It was around this time that Mum bumped into her old friend Eileen at the bus stop in town. Mum and Eileen used to hang around together in the 60s and I remember from old photos Eileen always used to have a big blonde beehive. They had drifted out of touch and hadn’t seen each other for years, but fate brought them together that day at a time when we were at our most desperate.
Despite not seeing one another for years, it turned out they only lived down the road from each other. A few days later, Eileen called Mum and asked if she’d like to go to St Stephen’s Club with her one night. They were having an open mic night and she thought it would be good for her to get out. Inevitably, Dad refused to go, so Mum went alone, but the following week he went along and it soon became a regular thing – most importantly, once he was there, Dad couldn’t help but get up onstage. Suddenly he was singing in front of an audience – something that he hadn’t done for years.
Mum’s meeting with Eileen and their trips to the club gave Dad a new lease of life and reignited his passion for performing. Now he had something to look forward to every week and it was the one night of respite Mum got from the madness. Seeing him up there was like taking a time machine back to his heyday – he was confident, swaying to the music, and he didn’t miss a beat. Anyone from the old days would have just said – ‘There’s Teddy Mac, smashing it again onstage.’ He was word perfect and had the crowd, such as it was, in the palm of his hand. You could have heard a pin drop as he sang ‘Here in My Heart’. That’s when we realized that music could be the key to controlling things. The stage was his safe place in a world that felt increasingly terrifying and alien to him. With that in mind Mum and I set up the record player in the back room and brought down some of his old records. We could have cried with relief when we saw his reaction – he was like a different man. Suddenly he would spend hours selecting records, putting them on, taking them off again and singing. His voice still sounded as good as ever. There would be a few occasions when he would fly off the handle, but you could tell that he had started to enjoy singing again. His voice had always brought joy and transported people away to another place; now it seemed it was doing the same for him.
Chapter 15
Of course, music could only offer a reprieve rather than a cure. By autumn 2014 things at home were getting worse. Dad’s rages were becoming more regular and extravagant. One weekend I went up to visit. Mum had gone to bed early, as she was so exhausted, while Dad and I sat and watched TV. Everything was fine. All of a sudden, Dad jumped up from his chair and ran upstairs. I’ve never seen him run so fast in his life. The next thing I heard all this screaming from upstairs.
‘No, Eddie, stop it! Eddie!’
‘I’ll break every bone in your body!’
I ran upstairs into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Mum was sitting bolt upright, with her hair everywhere, looking completely startled. The bedcovers had been ripped from the bed and Dad was stood there threatening us both. He looked possessed.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘Make sure she keeps out of my sight. I’ll throw her through the window if she comes anywhere near me,’ he said. He pushed past me and stomped downstairs.
‘Did you say anything to him? Did he hit you?’ I asked Mum.
‘He just came in and grabbed my hair and started shaking my head…’ Mum said.
She was in shock. That rage had no logic and it went on for hours. Eventually he agreed to go to bed while Mum stayed in the lounge. I hardly slept that night. In the morning, he had no memory of what had gone on the night before.
Even though Dad had never been let loose on any important jobs around the house, he had always pottered about, tinkering with things in an attempt to help and keep busy. But that all stopped as the illness got worse and things really started to fall apart. I’d gone up there another weekend to do some jobs in the garden to keep on top of things, and outside the front door and around the side of the house the paving stones had become mouldy and were slippery – I was worried Mum and Dad would fall on them and the last thing we needed now was a broken leg. I went down to B&Q and bought some mould cleaner as well as a new brush to make it all safe. I’d spent about two hours cleaning and brushing outside the house, all the time with Dad standing there, glaring. I knew he wasn’t happy about something but I didn’t dare say anything as I sensed he would go for me. I was just finishing off when he came storming out of the house, grabbing the brush from me and pushing my chest.
‘Piss off! Get out of here. It’s MY GARDEN! I do things my way.’
‘Dad…’
‘Piss off out my garden or I’ll break every bone in your body,’ he added. By now his face was almost touching mine and his eyes made him look possessed.
This wasn’t a threat. If I didn’t move there and then he’d kill me.
‘Fine. Do it yourself,’ I snapped and slammed the door behind me. I went into the front room, where Mum was having some tea.
‘What’s happened?’ she said.
‘I don’t know what I’ve done. I was just cleaning up to make sure you don’t slip…’
All of a sudden the door burst open and Dad came storming into the front room.
‘What you doing here? Get out! Go on, get out! Piss off!’
‘Dad, I’ve spent the whole weekend doing the garden. Why are you having a go at me?’
‘You know why I’m having a go…’
I stood up.
‘No, Dad – I don’t. You tell me why you’re having a go at me.’
By this time we were eyeball to eyeball. I was PISSED OFF. He’d been moaning and threatening me all weekend and this was the final straw.
He laughed in my face.
‘Piss off, you’re nothing! And you know why you’re nothing…’
I knew exactly what he was going to say and it terrified me.
‘Go on, Dad. You tell me why I’m nothing,’ I shouted in his face.
He jabbed my chest with his finger.
‘For years I’ve been ashamed of you,’ he said.
My stomach sank.
‘Well, go on, then. You tell me why you’re so ashamed,’ I shouted.
I’d never been so cocky towards him in my life and I knew, any minute, if this continued he’d punch me.
‘You’re nothing to me because of what you are. I can’t tell anyone I know about you. I’m ashamed of you and so is everyone else. So is your mother but she won’t say it’cos she’s too soft.’
‘Oh, so that’s it then, Dad. Because I’m gay.’
Despite being so cocky with him, it was as if my insides had shattered. It felt like my stomach had fallen through the floor. This wasn’t like the old Dad, he normally hated confrontation for the sake of it; if anything, he was a peacemaker and the one always trying to diffuse everything, but this illness made him furious all the time.
‘Yeah, because you’re gay. And because me and your mum won’t have any grandchildren.’
‘Fuck off, Dad!’
I’d never sworn at him before in my life.
There was a scuffle between us and Mum pulled us apart.
I went upstairs swearing and slamming all the doors in the house. Dad went out the back to his shed.
Mum came upstairs. ‘Simon, are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine, Mum,’ I said, pretending it didn’t bother me. ‘I’m just going to go out for a minute. I need to get some air. Don’t worry, I’m OK.’
I got in the car, reversed out the drive and drove to the traffic lights. And it started. Full-on tears. I was utterly devastated. I was sobbing and crying so much that I could hardly see where I was going. I pulled off at the first turning, which was Whitebirk Industrial Estate.
I couldn’t understand what was going on. When I first came out to Mum and Dad, the main thing I was worried about was them being ashamed of me and ultimately letting them down. I had kept it hidden for years because, like most gay men at the time, I didn’t want to let down the people I loved. When I had told the
m, Dad was the one who stood up for me the most. He was the one who calmed everything down, always telling me I had to live my life the way I wanted. ‘Bugger everyone else, Sime!’ he would say. ‘You know what’s right for you, as long as you don’t hurt anyone.’
But that moment, when he said what he did, I felt like everything he’d ever told me was a lie. It broke me. My worst fear had been realized and I felt like I’d failed at the one thing that I didn’t want to fail at – to make my parents proud. I cried like I’d never cried before.
After I calmed down, I drove back to the house, dreading what I was going to walk into. I was terrified Dad would fly off the handle again. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus but I was determined not to stand down or let anyone know that what he had said had affected me so deeply.
I opened the front door and went into the back room.
‘Sime? Is that you?’
‘Yeah, Dad.’
He was surprisingly happy and cheerful. What the hell was going on?
‘I’ve just made some tea. Do you want one?’
Then he popped his head out the door, smiling, without a care in the world.
‘I got some donuts from Morrisons so have one if you want. Have you been down town? Was it busy?’
It was like the trauma of the hour before hadn’t happened. I couldn’t understand it. I just carried on and pretended nothing had happened. It was complete madness. Nothing else was said and we all continued to live this dysfunctional life.
***
Mum turned 70 at the end of November, so I decided to throw a surprise party for her with the rest of the family. The theme was Dynasty vs France – two things Mum liked – the glamour of the Carrington family and holidaying in France. I didn’t tell Dad as I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep a secret.
By now he was regularly refusing to go out with Mum, sometimes even when the taxi was waiting outside. She was going through such an awful time at this point, I just wanted her to have one night that was all about her.
I realized that I’d need a Plan B in case Dad refused to leave the house that night, so I enlisted the help of Uncle Colin. Sure enough, an hour before we were about to leave, Dad announced that he wasn’t going out. The only thing that persuaded him was the fact that I told him I’d organized some food in a restaurant and he would have a nice meal. He had no idea it was Mum’s birthday, which was probably a blessing. Luckily the night was great and Mum loved every minute of it (despite not remembering much after being given too many Jägerbombs by one of my cousins). Everyone turned up in French costumes – wearing strings of onions and garlic and berets. Dad got onstage and sang his songs. For a moment it felt like everything was normal and, at the end of the evening, we filled the taxi with Mum’s presents, happy everything had gone so well.
But the next day (on Mum’s actual birthday) as she was opening her presents, Dad started saying terrible things to her. We both tried to ignore it. ‘Why are they giving her all these cards? I’m the star! She’s nothing.’ She was sitting around with hundreds of cards and presents – I’ve never seen so many gifts for one person – but Dad was tutting and making horrible comments. I knew he was ill, but the nature of this illness is that it plays tricks on you because the person in front of you looks the same way they always have. You forget that the person is ill and you don’t understand why they can’t control their behaviour. It seemed the ultimate cruelty that Dad could still stand up on a stage and be Teddy Mac, the name that he used down in the Midlands, like he had the night before. He still knew how to do that, but he didn’t know how to be decent to those he was supposed to love. It was hard not to think that, yet again, he could turn it on for strangers but not for us. It felt like everyone else had the brilliant Ted stage show, while we had to mop up backstage.
After the disastrous few years we’d had at home, it was decided that Christmas 2014 would be spent at my flat in London. Mum and Dad came down on Christmas Eve and I’d planned a surprise trip to The Shard. We walked down the South Bank and stopped off at a pub on the way for a glass of wine, but Dad was complaining about everything. I prayed that his mood would change as I really didn’t want another Christmas to be ruined. A group of workmen were having an after-work drink and Dad sidled up to them, chatting away like he’d known them for years. They were all looking at each other as if to say, ‘What is this guy on about?’ Dad thought they were kids, and he was talking to them as such. I tried to get him away, as I could sense they would take the mick out of him, but he was having none of it.
‘Come on, Dad, come and sit with us.’
‘No way! I’m talking to the real stars,’ he said.
‘Simon, just leave him, he won’t come back,’ Mum said.
So eventually I just sat with Mum with one eye on Dad, watching how the guys were behaving around him. A couple of the younger lads tried to take the mick out of him, but then thankfully the older bloke with them told them to leave it. He looked over and mouthed to me, ‘It’s OK.’ I was so thankful for those simple words. He understood totally what was going on and went along with it, taking my dad to the side away from the rest and having a simple conversation with him.
‘Right, I think we need to go and rescue them,’ I told Mum.
We put on our coats and wandered over. ‘Right, Eddie, we’re going now,’ said Mum.
‘Right, mate. It looks like you’d better go before they all leave you,’ said the guy. Dad put on his coat and made his way over to Mum.
‘Thanks for that. He gets a bit confused sometimes.’
‘Don’t worry, mate. I know what you’re going through. My father-in-law’s the same. I know how it is…’
I shook his hand and walked out – these simple moments of kindness from complete strangers meant so much. Looking back now, Mum and I had felt so incredibly alone in all this, but these occasional simple gestures had been a lifeline to help lift us, momentarily, out of the madness.
We made our way up to London Bridge and to the entrance for The Shard. After we handed over our tickets we had to pass through an airport-style security gate, so it was the usual procedure – everything had to come out of our pockets, our coats had to be scanned and our belts taken off. Of course, at the time I didn’t realize how terrifying this would be for Dad. It was a drama to say the least. It took me a good five minutes to explain to him that we had to take our coats off as well as empty out our pockets. The staff looked at us like we were crazy, smirking at each other. With no idea about Dad’s condition, they just thought we were idiots. We eventually made it through and then into the lifts up to the viewing floor. Again, I had no idea how much it must have scared Dad, being up so high. It was a beautiful view and the sun was just setting on a clear day, so the whole city was being shown in its glory. But Dad was having none of it. He got hysterical every time Mum and I stepped towards the windows and wouldn’t move from the wall where the lifts were.
‘Come on, Dad – have a look at the view.’
‘Piss of. I’m going!’
He insisted on going straight back into the lift.
I had been desperate for Mum to experience this without any stress, but the whole situation was a nightmare. Dad was shouting at other people around us: ‘I don’t need to look out of windows. I’m not a bloody sheep, like these twats!’ Again, the tourists and the staff were looking at us as if we were the family from hell. Eventually we had no choice but to call it a day and head back, but I could see the disappointment in Mum’s face.
Frustration and disappointment became the main features of her life but the old fighting spirit she’d shown Dad when they were dating made a reappearance – she wanted a holiday and she was going to have one. So, in June 2015, despite my reservations and concerns, she booked for her and Dad to return to France.
‘I need a life too, you know!’ she would say.
It was agreed that they’d go for two weeks in May and I would fly out for about five days in the middle of it, just in case anything happened.
<
br /> I called Mum on their second night to see how things were and, even though there had already been a huge scene, she sounded calm. I flew out and was surprised to find them both in great spirits. That was until we went for a drink in one of the bars on the site. It was the ‘posh’ bar, so all the waiters were dressed up and a bit self-important. It was a nice night, so we decided to sit outside.
The first thing I noticed was that Dad seemed to think there were glass partitions everywhere. He was confused, walking towards what was a gap between two pieces of wood with his arm outstretched like he was about to push open a door. And then it started.
‘Get me out this pissing place!’ he shouted.
‘Eddie, calm down,’ said Mum.
By now the whole place was looking over. Dad was thrashing about, trying to get out. He then stumbled over a chair, which made things ten times worse. He kicked it, nearly falling over, then stormed out, pushing through the imaginary plate glass door again, and again nearly falling over. We looked like nutcases.
From then on, the holiday got progressively worse. During the day, Dad would be fine – I’d take him along the beach for a walk in the sea and we would chat away, but I noticed that, for the first time, he didn’t really know who I was. Most of the time he still called me ‘Sime’, but he started to tell me stories about Blackburn – stories such as where he worked and that he was the eldest of fourteen children – which obviously he wouldn’t be telling me if he knew I was his son.
Everything seemed to suddenly slide – he refused to take any medication, often accusing me and Mum of trying to poison him. I’d sleep in the single bedroom in the caravan, but I could hear Dad insulting Mum when they went to bed. It was the usual stuff – things like telling her to ‘piss off’ or ‘get out of my sight’; all she got was constant abuse and it was horrible to hear. I’d often find her crying to herself, and a couple of times when I did go to console her, he would then lash out at me too, calling me every name under the sun.
The Songaminute Man Page 16