Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed

by Stuart Howarth

  She gave me the right number. I rang it, but still couldn’t get an answer. Pulling back out on to the road I started driving around, having no idea where the address Uncle Stuart had given me might be. I was becoming increasingly nervous the closer I got. My body was shaking with fear, just as it had done when I was a small boy preparing myself to go in through the back door and face a battering. I was trying to picture how I would break the ice when I found the house. How would I start the conversation? I decided to buy a couple of beers. That would be a good way to start, to make it seem more like a normal visit. I pulled up outside the Spa shop and went in. I picked up a couple of bottles and walked to the till, shocked to find John’s girlfriend Angeline on the till.

  ‘Hi, Stuart,’ she said. ‘I thought you went home.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve come back.’

  ‘Have you come to see your dad?’

  ‘Yeah, I thought I’d pop up to see him.’

  ‘Does he know you’re coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he was out before, but he should be back in by now.’

  I thanked her, paid for the beer and left without thinking to ask where his house was. I drove round a few more roads and just as I was about to give up and go home, I saw the green Range Rover Discovery John had been driving that morning. Assuming he had given it back to Dad by now, I parked the BMW and got out, so shaky and breathless that I forgot all about the bottles of beer.

  The house was a little way from the parking space, through a gap in a stone wall and up a track. As I walked towards it I saw the back garden, laid out exactly like our back garden had been in Cranbrook Street. I was about to go to the back door, as I had been trained to do, then remembered I was an adult, visiting another adult. It would be all right for me to go to the front. I walked round to the other side of the house, which looked out towards the sea. It was like walking back in time to our old home. I got to a gate and saw two silver dog bowls standing outside the door and stopped dead in my tracks. A vision of myself crouched down, eating from them while Dad masturbated, came into my head. If the dog bowls were here, I realized that the other side of the house must be the front.

  I was confused now to be approaching what felt like the wrong side of the house, terrified of what I was going to find. As I went through the gate I noticed there was a film flickering through the crack in some drawn curtains in what must be the front room and my heart beat increased as I remembered all those terrible times when he used to show us films. I was so filled with fear I could hardly breathe, but I knew I couldn’t turn back now. I wanted us to be able to talk, for him to explain things to me and for us to become friends.

  There was a bell by the glass door, just like at Cranbrook Street, and my hand hovered above it for what seemed like hours. A movement behind the curtains made me think he’d spotted me and I pressed the button quickly. There was no going back now. As the inside door opened his face appeared. He’d aged a bit, but he still looked the same. There was grey in his hair, making it look like he’d had it streaked. And he had the same twisted look round his mouth that I’d seen a thousand times before when he was beating or abusing me.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Stuart. Don’t you remember me, Dad?’

  Although he was over six feet tall, I was a good three inches taller than him now, and much stronger looking, but I still felt like a frightened little boy as he turned round and walked back into the house without a word, leaving the door open for me to follow. He went straight back into the sitting room and sat down on the settee again. I could tell it must have been where he was sitting before because there was the bowl of water on the floor and he had his shoes and socks off. Pictures of all the times he made me wash his feet in an identical bowl came rushing back. I could remember the vile smell and how dirty it used to make me feel to have to touch them.

  The whole room was laid out exactly like Cranbrook Street. There was a collection of brand new toy cars on display and I remembered how we never got any new toys when we were children.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked, still standing over him, twisting my body uncomfortably, still not able to look him in the eyes, even though I was now a grown man, casting them down to the floor in an agony of fear. That was the rule; to look at him directly could get me a beating. He didn’t bother to reply

  ‘I need to ask you what ... I don’t understand ...’ The words were falling over one another in my panic to get them out and my fear of how he would react. ‘Why did you hurt us?’ I started to cry.

  ‘I never,’ he snapped, as if he was already fed up with my accusations, as if he’d heard them a hundred times before and was bored with the whole subject.

  ‘I wasn’t naughty, Dad.’

  I couldn’t stop shaking and tried to disguise it by sitting down, crouching like I used to as a child. I didn’t want him to know how frightened I was, but I couldn’t think how to act more naturally either. The foot bowl was in just the same position it had always been, and so was his ashtray. He was sitting in exactly the same position he always sat in when he kept the belt or brass fork to hand to beat me. He started shouting at me and I was unable to stop the sobs, transported back in time a quarter of a century, as terrified as I had always been.

  He just kept on shouting at me, ranting and denying everything, furious that I dared to question him and accuse him. He leant forward and I saw the lump hammer, like a small sledge hammer, the sort that builders and steeplejacks use, on the settee beside him, in just the same place he would have kept the belt or the fork or a walking stick, or whatever other weapon he wanted to try out on me. He must have been expecting me. He was ready and waiting to punish me in the same way he always had. Or maybe he’d been warned I was on my way and that I was a big, dangerous-looking guy now and he felt he needed to defend himself. I didn’t have time to think it through; I just knew I had to get the hammer before he used it on me. I lunged across behind him and grabbed it. He was standing up to attack me, I was certain. I’d seen that look on his face so many times and I knew what it meant. I was about to get a battering and God knows what else. I lashed out at his head, desperate to stop him.

  ‘Please, Daddy, no!’

  I dropped the hammer and ran from the house without looking back, terrified he would be behind me, that he would grab me and pull me back inside to punish me for daring to hit back. As I ran down the hill I was sure I could feel his presence behind me, as I had done so many times before. I reached the car and tore open the door, started the engine and roared away, still not daring to look back. I saw the bottles of beer and hurled them out the window, without knowing why. Not knowing what to do, I dialled everyone I could think of.

  ‘Tracey, help me, something terrible s happened. I don’t know what I’ve done. Please meet me at the pub.’

  ‘Christina, you know I love you, don’t you? Please meet me at the pub.’

  ‘Seb, I don’t know what I’ve done. I think I’ve hurt him.’

  ‘Mum, please can you and Trevor come back to the pub straight away, something really serious has happened and I need to speak to you.’

  I rang one friend after another as I drove at full speed, trying to escape from my past. I was so terrified I wanted everyone to be there and to protect me from the demons. I didn’t know if I had really hurt him, but I knew I would have angered him and he would want to punish me. He would be coming after me because I had done something really naughty. I was shaking with the shock, driving as fast as the BMW would allow me, desperate to get to the safety and security of my friends and family before Dad caught up with me. I just wanted people to hold me and tell me everything was going to be OK. I wanted everyone I cared for to be together, frightened that he might come after them as well as me. We needed to be able to defend ourselves. My head was completely scrambled.

  When I pulled into the pub car park Tracey was already there, looking frightened and concerned. I jumped out of the car and ran to her.

 
; ‘Tracey, I don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve hit him with a hammer.’

  ‘What do you mean? What are you on about?’

  At that moment Christina turned up and they hustled me inside the pub and upstairs, away from prying eyes as I tried to stutter out the story. Other people arrived and I could see they were all looking at me in a funny way. The more I tried to straighten the story out in my mind, the more I babbled nonsensically.

  ‘Have you been taking drugs Stuart?’ someone asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve been to Wales tonight? You seem very calm if all this has just happened.’

  Calm? How could they think I was calm? I was shaking and hardly able to get my words out. It was starting to sink in that I had hit Dad with a hammer; the chances that he was still chasing me were slight, but the chances I had done him a serious injury were high. As my memory began to settle down the gravity of what might have happened started to sink in. For the first time ever I told them that Dad had sexually abused me too, just like he had Christina and Shirley, and God alone knew how many other people we knew nothing about. It was obvious from their faces that they were stunned. They’d all seen how he had bullied and beaten me, but it had never occurred to them what else he was doing when he came up to my bedroom, ordering Christina to wait downstairs until he came back. They had assumed it was just more beatings. Mum and Trevor could see things were serious, even if they weren’t sure quite what had happened yet. They went downstairs to clear the pub out for the night and then came back up.

  ‘We need to call the police,’ Mum said.

  As I calmed down I felt a terrible weariness coming over me. I didn’t think I could cope with what was going to happen now. I just wanted to kill myself and end the whole horrible thing once and for all. I looked round at Mum and Christina, Tracey and Clare, and I started to give them all hugs.

  ‘I’m going out for an hour,’ I said.

  I walked outside and got into the car. I couldn’t mess it up this time. I had to succeed. I took the car out on to the motorway and headed for a spot known as ‘Death Valley’, where I was confident I could drive myself off the road. I pulled over for a few minutes to compose myself, then drew out on to carriageway and accelerated the car up to its maximum. I wanted to end the pain and the misery once and for all, but when it came to turning the wheel and deliberately destroying myself I just couldn’t do it. Yet again it seemed something was stopping me. I drove on down the motorway for a bit and then turned, determined to do it on the way back. I pressed the accelerator to the floor and felt the power of the engine building. The phone rang, making me start. I picked up.

  ‘Stuart?’ It was Tracey, and I could tell she was crying. ‘Stuart, I love you more than anything in the world. Whatever you’ve been through we’ll get through it. We all love you. Your mum’s here and Christina and we all love you. We don’t want anything to happen to you.’ At that moment I knew I was loved. I lifted my foot off the accelerator and the engine settled down again. I was crying now as well. They were all there when I got back to the pub and I felt overcome with exhaustion. It was like walking through a bad dream, not really knowing what was real and what was my imagination, having no idea what was going to happen next or what I should do. ‘I’ve phoned the police, Stuart,’ Mum said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Stuart, I had to. They want you to phone the station.’ All I wanted was to go to bed and sleep forever, but I made the call. I told them I thought I might have hurt my dad, but they said there had been no reports of any incidents but that they would get back to me if they heard anything. I suppose most of the calls they get turn out to be false alarms or situations that just sort themselves out. They certainly didn’t make it seem like a big deal, which made the whole thing seem even more surreal and dream-like. I was pretty sure I’d done something very naughty and would deserve to be punished, but no one else seemed to be too bothered. I went to bed and Tracey hugged me and tried to reassure me that everything was going to be OK.

  A few hours later I was woken by a phone call. I answered it, still groggy and confused, not sure if I had dreamed the whole thing. A policeman from Manchester introduced himself, confirmed that I was the right person and then informed me that they had police at the back and front entrances to the pub and asked me to come out quietly My first worry was Tracey and then Clare.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, the memories of the previous day beginning to come together, ‘I’m a big bloke, but I don’t want any heavy stuff when I come out.’

  That’s OK, lad,’ he assured me. ‘That won’t happen.’ In fact the police were already inside the building. By the time I had pulled some clothes on they had arrived in the bedroom. They took me downstairs and there were more of them there. Everything had changed. They now knew what had happened in Wales and whereas a few hours before everyone, including me, had been wondering if I had imagined the whole thing, we all now knew it was real.

  ‘Is he all right?’ I asked. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘We need to talk about that, lad,’ the senior officer said. He cautioned me and then told me he was arresting me on suspicion of murder. Gradually I learned what had happened. I had caved Dad’s skull in with the hammer, but I hadn’t killed him instantly. He had been brain dead by the time Doris and Stuart and the others were alerted that there was something wrong, but he had died from his injuries by the time he reached hospital. It must have been terrible for the family when they got to the house; there was a lot of blood and his brain was hanging out of his head. The local police quickly got the impression that a cold, calculating killer had driven down from Manchester in his black BMW to execute this well-loved family man and upstanding employee of the local council.

  I asked if I could say good-bye to Tracey and the officer said yes. I was walking about in a trance, unable to believe that I had actually killed my own dad. Tracey was crying and my mind just went completely blank. As we came out into the fresh air I could see police vehicles all the way up and down the street, like they had come to arrest Al Capone. As they guided me into the back of one of the cars, I just kept saying, ‘It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault,’ like a child who’s been accused of breaking something.

  Chapter Fourteen

  FORGET EVERYTHING

  When we got to the police station they put me in a paper suit. Everyone seemed to be looking at me really nastily, as if I was some kind of killer monster and I suppose that was how it looked. There were people there from North Wales and they told me they were taking me down there, as that was where the crime had been committed. I didn’t want to be taken that far away from Tracey and Mum and Christina.

  The duty solicitor, Ash Halam, a nice young guy, came in to see me.

  ‘You are on a very serious charge here,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I replied, ‘but I have to get to work in a minute.’ I hated the idea of letting my bosses down and getting into trouble.

  ‘Forget work,’ he said. ‘You can forget anything for a long time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I was still in shock. I couldn’t work out what was going to happen next.

  ‘They’re going to take you to North Wales now and I’ll come down to see you there. If any other solicitors ask you if you want representation, tell them no. We’ll look after you.’

  I guess he could already see that this was going to be a big case and he wanted to keep it for his firm. I’ve since heard that the average cost of defending a murder charge is a million pounds, so I represented a lot of potential income for his firm. I nodded dumbly. I liked him and just wanted him to sort everything out for me, so I could go back to work and back to Tracey.

  Once we got to Wales they brought me a pie and chips, but I couldn’t swallow, I was too tense and frightened. It reminded me of how hard it was to eat whenever Dad was threatening me or hitting me. I just kept rambling on to anyone who was around: ‘I’m sorry about this. It wasn’t my fault. I was abused as
a kid.’

  Ash arrived after a few hours and I asked if I could see Tracey. I felt so alone and vulnerable and confused.

  ‘No, you can’t see her,’ he said. ‘She’s part of the investigation. They’re going to interview you now and you are not to say anything, leave everything to me. I believe you are mentally unstable, but you mustn’t say anything at this stage. I’m here to protect you and serve you. You are being charged with murder, and you could end up being put in prison for twenty-five years. So let me do my job. If you answer one question they will know you are capable of answering others. So even if they ask you if you want a drink of water, don’t answer beyond giving your name and address. Everything else is “no comment”.’

  I just stared at him in a daze. I was willing to do whatever he told me but it didn’t feel honest somehow. All through the interview I wanted to answer the police questions honestly, but each time I had to say, ‘no comment’. It continued to feel like a terrible dream and I wanted to wake up. They questioned me for more than forty-eight hours before they charged me with murder. I pleaded not guilty.

  The next morning I was handcuffed and then double cuffed to a security man who took me out to a police van, known as a ‘sweatbox’, where prisoners are separated into minute cubicles to be transported about. Ever since being locked in the cellar as a child I’d had real problems with confined spaces. Inside the van my knees were pressed up against the wall so I couldn’t move an inch, and the sweat started to pour from every inch of my skin.