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 me a kiss, David.’

      I do what she says and instantly I can smell and taste the brandy on her mouth. I feel a little sick and finally pull away.

      ‘Mummy, I’m tired. Can’t we have tea now?’

      ‘Yes, let’s have tea,’ she groans and tries to get up but collapses again on the kitchen floor . . .

      Mum never gets to make me tea this evening and that’s the first time this has happened. She seems to have forgotten completely about my tea and even about me.

      In the end I make myself a jam sandwich and put myself to bed but I stay awake for a long time, waiting to hear her come upstairs.

      After what seems like another hour or more I hear her staggering to her bedroom and slamming her door shut.

      Only then do I dare allow myself to go to sleep.

      * * *

      For me the first seven years of my life in Calder Bridge are a stark mixture of lightness and dark – I think of my earliest memories of playing as a child in a wonderful, exciting setting, the happy times playing in the woods and fields or in the scrapyard down the lane and I remember that one happy Christmas. But I also remember the sexual contact with my mother – the alcohol, mood swings, violence, blood, swearing and pain. Calder Bridge has created good memories and bad for me, but mainly I am haunted by the bad ones.

      We are soon to move away from there, but the problems won’t be resolved in our new home. Instead of life getting better, it is about to get much worse . . .

3

       A Man Called Reg

      One day, when I’m seven, Mum takes me to see someone. Reginald Arthur Brownstone is old, fat and bald, with a huge ginger beard. Mum tells me she does some cleaning for him. I have no idea why we’re there, apart from allowing her to introduce me to one of her friends. It’s a sunny day and the house seems very impressive to me – detached and in a beautiful setting, halfway up a valley.

      Reg left school at the age of twelve because he was needed on his father’s farm. When I am introduced to him he’s still working in a textile factory but he only does so for a few months longer after 53 years of work. He seems a jovial man with a keen sense of humour. He certainly makes Mum laugh and that hasn’t been happening enough.

      Back home, Mum asks me what I think of Reg. I say he seems OK. She’s pleased with that and I feel good inside too. I sense there is some kind of connection between them and he seems like a nice, kind man.

      By April 1975 we have moved out of our house in Calder Bridge to live with him at his house in Ludden Vale, near the village of Bradling. When we move in he is already 65, while Mum is 30. But the age difference doesn’t matter to me and moving in is great news. He is going to be the missing father figure in my life and make Mum happy. We have a new home and are destined to have a wonderful future together.

      But unfortunately, Reg isn’t all that he appears to be.

      * * *

      Because we have moved, I start at a new school, Bradling Primary. I like it immediately and it doesn’t seem to have the problems of the old one. It is light and airy with large rooms and friendly teachers. There are lots of kids around where we live too. Even though our new house is rural, with only twelve houses in the immediate vicinity, there are eight kids aged within two years of each other and we start hanging around together.

      Our house is just a couple of fields from a council estate where many kids from the school live. The estate is very nice and the houses are well-maintained. But although the houses look great, going to the estate simply highlights how special our house is and how lucky we are to be living there.

      Our new home is idyllic from the outside – a cluster of three early Victorian one-up–one-down cottages knocked into one, with lots of character – built on the side of a valley. The downstairs rooms from the three cottages form a group of three, the middle one (which we call the middle room) being the dining room. The house is detached and surrounded by fields and woodland, with a large garden full of fruit, vegetables, flowers and shrubs. The views from the front and back are breathtaking, showing the whole of the valley in one fell swoop. Inside, the house badly needed renovating. Reg has lived there a long time alone and hasn’t bothered to do anything to the property in ages. But Mum is on the case and is going to get things done.

      Living at Ludden Vale seems just as good as Calder Bridge but without all the bad memories, initially at any rate. This is a time to renew and start afresh. We are living as a family and in a beautiful family home.

      Mum has been taking typing lessons at night school and is soon doing secretarial work as a full-time job. Although she isn’t on a high wage, her money management is sensational. We go on holiday every year, have a nearly new car every three to five years and she manages to find the cash to get lots of work done on the house. We always have pets to look after too as both Reg and Mum are animal lovers. She smokes heavily and is still drinking. How she manages to do all this on the money coming into the house is a miracle. It helps that Reg owns the house outright: she doesn’t need to borrow money or pay a mortgage.

      Looking back on this all as an adult, I still find it astonishing that even with no mortgage she never fell into debt or borrowed any money, as far as I was aware, considering the double whammy of low household income and her drinking which must have drained her purse.

      * * *

      When we move into the house, to my relief, Mum’s visits to my bedroom – the Special Time which I have now come to dread – suddenly come to a stop. As a seven-year-old I understand as little about why they stop as I understand why they started in the first place, but I think it’s because now that Mum is sharing a bedroom with Reg she no longer needs me in the same way as before.

      In any case, in the last few months of living at Calder Bridge, things have begun to change. I am now much more aware of what is right and wrong and have been feeling uncomfortable about what she makes me do when she’s been drinking. I know we shouldn’t be doing it and I have already begun trying to resist her. But until now I have always ended up doing as I was told, especially as she is so forceful and aggressive when she is drunk.

      I think she is also drinking less as she is happier and more settled with Reg than she has been in a long time. I know that she always drinks more when she is feeling stressed or unhappy. So her demands for me to play with her seem to have ended, I have a new ‘father’ and Mum is drinking less. It feels like a brand new start and the house move seems to resolve the issues of my early life. We have security, stability, a home life and a family unit.

      That’s how it seems, at least.

      * * *

      In the first few months of living with Reg, Mum seems much happier. She loves gardening and sets about making the most of it. I think the garden looks a big mess and certainly isn’t going to win any awards, but Mum grows rhubarb, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, potatoes, cauliflowers and peas in the summer, tomatoes in the greenhouse, lots of flowers, СКАЧАТЬ