Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed

by Stuart Howarth

  ‘Do you miss your Dad?’ she would ask sometimes, and I wanted to tell her everything but I just couldn’t.

  ‘There’s something you should know,’ Mum said one day. ‘David’s not your real dad. You had the same dad as the girls, George Heywood. But David wanted everyone to think you were his, including you.’

  I was devastated. Despite everything he had done to me and to the rest of my family, he had always remained my hero. I had always loved him because he was my dad, but now Mum was telling me even that was a lie. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She was telling me she had been lying to me all my life about who my father was, but how did I know this wasn’t the lie? Maybe he was my father and she just wanted to offer me a more bearable alternative. It felt like my head was going to burst.

  Chapter Eight

  THE MAN OF THE HOUSE

  Even though we had had the daily terror of living with Dad taken away, life was by no means easy. Our dad was in prison, and Mum had to give up work to look after Shirley and Clare, both of whom needed special care in their different ways, so we had virtually no income. The house was falling down around us, the wiring was all knackered and the smell of damp rising up from the cellar gradually infected every floor. It was so cold at night we would wrap ourselves in newspapers and heap all the coats in the house on top of us, and in the morning the insides of the windows would be frozen. The newspapers would leave me grubby with ink, but that was the least of my problems. I was used to looking dirty.

  Being head of a family like this would have been a lot for a grown man with a job to take on, never mind an eleven-year-old who had spent most of the last few years being beaten up and sniffing glue. The first problem was getting enough food so we didn’t starve. I started robbing bread, milk and potatoes off people’s doorsteps, remembering from my days on the milk round which houses to go to, including the ones that left money out under the mat. I didn’t feel guilty because I knew we were desperate. We weren’t bad people but we were on the verge of starvation and I had to do whatever I could to keep us going; that was now my purpose in life. Stuart the milkman had retired by then, so it didn’t seem like anything personal against him. I would have felt bad to steal from his round after he had been so kind.

  Some of our food I pinched from our local Presto store, wearing Christina’s duffel coat and filling the pockets with beans or whatever else I could get hold of. I’d worked out there was a blind spot in the mirror where they couldn’t see what I was up to. But I wasn’t as clever as I thought and on one occasion the store detective stopped me.

  ‘I’ve just seen you nicking chocolate,’ he told me. ‘What have you got under your coat?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Hold your arms up.’

  I did as he told me and two loaves of bread landed on the floor at my feet. ‘It’s for me mum,’ I said, unable to stop myself from crying. ‘Me sister’s in a wheelchair and we’ve got no money.’

  He looked at me hard, then bent down and picked up the bread. He pushed it into my hands. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘get out of here.’

  I ran home at full speed, but it wasn’t the last time I went shoplifting — it couldn’t be, we needed too much.

  I might be able to put the odd meal on the table, but I couldn’t do anything about our debts. There were always people coming to the door and letters flopping on to the mat, just like it had been in Smallshaw Lane. I got myself a paper round in order to earn some extra money, but it was nothing like enough to keep us afloat.

  Mum was beside herself with worry and kept asking us if we wanted our dad to come back to live with us when he was released. He’d started putting requests on the radio from Strangeways for us as a family and had sent home models he’d made from matchsticks, trying to charm us into believing he would be a reformed character. I wanted my dad back, but I didn’t want him in the house with us in case he started doing all the same things again. I thought if I could support the family then he would be able to see he wasn’t needed. I wanted him to see what a good job I had made of filling his shoes while he was away. I also wanted to show my mum just how much I loved her, even though I could never say it out loud. I was pretty sure she loved me too, although sometimes I got angry when I wondered why she hadn’t tried to protect me from him when I was small.

  Another source of emergency cash was all the junk that he had brought back to the house over the years, like the swords with the jewels in them, and the brass ornaments. Every weekend I would take something else round the second-hand shops trying to get the best prices possible. I got pretty good at haggling, sometimes visiting the same shopkeeper several times before finally agreeing a price. On the day the swords went a friend and I used them for duelling all the way to the shops. Even if I was now the main breadwinner, I was still only twelve years old.

  I discovered that if I joined the local church choir they would pay me two pounds just to turn up. I couldn’t sing a note, but I could mime. I also liked jumping up and pulling the ropes that set the church bells ringing, which would also set the vicar shouting at me. I used to love to listen to the stories from the Bible, so much so that the vicar came to see Mum and suggested I might benefit from a bit more religious education, but I was really only there for the money. Most of the other choirboys were from quite well-to-do homes and I didn’t fit in at all — I was just a boisterous little urchin running around getting told off all the time.

  I joined the Boys’ Brigade as well and got to play the bugle and drums and be in their football team. I liked the marching and the uniforms and during the football matches I liked the oranges they brought on at half time. I liked the uniform so much I tried to wear it to school, but that got me into trouble. It was clean and smart and made me feel proud when I wore it, like I was someone important, not just rubbish as Dad had always told me I was. I used to wear it round the house as well.

  I would practise the bugle at home and one of the neighbours came knocking at the door one day.

  ‘Is your son musically minded?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think he is,’ Mum replied proudly.

  ‘Does he enjoy playing that bugle?’

  ‘Yes he does.’ Now she was thinking he might be going to donate an old bugle he didn’t need any more.

  ‘Well,’ the neighbour said, ‘tell him if he doesn’t stop playing that thing morning, noon and night I’m going to smash it over his fucking head.’

  Mum changed jobs and went to work in a fish and chip shop, so some evenings she would bring us back leftover chips. Tina the Alsatian, Bobby and Trixie had gone by then and she had bought herself a border collie to replace them.

  With Dad out of the house I finally had a chance at making some friends. I would steal things to give them, to make them like me, and invite them back to the house for company, even though I was embarrassed to have them see the state we were living in. I could see it all through their eyes, with Shirley slumped in her wheelchair and Clare continually rocking back and forth on the sofa, lost in her own world. I used to take the mickey out of Clare myself sometimes, out of embarrassment. She would have her music so loud we had to get her a pair of headphones, so the rest of us could hear ourselves think, but she would sing tunelessly along to endless Don Williams Country and Western tracks at the top of her voice, a dreadful wailing sound that filled the house. In the end we banished her to her bedroom but we could still hear her as if she was in the same room, as well as the creaking of the bed as she bounced up and down.

  ‘Are you gay, Stuart?’ Mum asked out of the blue one day ‘It’s all right if you are.’ Why did it make me gay just because I wanted to have some mates stay over when I was twelve and thirteen? I thought it was something normal to do, not something abnormal. I was cross with her because of the things that had been done to me when I was little and because I was worried my friends would overhear her talking. I had never had a gay thought in my life, but I would no more have known how to start a relationship with a girl than f
ly to the moon. I was interested in girls but I was very afraid of sex, and I suspected every boy I met of being a paedophile. Other boys talked about touching girls the whole time, but they didn’t talk about love or any of the romantic stuff. I thought they were all disgusting, just like Dad and Granddad from the Pen with their magazines, the babysitter with his sweets and the men in the showers of the swimming pool.

  Although I was the class clown, my teachers were starting to tell Mum that I was very bright. I wanted to be loved and I realized that if I messed around in class and cheeked the teachers a bit it would make the others laugh, which would mean they liked me. But even though I messed about, I was still good in exams and did quite well. I hated myself all the time, because I knew I was bad and I wanted to be good. I would hit myself sometimes, and cut myself, just because I hated me so much. Why did I have to be the person I was? Why did I have to have the dad I did? Why did Christina and I have to share our clothes? I was full of hatred for my whole life and emotionally I stopped developing, frozen as a small, confused, hurt boy, even as my body was growing into a man, a big man. If anyone asked me how I got the bruises I would just say I’d been in a fight. I felt embarrassed, guilty and ashamed of my behaviour but life seemed to have no point. My family was all broken; Mum was always out and the house scruffy and dirty.

  I always loved Mum, and wanted her to love me. But none of us knew how to love. There was never any kisses or cuddling. Nobody ever came to watch me in a swimming gala or winning trophies playing football, or even on school sports days when everyone else’s parents were there, cheering and waving. We weren’t taught how to deal with sadness or anger and there were never any bedtime stories, apart from the ones Christina used to tell me. Fairy tales never existed in our world and no one ever lived happily ever after. I wanted to be cared for and to belong. I wanted the world to be a safe place where there were no demons or monsters. I wanted to fit in, but I never felt I did.

  I would lie a lot about Dad, making up stories of how I wanted my life to be rather than how it was. I would tell the other kids I’d been fishing with him at the weekend, or that he’d taken me for a ride in his car.

  I started running wild, staying out late, drinking and smoking. There was a warehouse nearby where they stored old cider bottles and a friend and I used to break in at night and drink all the dregs. Then we would steal a few crates of empties and take them back to the shop the next day to claim the refunds. Mum tried to get some control over me, but it was too late by then: she had already told me I was the man of the family. She couldn’t expect to be able to take it back and boss me about; she couldn’t have it both ways.

  I was too fearful of other people to become really violent. I could take a beating without too much trouble, but I couldn’t give one out. There was also a part of me that was frightened that if I ever lost control of the rage that I kept bottled up inside me, I might really hurt someone, and I knew what that felt like.

  ‘You blame me, don’t you,’ Mum would say whenever we fell out, ‘for sending your dad away.’

  I hated her saying that. Nothing could have been further from the truth. If anything, I blamed her for not doing anything to protect us all those years before.

  I could never feel sorry for myself because whenever I did I just had to look at Shirley and realize I had nothing to complain about. Her whole life she’d been stuck in a wheelchair with nothing to do, half her body not working, dependent on others who then abused her, and never knowing when she was next going to have a fit. If she never complained, what right had I got?

  Christina seemed to have been more disturbed by what had happened to her than Shirley. We never talked to one another about it, but she was obviously in a terrible state, literally tearing her hair out and smashing things up around the house in her anger and frustration at the hand fate had dealt her. She was becoming a beautiful girl and would eventually do well in beauty competitions, but that didn’t make her any happier. Whereas I seemed to survive by bottling my misery up, she let hers rip at full volume. I guess in the long run, considering what would happen when I finally exploded, hers was the healthier option, but at the time it seemed like she was permanently in pain.

  As the second Christmas since Dad went to prison approached, I found Mum sitting on the sofa in tears. ‘Christmas is always shit,’ she said through sobs. ‘We’ve got no money for presents or anything.’

  I tried to comfort her, and determined to do the best I could to give us a good Christmas. I felt so sorry for her. No matter what mistakes she’d made she had always managed to keep us together as a family, when many other women would have given up the struggle and had us put into foster care or homes. Even with all Shirley and Clare’s problems she had never given up on them. I was sure she had wanted Dad to love her just as much as I had wanted him to love me.

  I set off to the toy store in Oldham with a mission. I browsed around the shelves for a while, working out what I wanted and checking out the staff. I noticed that a lot of the other customers were already carrying plastic bags from the same store with purchases they’d made earlier. I waited until all the staff were looking the other way and crept up to the counter and took a bag. Going to the other end of the store, my heart thumping in my chest, I put the stuff I wanted into the bag and walked out the door. Nobody stopped me. I got all the way home and stashed the toys in my walk-in wardrobe. I’d got away with it and felt very pleased with myself. Dad had never been able to give us a good Christmas, but I was going to.

  I took the same bag back twice more with equal success, but what I hadn’t noticed on the third trip was that Jim, Mum’s collie, had chewed the corner of the bag. The manageress, however, spotted a boy with a chewed carrier bag and guessed I hadn’t just made a purchase. The moment she called me back into the shop and accused me of shoplifting I burst into tears. I was never far from tears, always living on a nervous edge. I blurted out my story about my sisters being abused and one of them being in a wheelchair, which usually got a sympathetic reaction, but she wasn’t interested. She rang the police and I was taken to the station and charged.

  Mum was convinced I’d done it to get back at her for sending Dad to prison, but it was nothing like that. I had just wanted to give us a good Christmas for once. The magistrate put me under a supervision order, and no one else knew about the toys from my other missions, which were already safely hidden in my wardrobe. On Christmas Eve I made Mum promise she wouldn’t shout at me if I told her a secret. I couldn’t bear being shouted at by anyone — raised voices bringing back terrible memories and making me tremble with fear and anticipation of pain. She promised and I showed her the presents I’d got for us. Instead of shouting and being angry she just cried, and the next day I felt proud of myself for having been able to provide the best Christmas we’d ever had as a family.

  Chapter Nine

  NO ANSWERS

  I didn’t want Dad to come back and live with us when I he came out, but I did want to see him again. Despite all the bad things he’d done to me he had taken me everywhere with him and I wanted to have that part of my dad back. I wanted a role model, someone to look up to, someone to protect me, someone to teach me. I wanted him to tell me he loved me, that I wasn’t a naughty boy and that I’d done well to look after the family while he was away I wanted to hear him say that he was proud of me. I wanted him to say he was sorry for the ways in which he’d hurt me. I wanted him to tell me that it wasn’t true what Mum had told me, that he was my real Dad.

  I thought all that would happen now I was the ‘man of the family’ and he had served his sentence, that we would be able to start our father-son relationship afresh. I felt I needed a dad, like all the other kids at school, whose dads had been standing on the sidelines when they played cricket and in the school hall when they won prizes.

  Because we had said we didn’t want him back when he came out of prison, he went to live with his sister Doris in Wales. Once I knew he was there I rang, and I can still remember their
telephone number by heart, even now. They agreed I should go to visit and I caught a train down through Llandudno to their local station. When I got there, there was only my cousin, John, waiting for me, so we walked to the house together, with me trying hard to hide my nerves. I was really pleased to see John. We had always had a real bond, like true friends.

  Auntie Doris had got a log fire going and Dad was there in her sitting room like it was the most normal thing in the world. He didn’t look any different at all, but I must have changed a lot in those two years. I felt a tremendous love for him.

  I was to share John’s bedroom, with me on the top bunk and him on the bottom; Dad was going to be in there too, on a camp bed. I thought I would be pretty safe on the top, as long as John was there. Dad had never done anything to me when anyone other than Mum or my sisters was around. Over the weekend John and I spent a lot of time together and I didn’t really get any time to speak to Dad.

  On the second night John and I had gone up to bed together and he was making me laugh by rocking his head around and making himself dizzy. Suddenly the door burst open. Doris exploded into the room with her slipper and gave me a good whacking. After two years of not being touched or physically hurt it unleashed a thousand terrible memories and feelings and I started to cry. The more I cried the more John laughed, because he was used to being slippered and thought nothing of it. The pain of the slipper was nothing compared to what I had been used to, but the pain of the memories it brought to the surface was almost unbearable.

  Doris stormed back downstairs, leaving me sobbing. When I eventually calmed down and regained some control I could hear her and Dad talking downstairs: ‘I thought he knew he wasn’t your lad,’ she was saying.

  Mustering all my courage, still stinging from her blows, I climbed off the bunk and went downstairs, telling myself I was a grown-up now, the acting head of the family, not wanting to be intimidated by them any longer. Doris was standing by the fire and Dad was on the sofa.