Someone to Love Us
Terence O’neill
The Shocking True Story of Two Brothers Fostered into Brutality and Neglect
Dedicated to the memory of my dear brother “DENNY” (3 March 1932 – 9 January 1945)
Table of Contents
‘Hello, boys,’ Miss Edwards said, giving us a bright smile. ‘I’m here from Newport Council to see how you’re getting on. Does life on a farm suit you?’
‘It’s OK,’ I mumbled, but Dennis just stared at the ground.
‘Do you like your school?’
‘It’s fine,’ I said.
Mrs Gough, our foster mother, gave a big, false kind of a smile. ‘Go on, Terence. Tell Miss Edwards what you’ve been doing at school.’ She continued, without giving me a chance: ‘They’ve been making Christmas decorations and a nativity scene and he’s been learning all the old carols too. I keep hearing him singing them round the place.’
I didn’t think she’d ever once heard me singing in the six months I’d been at Bank Farm but I knew better than to contradict her.
‘Are you all right, Dennis?’ Miss Edwards asked him, and he nodded without looking at her. ‘You look awfully pale. Are you feeling all right?’
Mrs Gough answered for him: ‘He’s had a nasty cough but he’s on the mend now, thank goodness.’
‘He’s got huge dark rings round his eyes. Are you sleeping all right, Dennis?’
Dennis kept fidgeting with his hands while she was talking and wouldn’t stand still, as if he was nervous about something.
‘Answer the nice lady,’ Mrs Gough rebuked, and he cleared his throat and whispered ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘What do you do with your spare time, Dennis?’
‘I try to be a help,’ he said, his eyes to the floor, and Miss Edwards looked a bit surprised. ‘I think you should take him to a doctor,’ she told Mrs Gough. ‘The council will pay. Just let me know how much it costs.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Mrs Gough. ‘It can be hard to manage with two growing boys to feed.’
The two women chatted for a while as Dennis and I stood to one side, then, when she finished her cup of tea, Miss Edwards looked at us again. ‘So are you happy here, boys? Do you want to stay?’ She smiled, encouragingly.
I could see Mrs Gough staring hard at us with a nasty glint in her eye and nodding her head, letting us know the answer she expected us to give.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, and I think Dennis nodded. Inside I was miserable, though. I watched Miss Edwards pull on her coat and hat and walk out the front door and I wanted to run after her and shout ‘No! Don’t go! Don’t leave us here!’
But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I was far too scared. No one could help us. We just had to get through it on our own somehow.
Once, when I was four years old, I climbed up onto the car deck of the big Transporter Bridge in Newport. It was fun up there because when all the cars had driven on, the deck started to move, carrying them over to the other side of the river. I had my feet dangling over the side, watching the boats down below, and I thought I was the bee’s knees.
Suddenly a man in a uniform rushed up and grabbed me by the arm. He pulled me to my feet, hurting my shoulder, and shouted ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I was just looking,’ I told him.
He said that I could have fallen and been killed and he wanted to know where my mam and dad lived, so I told him they lived on Bolt Street. My big brother Dennis had made me remember the address in case I ever got lost.
The man said that