‘Mum?’ I began.
‘What now?’ she sighed, continuing to peel potatoes for dinner.
‘I’m a big girl now, aren’t I?’
‘Why? What do you want?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes at me as she turned round.
‘Well, Sophie and Debbie in my class don’t have big brothers . . . and they get to walk to school on their own.’
‘So?’ she queried, concentrating on the potatoes again now that she knew I wasn’t after anything that would cost money or time.
‘So, can I walk to school on my own? I’d be good. I’d be careful. I promise. Please, Mum? Please?’ I begged.
I was putting in more effort than required.
‘Do what you like,’ she muttered.
I was delighted that I had managed to get Mum to agree that I could go with the others, as it served the dual purpose of getting Gary away from me and making me feel even more grown up. I wasn’t too bothered by the fact that she didn’t seem particularly interested in what I did because, just as I accepted we might move at any time, I also accepted that my mum wasn’t the most loving person in the world. Of course, I would have preferred things to be different, but I was well aware that she had other things on her mind. The thing was, Mum wasn’t very well. I had no idea what was actually wrong with her, but I wasn’t the only one – I knew from listening to snippets of her conversations with Dad when she came back from the medical centre that the doctors were clueless too. She was often sick and I would hear her vomiting at all times of the day and night. Sometimes the sound would wake me up as it was so loud and she would moan in pain when it happened.
I had also seen these weird lumpy things on her body, like boils, and knew her skin hurt a lot of the time. She would rub horrible smelly stuff into it that she told me was paraffin oil, and the stench of it filled our house. When she was unwell, she would tell me she couldn’t be bothered with me, and Dad would say that I had to leave her alone, so I knew she might be in pain or feeling unwell when I asked her about walking to school on my own. Maybe that was why she had seemed so disinterested.
Whatever the reason, by the time I was sitting at the table, with my books and jotter in front of me, I was glad I had been allowed to walk to school with Debbie and the others, because it was all part of becoming grown up. Gary wasn’t able to get at me when I was with other people and, to be honest, he wasn’t that bothered anyway, as he could go off with his friends now he no longer had to take care of me.
I was concentrating so hard on my work that my tongue was poking out between my lips and my eyes were screwed up – I couldn’t really read yet and numbers were still a bit tricky, but I was determined to try really hard. I got distracted by the weather and, as I watched the rain pour down the window, all these changes were floating around in my head, making me feel so happy – until I heard Gary guffawing over my shoulder. Quickly, my thoughts were dragged from how proud I would be to hand in my work to a sense that my brother knew something I didn’t.
‘What is it, Gary?’ I asked. ‘Why are you laughing at me?’
He snatched my homework book from my lap and sniggered. ‘You’re stupid! Anybody would laugh when they saw how stupid you were.’ He waved the notebook around in front of me, dangling it in front of my face as he ridiculed me. ‘You don’t know how to use capital letters or anything – the only thing you’ve got right is your name. And that’s stupid, just like you.’ I looked over to Dad, sitting in front of the telly, oblivious to everything that was going on. I knew he wouldn’t intervene, but I didn’t want him to anyway; he wasn’t the parent I needed. With tears welling in my eyes, I snatched my book back from Gary and rushed to find Mum.
I’d tell on him. I’d tell her how awful he was to me, and she’d sort him out. I knew she was in her bedroom, so I rushed there from the lounge, full of hot tears at how Gary had spoken to me, with an urgent need for Mum to make it all right. I barged in, the words all ready to tumble out – and froze. My mother was bent in half over a basin, vomiting violently. Her body was convulsing in pain and the sickness was coming fast. As always, I had no idea what was wrong with her, but knew she was so ill she was in no state to deal with my childish disputes. She looked up weakly, but had neither the strength nor the ability to even talk to me, promptly bending over the basin again and retching once more.
I backed out of the room, full of concern for her, but also worried. This had happened so many times before, but there seemed to be a violence to the sickness now that I hadn’t been aware of previously. Mum had been taken ill the week before and, as young as I was, even I couldn’t help but notice that she seemed to be getting worse as time went on. Ordinarily, she was pretty and well groomed, a tall woman with long, blonde hair and a radiant glow to her skin. But on this evening, her locks were lank, her skin pallid and she was terribly thin. My mum was only twenty-eight, but tonight she looked more than twice her age.
I returned to the lounge, where Gary was perched at the window, smirking at me and seemingly unconcerned at my mother’s illness. Dad was still sitting where I had left him, Senior Service cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other. When he finished, the cigarette butt would join the many others which lay in a full ashtray and the tin would be thrown into an old cardboard box which rattled with empties. The beer cans were always there, a constant reminder of the fact that Dad drank all the time, yet he never seemed to be drunk. I couldn’t understand this. When I watched television, men would drink beer and then reel around in drunkenness, often falling over, or singing, and having a great time. That wasn’t my dad. That wasn’t how drink affected him. I had concluded that my dad must not drink as much as those men, because, apart from sometimes falling asleep in his chair, I’d never seen him fall prey to the funny antics of the drunk men on telly.
In fact, my dad wasn’t a funny man at all.
Tonight, as I came back from seeing Mum looking like death, from watching her retch her very insides out, I would realise just how bad his temper could be. His anger seemed to ooze out of him as he turned to me and barked, ‘For fuck’s sake, stop harassing your mother.’ I was shocked – I couldn’t remember Dad ever swearing at me before, even though he had never been particularly loving or warm. He was a man who believed in standards, he was Army through and through, but now he seemed to have forgotten that he was talking to a little girl.
I stood there staring at him, stunned by the bad words which had come out of his mouth.
‘What are you fucking gawping at?’ he snapped. ‘You know she isn’t well, you know she’s ill, and Christ knows when she’ll get any better.’
I’m not sure that I did know that. I did have an awareness that my mum was often sick, and that she was being sick more often these days, but at five years old I never thought about the future and I didn’t put two and two together. Sometimes I felt sick if I ate too many sweeties, and I knew my friends did too. I certainly hadn’t faced up to the possibility that there was something seriously wrong with Mum that might not get fixed.
My dad’s words snapped me out of my reverie. ‘Keep the fuck away from her,’ he told me. ‘In fact, clear up your rubbish instead of standing there being useless. It’s your bedtime, so hurry up for Christ’s sake. Get all of your shite out of the way – move it!’
The unfairness of it swamped me. ‘It’s not rubbish, it’s my homework!’ I said, desperately wanting to cry. My mum was ill, my dad was swearing at me, my brother was calling me names, and my world seemed overwhelmingly horrible. I grabbed my homework jotter and books from where Gary was sitting, ignoring the fact that he was sniggering at Dad’s treatment of me, and ran down the hallway to my bedroom.
I threw it all down onto my dressing table and flung myself on the bed. Just as I did so, I heard a horrendous crack and saw flashes of light. This was a ghastly night and it was getting worse. I hated thunderstorms and felt a knot in my stomach as the night got threateningly dark. I could hardly see anything. Despite an ominous feeling, I knew I had no alternative but to go back through to the lounge. ‘Dad! Dad!’ I screamed. ‘I’m so scared. What’s happening? When will it stop, Dad?’
He was as still as a statue as I stood beside his chair. I was a tiny child, terrified and desperate for some consolation. I couldn’t go to my mum and my dad was acting in a way I simply couldn’t comprehend. He wouldn’t even look at me. ‘Shut up. It’s only a fucking storm. Now get your arse back into bed and stop being so bloody annoying.’
Tears were brimming in my eyes as I pleaded with him. ‘Can I stay up for a little while, just until it stops? Please? Please, Dad?’
He finally turned round and looked at me. It chilled me to the bone. His face was alien and his eyes cold, almost as if he had no recognition of the child before him. Looking back, and knowing what was to come, I believe something had broken in my father that night. Given how my world was to shatter, beginning in only a few hours’ time, it was as if he himself was unable to react to how he was behaving. The swearing, the aggression, the lack of eye contact – all these things were part of a personality which he may have used in his day-to-day life in the Army, but they were not part of the make-up of a loving father.
‘If I have to tell you one more time, you little bastard . . .’ he muttered menacingly.
He didn’t.
I could feel the atmosphere. I could sense the tension.
As Mum writhed in agony in her own room, my own body felt a wave of fear. I was filled with the knowledge that this was a battle I couldn’t win. As I scurried back to my room, the storm raged outside – and the one which would rip my life apart was only just beginning.
As I lay in bed, I watched the storm. There was no point in trying to sleep; I was scared of the noise and of the flashes, scared of how Dad had treated me and of his words, which had made me realise how ill Mum was.
The blocks of flats surrounding where we lived were all alike during the day: grey, drab and peeling, desperately in need of some refurbishment. Ours was no different to the others, but the storm was changing things. The flats were washed in the glow of lightning, and the streaks of brilliant white sky were coming around more and more quickly. They changed from white to orange and then blue. My dressing-table mirror was reflecting all of this, and I was amazed by the kaleidoscope surrounding me. I wasn’t a scaredy-cat. I was a big girl. A brave girl.
I snuggled down underneath the blankets. Perhaps other things would get better too. Perhaps, just as I had imagined the storm was a terrifying thing, I had imagined that Dad had been mean to me, that Mum would never get better again. Perhaps everything would be fine in the morning.
I’m glad I had that optimism – even if it didn’t last.
I lay there, torn between fear and wonder at the light display which was flickering across my room. I clung to my golliwog, one of the few possessions I owned, and tried to sleep. I closed my eyes very tightly, but the flashing shards of colour from the storm still seemed to register. Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep.
I don’t know how long it lasted, but sometime later that night, more likely the early hours of the morning, I was awoken by something – voices maybe, shouting or some other commotion. The storm had stopped, but there was something else brewing. There was a low droning noise, which, in my sleepiness, I finally identified as voices. As I listened, I could pick out those of my dad and also of Agnes Anderson, Mum’s friend who lived in the same block as us. For a moment, I thought the storm had come back because there was still something playing out on the walls of the room. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, finally identifying it as a bright blue light shining upwards towards my window. But when I looked out, I saw something which made my stomach lurch – it wasn’t lightning, it was an ambulance.
I ran out into the hallway and found the source of the noise which had woken me. There was a group of people there: two ambulancemen in green uniforms and Gary were standing beside my dad and Agnes. I wormed into the middle of the group easily, as I was so small, only to be grabbed by my father pulling at my nightdress. He stared down at me, his gaze unflinching, as I heard Agnes say, ‘Let me take the kids for the night, Harry; you’ve got enough on your plate.’ Dad dragged his eyes away from me to answer her. ‘No. They’re staying here.’ He was scaring me by that point, just as he had before I’d fallen asleep. He was acting in a very calm, intense, controlled way and, as no one had yet told me what was happening to my mum, I felt panicked. Agnes noticed this and tried again. ‘Well, at least let me take Tracy. She looks terrified, poor wee thing.’ I knew instinctively that was what I wanted.
‘Let me go with Agnes, please let me go with Agnes!’ I begged. Somehow, I just knew that I needed to get away from my father, but he wouldn’t budge. There was something so alarming about the look in his eyes – I didn’t recognise it but knew I had to escape. He refused my pleas, rejected the offer from Agnes, and kept a firm grip of my wrist as Mum was carried out of her bedroom on a stretcher. I realised then that there was a doctor in the house too, and both he and the ambulancemen looked very serious.
Mum had been sedated and was oblivious to everything; and the fact that she was so still and so unlike my mummy started me crying. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted her to tell me that everything would be all right. I had a terrible feeling that if she didn’t say those words, things would never be the same again.
I was right.
I was so right.
Dad told me and Gary to go into the lounge and, as we did, I could hear Agnes try again. ‘I’ll just take Tracy,’ she said breezily, as if my dad’s previous rebuttals had never happened. ‘I can make sure she gets to school tomorrow and then pick her up afterwards. She’ll be fine with me, Harry. I’ll keep her safe.’
Those words are imprinted on my mind. We don’t remember everything about our childhoods, but there are some scenes we all keep locked in our memories as if they happened only yesterday. That one, the one of my mother being taken away on a stretcher and of Agnes trying to get me away, is burned in my memory. Did Agnes suspect something? Why was she so insistent? She was a good, kind woman, but I do wonder why she was so keen to get me in particular away from my dad, rather than Gary as well. What was she picking up on?