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 her to be hysterical, like she is when she’s drinking. It now occurs to me just how carefully she can keep her emotions under control when she’s sober.

      * * *

      Dad returns to Halifax once a month and takes me to see his mother, my grandmother. They never talk at all about his father – my grandfather – and I often wonder about him. It seems that Dad has been brought up mainly by his mother and when he talks about his upbringing to me he describes it with affection.

      Grandma brushes my hair, which I like, and lavishes attention on me, which feels wonderful to me. It is unconditional and different from that of my mother. Although Mum’s attention is certainly not conditional when she is sober, when drunk the only attention I get is when she wants me to touch her. She will decide how and when to show me affection – and nothing I do makes any difference. I may not fully understand this, but I sense it. Grandma, on the other hand, does that thing that grandparents do: she’s highly attentive for a short period of time.

      But Grandma has a strange side to her personality. She lives on her own – a quiet, eccentric, affectionate woman, with unusual views. She isn’t very tall, walks with a slight stoop, and wears her long grey hair in a bun. Her house is like a junk shop, crammed with books, furniture and weird, exotic bric-a-brac, such as a carved wooden statue of three monkeys with their paws covering their eyes, mouth and ears.

      ‘That means, see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil,’ she says.

      She’ll talk about subjects I’ve never heard anything about in a fascinating way and I hang on to her every word. She knows a huge amount, does Gran, and I’m amazed and intrigued. I often wonder what it was like for Dad having her as a mother, with just the two of them living in the same house and how it must have affected him. I also wonder what he thinks about the things she tells me, but he just sits there in an armchair among the potted palms and peacock feathers while Gran talks to me; he’s looking slightly bored and bemused, like he’s heard it all before, and just lets her get on with it.

      But, despite her crazy ideas, I love Grandma, which means that Dad doesn’t have to work too hard to entertain me.

      Nowadays it sometimes feels like Dad is simply going through the motions of being a father. I look up to him and desperately want him to be more involved. But he seems to have moved away emotionally as well as physically, never to return. He has chosen to be a distant parent and not get involved in my daily life. I can’t work out whether it’s because he doesn’t care and can’t be bothered, or because he simply doesn’t have it in him.

      * * *

      It’s really up to Mum to provide me with whatever it takes for me to have a happy and complete life and she can’t do it either. Life with her seems to rock violently from one extreme to another.

      But one thing she can do very well is make new friends. One of them lives just around the corner from the school in Calder Bridge. Mum’s new friend has a daughter the same age as me called Katie. She is very pretty with a nice smile, long brown hair and she wears glasses. I often play with her and as I’m always keen to please, I’m happy doing anything Katie wants to do.

      One evening at Katie’s house, I am alone with her and decide to do what I do with Mum: I put my hand up her skirt and into her knickers. Her minnie feels different. It is smaller and there are no hairs. I start rubbing her in the same way as I do for Mum but Katie doesn’t respond at all. This puzzles me as Mum always does, especially as I work hard to do it well.

      After a short while she pushes my hand away and we play at something else. I don’t mind because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what we have done. It’s just a game and we simply play another one that she likes.

      * * *

      By the time I’m seven, I know that Mum is drinking regularly. It isn’t happening all the time – certainly not every day – and a lot remains hidden from me. I don’t see her starting to drink. I only see the results when she has drunk a whole bottle. She is never just slightly drunk or tipsy: she is either sober or completely smashed.

      In a rare moment of confession much later on in her life, she tells me that her main problem is that when she’s opened a bottle of brandy she can’t stop drinking it until it’s empty.

      Once drunk, she completely loses control, not just of her emotions but also her body.

      And something else happens when she drinks in the evening. I remember the first time it happened . . .

      * * *

      Mum usually makes me tea when I come home from school but one day this doesn’t happen. She lets me into the house but then goes off upstairs.

      It feels like she’s been gone a long, long time and she still hasn’t come down and I’m getting very hungry.

      ‘Mum, are you there? Where’s my tea, Mum?’ I finally call out.

      ‘Be right down, David,’ she replies after a minute.

      More minutes go by and she still hasn’t come down.

      Then she does.

      She’s half undressed, and although she’s trying to walk normally she’s not quite steady on her feet as she comes into the living room where I’m sitting.

      The clock on the mantelpiece says ten past seven and it’s past my bedtime but Mum doesn’t seem to notice.

      ‘David!’ she calls out as she sees me.

      She staggers towards me and reaches down to hug me.

      ‘David, give your mother a cuddle.’

      Her words are slurred and I can smell the brandy on her breath as her face closes in towards mine.

      ‘Can’t we have tea, Mum? I’m hungry.’

      ‘Yes, let’s have tea, I’ll make tea,’ she says and staggers off into the kitchen.

      I follow her, and I’m now feeling frightened but I’m not quite sure why. It’s never happened before that she’s forgotten to make me tea because she’s been drinking.

      Now she’s trying to open a tin of baked beans and she’s getting angry because the tin opener won’t work.

      She slams the tin down on the kitchen table and starts looking for a saucepan in the bottom cupboard but as she bends down she falls over.

      ‘David, come here and give me a kiss,’ she says angrily, forgetting that she’s been trying to find the pan.

      ‘Oh Mum, can’t we just have tea?’

      ‘David, do what your mother tells you!’ she shouts.

      I know better than to disobey her.

      I join СКАЧАТЬ