Street Kid Fights On: She thought the nightmare was over. Judy Westwater

      Slowly, Roger got worse. Sometimes there were a couple of days when things seemed almost normal, but then, without any warning he flew into a jealous rage. He didn’t trust me, or anything that I said.

      ‘No wonder none of your family want you, you’re disgusting’ he screamed at me one night when he had been questioning me about my past. He refused to believe that I hadn’t had any boyfriends before him.

      ‘Just tell me. Just tell me,’ he shouted over and over again.

      ‘There wasn’t anyone,’ I swore.

      It was desperate. I wasn’t lying to him – there had never been anyone in the way that Roger meant and I was too afraid to tell him about the terrible things that had really happened. I wanted my past to remain where it was. I had been the one who had suffered it and dealt with it, and to air it for his dissection, his mocking condemnation and intolerant opinions, would have been too painful. I hid my bruises under long sleeves and kept away from the neighbours.

      Over the weeks I felt worse and worse. My whole world contracted into the tiny rooms inside the house. I shied away from the door if anyone knocked and tried to stay out of sight of people passing my window and casually looking in. I didn’t think I was of any value; I believed it when Roger screamed abuse at me and I took the beatings without fighting back.

      Worse than the beatings were his violent, unwanted sexual attentions. In his bizarre fantasy life, he saw me as a slut and ordered me to do ever-more degrading things that made me feel sick to the stomach. It might start with him insisting I went out of the house without underwear on, then deteriorate into situations in which I was used like a piece of filth from the gutter. In all of the scenarios he wanted me to act out, he was totally dominant and if I ever baulked at anything, it would end with me being brutally beaten and raped by him.

      What he didn’t know was that my terror in those situations was absolutely real. Every time, I would relive the night I was raped in Johannesburg by a man who stank of beer and sweat, who grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and grunted, ‘Shut up, you dirty slut!’ I remembered the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe when he grabbed my throat, the punches and kicks, and that mean expression in his eyes. Roger did all this to me and more, night after night, but there was nothing I could do except put up with it. At that time there was no court in the land that would accept that a husband could ‘rape’ his own wife. It simply wasn’t recognized.

      Then one day while I was washing, I noticed that my breasts were painful. I actually flinched as I rubbed them with the soap. Wrapping a towel around me, I caught a glimpse of myself in the tiny mirror over the sink. In that moment I counted the days and realized what had happened – and despite everything I was over the moon. I must have been about two months gone. Perhaps this would make everything better. Surely, surely.

      ‘Roger,’ I said that night when he got home. ‘I’m feeling a bit strange. I think I’m going to have a baby.’

       Chapter Six

      Roger was pleased about the baby, or at least I thought he was – he didn’t say much. But for that matter, neither did I. I was quietly ecstatic. The pregnancy didn’t stop him constantly demeaning me, of course, but now we had a secret together. In the first weeks we didn’t tell a soul.

      One Sunday we went to his parents’ house for lunch. It was the usual overwhelming Lethbridge onslaught, though now we were married Roger openly criticized and mocked me in front of his family and sometimes they joined in.

      ‘You look a state,’ he picked on my appearance. ‘Look at you in that old dress. What a sight!’

      I was mortified. I had never cared much about clothes and I knew I didn’t turn myself out smartly like Roger’s pretty sisters. Of course, now that he controlled the budget I was never allowed any money to buy new clothes but I didn’t mention that. Instead I hung my head and stayed completely silent.

      Roger’s mother had come to openly dislike me by this time. It was a particular bugbear for her that I didn’t have any family.

      ‘Judy must have done something really awful in the past,’ Roger said, ‘because she won’t talk about it.’

      Mrs Lethbridge eyed me up and down and I knew she was disappointed with her son’s choice of wife. I wasn’t what she’d hoped for. I dreaded going over there, even though it was the only time that I left Compass Street to do something that should have been sociable.

      That Sunday I felt sick and I couldn’t finish my meal.

      ‘Is my food not good enough for you?’ Mrs Lethbridge snapped.

      I didn’t want to tell her that I was suffering from morning sickness and Roger didn’t step in to defend me, so I just shook my head silently and looked at my lap.

      ‘See how useless you are,’ Roger said on the way home on the bus. ‘Can’t take you anywhere. Keep your bloody eyes to the floor, I don’t want you looking out.’

      In his paranoia he had convinced himself that if I looked up, and my eyes caught a man inside or outside the bus, I was flirting with him. Often I was punished for that when we got home and protesting my innocence only made the screaming and the beating worse. He’d slap me, punch me or hit me with the poker or any other implement that came to hand, fuelled by a rage that I was a whore who was lying and cheating and couldn’t be trusted. Looking back, I see now that his jealousy was pathological, almost verging on clinical insanity. That’s the only explanation I can think of. But back then, I still didn’t know how far from normal married life mine was.

      Being pregnant changed things for me. It gave me a sense of purpose and I was excited about the future despite everything. I counted the months until I was due to give birth and planned my first trip to the doctor for when I was three or four months gone. Every day I felt the subtle changes in my body and I treasured those feelings, keeping them to myself. Each time I sensed something different I convinced myself that after the birth, things would surely change.

      Much to Roger’s amusement, I scrubbed the small bedroom upstairs. We might not have much, but at least it would be clean and tidy. Roger’s granddad, who lived over the road, gave us several half tins of paint, rolls of odd wallpaper, and bits and pieces of D.I.Y. equipment so I set to painting and decorating the house. From the moment I knew that I was pregnant, it was very important that I did everything to be a wonderful mother. Back in South Africa, during the very worst times – when I was beaten senseless by Dad the night he recaptured me after my escape to the circus; or staring at my bloodied, puffed-up face in a station toilet mirror after being raped in a back alley – I got myself through by imagining how I would bring up my children if I was ever lucky enough to have any. I had so much love to give and I was just aching for someone to give it to.

      Roger didn’t change, though. He squirreled away every penny he earned, drank a great deal and gambled what was left on the slot machines. He did give me a housekeeping allowance but it was tiny and out of that I had to buy the expensive food that he liked – bacon and eggs and meat. I couldn’t afford that kind of thing for myself as well, and as a consequence we ate different meals. For myself I made soup out of a few vegetables and a bone that the butcher would either give me or sell for a penny or two. A lot of the time I was hungry and during the pregnancy I found myself craving meat and other luxuries, but there was no way I could afford them.

      One night, a few weeks into the pregnancy, I felt very tired. Roger had gone to the pub that evening with his uncle and I wasn’t sure when he might be back. Roger’s extended family was huge and many of them lived quite close by. It meant he was out of the house quite a bit in the evenings and that was fine by me.

      I had to get some sleep, so I made some food and left it on the kitchen table for when he got in. Then I went upstairs and fell asleep immediately. I had been painting all day and the pregnancy was taking it out of me. I was exhausted.

      A few hours later I woke up with