Nobody's Child (2 page)

D
addy was a warder at the notorious Strangeways Prison in Manchester, and in uniform he always looked a bit scary, not just to me but to the other kids in the neighbourhood too. Some of those kids would be cheeky to almost anybody. But not to my father. Perhaps they had heard stories about the beatings he gave Mammy and me, but they seemed to know not to mess with him.

His black uniform jacket and trousers were like a policeman’s and were complemented by a shiny, black peaked cap, white shirt and black tie. Daddy always kept his hair very short at the back and sides, which helped to make him look very fierce. At that time, he always seemed to be angry about something and I don’t remember ever seeing him smile.

He carried a whistle, which he once let me blow, and a black baton, and wore a thick, black leather belt with a large buckle. He was a tall man and quite slim, though his arms were hard with muscle. Daddy often told me he was the fittest and toughest man at Strangeways, including the prisoners, and that he was a match for any of them.

I don’t know if that was true because, apart from a crazy situation when I was older, I only ever saw him hit Mammy and me – and neither of us could put up much of a fight.

The first beating that was different, and I can still remember it vividly, was when he made me bleed for the first time and dragged Mammy into the bedroom to do things to her. As usually happened, she was
half-asleep
in an easy chair when he came in, and I was watching
Dixon of Dock Green
on television. I heard Daddy’s footsteps coming up the stairs and I shuffled myself as far back into my chair as I could, trying to make myself less noticeable. I had long since learned that out of sight meant out of mind and that I was less likely to receive a slap if he didn’t notice me.

Mammy didn’t look up when he came in. Perhaps she didn’t even know he was there. That often seemed to be the case with her. Her eyes could be open but she didn’t appear to see what was happening around her.

Daddy marched over, still wearing his cap, and stood, legs apart, in front of her, just staring down. Then he reached down and shook her by the shoulders. ‘Can’t
you ever be bloody normal when I come home?’ he shouted. ‘Well, don’t think you can get out of your duties by doping yourself into stupidity, ’cos you can’t. You’re like a bloody zombie. Absolutely useless. It’s like being married to a corpse.’

Mammy seemed to understand something and tried to push him away. ‘Stop it,’ she said in the sort of
singsong
voice she sometimes used. ‘I don’t want you to touch me. You hurt me.’

‘I’m not hurting you,’ he yelled, his face only a few inches from hers, ‘but if you like I’ll give you something to hurt you,’ and he slapped her hard across the side of her face with his right hand.

Mammy screamed and I jumped from my chair and rushed over to him. He was still leaning over her and I grabbed hold of his sleeve and pleaded with him. ‘Please, Daddy, don’t hit Mammy any more. You’re hurting her.’

‘What the hell do you want, you stupid boy?’ he snarled. ‘And what are you doing here anyway? You’re nobody’s child. Don’t you understand that, you little brat? You’re nobody’s child.’ He glared at me, then undid his belt buckle and began to take off his belt.

‘Please don’t hurt us,’ I said again, but it was far too late for that.

He pulled his belt free of his trousers, folded it in half lengthwise and suddenly swung it violently at my legs.

The pain was awful and I couldn’t help screaming. ‘Please don’t, Daddy,’ I yelled again.

But he was too angry to listen and he lashed at me again. This time the belt landed across my shoulders and the buckle end wrapped around my head and smashed into my face.

I screamed again and put my hand up to my face. I was in agony. I felt my face was wet and thought it must be tears, but when I took my hand away it was red with blood. The big metal buckle had split my cheek.

Daddy was already raising his arm for another blow, but when he saw the blood he paused with his arm in the air.

Mammy was still crying – but not for me. Although she was staring towards me, I don’t think she knew what was happening. Usually, if she wasn’t drugged, she would try to stop him when he started beating me. But this time Daddy seemed to think I had had enough.

‘Stop your bloody snivelling, boy, and go and wipe your face,’ he said, and returned his attention to Mammy.

‘Please don’t hit her again,’ I pleaded.

‘Just do as you’re bloody told, you stupid brat,’ he shouted. ‘I want my dues. She’s going to do her damned duty one way or another, or I’ll wring her bloody neck.’

Then he reached down and pulled Mammy to her feet by her shoulders. She tried to sit down again and he hit her across the face again. With a scream, she dropped to her knees in front of him. Her lovely face was now all red and blotchy and she was crying.

I thought then that he was going to punch Mammy,
but I was just too terrified of what he might do to me to try to help her.

Instead, he grabbed her by one arm and the scruff of her neck and dragged her, her heels scraping across the floor, out of the living room, cursing her all the way.

‘Now we’ll see who’s the master here,’ he yelled and hauled her into the bedroom and slammed the door.

I found a dirty teacloth in the kitchen and held it to my cheek, which was still bleeding and really smarting. I crept into Mammy’s armchair and curled up into a ball.
Dixon of Dock Green
was still on, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sounds of Mammy’s cries and Daddy’s curses.

I don’t know what he was doing to her to hurt her, but I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to help. And I was too frightened anyway.

Eventually, I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I remember it was daylight and the television was fuzzy and making a funny high-pitched noise. From the bedroom there was not a sound.

W
hether Daddy had stayed the night or gone to work early I didn’t know, but that morning Mammy must have forgotten to take her pills because she was talking and acting quite normally.

I thought that perhaps something had happened with Daddy the previous night which had changed her, but it didn’t really matter. I was just so pleased to have her with me once again after such a long time. The real Mammy, not the half-asleep person who looked right through me.

I didn’t dare to hope that the change would be for ever. On the other rare occasions when she had acted normally, it had lasted for at most a day or two but usually for only a few hours.

All I could do was make the most of it. As soon as she emerged from the bedroom, she came over to me, where I was still sitting in the easy chair with my blanket wrapped tightly around me. Her face was still red where Daddy had slapped her, and one cheek was a little bit swollen. Her eyes were puffy the way they always were when she had been crying. There were also blue bruises on her neck and I thought that Daddy must have hit her there as well.

Her voice was very calm when she spoke to me. ‘Michael,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we can go on like this. You deserve a lot better – and so do I. I didn’t have you so that you would be hurt and miserable and frightened all the time. We’ve got to get out of here, you and me, even if it’s only for a while. We have to do something nice for a change.’

It was the first time Mammy had ever talked about getting away and doing something nice and it sounded wonderful to me.

‘I have a friend called John,’ she told me. ‘He has a nice big car and he has offered to take me and you out for the day if we like. Well, I’m going to speak to him today and tell him that we’d both like that. Would you like that? To go out with someone nice?’

To me it sounded almost too good to be true. ‘I’d love that, Mammy,’ I told her. ‘Just you and me, though. Not Daddy.’

‘No, definitely not Daddy,’ she said with a kind of shudder. ‘It’s Daddy we need to get away from.’

She led me into the kitchen and took a cloth and bathed my face, which was still coated with dried blood. Then she rubbed some ointment into the cut and put a plaster on my cheek.

I was overjoyed. It was the most attention Mammy had paid me in weeks. Sometimes she went a whole day without speaking a single word to me. And weeks, or so it seemed, without touching me. I found myself actually daring to believe that she might stay normal this time. That my Mammy had actually come back to me.

The next day, she was still acting normally. Daddy hadn’t been home. He sometimes stayed away for a day or two after they’d had a big fight and on those occasions Mammy would let me sleep in the big bed with her.

She woke me up bright and early and made sure I washed properly and put clean clothes on. Then she brushed my hair down flat with the big brush she used to do her own hair. My hair was already curly and it took a lot of brushing to make it lie down.

I could feel that she was excited, and I was too. She had put on lipstick and the rest of her make-up and was wearing perfume that smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. That, and the fact she was spending so much time getting me ready, was so rare it had to mean something very special was going to happen. And I was right.

Soon after she had gone down to the shop, a big silver car pulled up outside. I was sitting in the window, from where I liked to look down on the busy street below, and saw it arrive.

A few moments later, Mammy came rushing up the stairs shouting, ‘Michael, Michael. It’s time to go. Come on, quickly. John is here to take us for a drive in the country.’

I followed her downstairs, where she hung a ‘closed’ sign behind the glass panel of the door and turned the key behind us.

Mammy’s friend was standing by the big silver car, which he told me was called a Jaguar. John was shorter than Daddy, and a bit fatter and had a bald patch, but, unlike Daddy, he gave me a big grin and said he was very pleased to see me and hoped we would become friends.

He opened the back door of the car and suggested I sit there. The back seat seemed very wide and had an armrest in the middle. There was an odd smell, which John explained was the smell of the leather seats. After he had fussed about Mammy and got her settled in the front, John slid in behind the wheel and we were on our way.

The Jaguar was so much more smooth and comfortable than Daddy’s second-hand old banger, which used to rattle and shake all the time. It was different from driving with Daddy in other ways too. He hardly ever said a word to us, unless he was in a bad temper and shouting, but John kept up a constant stream of chatter. Mostly he spoke to Mammy, who seemed to be really enjoying herself, laughing out loud at some of his remarks, and sometimes he spoke to me.

John wanted to know all about me, he said. Did I go to school, because I looked so big and grown-up. What games did I like to play? He seemed to be genuinely interested in me and I found myself chattering away in a way that wasn’t like me at all. It felt very strange. Normally, when I spoke to people, I said just a few words, and those usually out of necessity. We didn’t talk much to one another in our family and I had learned to keep everything hidden away inside. But it was nice talking to John. He had a way of making even the most ordinary things sound funny and he treated me more like a grown-up and not like a little boy.

We eventually stopped in the countryside, where there were no other people, and we sat down beside a stream which gurgled along between grassy banks and big shady trees.

John showed me how to make boats by folding squares of paper and we raced them down the stream, running alongside and whooping and cheering. I managed to fall in twice, but Mammy wasn’t cross at all. John said he had fallen into the beck which ran through his village every day when he was young. It was all part of being a boy. Mammy took off my shoes and socks and put them on the grass to dry while we had our picnic. I didn’t even mind that the sandwiches were ham and tomato.

I wondered if other boys and girls did this with their parents all the time. It would be so nice to permanently feel this happy, I thought.

All too soon, it was time to go home. By
mid-afternoon
, we were back in the Ashton Old Road.

John gave me a pat on the head and told me he hoped to see me again soon, so we could play some more games. When I told him I hoped so too, he grinned back at me. Then he kissed Mammy on the cheek and was off.

As soon as we were in the shop, Mammy became very serious. She took me by the shoulders and bent forward so that her face was level with mine. ‘This has got to be our secret, Michael,’ she told me. ‘Nobody must know about our trip with John, especially not Daddy. I know you’ve enjoyed it, and so have I, and it will be nice if we can do it again. But we won’t be able to if Daddy finds out. So you mustn’t say a word. Will you promise me?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I promise. I won’t spoil our secret by telling Daddy. I want to go out with John again. It was fun.’

Over the rest of that summer and autumn, then into winter, John became the only bright spot in my life. From the end of one outing, I would long for the next one.

When it became too cold and wet to visit the countryside, he would take us to other places. One trip was to a museum, another to the zoo. And one of the best was when he took me to a big shop in Manchester to see Father Christmas. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I would like a big toy truck. I didn’t really expect to get it, though. I was hardly ever
given toys for presents, except by Nanny Ramsden, who had given me a football for my birthday.

Daddy always gave me hats as presents, for Christmas and for my birthday. I had a prison warder’s hat, a policeman’s, a fireman’s and various others. They weren’t much to play with but I liked them and sometimes lined them up and pretended that people were wearing them and imagined how they would act. Occasionally, Mammy gave me crayons and pencils and drawing books, but neither she nor Daddy ever wanted to look at my drawings.

I had always thought that our outings with John were too good to be true, and I should have known that something that nice wouldn’t be allowed to go on. I was a bad boy. Daddy told me that all the time, and I knew that nice things didn’t happen to bad boys. Only bad things. But I could never have known just how frightening the consequences of our secret would be.

The beatings from Daddy had gone on throughout the time that John was taking us out, but they were no worse than before. The slaps and the kicks were just as unpredictable and painful, and some of the things he said were still as hurtful, but by now I had almost become accustomed to it all. I’d learned to cope with it. Daddy had always been like that, for as long as I could remember and, at least, since the night he had cut my cheek, he hadn’t used the buckle end of his belt on me.

But, on the night we learned he had found out about
our secret trips with John, it was terrifying. I really believed he was going to kill us both.

It was dark when he came home and the fire was burning in the living room, where Mammy and I were watching television. I could tell by the smell of his breath, almost from the moment he came into the room, that he had been drinking, and I was anticipating the usual punishment even before he began to shout.

Mammy, who had gone back to her regular zombie routine in between our outings with John, was only
half-awake
when Daddy hauled her out of her chair and, with no warning, hit her hard across the face with the back of his hand.

It was so sudden it took us both off guard. Daddy usually had to work himself up into a temper before he started lashing out.

Mammy screamed and fell back in her chair but he just bent forward and gave her another hard slap across the face, which made her scream again.

Then he started to yell just as loudly as her. ‘You whore! You dirty, bloody whore! You’ve been seeing a bloke behind my back. How did you think you could get away with it, eh, you slut? And you took this stupid bastard brat with you. Did you want him to watch you in action? You’re a right bloody pair, aren’t you! A whore and her bastard son out with her fancy man.’

‘He’s not a fancy man,’ Mammy screamed back. ‘He’s just a friend who was being nice to us.’

She managed to struggle to her feet and then Daddy
began punching her in the chest. She was screaming more with every blow but he just kept on. He seemed to be out of control.

Then he hit her across the face again and she went crashing down into the fireplace, scattering the fire tongs and brush and knocking over the coal scuttle as she landed hard on her bottom. Her left arm, which was bare almost to her shoulder, struck against the horizontal bars of the iron grate, and suddenly her screams grew even louder.

‘You’ve branded me, you swine!’ she shouted.

He laughed at her. ‘Serve you right, you bloody whore,’ he said, and raised his fist again.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. It was far worse than he had ever beaten Mammy before and I was afraid he was going to kill her. I rushed over to him and started kicking his legs and punching at his stomach but it had absolutely no effect on him. He just smashed me across the face with his hand and that took all the fight out of me.

‘You bloody little nobody,’ he shouted. ‘You need to be taught a lesson just like her. One that you won’t forget.’

He grabbed me by the arm and neck and hauled me over to the fireplace. Mammy had crawled away and was lying on the carpet, sobbing, and nursing her burned arm in her good hand.

‘Let’s see if a little of what this slut has had will teach her bastard to behave,’ he growled. Then he took my
arm and pressed the side of it, between the wrist and elbow, against the hot bars that had burned Mammy.

It was the worst pain I had ever experienced, and I screamed out as loudly as Mammy had done. He held my arm against the grate for a second or two, but the pain seemed to go on for ever, and I could feel the agony everywhere at once – on my arm, in my head, all over. I could smell it too – singed hair and scorched flesh.

When I looked at my arm it had turned bright red and I think a blister was already starting to come up.

I was weeping and probably hysterical, and so was Mammy. Sobbing, she crawled over to me and put her arms around me. She could have been trying to protect me from anything else Daddy might decide to do, or maybe she just needed comforting herself.

The amazing thing is, despite all that screaming, none of our neighbours came to see what was happening, even though they must have heard everything. It was just that kind of place. People minded their own business and nobody ever involved the police. But there was always gossip and everyone in the street knew every detail of one another’s lives.

I don’t know if Daddy realised he had gone too far or whether he had just run out of steam, but he didn’t try to hit us any more. Instead he just glared at us both for a long while and then snarled, ‘You two make me sick,’ before storming out of the room and down the stairs.

I don’t know if he was going back to the pub or to
work. I was simply in such agony that I was just relieved to see him go so that he couldn’t hurt me any more.

That is how our secret trips with John came to an end. He never came back to see us in his big Jaguar, and Mammy rarely mentioned his name again. She did tell me that she had first met John on one of her fantasy shopping trips in Manchester. She couldn’t afford to buy anything, but she loved to go in the expensive department stores and clothes shops and pretend that she was one of the rich ladies who were shopping there. She always looked at her most beautiful when she was going out on one of these fantasy sprees.

She had met John while having coffee in one of the big stores. He had shared her table and they had started talking. Mammy said he was the first man to treat her like a lady for years and that’s why she had agreed to go out with him. He was simply a nice man who had treated her with respect.