by Joseph Kane
Since the holy communion, everything went back to normal. Normal was not something I liked anymore. The situation started to become volatile. Money must be getting tighter because dad began to stay at home all the time. He started drinking bottles of cider with his friend ‘Bluey.’ Mum was now the one that wasn’t seen much. They were arguing a lot; for what I didn’t know. His friend now replaced mums place on the sofa for the time being during the day. ‘Bluey’ was a small guy with a beer belly. His black hair was hilarious. It was long on the sides but completely bold on top. He also had a beard. Being dads drinking buddy, they laughed with 3-litre bottles of cheap cider in each lap. Day after day, they did the same thing. Mum kept out of their way. It was harmless enough, but I couldn’t understand why they drank straight from the bottle instead of using a glass. They took turns going to the shop; a sad routine to say the least. This went on for a while before dad started to get violent towards mum. Half the time, I didn’t pick up much being so far away in the bedroom at night, then they stopped caring if I was awake or not. Shouting, arguing, and wrestling was now the new norm. I had to hide behind the three-seater settee, while I cried in fear. Dad opened the window one night and stuck mums head out, threatening to throw her out. I panicked, not knowing what to do. All I envisioned was mum falling from the window, so I ran out of the flat, down the communal stairway and onto the street beneath the window.
“I’ll catch you mum.”
I soon realised there was no way I could break her fall. Just passed the pubs sat a phone box. Early hours in the morning, with dad still pushing mums head out, I ran to get help. Not knowing the number for the police, I pressed the numbers that were on the phone box pictures - 999.
“Quick, I need help. My dad is trying to push my mum out of the window.”
“Where are you.”
“I don’t know. Near some shops and some pubs.”
“Ok, well you stand on the main road, and a policeman will come and find you.”
Describing the best I could, I did what the operator told me. By the time I got back, the window was open, but there was no sign of mum. It was quiet until a green car passed. An unmarked police car with a man inside shouted me.
“Do you need help?”
Dad was arrested soon after. I went to bed while mum stayed up. I wish I could say that was the last time, but it wasn’t. Three times I had to run to the phone box in the middle of the night, to call the police. Dad had a nasty side of pure violence. We had a black man that lived in the flat above us. There seemed to have been an altercation with him and my dad. One day he ran up to his flat, smashing a hammer on his door.
“Get the fuck out here now, nigger!”
He was only banging above in his flat; maybe he was moving his stuff around. It didn’t take much to trigger dad off. The black man was left terrified in his flat. Chris used to tell me how my dad would go up to the biggest guy in the pub, and cause a fight or say something untoward until he was knocked out cold. What Chris didn’t know was that I was in the pub watching, as my dad was sprawled on the floor, after being knocked out. His unconscious body laid under pub tables, as I tried to make sense of the silence that followed. Everyone just left him. Even my uncles acted as if this was a regular thing. Before he ended up under the table, we sat together as he drank ten pints of beer. I was the screaming four-year-old holding on to my teddy in the back of a car, as my uncles wrestled with my dad to get him in. It was sad to see infighting within my own family. It finally came to a head when he battered mum black and blue. He broke her ribs, smashed her face in, then left her for dead. She laid outside our flat door in a pool of blood. The navy-blue carpet was stained permanently with a big circle of blood. This time dad had gone too far. He was arrested, while we were placed into a hotel by the council.
Me, Chris and mum were all together in one hotel room with three single beds. Now I know why we moved to Chorley in the first place. Feeling secure had become insecure, unsettled, and uncertain about our future. Chris hated my dad, so they always stayed apart. Everything started to make sense. I can picture what things were like way before I was born. I can imagine Chris and my dad fighting. I don’t think the council or police could do much to help. Apart from being on a waiting list for a flat, we had to dwell in one room in the middle of town, not far from dads flat. How the hell could we hide from dad in the middle of town? I quite enjoyed the hotel because there was an arcade below, and we got a free breakfast. The only problem was, we didn’t have a cooker. We lived on takeaways for a few months until the council found us a new home. It made no difference to me; I was lucky to get one meal a day. Mum would stay up all night waiting for a TV show that came on at 4am. ‘Cell Block H’ was a soap based on women in prison. I told mum to wake me up to watch it every time it came on; I loved it. Sat in our beds, we watched it together while Chris was out or asleep. By then, Chris was well into becoming a DJ. Under his bed, he had his decks and records. When Saturday came, my Uncle Mick arrived to pick me up to go to my grandparents. It was awkward getting dressed under my bed covers, with mum and my uncle in the same room. “Who wants to look at you?” Mick would say. If only he knew what Steven did to me. I became paranoid and self-conscience after what happened. Mick had always lived with my grandparents. Being my dad's brother, I never saw my dad at their house. I don’t think my dad got on well with my grandad. The cycle of drinkers seemed to continue. I didn’t hate my dad. I wish he would act normal so we could be a family. All this infighting was bad for everyone.
Two months had passed, as we were getting closer to a flat offering. Sat talking, someone knocked on our hotel room door. Mum opened it to find my dad stood like the Terminator. Chris ran to the door, as all three of them wrestled to the floor. All hell had broken loose. I sat on the bed weeping for them to stop, waiting for an accident to happen. Usually, I’d cry or scream. I must be getting used to violence because it didn’t phase me as much. They managed to fend him off, to the point of my dad walking away. Chris grabbed his hammer then ran up behind him down the hallway while my dad had his back turned.
“Please Chris, don’t hit my dad over the head.”
I begged him not to hurt my dad. Hitting him over the head would have killed him. I ran to the corridor to see what he did. Chris ran up behind him and hit him over the head with the handle. Doing so was like hitting a wasp nest with a stick. It only provoked him, and they started fighting again. The hotel staff did their best to kick him out. He kept trying to get back in over and over again, drunk and ready to attack. The receptionist stopped him a few times, but he still managed to get past when no one was around. He was like a possessed lunatic trying to kick our door in. After fending off all of his attacks, things managed to settle down again. I don’t know what mum had done wrong to him, or why he was so adamant in attacking her.
Using other people’s showers, living off takeaways, and sleeping in the same room, we were finally offered a flat. Thanks to dad, my new school had gone to pot. I wasn’t able to go anymore for mum’s safety. It seemed that every year, I had to change schools. Each time I would leave school, I had to wait for the start of a new year before I could start all over again, not learning a thing. One year on, one year off. It was pathetic. I didn’t even know the alphabet. Finally, we had a home of our own; a two bedroom flat in the middle of the estate we just came from, great! The pubs and dads flat were only a few hundred yards away. Because the council owned it, mum didn’t have much say as to where we lived. Given the situation, anyone would think we could change the location. Dad was good at finding us, so I doubt it would have made a difference. I was just glad to have a home again; only this time, the three of us could start over in a good home like Chorley.
Chapter 4 - Breath of Fresh Air
I was never close to anyone from mums side of the family. Given dads track record, it's not hard to understand why they would distance themselves from me. Mum and I would visit her parents every so often. My gran seemed kind enough. My grandad on t
he other hand never said a word to me. He would lay on the sofa with a blanket over himself, smoking his pipe, with grey hair slicked back. The smoke-filled room suffocated my cotton clothing with his strong tobacco. At only sixty, he looked much older from the drinking and smoking throughout his life owning a pub. He was dying from liver failure and was waiting for a transplant. Mum idolised him. He was definitely her number one because it wasn’t me. When it was time to leave, he wouldn’t hug me. I motioned to mum, whispering by the front door.
“Why won’t he cuddle me?”
“Ask him.”
“No, you ask him.”
“Dad will give him a cuddle.”
He put his arm out with a poor effort to cuddle me. I was the bastard son of a man that beats his daughter up. I soon learnt nothing was coming to me from mums side of the family. My grandad passed away after his transplant. His body rejected the new liver. Years later my grandma was in and out of psychiatric wards. During the 1950s, she became a victim of electric shock therapy. Back then, doctors had no idea of the effect it had on patients brains. With the voltage way higher than today's treatment, they fried her brain. It all started when she met my grandad in her late teens. She was labelled a nut-case from her outburst, so he rang the hospital, resulting in doctors with white coats on, throwing her into the back of a van and shipping her off to a psychiatric ward. If she was to be diagnosed in my day and age, I bet it would have been nothing more than a personality disorder, or bipolar at the worst. My grandad didn’t think twice about having her shipped off. It was clear where mum had got her cold personality from. Mum and my Auntie Brenda took turns having her every Sunday for dinner. She would twitch a lot and played with her hands, signs of brain damage from the bastard doctors that sent high currents directly to her brain. I wish I were around at that time; I’d strap that device to the doctor's balls. It was hard work having her for the day. Taking her home was a nightmare. It's not easy driving with one hand while holding on to someone that is trying to jump out of a moving car. My mum's sister equally shared the burden. My cousin Anthony and I would visit her on our own once we were old enough. Going into mental hospitals was an adventure for two young lads. Anthony, also my age, was the only person I was ever close to from mums side of the family. They all shared a shyness about them, but my dad's impact certainly left a stain regardless of any characteristics they had. My mum inherited her dad's cold personality, while my auntie inherited my gran's shyness. Before she became unwell, after my grandad had died, I stayed over a few times on my own. She always wore tights with a skirt. The cat she had would sit on her lap, which made me jealous. Her cat would never sit on my lap. It was entirely grey and very vicious. Hiding under a table, it hissed at me as I moved my hand closer. If I moved slow enough, it would let me stroke it, but that was rare. Most of the time it attacked me. My grandad didn’t like me; I didn’t imagine his cat would either.
Every Saturday at noon, I anxiously awaited for Mick to pick me. It was a world away going from a poor estate during the week, to a posh area in Fulwood at the weekends; talk about one extreme to another. My dad's side of the family loved and cared for me the best they could. It was kind of like a double-edged sword. Mick had always lived with my grandparents. I don’t know why he never moved out; he had it easy I guess. My gran and granddad were both respectable people that worked hard all their life. They were upstanding pillars of the community that would bend over backwards to help people. Everyone knew them. They couldn’t even go on holiday to another country without bumping into some of their friends. Our family was huge. Everyone came together on almost every occasion to share gifts, create parties, or to help each other. Nobody was left out. It turned out my gran was secretly the queen of the family. She was the one with the wisdom, organisation skills, and the person that could make a buffet for over one hundred people within two days, right from her kitchen. Both my grandparents had many siblings so one can imagine just how big our family was. I must have had over twenty cousins, three were boys, and the rest were girls. We even had family that migrated to America, and if they weren’t coming to visit us in the UK, our clan went to visit them in Sunny Florida, or on the West Coast of California. Most of this happened before I was born. It would have been great if my dad had me when he was fifteen, I would have had the chance to see it all. Mick would tell me stories as we flicked through the family photos. He would tell me about Disney in Florida, while he showed me pictures of himself stood next to Micky and Minnie Mouse. He would also tell me about their trips to Las Vegas, a tour around Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, or how lovely the bay was in San Diego. Not many people in Preston can say they went to see The Jackson 5, or Elvis Presley, live on stage. My gran's brother gave the security some money so they could walk through the back door, going straight to the front. Mick told me how he saw Michael Jackson walk right past him in a Casino. Both of them would have been children. After two or three fascinating stories, my life ambition was to move to America. Our family that lived over there were such good people. It was no surprise; how could anyone not be happy living in such a climate. Life in England is like living in the stone age compared to America. For now, I had to make do with what I had. On Arrival to their house, I would run up the garden path, making eye contact with my gran in the kitchen as she made dinner for everyone. I ploughed through the back door and into her arms where she would pick me up for a big squeeze. She was 6ft tall and big boned with broad shoulders. Nobody would ever mess with her! Even my grandad received a few whacks whenever he drank too much whiskey. Everything had to be in order, or else.
Our oldest surviving relative was my grandad’s mum, Ellen. Mick and I would visit her in her flat every week. She ate yellow haddock fish every Friday. The fish and a glass of whiskey every night must be her secret to reaching old age. When she reached ninety-eight, she had to go to a nursing home after breaking her leg. Being small and slim, she never had to carry any excess weight around. As a devoted Catholic from Ireland, she did well bringing up five kids while my great-grandad spent his time and money in the Hesketh Arms pub, while my grandad ran around in bare feet in his early years. Elderly people in her nursing home barely hung on to life, giraffe-like necks from wasted muscle while sat in god’s waiting room. My great-gran was sat up having a conversation with us every time we visited. It was amazing how she was born around 1900. She lived through countless wars, including being a nurse in the first and second World War. She would have been a young child when Albert Einstein wrote his groundbreaking articles on space, time, mass and energy. I bet she had countless stories stored away in the back of her mind. One could only imagine what she saw. She hated it when I turned up with a new haircut, short back and sides.
“Who’s…who’s done that? I will… I will punch their lights out. Just tell me who’s done it.”
She clenched her fist in front of me, with her soft-spoken Irish voice. I loved holding her shaky hands, and how her skin felt like paper. Her long nails would stab me in my palms. It was fantastic to see her reach one hundred. Queen Elizabeth II sent her a telegram. It was such an honour to get a birthday card from the Queen. Inside was a photo of Her Majesty, with a message inside.
“I am so pleased to know that you are celebrating your one-hundredth birthday. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion.” Signed by Her Majesty.
She peacefully passed away one week after her birthday, where she was returned to Ireland for her funeral. She was returned to the earth in her home town. Ever since, I’ve always wanted to live just as long, if not longer. Life itself was amazing. I wish I could live for a thousand years to see and do everything; minus becoming old and frail.
The weekends were all I focused on during the week. Monday to Friday was hell on earth with no food, nothing to do and living in a ghetto. When the weekend came, it was roast dinners sat around a table with family, cable television, trips around the country watching football matches, and long hours out with good friends creatin
g amazing memories. Once my five-day labour ended, it was my two-day vacation. I would give my right arm to live there full time. My gran worked in the laundry facility at the Royal Preston Hospital. She had the pleasure to meet Diana, The Princess of Wales when it first opened two years before I was born. They once owned a Spar shop and a garage with a fleet of vans that my grandad rented out, but he preferred to be a motor mechanic for the Royal Mail. Mick started window cleaning around the time I was born. He never did like anyone telling him what to do. They could have had a line of successful businesses, but I guess the working class DNA was built into them. There was no way I could live with them and look after myself. Saturday to Sunday will have to make do. It was great experiencing normal family life. Mum and dad had no interest in me whatsoever. It's a wonder how I was born. My gran was always cooking, knitting, or reading books. My grandad would relax on the sofa to catch up on his beer and whiskey, without getting too drunk. If he did my gran would kill him, let alone be late for bed when she shouted for him. I always kept Mick on his feet getting him to take me to the video shop to rent video games for my Super Nintendo. He liked renting out thrillers to watch on his bed during the day with the curtains nearly shut. We went on bike rides, raced to the shops and had play fights on the carpet like two peas in a pod. He was a big Preston North End fan. Undoubtedly, I followed suit. We must have attended every football match, home and away.