TRUE STORY: ASSAULT AND MAYHEM IN A LITTLE HOUSE

​NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE ORAL STORY OF WORKING-CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell

True story 1940s

The first time old Andy came to the little house in Pretty Valley, Daisy thought it was just a regular neighbour visit and offered him tea. But very shortly, he grabbed her and she fought him, shoving and yelling and trying to wrestle away. That’s when he punched her in the face and she came to on the floor with him raping her, but she fought him even then, gouging and raking at his face.

He stopped long enough to punch her another time, then he finished what he was doing.

When he was gone, Daisy dragged herself up and sat on the chair by the window, crying and holding herself. What if he came back? Her face was bloody and swollen, lip broken, and she was burning bad in the lady parts, he’d been very rough. The baby was wailing back in the room. But she could hardly move, sat there dazed and crying till Danny came home for supper.

In bed, they talked about what to do. Danny said they’d go to town and report it to the constable, but Daisy said, “What good would that do? Everybody knows the family I come from, dirt poor, have-nothings. And him an upstanding citizen, it would be my word against his.” And then, talk would spread all over, she said. How could she bear for people to know… what was done to her… and judge her for it?

Danny stayed home with her all week, watching the road, on guard. The fever he had had as a child had twisted his legs and bent his back and although he was only twenty-five, he was stooped like an old man and often in pain.

Daisy smiled sadly. “Danny,” she told him, “what in the world would you do if he did come?”

But he didn’t come and when Danny went back to his job on the Monday, they were not happy with him. “Either work or don’t work,” the boss told him. “You’re lucky to have a job at all.”

The second time Andy came down the long dirt road, she grabbed the baby and shoved herself back into a dark corner behind the dresser. But she was found and dragged out, begging and pleading, “Please, no, no, no.”

He was a big, muscular man and she, barely five foot tall. Gouging his fingers in her fleshy arms, he growled, “Are you gonna put that kid down or do you want to have it in the mix with you?”

So she put the baby girl in the crib and he threw Daisy on the bed, laughing, saying why should he hurt his knees on the floor when there’s a nice soft bed. He jumped on her rough, tearing her clothes, and started raping her but she tried to resist, crying and begging.

He stopped moving and looked her in the eye. “Do you want it nice? Or do you want to fight? Because I can fight, too.”

She turned her head aside and stopped the struggle, just sobbing and flinching, while he finished taking what he wanted.

When Danny came home, they talked. Again, he said they’d go to the constable in Swan River and again, she said the constable would do nothing and it would only come back on them. He said what about her brothers, could they go talk to old Andy? She knew what kind of talk he meant and she said she didn’t want her brothers to go to jail. What good would that do?

“Well then, I’ll go talk to him,” Danny said.

And she cried and clung to him. “Danny, no, he’ll kill you. I just know it!” She cried and wailed. “Don’t go up there, Danny, please God. Please don’t go up there.”

And they cried all night and clung onto each other and didn’t know what to do. He stayed home the next day but they were almost out of flour and sugar both, down to potatoes and turnips in the bin. They desperately needed the money Danny made and she was terrified he’d lose his job.

So the next morning, she got up early and made him a nice, hot breakfast. Porridge and salt and the last of the butter. Then she called him and said, “Time to go to work.” At the table, he was quiet and sad, but she said she’d be fine. “It will be alright, Danny,” she told him. “You’ll see.”

It was a week later the next time Andy came. He was on the porch already when she heard him, but she just walked into the bedroom and put the baby in the crib. He marched into the room, ready for battle, but she just took off her bottoms and lay down on the bed, staring up. So he mounted her and did his thing, not even rough or mean, and when he was done, he sat on the edge of the bed, chatting all friendly while she got up and straightened herself.

And that’s how it went for months when old Andy came around. Sometimes, he asked her for tea after and she would give it to him. And he’d talk about the kind of crops he had planted, or how much he missed his deceased wife, or how he had modeled his house on the sturdy, stone houses they used to build back in England. Whatever he felt like.

Once he asked if she’d play a game of cribbage with him and she paused. “Well… if there’s time before I gotta make Danny’s supper…” So they played a quick hand and he left.

The following spring, they got a chance to move to a place near Kenville that was closer to her mother and closer to the mill, where Danny might get work. And when the baby was born in the summer, she named him Dan Herbert, after his father. They both were certain he looked just like Danny.

“Why, lookit his eyes, the curve of his little head,” Danny grinned. “He’s a spittin’ image of me.”

One day, Danny came home for supper, saying he heard that Mary and Fred Halindale had moved into the house they used to be in, down the road from old Andy. They were building a big, new house, big barn, and everything. Lots of money in that family.

Later, lying in bed with the little guy between them, he asked her, “Do you think Mary Halindale will be alright?”

“Probably,” she said. “Her husband is tall and big, and they got them two boys, healthy big sons.” When the baby finished nursing and drifted off, she laid him gently into the little cradle, then snuggled further into Danny’s warmth. “Anyway, better her than me,” she said.

*This true story from the 1940s was told to me in 2005 by Daisy’s sister, Petunia. All names changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty).