Not My Idea of Heaven

Pretty soon, though, on the first morning, I was sitting in that Welfare office on the plastic chair, with all the Asian children. No one in the family prepared me for that.

The only preparation for school I was given by my parents was intended to make sure I followed the Fellowship rules while there. How I coped with that in the school environment was left up to me.

It was when I started school that I began to realize how my life really differed from those of the rest of my friends. I didn’t want to stand out, but having to follow the Fellow-ship’s rules made it difficult not to.

One of the first friends I made at primary school was Catherine. I can’t remember much about her now, but I must have thought she was nice, because I invited her back to my house. For some reason I decided that the Fellowship rule of not having worldly people in the house wouldn’t apply on that day. I was living in the moment and it seemed right. I was only five.

Mum was busy helping Alice make her wedding dress that day and had asked Catherine’s mum if she could walk me to the corner of Albion Avenue on the way home, to make sure I arrived safely. But when it came to saying goodbye I found myself asking, ‘Can Catherine come to my house and play?’

Catherine’s mum sounded unsure. ‘I don’t think we can, Lindsey, that’s not … I don’t think we’re allowed to do that.’ But there was no stopping me now.

‘It’s going to be fine,’ I said.

Together all three of us headed up Albion Avenue, right to my front door.

When Mum opened the door her face said it all. The two adults looked each other: Mum in her sensible skirt and blouse, and Catherine’s mum in her bright-pink leg warmers. I don’t know who was more embarrassed. I had done wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum managed to say to Catherine and her mum … I pushed past her and ran into the front room. Alice was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by acres of material. I looked at all that white satin and in a moment I had forgotten my bad deed. After Mum had dispatched Catherine, she entered the room, picked up the scissors and carried on cutting carefully around the edges of the wedding-dress pattern. She didn’t say a word.

I did not invite my school friends home again.

Halfway through my first day at primary school, I came across a problem. Most of the other children were having packed lunch or cooked dinner at school, whereas I was expected to go home. I really didn’t want to be the odd one out, so I looked for somewhere to hide.

Off to the side of our classroom was a long cloakroom with benches down the middle and our coat pegs on the walls. It seemed like the perfect place, so I ducked behind the door and hoped no one would find me. Samantha somehow knew I’d be there, and took me home straightaway.

I soon found out that going home for lunch wasn’t the problem for me: it was coming back afterwards. By the time I returned, everyone would be playing out in the field and playground. Even worse was when it was raining and all the pupils were inside the hall, sitting at tables laden with various arts, crafts and games. I’d arrive at the hall doors, and look through the panes of glass at everyone busy in their groups, working away at their activities. Taking a breath, I’d push the doors open, and, with a bright smile on my face, walk in.

I always had the fear that everyone would stop what they were doing and look at me, seeing how different I was. In fact, no one really noticed, but every day the fear was the same. In the playground I would try to join the groups and games, kick a ball around, play on the cement blocks or on the climbing frame. The need to blend in was everything to me. I was proud to be part of the Fellowship, but that was of no value with my friends and offered me no protection among them.

I managed to fit in most of the time. I may have had to wear ribbons in my hair, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for a young girl. And our school uniform was a blessing for me. I could wear the requisite grey skirt (keeping it below my knees, of course), without breaking Fellowship rules. Most of the time it was just the school assembly and lunch that caused me problems, but I was disappointed not to be allowed to join after-school clubs. I couldn’t go to Brownies, or swimming, or join a book club. Generally speaking, if it had the word ‘club’ in the title, I wasn’t allowed to attend. Luckily, though, the person who started the after-school netball didn’t call it a club, preferring the word ‘team’. Well done to them, because I was allowed to play as goal attack and competed against other schools. I loved it and was even made captain, but it was a short-lived affair. My parents eventually decided to crack down on teams too, just to be on the safe side.

In my first year at school, a boy in my class handed out party invitations, one of which was addressed to me. I felt no joy, though. Instead, I knew immediately that it was another situation highlighting the fact that I couldn’t be normal and go to a party. I was saved from having to make my excuses by one of the other girls in the class shouting out, ‘Oh, don’t give an invitation to Lindsey. She doesn’t go to parties.’

I certainly didn’t thank her for that, though. It was a bad situation made a billion times worse by her loud mouth.

I made sure I had plenty of friends at school, but I was always looking for ways to prove myself to them. If I had to be different it would be on my terms; I wanted my differences to be envied rather than thought odd. I was very proud of my muscles and started defining myself by how strong I was. I once carried Yvonne Worthington on my back down to the bottom of the playing field and back up again to prove my brawn. Yvonne was extraordinarily tall, towering above everyone else, so she was the obvious target.

Once, I started a fire in the grounds of the school. I was out to impress the kids in the street, and creating a blaze on council property seemed as good a way as any to do that.

We’d somehow managed to lay our hands on a box of matches and soon people were challenging each other to see who would dare to light a fire. Of course, I put my hand up. No one thought I’d have the guts to do it, but I climbed over the gate, as I regularly did for a bit of excitement, and stood on the drive in full view of the road and school caretaker’s office.

I collected up some leaves and twigs, plonked them on the tarmac and shoved a match under the driest-looking twig. To my horror it caught fire. I started stamping on the flames with my rubber-soled shoes. I was really scared at that point – not about burning my foot though: I feared that my parents would notice the charring on my shoe. The fire eventually went out but my shoes were blackened. I scraped them the best I could and hoped for the best. They never found out.

Another time I was in the school grounds again, throwing stones. One of my shots whizzed over the gate and hit a car parked outside on the road. There was a loud bang. I ran to see what I had done, excited and horrified. I saw where my stone had landed and I saw a dent in one of the cars.

I always took it too far – that was the thing. I was always so keen to impress people. I can see now it was just my way of finding an outlet. My life was restricted in so many ways that my antics were inevitable. It seemed to me that the other kids didn’t feel the same need to light fires, throw stones or trespass. They were quite happy watching TV.

I think I got away with a lot more than many other Fellowship children did. I was always allowed to play out in the street with worldly children, as long as I didn’t try to take them home, and, after my experience with Catherine, I wasn’t planning to try that again.

From the day I heard about the school trip I began to dread the time when we were asked if we wanted to go. It was an exciting week-long outing that happened in our last year, and all the children were taken to Wales to stay in a hostel. I’d heard about how they all had wonderful adventures together. I was dreading it – I knew I would have to stay at home and attend school without my friends.

Mum sent me to school clutching the permission request slip, stating that I was not allowed on the trip. I handed it to my teacher, Mrs Renowlden, and sat down at my desk in the middle of the classroom. She leafed through the slips of paper checking each one and then made her way over to see me. Without speaking, she crouched down beside me so that her face was level with mine.

‘Lindsey,’ she said quietly. ‘Your parents won’t let you to go on the school trip, is that right?’

I nodded. I was mortified but I wasn’t going to show it.

‘Is it because of religious reasons, or because of … money?’

I considered what my teacher was asking. My family weren’t rich, but we lived in a nice house and I had all the toys I wanted. In that respect my parents were pretty generous with their money. The money that I was allowed to drop into the collection bowl at the meetings seemed to me to be an enormous amount.

Of course, I knew what the reason was. If I went on the trip I would be exposed to all kinds of evil and would have to eat with worldly people. That was definitely not allowed. Somehow I knew my kindly teacher would find this difficult to understand, and I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the class.

‘Money,’ I lied.

When I was with other Fellowship children I had nothing to hide because we were all alike. From the age of five, I found myself in situations where I had to deal with a school full of people, who knew I was not at all like them. Very early on, I decided to minimize my apparent differences, and do my best to hide them.

My friend Kerry lived a few doors down from me. She was a year younger and much smaller, which had its advantages when we were role-playing mother and baby. She was always doing back flips and handstands and cartwheels on her garden lawn and was the ideal build for a gymnast. To me, she was a show-off, but I didn’t let her know I had such terrible thoughts because then I wouldn’t have access to her fantastic collection of toys!

The only problem was, Kerry wouldn’t let me play with her toys most of the time. I thought she was really selfish. It didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t invited her into my house to play with my toys.

I badgered her to let me ride her plastic tractor, and pleaded to have a play with the old-fashioned sprung pram with huge wheels, which lived in her shed. If I was lucky I could strike a deal with her. She’d let me push her pram if she could pretend to be my baby and sit inside. I’d wheel her up and down the pavement, both of us thinking that we were convincing the passing neighbours that she was my offspring.

I may have had a beautiful piano at home but what I didn’t have was an organ with two keyboards, stops and bass pedals. How I wished Kerry would let me have a go on it. If worse came to worst, and I wasn’t given access to the toys, I’d sit on the organ stool silently banging away at the keys, pretending it was switched on. It was torture for me. They had all this great stuff and no idea how frustrating I felt not be able to play with it.

Kerry had a great garden with a shed at the bottom where all the best toys were kept, together with the pram and the tractor. As soon as I got to her house, I’d make a beeline for that shed.

One day I was at Kerry’s house playing with dolls in the conservatory at the back of the house. This involved a lot of undressing and dressing them in a variety of splendid outfits. It was while we were doing this that we noticed that they didn’t have any privates. How did they wee and poo? we wondered. We needed to do some research on this, so Kerry, her older sister Felicity and I all took off our knickers and started comparing parts.

When Kerry’s mum walked in to offer us some orange squash and biscuits, she found us all sitting there with skirts hitched up, bare-bummed. Bizarrely enough, for the only Fellowship girl in the room, I didn’t feel we had done anything wrong. We were just looking at our bits. But Kerry’s mother was very strict and she sent me home. Her reaction seemed a bit extreme and I didn’t understand why she made a fuss. But the main reason I was upset was that it threatened my friendship with Kerry. If her door was closed to me, that would mean no more playing with her pram, tractor and organ.

After that day I would often see Kerry playing in her garden behind her high, wooden gate, and sometimes I got up the courage to knock on her door.

‘No,’ her mum would tell me, again and again, ‘Kerry can’t play with you today.’

Chapter Eight

Trouble with the Neighbours

I suppose my street was typical of many of the calm suburban roads beyond the chaos of the town centre. The trees that lined the pavements were useful to us children for hiding behind when tracking intruders on our territory, and provided an invaluable supply of sticks we used for whacking each other.

I knew most of the neighbours, but of particular interest to me was Jim, who lived in the house opposite ours and had the largest front garden in the street. Jim was a war veteran and it was widely known that he had spent time in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. This piece of information was passed between the neighbours, with knowing looks from the adults and unsympathetic sniggers from the kids. He was an easy target for us merciless children. With shouts of rage he defended his land and primly painted bungalow against any child or adult who so much as dared to stroll past the white picket fence that controlled the border between friend and foe.

He had almost met his match in me, though. I could also be fiercely defensive. I had good reason to defend my family, I thought. They would not defend themselves as they staunchly avoided confrontation. Having watched Jim reverse his car into Mum’s one day, without so much as a look at the damage, and witnessed him pouring bricks from a wheelbarrow over Mum’s feet, I decided it was time for revenge.

Gathering up as many of my friends as I could find playing out that evening, I laid the plans for the battle. Carefully splitting off the sturdy stems of Jim’s roses, we armed ourselves with rosehips and scuttled back to the protection of the cars parked opposite his house. One by one we ran across the road and flung those hard missiles at his windows. Time and again we watched the lights in his house go on and the curtains pull back. The thrill was superb. And then it was halted abruptly. We had been seen.

‘Lindsey! Come in, now!’ Mum bellowed.