JP

What made me this way?

I don’t know. Can you ever really know why you are the way you are?

I guess in more ways than I was comfortable with, Seamie and me were very alike. We were both the quiet type, happy to keep our heads down and work away, prone to self-pity and anger when the status quo was upset. Especially when we were forced to deal with other people’s messes impacting on us. For him, that meant Betty. For me, it meant him.

In another life I might have followed his path, step for step.

But I’d my sister to think of.

Seamie was of a generation that believed the job of a father was to get your offspring to eighteen alive. He wasn’t a bad father before he took to the drink, but he wasn’t a model one either. I never really looked for parenting from him. Despite her problems, Betty was the adult I’d known the most during my early years. But Charlie, abandoned by our mum so young, wanted a proper daddy. One who’d give her jockey backs and take her to fun places, one who told her stories and gave her hugs at bedtime. In the absence of anything resembling that she turned to her big brother, and there was something in me, something good, that made me the person she wanted me to be.

She held our small family unit together, but she couldn’t keep it going for ever.

Not long after I turned seventeen, I had the run-in to beat all run-ins with Seamie.

He was drinking every day by that stage. I’d come in late from work, having stopped at a mate’s house for a joint en route. I was relaxed and instead of heading straight for my room, I sat with him in the sitting room.

Big mistake.

Seamie generally drank alone, quietly, quickly, until he passed out. But then it got so he liked to have an audience.

That night, he started off with his usual routine – talking about his life and how tough it had been. I was barely listening, keeping half an eye on the Match of the Day results flashing up on the telly screen.

I realized he was talking about Betty and lowered the sound.

For years I’d been angry at Seamie about our mum. I reckoned if we’d stayed in London, she might have come back to us. Sometimes I’d direct my bitterness at her but as I’d got older, I’d begun to accept she had an illness that she hadn’t chosen. Betty had an excuse for being a terrible parent; Seamie had inflicted the drink on himself.

Yeah, probably unfairly, I loved her more in her absence.

That night, he was going on and on about what a dreadful wife she’d been, what a shit mother she was to us, and something in me just snapped.

‘Funny thing is,’ I said, and he stopped, shocked to hear me speak, probably having forgotten I was even there, ‘she never landed me in hospital, Seamie. She never used her fists on me, like you have. She walked out because she was a sick woman, but how hard did you try to find her? Charlie was only three and you moved us over here, where Betty couldn’t even make contact. And then you set about drinking yourself stupid while we dragged ourselves up. And you reckon you can sit in judgement of my mum? Give me a break.’

Seamie’s mouth fell open and his eyes swivelled in his head as he tried to fix his gaze on me. I’d never spoken to him like that. I barely spoke to him at all.

‘How dare you!’ he roared. ‘How dare you speak to me in that tone when I have sacrificed everything for you! Who was here? Who stayed? I could have put you into care. I could have just left you starving and alone. I gave up everything. I couldn’t even work because I had to mind you – a grown man sitting at home with two children. It’s … it’s not right!’

‘Yeah?’ I snapped, jumping up off the couch. I knew the argument was going to escalate, and I was prepared for him this time. If he took a swing at me, I was going to land a punch on my dad that would put him back in that bloody armchair for good. ‘Maybe at the start, Seamie. But what about for the last few years? Once Charlie started school there was no need for you to hang around here. You sit in this house, drink and sleep. You’re not here for us. We live around you. At least Mum cared.’

Seamie looked like he was about to stand, and I tensed my fists.

But he stayed sitting. He’d sized up the situation and could see that I’d grown. I wasn’t going to be pushed about easily.

There was that, and also the fact that over the years drink had made him meaner.

He could hurt more with words than slaps.

‘Your mum. Your mum took care of you, did she, John Paul? Ha! Did I ever tell you what she did to you when you were a baby?’

I’d heard words like that before. The nurse who’d visited our flat when Mum was pregnant. She’d said something about me as a baby and what Mum had done. Rose, our neighbour, too. I had wondered at the time what they were on about but had long since forgotten to ask.

Seamie squinted at me as I towered over him.

‘When you were only five weeks old, your mum put you in your pram and wheeled you up to the big bypass behind ours. She walked to the middle of the bridge, stopped, took her bag out of the bottom of the pram and turned around. She left you there, John Paul. Alone. A five-week-old baby, with cars and lorries racing by. You were on that bridge for hours. It wasn’t used much by folks, and the motorists driving past just thought somebody had dumped a pram.

‘Six hours later, a car broke down. The fella had just got out to look under his bonnet and he said he heard this godawful screaming. He ran over to the pram. You were almost blue from the cold and the crying. It was November and she hadn’t even left a blanket on you. But do you know what the worst thing was, John Paul?’

I could feel myself physically shrinking. I couldn’t tell him to stop. I wanted to hear the end of the story, but I couldn’t bear it.

‘I was working away that night, so I wasn’t there for it. The cops did a door-to-door in the tower blocks, asking if anybody had seen a man or woman crossing the bridge behind the flats earlier that day with a pram. They knocked on our door and Betty spoke to them. You’d think she’d have broken down, wouldn’t you? Confessed, said it was her baby. No. She told them nothing. The cops said she even offered to make them tea and kept on about what a terrible thing it was, to leave a poor baby like that.’

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. Even though, in the back of my head, a voice was screaming She was ill! I still felt sick. What sort of mother could do that to her child?

‘I got back the next day,’ Seamie continued. ‘She wouldn’t tell me where you were. I couldn’t wait to see you, my little son. I went down to Rose to see if she’d left you there, and it was then Rose put two and two together. You were in foster care for a month, John Paul. They wouldn’t let me take you home even after Betty was admitted to the hospital. That was your lovely mum who cared so much for you.’

I fell back on to the sofa and put my head in my hands. Then I started to cry.

Seamie said nothing. He’d won.

But, as always, his satisfaction was fleeting. Seamie’s tongue was wickeder than his heart. His attacks were always followed by guilt.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But you had to know.’

I shook my head. I didn’t need to know that my mother had abandoned me twice. He’d only told me to hurt me.

I stood up to leave.

‘John Paul,’ he said feebly.

‘Fuck you,’ I answered. ‘Fuck you, Seamie.’

The damage was done.