When, out of the blue, Adrian received the manuscript for this book he was extremely generous, and sent his own memories. They left me sadder than I have felt in years.
My mother died just after my fifth birthday. The period is etched in my memory, trapped in a nursery school from dawn to dusk surrounded by adults who wouldn’t listen to me. They wouldn’t let me see her. Dad swore blind I never visited her in hospital, but I did. I will never forget seeing her lying in her bed, talking to me, reassuring me. It was the last time I ever saw her.
I never had time to grieve. I had to survive. I had to keep Dad awake on the numerous drives between Dartford and Edinburgh, standing in the front of his MG keeping lookout and stopping him from falling asleep.
Dad would never tell me about her. I tried and tried but it was harder than pulling teeth. He would never even tell me where she was buried.
Her death left me in a world full of uncaring, angry and violent adults. Granny Doyle, indifferent, smelly and uncaring, and Dad, a walking bag of rage and suppressed violence. Then Dad brought Maureen into my life. To me she was just another angry adult, much like Dad, but wearing a dress. There was no escape.
So I withdrew. You describe me as remote. An understatement if ever there was one. I withdrew into my own world of Enid Blyton and pulp children’s fiction. I became so independent that I would let no one touch me. From the moment my mother went into hospital until puberty I received no affection. That was my choice.
When you and Ed came along, I changed your nappies, I read you stories, I fed you at meal times, but I never really connected with you. You were too likely to be affectionate, or even worse, need affection.
Dad had mellowed by the time you came along. You seemed to get away with stuff for which I had been soundly beaten. I resented what I saw as an ‘injustice’. Of course in hindsight it was anything but.
That said, even mellowed, he was a tyrant – angry, violent and unpredictable. Life was one ginger step after another. I could never predict what would cause him to fly into a rage. It might be a word, reaching for the marmalade without asking, covering a schoolbook with paper the wrong way.
I dealt with this by spending more and more time outside, virtually coming in only to eat. Your passage about the aftermath of the burnt lino summed up my entire life from age five to sixteen. Then I fought back. He beat me up, but the balance shifted. He could no longer terrorise me.
The terror was not the beatings. I could handle those. The terror was that I never could relax. I smashed the shed window once with my football. I went in to confess and take the punishment (get it over with). He just laughed. I covered a book slightly incorrectly (simple childhood error) and was beaten so hard with a wooden spoon (the nearest weapon to hand) that it broke.
My intellect is what saved me. The only time Mum and Dad smiled at me at the same time was when I got straight As at O-grade. So when Dad tried to beat knowledge into you or Sean I would be sitting on the stairs trying to send you the answers telepathically. I really tried, but I never had the courage to come in and stop him. I could have taught you all those things, but I was too scared. In my imaginary castle, I came to the sorry conclusion that I could not trust anyone, so I drew up the metaphorical drawbridge and posted a big fuck-off sign – STAY AWAY. I was only six or seven years old.
Now I have too much good in my life to think about the past. Why dwell on all that? What’s the point? They were shit parents. It happens. I survived and have done my best to fix myself. Anyway life is not about the past. It’s not really about the future either. It’s what we do today.