Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive.. David Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ no idea at all what’s going on or any control whatsoever over her actions. Anything can happen and it often does.

      She doesn’t care about me either when she’s like this. She’s not a distant, unfeeling mother when she is sober, but on this night I can sense that I am surplus to requirements. Then something happens that changes all that. Somehow, in the course of the argument, she gets locked outside the house with me on the inside.

      She is shouting bad words, banging on the window. I am completely bewildered by what is going on and just sit there crying. Of course, Mum hasn’t tried to explain it to me and all I want is for her to be back inside the house.

      ‘Charlie,’ I’m crying, ‘please let my mummy in!’

      ‘No,’ he shouts, ‘she’s not coming back in.’

      By now she’s at boiling point.

      ‘Let me in, you old bastard!’ she screams at Charlie through the glass.

      ‘Not a chance!’ he shouts back at her from inside.

      She bangs harder until there is a sudden almighty crash as her fist goes through the window. Glass shatters all over the floor and my mother’s head appears at the hole, her hand covered in blood where the glass has sliced it, blood dripping on the window ledge.

      When, years later, I see Jack Nicholson’s manic portrayal of the disintegrating writer Jack Torrence in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining, I can’t help being struck by the similarity of the scene where Nicholson takes an axe to a wooden door, finally breaks through, pokes his heads through the shattered door and jeers at his terrified wife, ‘Here’s Johnny!’

      But, for me, at the age of six, the reality of seeing my demented mother’s blooded fist breaking through the glass to be followed by her head is far more terrifying than any movie and it’s a vision that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

      She points and shouts abuse at Charlie at the top of her voice, telling him to let her in.

      When he refuses, she turns on me.

      ‘Open the door, David, now!’ she screams.

      I can see the obvious desperation of the situation even if I don’t understand it, and I badly want to help her. I run to the door, trying to reach the latch, but can’t quite make it.

      ‘Come on, David,’ she is shouting at the other side of the door. ‘Come on!’

      On the third attempt I succeed and release the latch. As Mum has been leaning on the door, and I have no time to move out of the way, it immediately swings open, bringing her full weight crashing down on me, knocking me to the floor. Completely oblivious to this, she leaves me there and, staggering along, pushes herself from one piece of furniture to the next, her hand dripping blood on the carpet, screaming at Charlie.

       ‘You fucking bastard. Why wouldn’t you let me in?’

      Without giving him a chance to reply, she lunges at him, raining punches down on him again and again. They are inaccurate but he is an old man and he just sits in his chair, hardly able to defend himself. All he can do is curl up, trying to push away her flailing arms.

      He is too old to retaliate.

      She is too drunk to be reasoned with.

      I am too frightened to speak.

      All I have been trying to do is help her, but it feels as though in the process I have made things worse; and now Charlie is getting hurt too.

      What is most shocking to me is the sudden unpredictability and volatility of my mother in this situation. For all I know she might well have killed herself, and Charlie, and even me in her drunken rage.

      I’m so upset that I still can’t speak for the rest of the night and even the next day I find myself keeping my distance from her, at least in my mind. I am looking at my mother differently now and what I see has changed something in me.

      It may only be a small loss of innocence and trust, but from that night onwards I can never turn back the clock. I cannot make things better, or find my way back again to the mother I so long for her to be.

      From that night onwards, my Dark Mummy is never far away.

      * * *

      Life with Mum is a rollercoaster. It doesn’t help that by the time I am six Dad has met someone new and within a year has gone to live with her in Manchester many miles away from where we live in Yorkshire. Her name is Maureen and she lives there with her two sons, Harry and Alex, who I discover are two and four years older than me.

      When I come downstairs one morning in the summer holidays of 1974 I find Mum crying. She’s sitting at the kitchen table filling out a large, official-looking form in her careful, almost schoolgirl handwriting.

      ‘What’s the matter, Mum, why are you crying?’

      ‘Nothing, David, just eat your breakfast.’

      ‘What’s that you’re writing?’

      ‘OK, if you want to know, I’m applying for legal aid. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to afford to pay for solicitors.’

      ‘Why do you Ford Slisters?’

      ‘Never you mind, David, you’ll understand one day.’

      It takes me a while to work out that Mum and Dad are now no longer married legally and by this time it’s 1975 and Mum tells me Dad has now married Maureen in Manchester. I can’t understand why he hasn’t invited Mum and me to the wedding. After all, we’re still his family. Why wouldn’t he want us there?

      Maureen hasn’t been involved in my parents’ separation but this doesn’t stop Mum hating her with a passion. She has managed to get a photo of her and has written ‘Bitch’ on the back.

      I don’t dislike my new stepmother. After all, I don’t know her. I haven’t even met her and nor has Mum as far as I know, but I’m intrigued as to why Mum hates her so much.

      * * *

      One day Mum and I are walking near our house when we see Rastus, our beloved orange and brown five-year-old collie, on the opposite side of the road at the top of the hill, some 50 yards away. Mum calls to him and he comes running down the hill towards us. We watch him all the way and as he gets to the road he doesn’t stop. Before we know it he’s been hit by a passing car just five yards in front of us.

      There’s a terrible screech of brakes and the next second the car stops twenty yards or so further up the road. But it’s too late – Rastus has been killed instantly.

      I can’t quite grasp what’s happened. It’s the first time I’ve been brought face to face with death and after the shock I’m inconsolable. There’s nothing we could have done to stop it but in my mind I keep re-running the incident like a video, trying to press Pause before Rastus reaches the road.

      I cry for days.

      Mum cries too СКАЧАТЬ