Please, Daddy, No. Stuart Howarth

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СКАЧАТЬ and breathed deeply of whatever was inside. They seemed quite friendly and I hung around on the edge, partly curious, partly desperate for company.

      As I grew braver I would go into the dens with them when they invited me, pick up the bags and breathe deeply, as I had seen them doing. The fumes from the glue bottles inside the bags would make my ears buzz in a pleasant way, and my unhappiness and pain seemed to become fuzzy around the edges. I got a feeling of love and peace and nothing seemed to matter quite as much. By the time I got home I was walking in a semi-dream. When I got inside and Dad hit me it didn’t hurt so much because I was already partly numb, and the glue would help me to fall asleep after my beating.

      Once I had discovered it I liked the feeling and I would go back to the railway lines almost every day for the next five or six years. The bigger boys became used to having me around and were happy to share their escape route with me because they thought I was funny, like a live toy, a sort of mascot I guess. They all knew who I was and what my family was like. We were easily recognizable because of Shirley being in her wheelchair whenever we were out. Sometimes I would bring the glue home with me and take it up to my bedroom, so I could keep the feeling going later, when I needed it.

      I always knew when Dad was angry with me because his upper lip would curl up at the sides, and the night that things got worse he was waiting for me inside the back door with that familiar look on his face.

      ‘What fucking time do you call this?’ he snarled.

      I couldn’t properly tell the time by then, but I had taught myself to recognize seven o’clock and I could see the hands were in the right place on the kitchen clock behind him. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t naughty, that I had got it right, but he didn’t seem able to listen to any reason and started to lay into me with a ferocity I had never experienced before, kicking and punching me so hard I was thrown around the room as if I weighed nothing and as if he didn’t care how damaged I might become. Whenever I was terrified, which by then was most of the time, I used to experience a sort of buzzing noise all around me, like a static charge. It would get inside my head as well, as if all the sounds around me were slightly distorted. The fear constricted my throat, making it hard to talk or swallow. My chest would always hurt from sobbing.

      ‘Get upstairs and get cleaned up, you little bastard,’ he shouted, kicking and pushing me towards the stairs. ‘And get to bed.’

      I struggled to obey, my body feeling broken and painful. I was so cross with myself for being naughty again and making my father so angry. Why couldn’t I just be a good boy? Why did I have to make him have to punish me? I had an overwhelming feeling of being so sorry as I sobbed into my pillow, wishing Mum would come home and give me a cuddle and tell me everything was all right. I tried to hug the wall, which was covered in footballing wallpaper, left over from when my aunt and uncle lived there. All I wanted was for my mum and my dad to love me, but I understood they couldn’t for as long as I went on being such a bad little boy. I knew my mum wouldn’t be able to cuddle me, because I’d heard Dad telling her not to. He said I needed to toughen up. Looking back now, I realize he was jealous of my relationship with her even then.

      I don’t know how long I lay there that night before he came upstairs to my room, pushing the door shut after him. I stayed as quiet as I could, determined not to do anything else to anger him. He lay down on the bed beside me and the familiar odour of his stale sweat enveloped me. He had never hugged me in his life, but he put his arm around me. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming again.

      ‘You know you’re a naughty boy, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You know I don’t want to shout at you, but you have to learn.’

      He started stroking me, which was comforting and strange. Then he took my hand and held it against himself, moving it rhythmically back and forth. The bed started 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 СКАЧАТЬ