there, except for the occasional ‘isn’t that right, dear?’ One time she’d been describing, in graphic detail, a nasty sinus infection which was troubling me. Dr. Foster had looked down at me from his towering six-foot height, and placed his index finger over one nostril, thereby closing it off. He then instructed me to ‘Blow!’ It seemed a strange request, given the nature of my ailment, but I did it anyway. As I blew, an accumulation of thick green mucus was propelled from my nostril onto the doctor’s hand. As I lay shivering on the examining table I wondered if he too remembered the incident and, if so, whether he was the type of man to bear a grudge.
Dr. Foster had known me all my life. He was the first human to touch my flesh, as I entered this world kicking and screaming from my mother’s womb. He had cut the umbilical cord which joined me to my mother, and now he was going to ‘examine’ me. What part of me didn’t he know? He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, snapping them around his wrists. Then he picked up a scary looking instrument and turned to face me, all the while talking and trying to calm me. But I wasn’t listening. I was too intent on watching. Watching to see what he would do next.
“I want you to lie back and put your feet in the stirrups,’ he said. And as he spoke, he gently guided my feet into the cold metal stirrups, which feel like ice on such a dark and rainy night. My petticoat slips down my thighs and bunches on my hips. I thrust it between my legs and strain to pull my knees together to cover my private parts. I don’t want anyone looking at me down there. I’m tired of being treated like a piece of meat, like I don’t even own this body I’m in. I feel so small, so unable to shield myself from yet another man probing my body. I start to cry. Silently, like I’ve learned to do. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying out. I hear the doctor talking, soothingly, telling me it won’t hurt. But it does hurt. It hurts far more than he or my father can ever know. It hurts to the very core of my being.
I withdraw inside myself where it’s safe, where I can no longer feel the pain or humiliation. Inside where there is only a gentle rocking, and a soft wailing that blends with my soul and becomes me. I am numb. And nothing on the outside matters because I can’t feel it, it can’t hurt me anymore.
But I can feel the cold metal entering my body. I tense, instinctively, and it hurts more.
“Relax, relax. It’s all right. It’ll only take a minute. It won’t hurt if you relax.” And so Dr. Foster drones on, for what seems like an eternity. Then I feel the pressure easing, cold metal sliding out of me, a reassuring pat on the knees, the sheet being pulled down over me, to quell the shivering which is wracking my skinny body.
“You can get dressed now, Gail,” he tells me, as he walks towards the door. He leaves it ajar, and says to come out when I’m done. As I reach for my tunic and knickers I hear him talking. Words drift into the room in disjointed whispers ‘… violated …’ ‘… ruptured hymen…’ ‘… very tense, nervous child…’. The tears start flowing again. I hate being talked about in this way. I’ve become Exhibit A in a police file.
As I listen to their muffled talk, I worry about what people will say if they find out. I’ll have to deal with the humiliation and shame of it all, which will almost be worse than the abuse itself. Then I could just leave my body, rise up into the far corner of the room, and watch what was happening from there. That way it didn’t seem so bad. I could pretend it was someone else down there and I was just watching, like a show on TV. Except it made me cry a lot. And I got angry a lot. And I couldn’t do anything about it, unless you count the time I bit Dad’s penis as hard as I could. I’d heard him cry out and I’d tasted his blood in my mouth in that instant before his hand came crashing down across the side of my head in a blind fury, knocking me to the floor. But even that didn’t stop him; it just gave him a taste for a bit of violence.
When we got back to the car the driver was talking on his radio. He turned to Constable Jones.
“It’s all clear over at Hamsmoor now. I’m to drop you off there, so you can pick up the other children and a few of their things. They’ll send the police van over to bring you all back to the station. A child care worker will meet you there.”
“Oh no,” I wailed, dangerously close to hysteria. “I can’t go back home to Hamsmoor now. Dad will see me. He’ll kill me for telling. He made me promise never to tell, and if he sees me with the police he’ll know I told.”
“It’s okay, Gail. They’ve taken your dad to the police station to talk to him,” the police officer said. “And we’ve arranged for you and your little brother and sister to stay somewhere else for a couple of nights.”
“What about Graham? Isn’t he coming with us?” I asked, anxious to have the protection of a big brother.
“He’s going to stay with Nanny,” Mum said. “But Nanny doesn’t have room for the rest of you lot.”
“But Justin and Jane haven’t done anything wrong!” I protested, “Can’t they stay home with Dad.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong either, Gail,” Constable Jones said. “But we need to find a safe place for all of you to stay, until we get things sorted out. It’s for the best, you’ll see.”
As the police car pulled up in front of our house the neighbour’s front room curtains twitched. Nothing went unnoticed in Hamsmoor. Word would spread like wildfire that the police were at the Puddicombe’s, again.
We walked around to the back of the house and went in the kitchen door. The dinner table had been set. A knife and fork lay untouched at my place. There was a half-eaten plate of sausages, fried eggs, chips, and beans where my father sat. Grease had congealed around the edge of the cold plate. Dad’s knife and fork were laid across the rim of the plate, waiting for him to come back and finish his meal. He must have put them there as he got up to answer the door when the police came for him. He hadn’t known that as he sat eating his dinner and worrying about why I wasn’t home yet, I was at the police station speaking the unspeakable. It had just been another rainy Tuesday to him, until that knock on the door.
“Don’t just stand there gawking,” my mother chided, jolting me back to reality. “Go upstairs and get some clothes to take with you. We haven’t got all night.”
“You may want to bring some of your favorite things too,” Constable Jones added, in an attempt to take the sting out of my mother’s words.
As I climbed the flight of lino-covered stairs, I shuddered at the memory of what had happened there on countless nights. Straining to lift my father’s weight on my back and carry him up the stairs. He called them horsey rides. He liked to masturbate on my back as I mounted the steps. I’d cried and begged him to stop, to let me go back to bed, but he wouldn’t. My legs would buckle under the weight of him at first. But over the years my legs had grown stronger and now I was a rising star on the school sprinting team. Every cloud has a silver lining, it seems.
I put what few pieces of clothing I had in a brown paper carrier bag. There wasn’t much money for clothing in our family budget. I put my black high-heeled shoes in the bag too, along with my nylons and suspender belt. They were birthday presents from my mother when I turned twelve. She wanted me to look grown up when she took me to the night clubs where her boyfriend was playing piano. At twelve years old I had glimpsed a world my friends knew nothing of. Dark, smoky nightclubs where everyone stank of booze and smoked cigarettes, where women draped themselves over men and men smiled at me as if I were a woman, even though I was only a child. My mother would giggle when men admired her ‘beautiful sister’. One man, who was old enough to be my father, bought me a drink and sat too close. He started talking to me in that tone of voice my father used when he was telling me to take my panties off, and tears had spilled out of my eyes. The man had taken a closer look at me then. He was shocked when he realized how young I was, and had backed away a little. He had a daughter my age, he told me. He said something to my mother about how she should be ashamed of herself, bringing a child into a place like this. My mother had told him to fuck off - it was none of his business.
I pulled my chemistry set off the shelf and carefully placed it on top of my clothes, so as not to spill any chemicals out of the rows of glass vials. It had been a Christmas present from Dad, ‘suitable for a smart young girl in grammar school’, he’d said. Then I ran downstairs and grabbed the sheet music for Fur Elise off the piano, carefully sliding it down the side of the brown paper bag. I had been working on it for weeks and was due to sit my music exam soon. I didn’t think I would pass though because I’d missed a lot of lessons since Mum had been gone. But maybe there would be a piano for me to practice on wherever we were going.
When I got back to the kitchen Nanny and Aunty Barbara were there with Justin and Jane. Dad’s dinner plate had been scraped clean and was sitting in the sink waiting to be washed. Mum was smoking a cigarette with one hand and holding Jane on her lap with the other. Nanny looked very worried. They were talking in hushed tones when I came into the room. Aunty Barbara, only ten years my senior, jumped up and gave me a hug and told me not to worry, everything would be okay. I hoped she was right.
Constable Jones stood up.
“If you’re all done we can get going. The van is here to take us back to the police station.”
Justin looked up from the comic book he had been reading.
“Why are we going there?” he asked, pushing his National Health wire rim glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “It’s bed time.”
Constable Jones squatted down and put her hand gently on his shoulder.
“You and your sisters are going to stay somewhere else for a couple of days. It’s a nice place and you’ll be fine there.”
“Do I get to go in the police van?” he asked, obviously worried. In our world only the bad guys got to go in a black Mariah.
“Yes, you do. You get to ride all the way to Torquay in it. Good people get to go in police cars too sometimes. Ready?”
Mum turned off the kitchen light and locked the door behind us. I hoped Dad had his key to get back in.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung heavy and low. A black Mariah was waiting for us at the curb. Justin, Jane and I climbed into the back of the van and sat along the bench seats. Our meager collection of possessions was stowed under the seat. First Mum, then Aunty Barbara, and then Nanny, leaned in and gave each of us a kiss goodbye. Nanny thrust a half crown piece in my hand and told me to buy us some sweets when we got to Torquay. She reminded us to remember our manners, and we promised we would. I knew this must be very important, because she had tears in her eyes when she said it.
When we got to the police station we were told to come inside until the child care officer arrived. As I walked through the main door I came face to face with my father. He was sandwiched between two policemen, his hands cuffed behind him. I gasped and turned to run, but collided with Constable Jones. There was a sudden flurry of activity as the officers, realizing what had happened, hustled my father into a side office. He kept straining to look at me over his shoulder as he was hustled along.
“Oh Gail, my beauty, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” he kept calling, over and over, his voice reverberating along the corridor. Tears were streaming down his face. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, my beauty. I’m so sorry.”
I burst into tears, dying a million deaths to see my father, the great Rex Royston, trombonist and band leader extraordinaire, handcuffed, and humiliated in this way. Had I done this to him? Was this the price I had to pay, to end my nightmare?
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Carollyne Haynes Page PAGE 1
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Chapter One