I saw them all later walking down the road, smoking cigarettes and laughing. The young girl was with them; she was still not talking and she still wasn’t laughing at all. But she was with them so it must have been okay. But what I saw disturbed me for a long time and I kept away from the train at night from then on.
This was my introduction to sex – cold, violent and animalistic. I didn’t want to know about it. Why would anyone want to do that?
But it didn’t put me off girls. In fact, soon after I developed a crush on a girl in my class. She had beautiful long blonde hair and she looked like a doll. I used to follow her around like a dog, hoping she would notice me.
I would offer to do things for her. ‘Do you need me to open the gate for you?’
But she just ignored me. She would flick her hair around and walk away as if I wasn’t there.
I tried to walk with her after school. ‘Can I carry your bag for you?’
She still ignored me. For a little while I walked behind her, back about fifty yards or so, hoping she would warm to me. But she didn’t.
She turned around and cried out, ‘Go away, or I’ll tell my mum on you.’ Then she picked up a rock and threw it at me.
That should have been enough to put me off but it didn’t. I was just hurt and didn’t understand why she would have nothing to do with me. But I had the feeling her parents had warned her about kids like me. I came from one of those bad families.
I pretended I got over her but I didn’t really. I still remember her like it was yesterday.
Dad seemed to prefer drinking in the pub to hanging around with us. I remember looking into his eyes on those nights he did come home drunk, and seeing tears welling up when he spoke to me. It was as if every night might be his last chance to tell us how much he loved us. Every night I caught a glimpse of him leaving in his eyes.
It was only a matter of time until it happened. I had felt this for as long as I can remember. Each night at home normally started with Dad coming home drunk and Mum waiting for him.
‘Where have you been, ya bastard? Call yersel a man? You don’t even bring home enough money tae feed yer kids.’
‘God, woman. Let me just sit doon and rest. Just gie us peace a minute.’ He always looked worn out.
‘Why don’t you just get the fuck oot o’ here and go back tae yer pals?’
As things got louder and louder, my sister Dot would grab Lisa, Alan and myself and hide us away from them. ‘Come on, kids, let’s go play in here where it’s nice and quiet,’ she would say as she led us little ones to the other room to hide in the cupboard. We knew Dot was as scared as we were but she tried to hide it.
The cupboard wasn’t that big. It was just an old second-hand wardrobe. But it was our only shelter. We spent a lot of time in there. I remember it was dark and with the door shut it was hard to hear a lot of what was going on outside. Dot would sing to us, trying to drown out the words they were screaming at each other, words that we shouldn’t have heard. But I always heard them, every word punctuated by the sound of breaking glass. Mum’s screaming always seemed to cut through no matter how hard Dot tried to cover it.
Mum never let up on him. She would have been waiting for hours for something to feed us and it never arrived. She had a lifetime of waiting for something that never came. She wanted to kill him.
‘I hate you. Why did I marry you?’ she would cry, half sobbing and half cursing.
Then, nothing. There would be silence. When it was quiet we didn’t know what was going on but we knew that was when it was most dangerous.
Some nights we would fall asleep in there, waiting for the all clear to sound. Then Dot would cover us up with Mum’s or Dad’s overcoat. I remember almost feeling safe then because I was able to smell them on the fabrics. The slight scent of Mum’s perfume mixed with Dad’s cigarette smoke made me feel a little calmer as if I was closer to them both.
Some nights I felt nothing at all. It was as if my senses would shut down to stop me from being scared. At those times the darkness of the cupboard swallowed me up.
After the shouting had stopped, Dot would slowly open the door. Just a little at first as if she didn’t want to see what had happened. The light would shine through the half-open door, blinding us, and we’d cover our eyes as she poked her head out. Then we would follow her as she walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to see what damage had been done this time. Broken glass and smashed furniture was all that was left of our lives. That and the sound of Mum crying in the bedroom again.
Sometimes, if he hadn’t already left the house, Dad would bundle us out of the wardrobe.
‘Come on kids. Everything’s gonnae be aw right. Yer dad loves you.’ That same look on his face every time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he would whisper.
Dad didn’t know how to love us. His dad never showed him.
* * *
The fights were getting more intense, more extreme, and we were in more danger. Sometimes physically, but more and more of the time, we were in emotional danger. Some nights we were in the cupboard for hours waiting for the battle to subside, other nights we couldn’t leave the cupboard at all. The police never came to stop all the fighting. They must have had bigger fights to stop or families who were in bigger trouble to save, but all I know is they were never there to save us.
We would have to get up for school early and leave the house – walking over broken glass and blood, with nothing to eat, no clean clothes. Dot would say, ‘Just keep moving, I’ll find something for you to eat at school.’
She never really did. She had no money just like the rest of us.
On one occasion Mum locked Dad out of the house because he came home too drunk. I remember Dad calling out to be let in. ‘Come on Dot, I meant to come hame but it was Shuggy’s birthday. I had to have a wee drink wi’ him.’ He wasn’t angry sounding, just unhappy.
But Mum just screamed from the safety she thought she had behind the locked door, ‘I’ve had enough of you. You’re no comin’ in here.’
Dad suddenly went quiet . . . and then bang! He punched a hole in the front door. This was a heavy fire door so I don’t know how he did it. Then he put his hand through the hole he had just made, opened the door, came in and sat down, and began to calmly watch television as if nothing had happened. He never said a word.
The silence was frightening. Mum ran to the bedroom and came out with a stiletto-heeled shoe and started screaming, ‘I’m sick of you!’, hitting him on the back of the head with the heel. Blood spurted out everywhere. I know one of them ended up on the floor. You can guess who. Dad passed out in the chair.
Dad didn’t hit us, as far as I remember. Mum was the enforcer of the family. I don’t remember seeing Dad hit Mum either, but I know he did. It was probably so fast and deadly that we looked away and missed it, thank God. But some mornings I would get up and there would be Mum with a black eye or a fat lip, sitting alone in the kitchen crying while Dad was unconscious, snoring on the bed in their room, sleeping it off.
It seemed that in those days it was normal for husbands to hit their wives. All Mum and Dad’s friends seemed to do it at some time. Their wives would turn up on our doorstep with black eyes, crying to Mum, saying, ‘That’s it. This is the last time. I’m never goin’ back. He’ll never lay a hand on me again, I swear to God.’ They always went back and the violence never stopped.
It wasn’t right. We always knew it was wrong and sometimes we wanted to hurt Dad for hitting her. We were learning that lashing out was the way to solve problems and we were hitting each other and kids at school. This was all wrong.
Someone was messing with the kids. There was a family who were friends of Mum and Dad’s who were around all the time. If they weren’t at our house we were at theirs. Mum worked nights with the wife, wherever they worked, and they spent a lot of time together.
We used to go over to their house and swim in their aboveground pool. In the summer it was really hot so we loved this. We would swim in t
he pool with these kids and I remember the girls, who were my age, not much older, would swim underwater and touch me and when no one was around they would take off their swimmers and want me to look at them. I thought this was just normal. Maybe it wasn’t normal, but it was where we came from.
Something weird was going on with our parents too. I’m not sure what it was; we didn’t know anything about anything. Was Dad having an affair with the wife? That was more than likely. Maybe Mum was the one playing up, who knows?
They had a son who was a few years older than John and he was a fucking deviant. It seems he was messing around with all the kids. We have never talked about this with anyone; in fact, we have never spoken about it with each other, so this is hard to write about. I am writing from what I feel; I don’t really know any facts. But what I feel has driven me to the brink of insanity for many years.
I have spent most of my life ashamed of something that I didn’t understand. I have been subconsciously trying to kill myself. I’ve tried to drink myself to death for a start, but I tried anything that would keep me from facing things in my life that were too hard to look at. And there were lots of things that I didn’t want to face. This period in my life seems to be the key to the whole mess.
I always used to say to Jane, my wife, that I thought my childhood was just normal. And sadly, in some ways it was. By that, I mean that there are a lot of kids who have gone through the same horrors that I have. But that doesn’t make it right. I have been afraid all my life and for good reason, not only because of this one person but because of many. The things I went through then and since have scarred me almost beyond help.
I don’t remember him touching me but I’m sure he did touch some of the other kids so why should I be any different? I wonder if my mind has blocked this time out of my memory. But it will come back to me sooner or later. Then, if I have to, I’ll find him.
* * *
I can still feel the touch of drunken strangers grabbing me as I walked through the living room. The smell of booze and cigarettes on their breath as they tried to touch or kiss me. I wanted to be as far away as I could get from our home.
I used to go and stay at a friend’s house because I felt safer. Until one night my friend’s brother came home. He had been away for a long time in jail. In the middle of the night he came into the room where we were sleeping and told us that he was going to show us how men practised sex.
We knew nothing, we were too young to know what was going on, but by that time I could recognise danger when it was near me and I knew it was near me at that moment. I remember this man trying to fuck me. I was terrified. I screamed and kicked until I got away and I left the house as quickly as I could. As I jumped out the window I looked back and I remember not liking what was happening to my friend. His own big brother was trying to fuck him. But I couldn’t help him. It reinforced to me that nowhere in the world was safe and I was on my own.
Sitting on the smokestack on top of the train, I started to shiver as I watched the sun setting again. I seemed to sit there a lot. I should really have gone home but I had nothing to go home for. So here I was, staring at people who didn’t even have the time to look up, never mind to see me as they hurried past. Grabbing last-minute things to feed their families on a cold winter’s night. Another day was gone and another long night was on the way. I wondered what it was like to feel warm and safe and happy. I hadn’t felt that for a long time. I wasn’t sure I had ever really felt it. If I had, I had forgotten when. Rain clouds were rolling in and the wind cut right through my clothes and chilled me to the bone. I kept my feet constantly moving on the cold dark metal of the train, trying to keep blood circulating as another gust howled through the shops and down the street. Mums were calling their kids in for dinner. Warm lights were starting to glow inside the houses all along the streets of Elizabeth West.
From up here everything looked nice. Just like it did when we first moved here. The streets were all neat and the houses were all in perfect rows with concrete paths and small iron fences in between each house. You wouldn’t know what went on in those houses unless you were inside. I’d been inside, I knew what went on. But from the top of the train it looked perfect. So I shut my eyes and tried to imagine for a minute what it should really be like for kids like me. Then the smell of piss wafted up from inside the train and I suddenly remembered where I was and why I was sitting there.
My house was not safe. It wasn’t warm. There was no one there to look out for me. I was safer outside in the rain than I was in my own bed. Out here I could see the predators as they staggered drunk and menacing towards me, and I could run away. But at home, they were invited in, even allowed to get so close they could do whatever they wanted. No one seemed to care.
Sitting on the smokestack on the top of the train, the wind bit as it touched my face but I felt safe up there. At least for the time being.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
the last bit of light
It was around the summer of 1965–66 that things really changed for us. One morning, I woke up and Mum wasn’t there. I didn’t wake up expecting to find her gone. I didn’t hear any fighting in the middle of the night. There was no breaking glass. No swearing or cries for help. There wasn’t even any shouting. She was just gone. The last bit of light in our lives was put out that day.
I went to school and when I got home she still wasn’t there. We had to feed ourselves and then we waited for her to come back. She always came back. She’d told us wouldn’t leave us. She loved us too much.
It took a few days to realise that she was not coming back. I think it really hit home when we kids were all alone and my sister Dot was crying, looking through the kitchen cupboards, trying to find something for us to eat.
We never heard from Mum, and Dad didn’t want to talk about it, except to say, ‘Yer ma left ye. She deserted ye. I’m the only one who cares for you lot.’
If he cared so much, he showed it in a funny way. We hardly saw him at all except for when he’d run out of money or needed to get clothes or a bed to sleep it off. Otherwise he was gone too. He was lying too. He didn’t care, no one did. From then on it was a matter of just trying to survive. It was us kids against the world and we had to stick together if we were going to have a chance.
Dot would get ten dollars or so from Dad when he was drunk and hide it so she could buy a sack of potatoes, and that was pretty well all we had to eat.
We would go to the shops and buy this big bag of potatoes that we would drag home because it was too heavy for us to carry. Then we’d keep them in the laundry. At least now we would have something to eat for the week.
The house fell apart without Mum to maintain some sort of order. Dot tried to do it but she was dealing with too much for any young girl her age. She was taking over all Mum’s duties – cooking, cleaning, trying to keep us all from falling apart. Even trying to make sure Dad was all right. But Mum couldn’t do that so Dot didn’t stand a chance. Dad wouldn’t eat and hardly slept unless he passed out.
On top of this, Dot was still at school and struggling with normal things girls had to deal with. But she was not a normal girl. She was all we had. And these were not normal days. Even her best wasn’t enough to help the four younger ones she was trying to raise. I’m sure I heard her cry at night in her bed. She didn’t cry in front of us, though; she put on a brave front. But I knew inside she was just like me – afraid. We all were.
At that time Linda brought some stray cats to the house. She must have learned this from Mum because Mum always brought strays to the house. Dogs, cats, people, you name it. I remember coming home from school starving and there was nothing to eat in the house. The sack of potatoes that Dot had bought was just about empty and I had to dig around the bottom of the hessian sack to get the last of them. Unfortunately for us, the cats had shit in the sack. I was too hungry to not eat the spuds but I was gagging at the sink as I washed the shit off the potatoes before we could cook them. I had to try not to think about i
t when I ate or I would have been sick.
The cats, by the way, were as neglected as we were. They had been running loose on the street, trying to survive, and eating anything they could find. They were skinny, mangy and had not been taught how to live in a house. I think the cats reminded Linda of how badly life had treated her. I felt sorry for them too, we all did, but when they insisted on shitting on the only thing we had to eat – the potatoes – I wanted them out of the house.
The cats decided that this was where they would go to the toilet from then on. I was beginning to dislike them even more. I learned from it though; I learned that sometimes in life you had to do whatever it took to survive. This was a big help to me later in life. The music industry was full of shit and we would have to wade our way through that. So it came in handy.
In a matter of months there were holes punched in the walls and all the furniture had been smashed; the house was dirty and the yard overgrown. Springs were poking out of the couch and out of the dirty mattresses we had to sleep on. We had no sheets or blankets except for what we got from the Salvation Army – hard woollen blankets, covered in stains. At night I couldn’t sleep from the constant itching. I was breaking out in rashes and was covered in bites. I would lie in bed thinking this was as bad as it could be and then the next day would come and I would realise I’d been wrong.
I had by this time come to the conclusion that there was no God. I knew it wasn’t anything like they told me in Sunday school. There was no one looking down on us from above and there was no heaven and no hell. Or if there really was a hell I was surely living in it. The church never helped us except with the odd pair of trousers or other pieces of clothing. I still have issues with the concept of an all-seeing, omnipresent God looking out for everyone. I grew out of that at about four years old. Maybe I’m bitter and jaded but I don’t think so. I liked the Salvation Army because they had looked out for us a few times but that was about it.
Working Class Boy Page 13