Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed

by Stuart Howarth

  Getting hold of steroids in gyms is never a problem; the problem is the side effects. Because they increase the testosterone in your system they tend to make you more angry and aggressive. Men who body build tend to want to show their bodies off, so they go to clubs, where all the other drugs are readily available as well, and get into the world of doormen and bouncers. That inevitably leads to the shadowy world of gangsters, and the pretty girls who hang around with them because they want to be part of something exciting and glamorous. I followed exactly this path and within no time I was snorting cocaine, amazed by how great I felt, my fears gone and my mood elevated. It even made me less fearful about sex; it seemed to be the answer to all my problems.

  The trouble was, when the effects of the coke wore off, I was back in my old depressing world. I was putting all my efforts into trying to find a place in life where I fitted in, but as soon as I sobered up I was left asking the same old question — why me? Why did all that bad stuff have to happen to me? Was I really that naughty?

  People were starting to notice that I was getting muscular and I felt good about myself physically. I began wearing shorts and T-shirts. I was hanging out with other bodybuilding guys at weekends. I felt like I was ‘somebody’ at last. I got to know all the doormen at the clubs, doing a bit of door work myself. It felt great to be able to walk to the front of queues outside pubs and clubs and have the barrier lifted for me by someone who recognized me. I had a smart BMW from work. I was starting to look as if I was amounting to something. When I was feeling good I could tell myself I could forget about my dysfunctional family and my broken marriage. I found myself talking to some of the big guys from the tough areas, fitting in, getting respect. This, I decided, was what I had been missing all those years; this was where I was meant to be. On weekdays, I was still working at Norweb and no one there had any idea what I was involved with in the evenings and at weekends.

  Looking back of course I can see that we were all taking steroids because we were full of fear, and we were all snorting coke in an effort to change the way that we felt. We all stuck together because like-minded people attract and we all wanted the same things, probably for very similar reasons. There are a lot of damaged people out there.

  I started a relationship with Lorraine from the hospital, who worked as a play specialist for sick children. Her family were very warm and welcoming, but I had trouble believing I was really part of it. They were such a lovely, family and I desperately wanted a family of my own. I still had all the same problems with insecurity and jealousy and I took more and more coke to keep my confidence up, to give me the buzz I needed. I’d taken to gambling as well, because it provided yet another way to change the way I felt in the short term. I started to get into debt on my credit card. Eventually I drove Lorraine and me apart. I always left people first because I was afraid they would leave me and I didn’t know how I would handle it. Lorraine never did anything wrong, any more than Angela did, and there was nothing wrong with the relationship, beyond the fact that I was sick.

  Mum had moved out of Platting Grove by this time and ran her own pub up in Oldham, although I still had keys to the place and Mum often asked me to check the house to make sure everything was OK. I sometimes used to go there to cry or to be alone. Whenever I wasn’t distracting myself and altering my mood by artificial means like drink, drugs, body-building or gambling, my depression was growing worse. I wanted somebody to look after me, to put their arms around me and tell me everything was going to be OK, but if anyone had tried I would probably have pushed them away. There seemed no point in going on, so I parked my car in the garage at Platting Grove, shut the door, fed a hosepipe from the exhaust in through the window and settled down with pictures of Shirley and my kids. I turned on the engine and waited to die. Within a few minutes I was asleep.

  I was shocked to wake up the next morning and find I was still alive. The engine was still running but the hosepipe had fallen out of the window. I switched the engine off and climbed groggily out of the car. Opening the garage door I was dazzled by the sunlight outside. It was a beautiful warm day and I was still there to enjoy it. I actually felt happy to be alive. I wondered if Shirley was trying to tell me something; maybe it just wasn’t time for me to go yet. I even wondered if perhaps I was dead and this was what it felt like.

  I made up with Lorraine and tried once more to get on with my life. We went up to Scotland for the New Year’s celebrations with a couple of friends, but I drank too much and the rage that was always suppressed below the surface, never allowed to escape, never resolved, exploded uncontrollably. I ended up smashing our hotel room to pieces in a miserable, furious rampage. It was getting harder and harder to control the demons in my head. Once I finished with the destruction I stormed through into the shower, picked up a razor and started slashing my hands, spraying blood around the room. We were about eight floors up and I tried to climb out of the window. Eventually I was calmed down and taken, shaking with emotion, to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. All I remember of the next few hours was hearing them saying they were going to have to staple me up. I have no idea what had caused me to lose it so badly.

  When I got home my doctor finally managed to get me in to see a counsellor, but I knew immediately from the questions she was asking that the woman had no idea how to deal with someone with my background. I got more comfort from the coke I was snorting in larger and larger quantities, the fruit machines and the Jack Daniels bottle. I kept taking the steroids because I liked the way I was looking. I started using sun beds to give myself a tan and visited a tanning shop in Ashton, where I met Tracey, a tiny, beautiful girl who was working on reception. I couldn’t get her out of my mind, which made me wonder if I really did love Lorraine. The other girls in the shop told me that their colleague liked me, which made me feel good. They told me she went to a club which was one of my regular haunts as well — in fact I was one of the people controlling the drugs and what went on there.

  The next weekend she was there, and just as beautiful as I remembered. I started talking to her friends, not wanting to make a direct hit on her, so she started dancing with my mate, which worried me, but by the end of the evening I had got chatting with her. I found out she was in a relationship with a guy she didn’t love and wasn’t happy. I told her I was in the same position. From that moment on we started seeing one another.

  A lot of my friends liked to take ecstasy when out dancing and I became curious. My body-building mate was always going on about how good it was, but I’d never got up the nerve to use it, having heard that it could kill you. I decided that if he did it, it must be OK, so I took one tab and it was fantastic. My confidence rose five hundred per cent and I even wanted to dance, something I never usually did. My legs and arms just started to move, able to get a rhythm they had never got before. It was even better than drinking and snorting coke. We started travelling to clubs in Leeds and Sheffield and Manchester every weekend, from Friday to Sunday.

  The weeks, however, were another matter, the comedown dragging my spirits back into depression and leaving me shaking, shivering, sweating and crying uncontrollably. I continually questioned why Shirley had to die, why I didn’t have a proper dad, why Dad had done the things he’d done. The nightmares and flashbacks that I could drive away during the weekends with drugs and dancing were unstoppable when I was sober.

  I moved in with Tracey and her two teenage kids. She was brilliant at dealing with my moods and jealousies. The drugs were the most important thing to me and I would often finish with her on a Friday and disappear off into clubland for two days, where I felt important and part of the scene, where everyone was friendly and no one ever judged or criticized me, only to crawl back and ask for forgiveness on the Monday. She was endlessly patient and understanding.

  Part of me really wanted to clean up my act and concentrate on my relationship with Tracey. I went back to the doctor and told her I thought I was in real trouble in my head and she booked me in to see a psychiatrist and
gave me some anti-depressants. The session with the psychiatrist went well; he could see there was a dark side to my life that needed addressing and I felt optimistic about the future. I asked Tracey if she wanted to go away to Blackpool for the weekend, thinking we could do some drugs and dance and have a good time.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’d rather go somewhere quiet, just the two of us.’

  ‘What about Wales then?’ I asked, not really thinking about it, but knowing it was quiet and relaxing.

  ‘OK.’

  Trevor lent us his camper van and we set off, holding hands, listening to music, feeling very in love, like we were making a fresh start. We found a campsite but the van wasn’t really that comfortable, so we changed our minds and decided to look for a guesthouse. We booked into a place called The Rose Tor and got given a lovely room. I was determined I was going to turn my life around from now on, stop knocking around with the door lads all the time, and cut down on the drink and drugs. After a lovely meal we went to bed.

  ‘If the weathers nice we’ll go for a walk tomorrow up the hills,’ I suggested, feeling really happy.

  The next morning the weather had turned a bit chilly, and Tracey wasn’t feeling too well, so we decided to scrap the walk. We wandered around the shops of Llandudno instead, not wanting the day to end, feeling romantic.

  ‘Would you like to see where I used to stay when I was a kid?’ I asked.

  We drove out into the countryside and reached the area where my Auntie Doris lived. The little Victorian houses dotting the roads looked so familiar and memories started to surface, many of them happy memories of things I used to do with my cousin John. There was a cafe, which had a submarine game we used to play, and then we passed the Spa shop.

  ‘That’s where I stayed with my dad when he had a flat over the shop,’ I said. A picture of the young prostitute came into my mind. A mile further on down the road we turned right down a hill and came to a row of cottages that included my Auntie Doris’s. It had changed a bit, but not so much that I wouldn’t have known where I was. I could see the railway where John and I used to play, and the quarry where we had climbed on the hoppers. They were good memories. I pulled up on a little bridge and stared at the house for a moment. I could even see their old outside toilet. I remembered how frightened I was to go out there in the dark, surrounded with spiders.

  ‘That’s where I nearly hung John, once,’ I said, looking down at the mossy bridge. ‘We were being James Bond. I was lowering him on a rope, having tied it round his shoulders and neck, and it nearly killed him. My uncle had to come out and rescue him.’

  ‘You all right?’ Tracey asked.

  ‘Yeah. I had some good times here. I really loved my cousins. John was probably the only real friend I had as a child.’

  After a few minutes I drove back up the hill to the main road and suddenly saw my uncle Stuart, standing beside a parked car. He stared straight at me and my heart skipped a beat. I’d always liked him, but he was still a reminder of my past. I stopped the van.

  ‘You all right, pal?’ he said, coming over. ‘You lost?’

  ‘You all right, Uncle Stuart?’

  ‘Bleedin’ hell, it’s Stuart. Look at the size of you!’ Before I could say a word he’d turned and shouted back towards the car. ‘Doris, it’s Stu! Come in, lad, come in.’ Before I could protest we were being swept into the house. My heart was thumping. I was suddenly petrified but I knew I couldn’t just drive off. Doris was as stonefaced as ever.

  It was all so confusing. They were offering us tea and the television was going, with news of a child’s abduction and murder and a Russian submarine trapped at the bottom of the ocean and so many images were flashing through my mind at once I couldn’t focus on anything.

  ‘Let me phone John and let him know you’re here,’ Stuart was saying. ‘He’ll be really pleased to see you. You were close as kids, you two.’

  ‘Does our David know you’re here?’ Doris piped in. ‘Do you want us to go and get him? I’ll send Lee over to get him...’ Lee was my youngest cousin.

  I wanted to burst into tears; everything was happening at once, going too fast for me to control. I certainly wasn’t ready to face my father after all this time. All my emotions were rising up like a tidal wave and I wanted to run out of the house before I was washed away. John turned up with his girlfriend, Angeline, and there was another round of introductions and more reminiscences.

  ‘That your Range Rover outside?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, it’s your dad’s, he’s lent it to me. Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘We need to get back,’ I lied, panicked by the casual way they all talked about Dad, as if it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to see him after all this time. ‘We’ve got friends waiting for us in Llandudno. Tell him I’ll be in touch.’

  I just wanted to get out. Doris was starting to talk about Dad’s second wife, Barbara, in the same derogatory terms she had always talked about Mum, claiming she was just after Dad’s money, just using him. I wasn’t interested in hearing whatever it was she had to say and blocked it out. Once we were safely in the car and driving away from the noise and the people my childhood memories came sweeping back over me in all their gory detail.

  ‘They haven’t got a clue, have they?’ I said out loud, unable to stop the tears from coming. ‘They haven’t got a clue how devastated our family was by what he did.’

  I was driving at a snail’s pace, the traffic building up behind me. I’d told Tracey more about my past than anyone else and she understood what I was going through. I wound through some country roads, without knowing where I was going, and pulled over, completely lost. I was feeling sick with depression and needed to clear my head. We got out and walked up some hills, holding hands. She put her arm around me to comfort me. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going to let this affect me or change my mind about our new start together. I wanted to show that my dad couldn’t still be affecting my life after so many years. But of course he was. I’d tried using drink, drugs, sex, the gym, working, starting a family, and nothing would clean him out of my mind. I needed her to take away the pain, to soothe me, but her gentleness aroused me, and my arousal brought back flashes of memory from the past, making me feel dirty and angry with myself for behaving like Dad.

  ‘I don’t want to go back home,’ I said when we got back to the van. ‘Can’t we just drive somewhere else?’

  ‘I can’t, Stuart,’ she protested. ‘I’ve got work tomorrow.’ ‘Can we do something tonight, because I just want to forget this.’

  OK.’

  I drove Tracey home, promising to come back for her later to take her for a drink. Her son had filled the house with his friends and I didn’t fancy going in. I drove the van back to Trevor, with Dad on my mind all the time. I wondered if he knew that I had done well with my work, that he had grandkids. I wanted him to know that I was a good boy now, not a naughty one. I wondered if he still had any feelings for me, any love. I felt the same urge to see him and ask him the questions that were spinning round in my head as I had when I was fourteen. Nothing had really changed in nearly twenty years.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE LUMP HAMMER

  I saw Mum as I went into the pub.

  C ‘You all right, chuck?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, my voice subdued. ‘I went to Wales today. I saw Stuart and Doris. They’ve no idea, have they? Dad’s just carrying on with another life down there as if nothing ever happened.’

  I could see she didn’t have time to stop and chat, busy getting ready to go out. It was always the same. If I ever tried to ask her questions about Dad and about our childhood she would brush me aside with ‘the past is the past’.

  I went to my room and sat down on the bed with my head spinning round. I must have fallen asleep and when I woke I felt the lead weight of depression, like my head was being squeezed in a vice. I went for a shower, feeling dirty, my childhood still running past me like a horror movie
on a constant loop, never stopping. I kept coming back to all the questions I wanted to ask Dad, the ones he had always avoided answering in the past. Did he miss me? Did he still love me? Had he changed? Did he want me back in his life? Why did he do what he did? Had he thought about the damage he had done?

  I got dressed and went down to the car to go and pick Tracey up. The next thing I knew I was back on the motorway to Wales, having switched my phone off so I didn’t have to explain any more to Tracey. I knew she thought I was lying, that I was going back on my promise to make a new start and that I was just going off to the clubs to try to drown all the demons that the trip to Wales had unleashed, but it was beyond my ability to convince her otherwise at that moment. I wasn’t in a fit state to explain anything to anyone. I couldn’t work out what was going on in my own mind anyway.

  When I got to Wales I stopped and turned the phone back on again. I dialled Doris’s number. Uncle Stuart answered.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, ‘it’s Stuart. Have you got Dad’s address?’ ‘Why? Are you going to write to him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I didn’t want to tell him I planned to go and visit Dad because I didn’t want all of them turning up as well. I wanted to talk to him alone. You can’t talk about personal things when other people are there, especially the sort of things I wanted to talk about. Stuart gave me the address. Thanks. Have you got the phone number?’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Doris knows that.’

  Doris came on the line and gave me a number. I thanked her and hung up. I rang the number but it didn’t connect to anything. A few minutes later, she rang me back. ‘Hi, Stuart,’ she said. ‘I think I may have given you the wrong number before.’ Doris seemed a little suspicious of me that day and must have been curious. Dad may even have told her about our past, given that he was closer to her than anyone. She said in her statement later that she called my dad for permission to give his number to me.