Dad’s other sister, Doris, lived in a place called Penmaemawr, not far from Llandudno, and we stayed in a caravan at the Robin Hood camp in Prestatyn. I had never stayed in a caravan before and it all seemed like a great adventure. Being able to go to the seaside was so exciting and it reinforced the feeling we had that we were special and better than the other families around us in Smallshaw Lane. No one around our way ever went on holiday and I felt proud to have a dad who could organize such a treat.
Still being so small, just four years old, the beach appeared enormous. We spent the first afternoon building sandcastles and the girls were as happy as I was to be playing somewhere where there was no one picking on us or trying to spoil our fun. We felt completely carefree. At some point I decided to go down to the water by myself. The tide was out and I had to splash for what seemed like miles across the wet sand to get to the sea. The sky was bright blue above my head and the ocean stretched away forever into the distance, its edges lapping and rolling across my bare feet as I danced with delight in the foam, the rest of the world forgotten, including my family sitting behind me on the beach.
Back on the dry sand Mum must have noticed that I had strayed too far for safety, and Dad must have told her not to worry, that he would go and get me. I didn’t hear him coming, didn’t hear him calling me to come back, then suddenly I was aware of his presence and he was on me, grabbing me hard, hurting me.
‘You naughty little bastard,’ he yelled as he squeezed me with all his might. ‘I’ve been shouting for ages.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t hear you. I was splashing.’
‘You are a fucking liar. You’re just plain fucking naughty, aren’t you?’
He punched me to the ground, forcing my face down in the sand so that it filled my mouth and nose and eyes.
‘Do you want me to tell your mum that you have spoilt the fucking holiday and you’ve ruined it for your sisters? Do you? Do you?’ Every question was punctuated by another punch.
‘No, Daddy, please.’ I tried to speak through mouthfuls of sand. ‘I’m sorry.’
I was struggling in his powerful grip, unable to breathe, panicked. After what seemed like forever he yanked me up.
‘Get up, you little cunt, and stop fucking crying. If you don’t stop crying I’ll tell Mum you’ve been bad and naughty.’
As he let go of me I pulled myself up on wobbly legs, still able to feel his grip on my neck. Dad was cross with me and I just wanted to please him, and I didn’t want him to tell Mum how naughty I was.
‘Now get back there and put a smile on yer fucking face.’
My legs were shaking as I tried to run to obey him, shocked and unable to understand what I’d done wrong. I just knew that I must try much harder to be good, so he wouldn’t be angry with me, so he would love me. I tried to hold his hand as we made our way back to Mum and the girls but he pulled it away and walked too quickly for me to keep up as I stumbled along.
‘Have you been having a good time?’ Mum asked when we reached her, and I just smiled and nodded, not able to trust my voice to be steady.
Starting school, just a little way from our house, was an eye-opener, like my visit to hospital. The teachers were so kind and caring, so different from the adults in my home world. The kids in the class were different from the ones who played in our street and came round our house. They didn’t want to pull my ears or my hair or hit me or be nasty to me. When I realized what a friendly world it was it was like a huge weight lifting off my shoulders. There were crayons and pens and paints, drums and even a violin, which I’d never seen before, and I was allowed to touch them and use them and everyone encouraged me and praised whatever I did. No one seemed to think I was naughty. There were some familiar faces from our estate, which was comforting once I realized they were going to behave differently at school from the way they behaved in the streets and houses. It was such a relief to be somewhere that didn’t seem at all threatening or frightening.
Shirley had to go to a special school because of all her physical problems, so she would be picked up in a taxi or ambulance each morning, and Christina and I would make our own way to and from our school. One afternoon we came home to be told that we were going to be moving to Auntie June’s house in Cranbrook Street. From now on, Mum explained, it would be our house. Overcome with excitement, I begged for us to go round and look at it, and Dad agreed to take me and Christina round there.
It wasn’t far, so we walked there together, him striding ahead in his Wellingtons, us galloping along, trying to keep up as he cut down all the back ginnels and alleys. We’d been there before, to visit our cousins, who seemed spoiled to us, always having everything that we didn’t — carpets, wall lights, proper cupboards in the front room, a gas fire in a stone-built fireplace and fancy patterned wallpaper. The carpet was purple and seemed to blend with the walls. I would get into trouble for keeping on turning the lights on and off because I’d never seen anything like it before. They even had a proper television, which worked all the time and didn’t have to be hit. It seemed such a big, grand place, three storeys tall, and with its own cellar. We always wanted to stay there. Then it had been their house, but now it was ours and we could hardly contain ourselves.
As we approached the house that our dad was going to get for us, I looked up in awe. It stood at the centre of the terrace, its front door opening directly on to the street; the slot for the post low in the bottom of the glass front door — I hadn’t noticed that before. I never knew you could have a letterbox there. It seemed like another sign that we were moving up in the world. The roof rose up to pointed eves, like the sort of houses families lived in on television. As Dad let us in it felt like we were walking into a big private castle.
The other kids in Smallshaw didn’t let us get away without some teasing: ‘Think you’re better than us, do you, just because you’re moving to a private house?-’
‘No, we don’t,’ we protested, but we did.
Christina and I ran from room to room, exploring every nook and cranny as we went. The attic rooms at the top of the house were going to be ours, which we thought were the best rooms in the house. It all seemed so huge, and in our rooms there were even wardrobes built into the eves that we could actually walk in and out of. I stood at the window, staring down, thinking it was thousands of miles to the pavements below, feeling a delicious little frisson of fear when I got too close to the sill. I felt like the king of the castle. Dad told us the council might give us a grant so we could build a special bedroom for Shirley, maybe even installing a lift so Mum didn’t have to carry her up and down stairs all the time.
I did feel a little sad to be leaving some of the kids in Smallshaw who had been my friends, but I was too excited about moving away from the bullies to somewhere so new and different to grieve for long.
Chapter Four
A MORE PRIVATE WORLD
The house in Cranbrook Street that had seemed like paradise on that first visit became as much of a junk heap as our house in Smallshaw within a few weeks of us moving in, filled with Dad’s scroungings. He found a huge reproduction of Constable’s famous Hay Wain picture on the bins and hung it in pride of place in the front room. I’ve never been able to see that picture since without thinking of him.
The house needed rewiring, but he didn’t bother, so the electric heaters never worked. The power kept failing upstairs and we would have to run cables up the staircase in order to use any appliances or lights.
We moved to a new school and whereas we had fitted in with other kids from the streets of Smallshaw, most of whom were pretty much as dirty and scruffy as us, now I really stuck out. We tried to make some new friends, but I think we were seen as little more than street urchins by the neighbours. I got a bit of bullying and teasing at school for my appearance and because we obviously lived in poverty. Because I was getting used to Dad hitting me, every time I saw someone raise their hand I would immediately fall to the floor and roll into a ball, covering my hea
d to protect myself from the blows I knew were coming. It wasn’t long before the other kids realized how easy it was to get me to do this.
There wasn’t the same culture of neighbouring as there had been in Smallshaw; people didn’t just pop in and out of one another’s houses and sit around for hours. We were left pretty much to ourselves and Dad started to become more and more of a tyrant in his own little kingdom. He started shouting at Mum a lot, especially after he had been to the pub. She could never do anything right. Cranbrook Street was perfect for him, with the pub on one corner and the chip shop on the other, and he soon developed a regular routine. He would be up on his bin round early and then into the pub between twelve and three, before coming home for a sleep.
He always smelled of the bins and once he’d pulled off his sweaty wellies he would sit with his feet in a bowl or pan of hot water, ordering me to wash them and scratch them for him. It was a disgusting job because they stank so badly. I would peel his socks off for him and they would be stuck to his feet, rock hard with sweat after spending so long in his boots.
As he got used to having control, he started to become stricter about the way our lives were run. Finding he had so much power went to his head. We started to be given definite bedtimes, when before we had pretty much run wild. He didn’t like it if he had to carry Shirley around and if she wet herself he would shout at Mum to ‘get her fucking changed’. The atmosphere was getting much worse, but he was still my dad and I still loved him. I had no one else to compare him with anyway
After his afternoon nap he would wake up again about seven in the evening and go back down the pub. We would all try to get to bed before he reeled back in and the rows really started. We could hear the shouting and screaming downstairs and even then I knew Mum was getting beaten. He told her she had to get a full-time job to help with the money, and she did as she was told. Until then she had at least been there sometimes, or at least not far away, and suddenly she was gone for long periods of the day, and I felt lonely.
* The glimpses of nastiness and aggression that I had seen up at the pen, which had exploded on the beach in Wales, now became regular occurrences, and they escalated almost daily.
‘Don’t touch those fucking crusts,’ he would yell if I went to eat some bread. ‘They’re mine.’ Whenever any of us had bread we had to cut off the crusts and give them to him if we didn’t want a beating.
If I touched something that was his, or was naughty in any way, I would get battered. The trouble was I didn’t always know when something I was doing would turn out to be on the forbidden list, although in the end it covered just about everything I did.
‘Don’t pick your nose!’
‘Stop picking your nails!’
‘Stop itching your bum!’
‘Stop scratching your head! Have you got nits?’
‘Dirty legs!’
‘Dirty knees!’
‘You’re a filthy little bastard. Go and wash!’
‘Look at the mess you’ve left round this basin and taps!’ ‘Clean the fucking soap.’
‘Your bedroom’s a mess.’
‘You’ve left dirt on the sofa.’
‘Your coat’s dirty.’
‘Your trainers are dirty.’
He had started grabbing me regularly, screwing my face up in his powerful fingers and slapping me round the head. He would suddenly appear behind me when I was least expecting it and slap me or throw me against the wall, knocking the breath out of my body. I wished I wasn’t so naughty because it seemed my behaviour was making him really hate me, but I just didn’t seem to be able to work out what I was about to do wrong next.
I was constantly scratching and itching because I always had nits and worms; it was impossible to stop myself, and it seemed to drive him mad. Sometimes I’d itch my bottom and pull out a whole handful of worms.
To deal with the nits, he decided I had to have my head shaved regularly, for hygiene, which revealed the little points I had on my ears, giving him the opportunity to tease me, calling me ‘Spocky’ after Mr Spock in Star Trek, or Kojak. The other kids at school were taking the piss too, warming their hands on the top of my head in the cold weather. I hated it all.
The more he went on at me, the more I just kept thinking, ‘Please, Daddy, no,’ but he never stopped, never let up on me. He was changing, becoming angrier every day, and more and more disgusted by me. I knew I must be bad and naughty, because he kept telling me I was. I knew I was ugly, because he kept telling me, so I could understand why it must be so hard for my parents to love me, but I didn’t know what to do to make myself better and more lovable.
Sometimes I did know I was being naughty, and just wasn’t able to resist temptation. We were nearly always hungry and he would eat chocolate biscuits in front of us and forbid us from having any; then he would go out, leaving the packet in full sight. Like most small boys I was unable to resist sneaking one, not realizing he had marked the packet before he went, and would receive a battering when he came back.
‘Your dad’s going to adopt the girls now,’ Mum told me soon after we moved into Cranbrook Street, ‘so we can be a proper family. Even though you really are his son, Stuart, we’re going to play a game. We’re going to go to the courts and pretend that he’s adopting all three of you together, so the girls don’t feel upset.’
I was willing to go along with that; it was a game we had been playing at home for as long as I could remember.
When we got to court, playing the charade of a happy family, wearing the first brand-new clothes I think I’d ever had bought for me, we were sat in front of two men and a woman. They asked a few questions.
‘So, Stuart,’ the lady said, ‘do you like your new daddy?’ ‘I like my daddy,’ I replied politely, ‘but I don’t like it when he hits me and hurts me.’
I glanced over and saw the look of anger flickering across his face. I smiled quickly, as I always did when I was afraid, and everyone started laughing, seeing the little exchange as proof that my dad and me could laugh and joke together. The adoption was approved.
Our days fell into a regular routine. After I came back from school Mum would be at work and I would be sent out to play, even though he would insist that Christina and Shirley went to bed with him for an hour for a rest. Now and then I would be allowed to join them for the rest and on one occasion Shirley started playing with my private parts. ‘Gerroff Shirley,’ I said, indignantly.
‘Stop fucking about, you two!’ he barked. ‘Go to sleep.’ ‘She keeps playing with my widget!’ I protested.
Shirley was always there in the afternoons after being brought back from her special school, a constant scowling presence in the corner of the sitting room in her wheelchair, her arms folded and her face unhappy.
On the afternoons when I was sent out I knew that if I came back before I was allowed, which was seven o’clock,
I would be in for a battering, so I never did. Even if I needed to go to the toilet I would find somewhere outside rather than disobey him and go into the house. I was not allowed to use the front door, always coming in through the back garden, which was the one part of our home that was kept neat and tidy, bracing myself for the expected battering.
I seemed to be an outcast from every group of children in the area, so it was hard to find things to do to fill the hours until I was allowed back into the house. I didn’t look like the others at my new school because I was so dirty, I didn’t sound like them and I didn’t dress like them. But I no longer fitted in with the kids from Smallshaw either, because they thought I believed myself better than them.
There was a disused railway line running not far from Cranbrook Street and some of the older kids would make dens in the arches along the side, where they would meet to smoke and drink and sniff glue. If I couldn’t find anyone else to play with I would wander up there on my own, finding some comfort in the wind that always seemed to whip along between the embankments. I was only five years old and the bigger boys would watch me f
rom their dens, taking the mickey but not in a threatening way. They all had plastic bags and I would watch as they put them over their faces from time to time 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.
Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed Page 3