LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

boys when they saw them. ‘He’s got a fanny!’ was their favourite. I would feign illness to avoid school on days when we had physical education or sports. If I was forced to go I would sneak into one of the toilet cubicles and struggle into my kit in private.

      My home life was equally unhappy. My father seemed to hate me and would hit me unmercifully for no apparent reason. On my eighth birthday, I remember I went into the back garden with my mother and sisters to play a game of cricket with a bat and ball my grandmother had given me. I accidentally hit the ball against the kitchen window and cracked a pane of glass. My father rushed out into the garden and pulled one of the cricket stumps out of the ground then proceeded to beat me all over my back and legs with it. The beating went on for two or three minutes, and when at last he stopped, I was left on the ground unable to move. My mother kept me off school for over two weeks until the bruising had gone.

      Of course, she fared no better. I lost count of the number of times she came crawling into my bed of a night after yet another violent row. She was always inconsolable. I would cuddle up to her in the hope that it would make her feel better, but it was always to no avail. On these occasions it was the sound of her whimpering that sent me into a troubled sleep. I grew to hate my father and promised myself that when I was grown up there would be a reckoning.

      He usually got out of bed around four o’clock in the afternoon. I never knew what to expect when I arrived home from school. Sometimes I would hear the shouting before I entered the house and would sneak up to my room and bury my head under my pillow to shut out the noise. Other times I would arrive home to find my mother already crying and my father scowling angrily. These were the worst times. Invariably, my father would hit me for just coming into the room. One day, I had fled the room screaming out how much I hated him. I went to my bedroom and cried myself to sleep but awoke some time later to the agonising pain of my father hitting me with a piece of timber, which he was wielding with exceptional ferocity. The next day at school I passed a lot of blood in my urine. It was then that I decided that my best option was to arrive home after six o’clock, which was when my father usually left for work.

      My favourite place to go after school was Jacob’s Ladder railway crossing, where trains from Ealing Broadway and West Ealing passed under a bridge on their way to and from the West Country. I had a little book of train numbers and underlined them every time I saw a new train thundering down the track. It was always exciting when the Flying Scotsman came speeding by. I would run to the part of the bridge where the funnel smoke would engulf me in a thick cloud and breathe in the glorious aroma of smoke and steam. Sometimes I was enjoying myself so much that I would still be there at seven.

      But I couldn’t stay out of my father’s way all the time. There were still weekends to get through and the evenings when he started work at a later hour. By the time I was twelve years old I had become hardened to my father’s beatings and nastiness, and I no longer hid with fear in my room. Whenever I witnessed one of his violent outbursts against my mother I would do my best to help her. I would try to kick him or throw something at his head. This meant, of course, that I got another beating but at least it stopped him hitting my mother. I hated him with a passion that was almost as strong as the adoration I felt for my mother. Often I would lie in bed and think about how I would pay him back in kind when I was older.

      It seemed to me that things couldn’t get worse at home, but on a January day in 1958 I found out that they could. Dad and Gran had joint tenancy of the house we lived in. He hated her living with us, even though she only inhabited the front room and rarely came out of it. She hated him for the way he treated her daughter. They rarely spoke to each other and, when they were forced to, the conversation was always strained with underlying venom.

      On that day Gran had come into the scullery to fill her kettle with water and my father was shaving in the mirror over the sink. She reached across to turn on the tap and accidentally jogged his arm, causing him to nick his face with his razor. He screamed out, ‘You clumsy old bitch. Get back in your own room.’ She retorted, ‘It’s a pity you didn’t cut your throat.’ That was it. Sixteen years of pent-up fury was unleashed. He grabbed her by her scrawny throat and started to strangle her, making no allowance for the fact that she was an old woman, nearly deaf and half blind. My mother jumped on his back to pull him away and his anger was then diverted onto her. He started to beat her unmercifully and the sound of her screams brought me running into the room. I found my Gran on the floor, clutching her throat and gasping for air, and my mother getting beaten to a pulp over the cooker. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand – a three-inch, sharp vegetable knife.

      ‘Leave her alone, you bastard!’ I screamed.

      My father turned to me. I knew it was my turn to face his fury and gripped the knife tightly. His face blanched noticeably when he spotted it and he said quietly, ‘What are you going to do with that?’

      ‘If you don’t leave them alone, I’ll kill you.’ My voice was trembling with emotion but my eyes showed that I wasn’t bluffing. I knew that this could be my moment of destiny and I welcomed it. I made a move towards him and couldn’t believe it when he ran from the room.

      ‘Give me the knife, John.’ My mother gently took it out of my hand. ‘Help me with Gran.’

      We lifted Gran off the floor and sat her down in the kitchen. She was in shock and her whole body was shaking as if she had been out in the cold for days. My mother wrapped her in a coat and made her a cup of hot, sweet tea. It must have been at least two hours before she was fit enough to return to her room and, even then, she was still whimpering. We didn’t see my father for the next two days.

      Life slowly returned to normal, but in my heart I knew that it was only a matter of time until my father had his revenge on me. What was he going to do? Would he kill me? These thoughts troubled my mind and kept me awake at night worrying.

      The bright, early-morning sun shining through my threadbare bedroom curtains woke me from a troubled sleep. Momentarily, I struggled with drowsiness and reached down to adjust the coats that I had piled on top of my blanket to keep me warm. Suddenly, I became alert. Why was the sun shining? It was a school day. It was always dark when I got up for school in winter. I jumped out of bed and shivered as I placed my feet onto the cold, lino-covered floor. The book I had been reading the night before, The Count of Monte Cristo, was lying on the floor so I picked it up and put it back on the mantelpiece. I hurried downstairs to see why Mum hadn’t called me. I found her sitting in the kitchen weeping silently. My father was sitting on his stool by the coke boiler, tracing patterns in the air with the glowing tip of his cigarette.

      ‘Why didn’t you call me, Mum?’ I asked.

      ‘You’re coming out with me for the day,’ my Dad said as he looked up at me. ‘Get yourself dressed.’ I noticed that he was wearing his Sunday best clothes.

      ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Are we going to see Uncle John?’ I liked my father’s brother. He was nothing like my father and was always full of fun and mischief.

      ‘Maybe we will and maybe we won’t. You’ll just have to wait and see.’

      I hurried back upstairs and quickly got dressed in my own Sunday clothes – basically my school clothes, but with a nice blue jumper that my mother had knitted for me. I looked at myself in the mirror: with my dark hair in the typical short, back and sides of the day, dark eyes and scrawny features, I didn’t think I was anything special.

      When I came back downstairs there was a steaming bowl of porridge waiting on the table. I sprinkled it liberally with sugar and wolfed it down. I was eager to be on my way – treats in my life were rare and a day at my uncle’s was definitely a treat.

      My father looked at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said ‘it’s time for us to go.’ My mother followed us to the front door. I turned to kiss her goodbye and she wrapped me tightly in her arms. She whispered, ‘Take care of yourself, John. Remember how much I love you.’

      I was puzzled by her remarks and looked deeply into her tear-filled eyes. ‘I’ll be fine mum, don’t worry. I love you too.’

      I was surprised when my father led the way towards West Ealing. I thought

Скачать книгу