Chapter 2
It was by no means Gina's last visit to David Richards's flat. In the course of the following nine or ten months she went there frequently. She enjoyed the way he made love to her, the way he respected her wishes, his understanding and friendship, and, also the money he gave her.
The money was beginning to be an embarrassment to her, for she had already bought clothes for herself and Maria that she could not have bought from the money given her by her husband. She had started a Post Office savings account, but she knew that she was taking 3 terrible risk for John might find her book. He would undoubtedly want to know where the-money had come from, and she was sure that he would force her to tell him. It was then that she hit on the idea of telling him that one of her brothers had begun to send her money.
John was pleased to near that her family wore helping her at last; he had half expected them to do so before. He would not be so hard pressed for a few bob now, there wouldn't be quite the same need to take back half his earnings for housekeeping.
Gina began to lead a new kind of life. Two or three times a week she would spend the day in Leeds, returning just in time to await Maria's return from school. And before a year had passed she had taken up with a another man, a business man who paid frequent visits to th®5 North from London. She had first met him in a bar in Briggate, and he had not been long in fixing up a flat so that she could spend the day with him when he was free of business engagements.
She continued to visit David Richards and with the passage of time she became more and more dependent on the money she got from them. She dressed expensively and even bought a small car.
Maria began to be neglected. Her mother would frequently be late coming back from her visits to the city, telling her that she had been held up by the traffic, or that she had had to wait at the hairdresser's much longer than she had expected. In the evenings she would be put to bed about eight o' clock and then Gina would get out the car and return to town if she was .sure that John was unlikely to be home early. And she could usually depend on that. All she had to do was to keep him well supplied with beer money.It was now the exception rather than the rule for him to return before closing time. He had no idea that his wife spent most of the early evenings away from home.
As Maria found that her mother was so often not back when she got home from school, she began to dawdle and play with other children instead of going home straight from school. As the weeks went by she would sometimes stay away until half-past five or even six o'clock, straying from the road she was supposed to follow, sometimes cutting through the fields or wandering off into the woods that lay near the outskirts of Leeds. Or she would return home,.help herself to tea and then go out to play, usually on the railings that ran along the edge of a derelict open space near to their home.
It was here that Maria first became aware that men took a curious interest in little girls.
She was no more than eight at the time, but she generally played with a group of girls of about nine and ten. One day two or three of them were swinging on the rails their bottoms in the air, showing their knickers quite innocently to passers-by. The girls soon noticed, however, that men who passed the railings took an obvious interest in them when, they saw them with their bodies bent over the railings,. their hands on the lower rail, their knickers showing and the backs of their, thighs and legs uncovered. It soon became a sort of game to show their knickers to the men as they passed by. Most men would take a surreptitious glance at the girls as they walked along, but occasionally a man coming along the path on his own would take a quick look round to see that no one was in sight and then he would pause and even talk to the girls, moving on quickly if anyone else approached. The girls got to know the men who liked to see their buttocks and when they saw one of them approach they would put on a special "show" for them.
One girl, more precocious than the others, started asking the men to slap her, and within a few weeks the girls lined up, their bottoms in the .air as a man came along, crying out "Slap me, Mister, slap me." Some would hurry along embarrassed, but a small number would do as the girls asked them and bring a heavy hand down on the upturned, knickered bottoms. At first hesitant about showing her knickers, Maria soon joined the others at the game and was one of the first along the line to call on passing men to slap her. She had little idea what it was all about, but got a kind of kick from showing off in front of the other girls. But one day a man kept his hand on her knickers for a few seconds then ran his hand down between her thighs and lightly fondled her flesh. It was all done in a flash and the-man was soon on his way, but it left a strange tingling feel in her thighs.
It was not so very long before Maria began to think about the men who would come to the railings and smack the girls on their behinds as they passed by, before she actually began to look forward to the end of the school afternoon so that she could make her way as quickly as possible to the piece of waste groundwhere the railings were situated and wait for the first man to put a hand on her knickers.
One day the man who had briefly placed a hand between her legs did so again but this time he kept his hand there and then moved it against the angle of her legs, pushing his fingers firmly between them. Marie felt a thrill of excitement run up her body and hoped that the man would keep his fingers there. But after half a minute or so he took his hand away and went on.
In the months that followed she became quiet and taciturn except when she had to contend with some of the rougher, loudmouthed girls in her class. Then she was more than able to hold her own; she could be as rude ana outspoken as the rest of them, using the local Leeds dialect as effectively as the other girls, and adding a few words of Italian invective that she had picked up from her mother.
But when she reached home she hardly spoke and used to go to her room for hours on end. Sometimes she would read, sometimes she would draw, but at others she would lie back on her little bed and think about some of the things the other girls had told her, about how a man could do certain things to a girl and make it very exciting for her. T+ w®s all hopelessly mysterious, even frightening, but somehow it beckoned her on: she wanted to know about it. Perhaps it had something to do with the Prince Charming she had read about who would come one day and make her into a fairy princess and take her away to a beautiful castle in the mountains. She cried when she thought about it; she wanted so much to get away from the dirty streets of the city, the rough girls, and the men who cams out of the pubs shouting and smelling of drink.
Her mother was always kind to her but she seemed to be so busy with other things, to want to go out at every opportunity, that she spent very little time with her. It almost seemed as if neither her mother nor her father really had much time for her. She began to grow into one of those lonely children who seek love and affection wherever it can be found.
Her mother seemed to be going out more than aver, her father seemed to be at the pub more than ever. She began to hats hate going back home in the evenings as she would sometimes have to wait two or three hours before her mother returned. She began to stray farther and farther from home, and sometimes she would go as far as the disused quarry at Meanwood where young couples went to make love and where peeping-toms took up positions behind the bushes. Leeds, though an industrial town, is never very far from the country, from the wild moors of the Pennines and the rolling dales. But between the town and the country there are pockets of unused or disused land, small woods, bits of waste land, old quarries, and every kind of place for children to wander in and lovers to retire to. It was in one of these, a mile or two from Maria's home, that she first saw a man make love to a woman.
She had gone off on her own, not staying to play with her friends, and she had made her way to a piece of land known as the Common-. She wandered along its paths until she came to one of the more wooded parts where she sat down for a rest. She had not-been there long before she realized that a man and a woman were lying side by side at the other side of the bushes she was using as a kind-of shelter.
She happened to look through the thick branches and bramble at the moment the man unfastened the woman's frock. For a moment she was about to get up and run away. But then she remembered what the other girls had told her: perhaps this man was going to do it to the woman. To a young girl of eight all older people seem much the same age. Maria saw the couple as a man and a woman but in fact they were in their early twenties, the woman even possibly younger. Maria saw the man pull out her breasts and avidly fondle their nakedness, and then he slowly unbuttoned the the rest of her frock and a minute or so later he was pushing his fingers into the top of her blue panties, trying to push them over her hips. The girl helped him, and eased them over her plump hips and buttocks and then down her legs to lie there naked except for her frock which she stil kept on her arms and shoulders. It was the height of summer and she had obviously come prepared for. the young man to make love to her. Maria had to raise her head slightly to get a proper view of the girl's body and what she saw at once frightened and excited her. The girl had a mass of dark hair at the bottom of her belly and it seemed to run down into what she had been taught to call her private parts.Already the man was stroking the hair on the girl's mound and deftly brushing part of his hand against the tops of her thighs as, very slowly, the girl parted her legs so that he could caress between them. It was not long before he was actually running two fingers up and down between the angle of her legs, then parting the hairy lips and fingering the soft red membrane within. Maria saw that the girl was wriggling on the ground as the man went fingering her. She leaned forward to see more distinctly what he was doing, and she found herself taking a deep breath as she saw his finger disappear inside the girl s flesh. He must be doing the thing she had heard about'.
"I'm going to fuck you, lass,"he said. "I know you said I couldn't but I've got to. Got to fuck you."
"No, Arthur," the girl said,her voice revealing her alarm, "no, you musn't, you said you wouldn't. What if I get a baby? You shan't Arthur, please."
The man seamed to take no notice of her protestations for he was unbuttoning his trousers and a moment later a big, fleshy shaft sprung from them and he was getting his body between the girl s legs and pressing the thing against her. "I've got to put it in love," he said. "I want my prick inside you." He added the last words as he shoved the thing between the angle of her legs and then into the fleshy slit he had been fingering a few minutes before. The girl did not say anything and was lying back, panting and wriggling and making strange little cries. Then the man was almost on top of the girl, moving his back up and down as he took her by the shoulders and brought his lips into contact with hers.
There was silence except for the heaving panting from the girl and grunts of lust from the man. The latter moved more and more vigorously up and down on the girl who had now bent her legs and lay with her knees in the air as she wriggled under him.
"You like my prick inside you, don't you," said the man called Arthur,hoarse with lust. "You like my big prick, luv, eh?"
"Yes, yes, it's lovely, it's lovely," she said, finding it difficult to speak as she tried to get her breath. They went on wriggling together and then the man seemed to become almost violent with the girl and rammed his body down on hers time after time with grunts of satisfaction before, suddenly, crying out, "I'm coming, I'm coming." The girl cried out words that meant nothing to Maria and then there was silence as the couple, exhausted, lay in each other's arms.
Maria quietly got up and then, taking a look back to make sure that she had not been seen, ran back to the main path and started to run home.
Her mother was there waiting for her. She had returned earlier than usual and saw with alarm that Maria had not come back from school. "Oh, I've been neglecting you," she said to her daughter as she saw her enter the room. She was filled with guilt and had spent an hour of agony wondering what could have happened to the child. She wanted to make amends for the many days she had not returned till later in the evening, and she was suddenly filled with remorse at the life she had begun to lead and which was taking her ever further from her daughter and life at home. These thoughts disturbed her ana it was not long before she began to rationalize her behaviour, justifying it on the grounds that, after all, she was doing it all for her family and her daughter's future. Yes, she had taken her reward from the men she had been with, but it had enabled them to (jet new furniture, clothes tor the child, and even 3 small car.
Still, there was a nagging doubt in her mind that she ought to take mor care of Maria. It was certainly wrong for her to be left evening after evening. God might punish her by letting something terrible happen to the child if she went on neglecting her in this way!