shaking and after a few moments I could feel that he had peed on to my hand. He wasn’t cross with me any more and I felt very happy to have been forgiven. It felt great to know that he thought I was a good boy.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
I was always hungry.
‘Wait up here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll make you some potato hash. Come down in a bit.’
I lay there feeling happy with myself for the first time in a long while, wondering how long ‘a bit’ was, not wanting to spoil things by going down too soon or too late. I must have drifted off to sleep because he had to send Christina up to tell me the food was ready. I rushed down, expecting to be in trouble again, but he was still in a good mood when I got to the kitchen.
To have him pleased with me and to be given something to eat was wonderful. Even to this day I can’t eat potato hash without remembering that first time. We used to eat it a lot, with meat that the butcher sold for pets, and vegetables, anything that was cheap. Nothing was ever thrown away or allowed to go to waste; everything was fried up again and again until every last scrap had been eaten. Sometimes I tasted the stuff he prepared for the pigs and it was nicer than the stuff we all ate.
Chapter Five A VERY NAUGHTY BOY
That first time was the gentlest time, and although it was a little while before he became really violent, from then on the abuse in my bedroom became a regular feature of our daily family routine. The glow of approval after the first time didn’t last long and his verbal abuse towards me escalated as quickly as the physical abuse.
‘You’re fucking ugly.’
‘You’re a bad boy and I’m getting the police to come and take you to a fucking home!’
‘Your mum doesn’t fucking love you.’
‘I’m gonna give your mum a fucking beating, I’m really gonna hurt her, and it’s because of you, because you’re such a naughty little bastard.’
Every day was like a test, a horrible repeat of the day before but with some new insult or pain added on. He was becoming almost as bad towards Christina as well, even though I knew she wasn’t naughty like me and worked really hard to try to keep the home going when Mum was at work. He used to shout for us to come in when he was sitting down in the front room, and we would hurry to do his bidding. I was always smiling in the hope of defusing his anger, looking up at him, my head bowed, waiting docilely for whatever would come next. I was always nervous about looking at him directly. ‘Are you eyeballing me?’ he would demand if I looked up, and my eyes would shoot back to the floor.
‘Fight each other,’ he would order me and Christina. ‘You both need to toughen up.’
There was no getting out of it, because if we didn’t fight each other, really punching and kicking and slapping, then he would hit us, and he hit much harder than we did. Even if Mum was there, witnessing it, he didn’t care.
‘Stop it, David,’ she would protest, but he overruled her, shouting encouragement at us like a trainer beside a boxing ring. All the time Shirley would just be sat there, in her wheelchair, watching the horrors going on around her, looking bored and bemused and sulky. If it was bad for Christina and me, God knows what it was like for her, day after day after day just sitting or lying around stinking of piss, listening to the shouting and watching the beatings.
After one of those fights he would send us up to bed, and I would be able to hear Christina sobbing in her room, just as I was in mine.
‘Are you all right?’ I would whisper, trying to send my voice across to her room but terrified he would be listening in and would exact some extra punishment.
‘Yes,’ she would gulp. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too.’
We would keep on telling each other how sorry we were until one of us eventually fell asleep.
Whenever I came in the back door of an evening he would be lying in wait for me with some new complaint about my behaviour, and he would start shouting and punching and hurting me, spitting at me to show his contempt. It was all about power. I was never allowed to do anything without asking his permission.
‘Dad, can I go to the toilet?’
‘Dad, can I have a drink of water?’
‘Dad, can I stand up?’
‘Dad, can I sit down?’
I always assumed that he was right about everything, because he was a grown-up and he was my dad. If he said I was bad, then I must be. He watched my every single move, just waiting for me to put a foot wrong, constantly thinking up new rules that I mustn’t break. If I sneaked myself a butty to eat and left a few crumbs, I would have to be punished in a frenzy of anger. If I had a slice of bread or a piece of cheese, or if I left a cup out, it didn’t matter what I did, it was always wrong and meant I had to be taught a lesson, ‘for my own good’. He took to checking my underpants and if I had left any sort of stain, which I often had if I had been to the toilet outside, I would have to be punished again. The questions he asked me made me squirm with embarrassment; no part of my life was private from his probing.
‘Have you been shaking your willy after you’ve been for a wee?’
He would inspect me all over, checking my willy, then taking his own out to show me what it should look like. ‘Feel it, so you know what it should feel like.’
He started stripping me naked in front of the girls and tying me up with ropes after beating me up at the back door, so tightly I couldn’t get free however much I struggled or cried. Sometimes he would tie my hands and my neck to my feet so I would be twisted into painful shapes, as the dogs ran around me, barking with excitement at all the noise.
‘Try and get out of that!’ he would sneer as my panic mounted. ‘Look at him, Shirl, look at him!’
Shirley would stare at me with blank eyes and an unchanging expression, knowing that if she said anything she ran the risk of him turning his wrath on to her.
My greatest priority was to be a good boy and make both my parents love me, so I never told anyone outside the family what was going on. I assumed it went on in lots of other houses as well and no one would be that interested anyway; they would just tell me not to be so naughty. And then there was the fear that if they found out how bad I was someone would tell the police and I would be taken away to a children’s home. However bad my life with my dad might be, the unknown was even more frightening. At least in Cranbrook Street I had Mum and my sisters. If I was taken to a home I wouldn’t have anyone to love, nothing familiar to cling on to at the lowest moments.
Some days he would send me up to bed the moment I came in and then come up to batter me there, away from the girls. Then he would come up and lie next to me, telling me to masturbate him. I didn’t like it, but at least it didn’t hurt and I knew it would make things better – it was part of my punishment and afterwards he would be pleased with me. I would have done anything not to be battered any more.
There was an old sideboard in my room, which he’d brought back from his rounds but had been unable to sell, and sometimes I would open the cupboard doors and squeeze myself inside, holding my breath and hoping he wouldn’t find me when he came up. But then I would become too scared of what would happen if he did catch me trying to hide from him and I would come back out and get into the bed to wait. Other times I would get into the walk-in cupboards that Christina and I had thought were such a game when we looked round the house. The place I felt safest was on the floor under the bunk bed, staring up at the slats, feeling like I was in a prison cell and couldn’t be touched, but my nerve would always go before he actually came up to deal with me and I would crawl back out to face whatever was in store for me.
Given a choice