Never a Hero to Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

what you were used to in your last location.
    We had moved to Rinteln when I was four. Before that, when we lived in Singapore, I was too little to remember a huge amount, so Germany was the scene of my first real childhood memories. We lived in a street which had three blocks of housing. In each of those blocks were three homes. Every single one had the same layout – if you were in a three-bedroomed Army house in one part of the base, you could rest assured every other three-bedroomed house across the whole place would be exactly the same. In fact, when we returned to Germany some years later for my father’s third stint there, we lived in the house in the block directly next door to the one we stayed in when he first started to abuse me. They were so similar that, one night, coming back drunk from the Army bar, Dad went into our old house, let himself in the unlocked door, and slumped down in a drunken stupor on a chair – completely unaware that it wasn’t his home! There was nothing different about it at all, and he hadn’t noticed a thing.
    As an adult, I’ve often wondered whether this lack of identity in something so personal as where you live was part of my dad’s increasing problems with his own identity. He changed from day to day, from posting to posting, and yet he had chosen a life in which he was expected to be the same, to show no emotion, to not even have a home which reflected his own idiosyncrasies.
    I know, from talking to my brother and Mum in later years, that he presented the move from Singapore to Germany as an exciting, positive one. ‘You’ll love it,’ he told Gary. ‘There are loads of kids your own age, youth clubs, swimming groups – there’s everything.’
    Gary’s response was typical of him. Straightforward, blunt – but completely lacking in sense.
    ‘Nazis,’ he said.
    ‘What?’ asked my dad.
    ‘Nazis. That’s what there is. It’s Germany. It’ll be full of Nazis. I hate Nazis.’
    My dad told him to stop being so stupid. ‘It won’t be full of Nazis. The war’s over, you stupid boy. Anyway, how many Nazis do you think there’ll be in a British Army camp?’
    My brother was unrepentant. ‘But I don’t like them. I don’t like Nazis.’
    ‘You won’t see any bloody Nazis – even if Germany’s still stuffed to the gunnels with them, they’ll be on the other side of the fence.’
    That was the end of that argument. Dad managed to convince Gary and Mum that the move would be a good one and, from what I’ve heard, he certainly seemed excited about it. I was too little to really be part of the discussions, but I was excited about the prospect of a new house and new friends. In Singapore, we had lived in a high-rise block of flats and there was very little to do. I rarely got to play outside, and had no friends to speak of, so Germany would be a novelty for me.
    When we got there we did meet lots of people, but Gary was better at making friends than I was. I was a reserved child, extremely quiet, and I wasn’t the naturally bubbly sort of little girl who drew others to her. I was allowed out to play a few times – but that would soon stop.
    Gary was allowed out to youth clubs and football practice, he played on the camp with his mates, and he always seemed to be having a good time. Dad was very laid-back with him, and allowed him to go his own way. At first, I thought it unfair that I was so restricted while Gary lived the life of Riley outside of school; only later did I realise that his absence from home was a deliberate strategy by Dad to ensure he had access to me whenever he wanted. When Mum was in hospital and Dad visited her, Gary would be allowed out to play with only one rule – he wasn’t to come back in until Dad gave him permission.
    One of the things I remember very clearly about living in the base was that every house had a big walk-in cellar. They were almost like cages when you walked into them. Most parents let the kids do the cellars up