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My brother and I grew up in Glasgow, in Springburn to be precise, where high-rise council flats scar the skyline. Like thousands of locals, our family was on the bread line. We lived on government benefits and cash in hand jobs that our father did. Mum did the best she could with the money we had, but we were a poor excuse for a happy family.
Mum was the anchor in our life and she protected her two boys from the worst of our father. She had been young when she’d given birth to us, and she must have been pretty in her youth. But now she was worn down by him, yet trapped in a relationship she couldn’t leave.
He had been officially unemployed for his entire adult life. A diet of twenty a day and a bottle of vodka isn’t conducive to holding down a job. When he was sober, he was a passable father, but the rest of the time he made life unbearable for our mother and us.
On his good days, when he’d won on the horses or earned a packet with the cash in hand work, he’d take us to the park and buy chocolate from the shops, a warm smile on his face.
“Peter, John,” he’d say, “You know how much I love you both.” It was like he never remembered the days he hit us in a violent, drunken rage.
And there were more dark days than not. Days when he gambled away the food money, drank too much, or got into a fight down the pub. Those days he believed the world was against him and he found consolation in taking his anger out on my brother and me, and our mother. I remember she never had a full set of teeth. No doubt our father had knocked them out.
There were times he’d go away for a few days on a black market job. Mum was a different woman when he was away—calmer, more attentive, happier. She had a warm glow about her, and the three of us lived happily. I always wondered what would happen if he never came back. But he always did—often with bloodied knuckles, black eyes, or a broken jaw.
Always relishing pain and suffering in others, Peter pried him for information about his injuries. He’d ask for details like, “What bones did you break? What did you do to the other guy? Did you knock him straight to hospital?”
When Peter and I were twelve, our father came back in the blackest mood I’d seen him in. Our mother sent us down the stair and out to play. She pushed us out the door onto the landing and smiled weakly at us. “You go away, boys. I’ll call you when it’s safe to come back.”
I looked longingly at our mother, a feeling of utter helplessness shrouded me. “Mum—” I said, but she closed the door.
“Come on, you fanny,” Peter called to me, running away down the stairs. “Dad’s going to knock a few more teeth out, that’s all!” As I followed Peter, I could hear the smash of glass and his raised, violent voice.
It was our elderly neighbour, Jean, who came hurrying out to find us an hour later. A woman in her mid-seventies, she’d lived in the flat opposite us for our entire life. She was panting as she reached us. “Peter, John,” she said, in a soft grandmotherly tone. “There’s been an accident. You’ve to come with me just now.”
“What happened?” I asked, my knees already trembling and my heart pounding in anticipation of the answer.
Jean pulled us close. “Oh boys, your mum’s dead. He’s killed her this time.”
After killing mum, our father had thrown himself off the balcony, unable to face the consequences.
Peter registered no emotion about our parents’ death. It’s like he didn’t care they were gone. He saw Mum as a weakling for not standing up to our father. But I knew how brave she was. She put herself out there to protect us.
If Mum’s death bounced off my brother like a dry sponge hitting the bathroom floor, I absorbed the full impact of it. It had a profound effect on my emotional state. Nightmares, angry outbursts, and escapism through drink or drugs. I did it all. It was a cry for help, but I pushed everyone away who came to help me.
***
With no stable relatives to support us, we were taken into care. Over the next few months, we lived with four different families. We’d come home to find our belongings packed into black bin bags, and the social worker waiting for us. Our departure was met with a stony silence from our foster carers or looks of disappointment by our social worker.
I caused our problems.
Eventually, we moved in with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Tom. We stayed with them in a large townhouse in Glasgow’s suburbs until we were eighteen. I remember the first night we were there. Peter blamed me for us moving again.
“Can’t you get a grip on yourself, John? You keep messing this up for us,” my brother shouted at me. We were in our new bedroom on the first floor of an old Victoria townhouse in Glasgow’s affluent suburbs. It had two single beds with matching Dennis the Menace duvet covers and a wooden desk with a tartan lamp in between.
“Sod off.”
“Every night you’re coming in stinking of weed and cider. Why can’t you just listen to the social worker and do what you’re told? You create all these problems for us.”
“Because I don’t give a damn.” He was right. I created these problems. “It’s all right for you, you don’t seem to care about anyone or anything apart from you.”
“I care about things.”
“Like what? You certainly don’t care that Mum’s dead.”
He shrugged. “Mum should have stood up to him.”
“She couldn’t, you idiot.” I stood up and shouted angrily in his face. “She was protecting us.”
“I didn’t need protecting. Dad and I got on fine.”
“Even when he hit you?”
Peter shrugged again. “It’s made me stronger.” He sat down on one of the beds, crossed his legs in figure-4 pose and clamped his hands on his ankles.
“Is that why you push me around? Are you trying to make me stronger?”
“You’re beyond help.” He waved me away with his hand.
I shouted. “It’s easy for you. You just suck up to every family we live with. They all think you’re a saint. You just manipulate every situation to suit yourself.”
“So what? You should try it. It’s an easier life than whatever the hell you’re trying to do.”
“You’re just like our father,” I spat. “Watch out or you’ll turn into him.”
He jumped up and punched me in the stomach, a common strike spot which never left a bruise. I doubled over and fell back against the table, knocking over the lamp. I retaliated and charged at him, screaming like a Viking warrior. We rolled around the floor for half a minute.
“What’s all this then?” asked Aunt Lucy, bursting into the room. The house had solid walls and even through them, the noise of our fight carried downstairs.
“John started it,” my brother lied, cradling a supposedly bruised arm. “He hit my arm because I said I missed our parents.”
I was about to deny it, but I didn’t have the energy.
“The social workers told me you were always at each other’s throats. But you’ve just got here, boys,” she said, shaking her head. “Right, come with me Peter and I’ll get that arm looked at.”
“Thank you, Aunt Lucy,” he said, clutching his arm. “It’s no worse than other times he’s hit me.”
“But I—” I didn’t have time to finish.
Uncle Tom, a large man with a thick, white beard, had made it up the stairs by this point. He picked my jacket from the floor and turned to me, tilting his head to one side. “So you’re John then. My goodness, you certainly look alike.” He gave me a tight smile. “I’ll take you outside to burn off some of your energy. You need to stop picking fights, John.”
I opened my mouth to proclaim my innocence and then shut it. As my brother left with Aunt Lucy, he smirked back at me.
***
And that’s how it continued through our teenage years. Peter exposed and exploited the weaknesses in anyone he met. He enjoyed watching violence and took pleasure in inflicting pain on others. But he was shrewd—only picking fights he knew he could win. He bullied me and was masterful at controlling situations in his favour. That’s how he secured an apprenticeship at 18 years old with a firm in Liverpool.
After he left Glasgow, we drifted apart, only texting or calling each other every so often. I flirted with the wrong crowds, living in a desert of boredom and hopelessness punctuated by alcohol and gambling to entertain me.
Four years after he left Glasgow, I called him. “Hi there, saint,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Wow, it’s just a joke.”
“Anyway, what do you want?”
“Do you remember what day it is?”
“Is this some kind of quiz, John? I don’t have time for that crap.”
“It’s ten years ago today that Mum died.”
He said nothing at first. Then he said, “And why does that matter?”
Taken aback by his coldness, I paused. “She was our mother for crying out loud. And 10 years ago today, she died. Our father murdered her!”
“I don’t need a bloody history lesson!”
“You still don’t care, do you?”
“Not really. People die all the time.”
“Well, I’m going to put flowers on her grave this weekend. I just wondered if you wanted to come with me.”
“I’ll pass. I’ve business to take care of down here.”
After that call, we stopped talking for a long time, just messaging on our birthdays.