No One Listened: Two children caught in a tragedy with no one else to trust except for each other. Alex Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ out of the house by Mum. Things just went completely mad for a few minutes.

      As I stood outside on the drive in my socks, holding onto Alfie by the scruff of his neck, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Mum was in such a hysterical state that there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to get back in the house until she had calmed down. The only person I could think of to turn to for help was my godmother, Helen, who had moved away from our street by then but was still living in the area. I don’t think we had mobile phones at that stage – or at least if we did I didn’t have one on me, not having expected to be leaving the house quite so abruptly – so I had to knock on one of the neighbours’ doors and ask if I could use their house phone.

      I don’t think they were surprised by the request because everyone in the nearby houses knew about Dad and assumed that our whole family was a bit dysfunctional. I rang Helen, who very kindly came and took Alfie and me back to her house before going to talk to Mum and attempting to calm her down and make her see sense. Helen was a good friend to Mum and one of the few people she allowed to get close to her. I expect Mum was already regretting her outburst by the time Helen got there. These sorts of temper storms always passed quite quickly and we would then return to our normal family routines as if nothing had happened, the hectic pace of our lives helping us to forget any lingering bad feelings. Dad wouldn’t usually come out of his room when Mum was kicking off. He had his own demons to fight in private. He had no interest in anything to do with any of us unless it affected him directly, and if Mum sounded upset that probably pleased him since he spent most of his time trying to achieve exactly that result.

      I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how much Dad hated me. It started because I looked so much like Mum, or at least that was what he kept telling me, but it grew worse as I got older and started speaking out against him more often. He needed to be able to dominate everyone in his life completely, and Mum was mostly willing to let him get away with it in order to protect us and try to maintain a fragile peace in the house. As I entered my teens, however, I became less willing to put up with everything he did in silence. If he was attacking Mum I would often take her side, speaking up for her while she remained silent, and that made him loathe me all the more deeply. Arguments were usually based on him saying how dirty the house was, or that the vacuum cleaner hadn’t been put back in the right way, which was infuriating to me. The house was perfectly clean because Mum spent her weekends cleaning it, but nothing she did was ever right it seemed. It drove me crazy that Dad should have the nerve to complain when he sat around at home all day never lifting a finger.

      Sometimes his attacks would escalate beyond mere shouting and he became physically violent. He would slap her and throw things at her while she tried frantically to pacify him by agreeing with everything he said, accepting all the criticism without trying to defend herself. Partly out of anger and partly out of fear, I would be screaming at him to leave her alone and threatening to call the police. He found the thought that I would dare to stand up to him almost unbearable and Mum would become desperate that I was winding him up even more by challenging him, but I couldn’t just stand by and watch him hitting her without saying anything. Perhaps her approach was more intelligent than mine. Maybe she already sensed just what he might be capable of if he was pushed too far, but to me at the time, with all the recklessness and ignorance of youth, it looked as though she was giving in to him, being a complete doormat, and my pride wouldn’t let me do the same.

      On several occasions as I went to pick up the phone to call the police, Dad pushed me out of the way, threw an ornament at me, or lunged past me and ripped it out of the wall. He didn’t always manage to get there in time, however, and when I was eleven or twelve years old I managed to call them out on two separate occasions. Both times I truly believed that Mum was in real danger and needed grown-up help. Once I heard noises from my bedroom and came downstairs to find him punching her and throwing her around the room. I intervened and he swung a punch at me as well. I managed to get a call through to the police but in the few minutes it took them to turn up he had wrecked the house in his frustration and fury.

      Even when the police were standing there in the room and she had a chance to tell them what he was like, Mum would never make a formal complaint or agree to press charges, so there was nothing they could do apart from warn him to calm down. On one occasion when he was particularly wild they took him down to the cells for a few hours to give him time to settle down, only allowing him home once they felt he was calm again. I remember we were all terrified that they would release him in the middle of the night. Alex and I were literally shaking with fear so all three of us slept in my bed till morning. Locking him up served the purpose at the time but did nothing to help our overall situation. His was a vendetta of hate that would outlast any short-term measures the police might be able to impose.

      When he got home after his night in the cells we were out at our swimming practice with Mum and by the time we arrived back he had changed all the locks on the house so our keys didn’t work. Mum had to beg him through the letterbox to let us in, trying to avoid provoking a scene on the doorstep that the neighbours would hear. I suppose ultimately he had to let Mum back into the house because she was his only source of income, but he had made his point, showing that he could take control, lock us out and disrupt our lives whenever he chose if we displeased him or challenged him.

      On one of the occasions when I called the police Dad ran upstairs and started stabbing himself in the arm with a fork so that when they arrived he could tell them that Mum had attacked him first, and show them the wounds to prove it. When they got there the police left Alex and me sitting on the stairs, just watching and listening and taking it all in. They didn’t ask us for our version of what had gone on, but just ignored us as if we were part of the furniture. Maybe they get called to so many domestic disturbances every day that they have a set method of dealing with them, but they never made us feel that they would be able to offer us or Mum any real protection from Dad should we need it. Later, when we were in court for Dad’s trial, a policeman read out his notes of the incident that night, talking about ‘two young and clearly very disturbed children’ being on the scene. If we were so clearly disturbed, why didn’t anyone do anything to help us, or even talk to us? Why did no one come back the next day after one of these fights to check we were okay? I suppose by not pressing charges Mum forced them to assume that she had the whole situation under control.

      Most of the arguments happened late at night, when Dad would emerge from his room and expect to have the house to himself, or perhaps he would decide to go and waken Mum to raise some grudge he had been mulling over all day. Looking back, Dad was getting through a lot of whisky and I suspect the worst arguments probably happened when he was drunk. Alex was usually fast asleep by the time they started to shout and often didn’t wake up, allowing Dad to believe that he could still control him and keep him on his side, even if I was becoming openly rebellious to his tyranny.

      If Mum was still up and about when Dad got downstairs it was almost inevitable that he would start picking a fight with her. Most of the time our routines meant that we were able to avoid him, but if something went differently it would make him feel threatened and he would immediately become aggressive. Sometimes, if he had fuelled himself up enough on whisky, he would keep the arguments going all night, forcing Mum to stay awake just so that he could shout at her, and me as well when I came downstairs to investigate. It didn’t bother him how long the fights went on for because he could just sleep through the next day, but we were exhausted and needed our sleep. He knew perfectly well how tired Mum got and exploited it sadistically. I think sometimes he picked fights simply to alleviate the boredom of his existence.

      As he got older Alex started to be woken by the shouting as well and we would all end up only getting a couple of hours sleep, but however tired we were in the morning Mum would never consider for a second that we should be allowed a day off school. It was almost like a religious belief to her. She would never take a day off work, however ill or exhausted she felt, and she expected the same level of dedication, determination and discipline from us. We didn’t even bother to ask because we knew what her answer would be. I think my attendance rate was pretty close to СКАЧАТЬ