Daddy’s Little Earner: A heartbreaking true story of a brave little girl's escape from violence. Maria Landon
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and start having children, but of course they had to wait until Mum was old enough. Dad had been in a fair bit of trouble when he was younger, always drinking and mixing with the wrong crowd, and Nanny was probably relieved to think she could get him off her hands, hoping he would settle down now that he had met the right woman.
Mum’s parents were not as pleased by this great love match as Dad’s mum was. In fact they went to court to try to stop her from seeing him. As she was only fifteen I suppose they thought they had a chance of saving her from him before it was too late. They must have been able to see through his charm and bravado immediately and they despised him, believing he was no good and would end up hurting their daughter. As it turned out they were completely justified in their fears. They had probably hoped she would meet some steady guy with a regular job who would be able to calm her down, and anyone meeting Dad would have known instantly that he was not going to be the man for that job.
The more her parents told her not to see him, of course, the more determined she became. By disapproving of her choice her parents had turned the affair into something illicit, adding to its glamour and excitement, making Dad seem like a forbidden fruit. From the first moment they spoke up against him they didn’t stand a chance of keeping two such wilful, self-destructive kids apart.
Mum was nineteen when she fell pregnant for the first time, and they got married a week or two after my brother Terry Junior was born in 1965. Dad’s mum was thrilled; I think she paid for the marriage licence and everything. Mum’s parents must have realized they had lost the battle by that stage and were going to have to make the best of a bad job. Perhaps they hoped that having a baby would make Terry and Jane settle down a bit and take their responsibilities seriously.
I was born a year later, in 1966, followed three years after that by Christian and then by Glen in 1970. Right from the word go I was a proper little daddy’s girl. I adored him, while Terry was more of a favourite for Mum.
‘The moment you were born you were his,’ Mum once told me, and I knew it was true. He loved my brother Terry too, but once I was born Terry became Mum’s and I was his. The night of my birth I’m told he paraded around the hospital, completely drunk and smoking a cigar, much to the annoyance of the sister in charge.
‘Right from the start,’ Mum said, ‘from when you were born, he used to joke that he was going to make you the best little prostitute on the block.’
Chapter Two
early home life
Beneath the glamorous act that Mum and Dad put on for the world when they were out around the pubs, things must have been pretty grim for them. While Terry was a baby they lived in a bed-sitting room, and it was only after I was born that they were given their own council house. If Dad had a job in those days it would have been painting and decorating, but I never knew him to do much work when he was a grown man and I can’t imagine he was any different in his early twenties. He always says he worked in the early days when he and Mum were together, but she would say he didn’t do much.
As a some-time decorator, Dad was able to do the house up a bit himself, but he only bothered with the parts that he saw and wanted to show off to the people he brought home at night. Their bedroom was beautiful and so was the sitting room, but the kitchen and outside toilet were horrible and our rooms were all bare boards and disgusting old wallpapers left by previous occupants; we had no curtains or furniture or light bulbs. We were given a couple of blankets each and there was no heating. I used to get myself dressed under the blankets in the morning, unable to face stepping out into the freezing room until I had on as many layers as possible.
Mum was very glamorous in those days, good at making the most of herself with make-up and clothes, and she owned an array of wigs to change her look when she wanted to. She used to sing around the pubs and clubs she and Dad frequented and she was keen to do more with her talent, maybe even going professional. She had a terrific, soulful voice and got a chance to appear on Opportunity Knocks, which was like the X-Factor of the time, but Dad wouldn’t let her do it. I guess he was frightened he would lose control of her if she became successful, that he would be out of his depth amongst the sort of people she would meet and that she would leave him behind. Perhaps he was frightened she might meet someone else, someone who would treat her decently. It’s quite likely that the audition would have come to nothing, but then again it could have been her chance to get out of her life with him, make some money and get some independence, and he wasn’t about to let her do that. Everyone, even people who seem to have drawn all the short straws in life, gets a few chances to make something of their lives. If enough of those chances are missed, the options begin to shrink.
Not that the two of them weren’t enjoying themselves for a lot of the time in the early days of their marriage, despite their money problems and Dad’s violent temper. They both liked going out drinking together and Terry and I would be left at home or would have to sit outside the pubs with Cokes and crisps and wait for them to roll back out. Sometimes we would be sitting there for hours on end before they finally emerged, weaving around and slurring their words. I’m told that when I was about three they came out of The Lamb in Norwich and found I’d gone from wherever they had told me to sit. Suddenly frantic for their lost child, they got the police involved and they found me at the bus station with a woman who was about to board a bus with me. I wonder sometimes what would have happened to me if the police had got there a few minutes later. Could my life with this stranger have been any worse than it was soon to become anyway? I’ll never know.
They were already developing a habit of spending every penny they had on drink. I’m pretty sure Dad wasn’t working at that time because Mum’s parents used to come round to our house every week with groceries and Mum had been in trouble with the law for breaking into the electric meters and things like that; so money must always have been pretty tight.
Apart from regularly announcing that he was going to make me a prostitute as soon as he could, Dad made plenty of other declarations that showed how little he took his role as my father seriously. Mum told me that when I was three he asked her to go down to the bookies to put a bet on for him. She didn’t leap up immediately and he grew impatient. Dad liked to get instant obedience from all of us. Grabbing hold of me he pulled my dress up and yanked my knickers down.
‘If you don’t hurry up,’ he shouted at her, ‘I’m going to have her by the time you get back.’
I guess he was joking, but not many fathers would make any sort of joke about raping their three-year-old daughter and it was just one more comment that sowed a seed of concern in Mum’s mind. She could never be sure what he was capable of or where he would draw the line of acceptable behaviour. Dad saw life differently to most decent people.
Occasionally Dad would come into a lump sum of money, mainly when he’d had a win on the horses, but also later when he bullied Mum into going on the game, and then he would really flash it around. No one could ever have accused him of being mean – quite the opposite. Even though he couldn’t drive he bought himself a Mark 10 Jaguar one time and hired a friend called Eric to be our chauffeur. He took particular pleasure in being driven to the dole office to sign on each week, smartly suited and smoking a big cigar, thinking he was the cleverest man in the world because he was getting the better of the system. I don’t know how he got away with it except that he was always so plausible people tended to believe whatever he told them.
His friends in the pubs loved him for these sorts of shows of bravado, and so did I. To me he was a hero. I remember sometimes when he was in the money he would actually light his cigars from the fire with ten or twenty pound notes. I thought that was the most brilliant thing imaginable, to have a father who was actually willing to burn money. How many little girls like me ever got to see such a shockingly extravagant sight?
Dad kept ferrets and he liked to put them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket when he went out to drink. It was like his little party piece in the pub to get them out and make all the women scream.
‘Oh, Terry, Terry! You are a one!’
They all thought he was such a card. He always managed to collect