Nobody's Child Page 7

  This time I didn’t have Mammy for support or even as a silent witness. She had scuttled away downstairs to the shop moments after Daddy had appeared on the landing.

  I didn’t blame her, because given the slightest chance I would have disappeared out of his way myself, and I knew quite well that she couldn’t have helped me anyway. It was just that, if she was sitting near by, even when she was drugged up and barely conscious, I didn’t feel quite so utterly alone and vulnerable.

  I cut a small piece from one of the mosaic-like slices and speared it on the end of my fork. In the jelly were bits of skin with hair still on and it made me feel sick just to look at it. My stomach heaved at the thought of swallowing it, and I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to put that horrid muck into my mouth.

  So I simply sat there staring at it on the end of my raised fork, and I began to cry. Big tears tumbled down my cheeks and splashed on to the table. From experience, I knew that something very bad was going to happen and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was very scared.

  Daddy carried on glaring at me across the little table and then slowly, without looking, he reached down below table height as though he was feeling for something. Moments later, my dread leaped up several notches, when his hand reappeared holding his shiny black baton. He raised it all the way to shoulder height and suddenly slammed it down on to the table with a bang. My plate jumped several inches in the air and I leaped up from my chair in sheer fright, then slowly sat again as Daddy placed his baton on my shoulder and pressed me down.

  ‘Now, are you going to eat your tea or do I have to find a way to feed you?’ Daddy asked in a fairly normal voice.

  ‘I can’t,’ I cried. ‘I just can’t eat it. I’ll be sick. Please don’t make me eat it.’

  I didn’t expect him to take much notice of my pleas because he never did. But I certainly hadn’t anticipated what happened next.

  My left hand was still holding the fork and my right hand was palm down on the table beside my plate.

  Daddy simply raised the baton and, in one swift, deliberate movement, brought it crashing down on the back of my hand.

  The shock forced all the breath out of me with a whoosh. Then came the pain, which seemed to race up my arm like something alive. I tucked my injured hand under my left armpit and began to cry with the agony.

  ‘You’re not eating,’ shouted Daddy over my sobs, his face inches from mine. ‘Better get started or I’ll give you something to really cry about.

  The pain in my hand was already almost more than I could bear. ‘Please don’t hit me again, Daddy. It hurts so much,’ I begged.

  ‘Well, you know what to do about it,’ he told me calmly. ‘Eat your tea.’

  I looked at the scrap which still hung from the end of my fork and I swallowed hard, willing myself to eat the offending morsel. But I still couldn’t do it. I knew I would be sick the moment it touched my tongue.

  Daddy raised the baton again and I cringed in my seat waiting for another blow to my head or arms. I just hoped that it would knock me out so it would all be over with.

  But he still had some surprises. He reached out his left hand and tore off a corner of one of the brawn slices on my plate, and pressed it on the rounded end of his baton. There was enough fat and jelly to make it stick there quite easily.

  ‘Open wide, you little bastard,’ he told me. ‘You’re going to eat this if I have to smash all your teeth to do it.’

  By this time the pain and the panic combined were so much that I was no longer in control. I sat there, my body frozen, my mind seized up, unable to decide what to do.

  Daddy decided for me. He suddenly stretched out his left hand and clamped his thumb and fingers over the end of my nose, squeezing it tightly. My mouth opened automatically as the air coming in through my nose was cut off, and Daddy pressed the end of his baton between my lips.

  It was barred by my teeth, so he barked, ‘Open wide or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat, so help me.’

  I was struggling to breathe and cry at the same time as little air was getting around the edge of the baton, and I opened my mouth as wide as it would go.

  Daddy pushed the baton forward until its tip, with its covering of brawn, rammed against the back of my throat, stopping any air from getting in at all. I grabbed his left hand in both of mine and tried to prise his fingers off my nose.

  At first he laughed. But I suppose he must finally have realised that he was choking me. Perhaps my face had turned bright red, because he suddenly released his grip on my nose and I was able to draw in some air.

  But it was not enough. The baton had pushed back my tongue, and this and the brawn were now clogging my throat. I pushed against the table with both hands and finally my chair fell backwards and I followed it down, landing on my back with my head banging on the floor. But at least I had got free of the baton.

  I spluttered and coughed and the piece of brawn shot out of my mouth as if from a catapult. My tongue felt swollen and sore and seemed to half-fill my mouth, and one of my teeth felt shaky.

  All I could do was lie there on my back and suck in deep breaths in between sobs. I felt I had come very close to dying.

  But Daddy hadn’t quite finished with me yet. My bare legs were up in the air still, horizontal to the floor and hooked over the front of the fallen chair.

  He walked around the table and glared down at me. ‘You don’t seem to realise. This is for your own damned good,’ he told me, then he hit me hard with his baton twice, across my shins, just below my knees.

  I couldn’t help it. I screamed so hard that I wet myself again. I had no control left at all, the pain was so awful. I began to whimper and at that moment I hated my father more than anything else in the world, and wanted him dead.

  ‘I hate you,’ I managed to gasp between sobs.

  Daddy sneered at me. ‘And I hate you, you useless little bastard,’ he said, and grabbed me by the hair and hauled me to my feet. It felt, for a moment, as though he was going to pull off my scalp.

  Then Daddy slapped me a final time, hard, across my face. ‘Get out of the house,’ he yelled. ‘I don’t want to see you. Get out.’

  I half-stumbled, half-fell down the stairs and through the shop below, hoping to find a comforting pair of arms and someone to kiss away my pain.

  But Mammy was sitting behind the counter, apparently asleep. If she knew what had been happening upstairs she never made a sign, though I was pretty certain she had chosen to escape into her drug world again rather than cope with yet another family drama. These days she was rarely there when I needed her most.

  I was still crying and hurting badly from the blows to my head, legs and hand and was desperately in need of warmth and tenderness. I knew there was none to be had at home, so I went in search of comfort, out through our back yard and along the lane.

  Two doors down was the home of a playmate whose mother, Betty, had always had a few words of kindness and the odd hug for me, and I made my way through their yard, which like ours backed on to the lane.

  When I walked through their back door, she took one look at me and gave a little cry of horror as she rushed forward and scooped me up in her arms. ‘Oh, God, Michael. What has that monster done to you now?’ she wailed.

  ‘I fell downstairs again,’ I sobbed. ‘That’s what happened. I fell downstairs again.’

  ‘Hush, my darling,’ she soothed, and sat down and began rocking me in her arms like a baby.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve wet myself,’ I sobbed.

  She just hugged me closer and whispered, ‘That doesn’t matter, lovey. That doesn’t matter.’

  I felt that, with her as my mother, Daddy would never have dared to hit me. But, instead of a proper mammy, I now had an almost permanent zombie as a parent, and I knew in my heart that somehow that would have to do.

  For just a while longer, I snuggled closer into Betty’s arms and allowed myself to escape to a fantasy world where I was being cudd
led and comforted by a loving, caring mother of my own.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I returned home that night, my legs and hand still throbbed with pain but our neighbour had replaced my damp trousers with a pair of her son’s and my spirits had been almost restored by her cuddles and kindness.

  They plummeted again, though, when I discovered that Daddy was still there, in the living room, watching television.

  Mammy had made it upstairs by this time and was slumped next to him on the sofa, apparently asleep.

  I nearly started to sob again, because I didn’t think I could cope with another beating. There was only so much hurt I could stand.

  But Daddy’s mood had undergone one of its mercurial changes and he greeted me, if not with a smile, at least not with anger on his face. He pointed towards the bedroom and told me, ‘Get yourself off to bed, Michael. I’ll be with you shortly.’

  I knew then that I was not to be allowed the easy escape of curling up for sleep in my chair. Daddy was going to make me do that thing for him again.

  I couldn’t explain why, but each time he made me handle his willy I felt more and more revolted by what I was doing. I knew that what we were doing was wrong, because it felt wrong. I instinctively knew that I daren’t breathe a word about it to another living soul, especially not my poor mother. I was too terrified by what he might do.

  As soon as I was undressed, I slid between the sheets and lay there shivering, partly because it was cold and there was only one thin blanket, but also because I was very afraid, as I always was before these sessions in Daddy’s bed.

  That night he didn’t give me time to fall asleep before he came to bed. Even with the bedclothes over my head, I heard him come in and undress, and then felt him slide into bed next to me.

  I knew it was useless pretending to be asleep, because he would just go on shaking me until I responded, but I resolved not to make it easy for him. I wouldn’t do anything, I told myself, until he made me. The wait wasn’t long. He shook my shoulder and, in that special voice he always used on these occasions, said, ‘Come on, Michael, you know what to do. Get on with it.’

  The fact that he had savagely beaten me only a few hours earlier didn’t seem to make the slightest difference to him. It was as though I was dealing with two completely separate daddies.

  What he wanted me to do to him was a very intimate act – yet there was no real intimacy between us at all;we were like strangers.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I told him. ‘My hand is all swollen and stiff where you bashed it with your baton. I can hardly use my fingers.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to use your other hand,’ he said. ‘So get on with it. And don’t stop until I tell you to.’

  I had to do it. There was never any winning with Daddy. He always made things go his way in the end. I started to cry, but I was determined he shouldn’t know, and I held in my sobs while I did what he wanted.

  As soon as it was over, I dried my hand on the sheet, away from me, and rolled on to my side, as far from Daddy as I could get. I was still crying when I fell asleep.

  The next morning he was gone before I awoke.

  It was another cold and dismal Manchester day and Mammy was still asleep on the sofa when I went downstairs, as usual, to forage in the shop for food.

  I found an apple and a few wholemeal biscuits in an opened packet, and that was my breakfast. Two slices of stale bread, a few scraps of ham and an overripe banana were all I could find for my lunchbox, but, as so often happened, they would have to do.

  When I shook Mammy’s shoulder before leaving for school, she actually opened her eyes and seemed to recognise me. But that was all. ‘Home from school already, Michael?’ she said.

  ‘No, Mammy, I’m just going,’ I told her, but got no sign that she had understood. But then I hadn’t expected any.

  She should have been opening the shop by now, but these days she was nearly always late. Another cause of frequent rows with Daddy, who claimed it was losing money.

  Sometimes she was so late opening that she missed deliveries and was unable to make sandwiches for her regular customers, who were gradually turning to other, more reliable sources for their midday meals.

  ‘It’s time to open the shop,’ I told her.

  ‘In a minute,’ she replied, closing her eyes again. ‘In a minute. I’m awake now.’

  I knew that, when Mammy said ‘in a minute’, it could mean anything, even the rest of the day, and that it was hopeless to go on trying to rouse her. How could a six-year-old succeed if a grown-up didn’t want to co-operate?

  On top of which I had my own problems to cope with. My hand was twice its normal size and dark blue and purple where Daddy had hit me with his baton. I had bathed it in cold water, which had sometimes helped in the past, but that didn’t appear to have had any effect this time. It was still terribly painful and I could barely move my fingers, which were the size of little sausages.

  My class teacher spotted it straight away and called me to the front. ‘What have you done to your hand, Michael?’

  ‘I shut it in a door,’ I told her, having anticipated her interest and worked out a story on my walk to school.

  By the look on her face, I don’t think she believed me. Then she spotted the bruises on my shins and quickly covered her mouth with her hand. She seemed really shocked. ‘What about your legs?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me you got those bruises from a slammed door as well.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I ran into a bench in the yard playing football.’

  She shook her head. ‘No one can be as clumsy as you claim to be,’ she told me. ‘I think a doctor needs to see that hand and then we can decide who else to call in.’

  A part-time teacher was summoned to take me to the local hospital, where they X-rayed my hand.

  ‘There’s nothing broken. It’s just badly bruised,’ the doctor told her. ‘But I would have expected the edge of a door to have left a scrape mark. This looks more like it received a blow from on top.’

  ‘It was the door,’ I told him. ‘I slammed it and still had my hand around the edge.’

  By the age of six I was so used to lying to cover up for Daddy’s brutal attacks that I could look an adult straight in the eye when I explained my fantasy accidents.

  ‘I suppose it might have happened that way,’ the doctor told the teacher. ‘It would be very hard to prove otherwise.’

  And that seemed to be the end of it.

  A nurse smeared ointment on my hand and bandaged it, then I was taken back to school.

  After all the lies I had told that day to account for my bruises, it was a relief to be able to tell at least one person the truth.

  ‘Daddy hit me with his baton,’ I told Mammy when I got home and she asked about my bandaged hand.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, a lot.’

  ‘I’ll try to get him to stop,’ she said. But she looked straight through me and I knew that she no longer had the spirit to fight with Daddy. To Mammy I had become a lost cause. It wasn’t that she no longer cared, I don’t think. It was simply that she was defeated, worn down by the screaming and the beatings and the hatred. That and the pills had taken away her ability to resist, her courage and even her will to survive.

  At times likes this, I would pretend to myself that I lived with a normal family who loved me and with whom I was safe. It was the only way I could prevent myself from crying.

  Mammy couldn’t help me and neither could my teachers or the neighbours.

  I was completely on my own and would have to find the strength inside myself to carry on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shortly after my seventh birthday, in June 1964, Mammy told me that we were to leave Manchester – for good.

  For months now, the bulldozers had been at work along the Ashton Old Road, demolishing the houses. By June, they were only a block away from us and Mammy said the council had told us we had to leave by the end of August.<
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  Daddy had also been told that he was no longer needed at Strangeways and would have to find a new job. Later, I heard it was something to do with his treatment of a prisoner but I never discovered the whole story.

  For weeks, whenever Mammy was lucid enough, which was less and less often, all they seemed to talk about was money – and our lack of it. We couldn’t afford to buy a home and from what I understood neither could we afford to live in another council property – even if one was offered in a decent part of Manchester. The only solution was to move in with one or other of my grandmothers. For me, that meant a choice between salvation and utter disaster.

  As the time for us to move drew closer and the rows between Mammy and Daddy became almost continuous, so did my beatings. I was punched and slapped and kicked almost every day and had so many cuts and bruises I would never have been able to explain them at school.

  But it was the summer holidays and, apart from two of our neighbours, there was nobody who seemed to care what happened to me.

  Mammy no longer made any attempt to shield me or even comfort me after a thrashing. She had once again became a regular target for Daddy’s brutality and was barely able to cope with her own injuries, let alone mine. I knew it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about me. She didn’t care about anything any more.

  Every moment Daddy was at home I spent in a state of high anxiety. I knew that he was going to bash me at some point, but I didn’t know when and I didn’t know what form his attack would take. Sometimes I became so frightened, waiting for the beating, that I would wet myself. I knew that at times I smelled because of it, but this was a very small worry compared with my main concern – guessing how the next lot of pain would be inflicted. The anticipation of what was to come was often far worse than the beating itself.

  One thing that didn’t change was his demands for my services in his bed. The milking may have given Daddy some kind of satisfaction, but my efforts never earned a word of gratitude or reduced the brutality of his attacks.