Wake Up, Mummy (6 page)

Perhaps most importantly of all, they were strong, positive influences in the negative atmosphere my mother always created around her, and they taught me that life could be different from – and unimaginably better than – the life I’d always known. In some respects, though, that was a lesson that made it even harder to accept the miserable, degrading new life I was about to live.

MY PARENTS WERE
divorced soon after we went to live with my grandparents and Chris and I rarely saw or heard from my father. In fact, I don’t remember even thinking about him. Sometimes, my brother would cry and scream at my mother, ‘I don’t want you. I want my daddy.’ And she’d shout back at him, ‘If you want your father so much, you can fucking go and live with him.’ To Chris, though, the words weren’t simply something he’d say to try to get back at my mother when she was being mean; he really did miss his dad. I couldn’t understand how he felt, and it wasn’t until many years later that I realised his experience of living with our father was completely different from my own, because he’d had an opportunity to develop a relationship with him. My father had always wanted a son, and as much as he was able to love anyone he loved my brother, whereas I could never form any type of bond with him because, for some
unknown reason, he hated and distrusted all women, including his own mother.

But although I didn’t miss my father, I never lost hope that one day he’d change his mind about me and see that I
was
worthy of his attention. So, when I was five years old and he invited Chris and me to his sister’s wedding, I was really excited.

When the big day finally arrived, I had breakfast with my grandmother as usual, and although she talked and listened to me as she always did, she seemed tense and distracted. She had a look in her eyes that I’d learned to recognise as meaning something bad had happened, but I decided I must be mistaken, because the day ahead was an exciting one.

After breakfast, I ran upstairs to put on my best party frock and then twirled round the kitchen to show my grandmother how I looked.

‘You look beautiful, darling,’ she told me. Then she turned away and started clattering dishes into the sink, so that her voice was slightly muffled as she added, ‘Just be careful.’

For a moment I was puzzled, but then I realised she was worried in case I made a mess of my best dress. Although it wasn’t like her to be emotional about something so relatively trivial, I knew that there was no accounting for the things that upset adults. So I hugged
her extra tightly, assured her I’d take the greatest of care, and then ran to the living room to sit on the windowsill and wait for my father.

What I was looking forward to most of all was showing off my father to my new uncle – the patient, kind man who’d recently married my aunt. He and all my other uncles were at the house that day, although it wasn’t until years later that it dawned on me they’d gathered there in case there was any trouble.

As soon as I saw my father approaching the house, I ran to open the front door, and was chattering so excitedly I barely noticed the lack of enthusiasm in his greeting. Grabbing his hand, I almost dragged him into the living room, where I raised my arm as if displaying some rare treasure and told my newest uncle proudly, ‘
This
is my daddy!’

My father held out his hand. But, to my horror, my uncle ignored it, giving instead a curt nod of his head as he said, in a cold, serious voice I didn’t recognise, ‘Hello, Paul.’

I felt a flush of hot, embarrassed disappointment rise from my toes to the top of my head. How could my uncle – who was always cheerful and nice to everyone – be so rude? Surely he was excited to be meeting my daddy? So what possible reason could he have for sounding unfriendly and for not shaking the hand that was offered to him?

My father just shrugged. It seemed he was as eager to leave the house as my family were to see him go, and it wasn’t long before Chris and I were piling into his car and setting off with him in the direction of his mother’s house, which was where we would be staying that night, after the wedding.

Since I’d been told that we were going to stay with my father’s mother – my other grandmother – I’d been trying to remember what she looked like, but without success. So I’d settled on imagining she’d be just like my mother’s mother, whereas in fact she was about as different from her as it was possible to be. When Chris and I clambered out of the car at the end of our journey, she said ‘Hello’ to Chris and then just glanced at me with eyes that didn’t smile like my ‘real’ grandmother’s did.

When my father took us upstairs to put away our things, he opened the door of a dismal, uncarpeted room that seemed to be full of beds, like a dormitory. I sat down on the bed nearest the door and tried a couple of tentative bounces.

‘Get off there,’ my father snapped immediately, hitting my shoulder with his fist. ‘Those are your uncles’ beds. That’s yours.’ He turned and pointed to a small, blanket-covered mattress on the floor.

I knew my uncles all had homes of their own, but thought that perhaps they were going to sleep at their
mother’s house after the wedding. I was about to ask my father about it when he said, ‘It’ll be just you in here. Chris will be in my room.’ Chris pulled a face and I felt a thrill of pride at the thought that
I
was the one who was trusted enough to sleep alone in a special little bed in a room normally reserved for my father’s brothers.

I can’t remember anything about the wedding itself, except that afterwards, in the evening, we went to the reception. We were driven there by one of my uncles; my father sat beside him in the passenger seat and Chris and I sat together in the back of the car. Every time we stopped at traffic lights, I’d make Chris laugh by knocking on the window to attract the attention of the people in whatever car pulled up beside us. Then, with a suitably anguished expression on my face, I’d mouth the words, ‘Help! We’ve been kidnapped.’

Kidnapped was a new word to me and one I only vaguely understood. I’d learned it just a few days previously when I’d overheard my grandparents discussing the possibility that my father might be intending to ‘kidnap’ Chris and me if we were allowed to go to his sister’s wedding. Judging by the anxiety the discussion had caused my grandmother, being kidnapped was something pretty serious and something you wouldn’t want to happen to someone you loved. Other than that, though, I had no real idea what it meant.

Nevertheless, each time the car stopped, I repeated my charade, and then, as the lights changed and the traffic started moving again, Chris and I collapsed in quickly stifled giggles. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a straight face while enacting my mini-drama, but I managed to do so one last time when we pulled up at traffic lights beside two men in a large, black car. Suddenly, the passenger door flew open and one of the men jumped out, tapped on the window beside my uncle and called, ‘Open up, mate.’

My uncle turned towards him in surprise.

‘Open the window,’ the man said again, slowly this time and with a note of aggression in his voice.

My uncle looked at him for a moment and then wound the window down a couple of inches.

‘They your kids?’ the man asked.

He was standing very close to the car, the fingers of one hand hooked over the top of my uncle’s window, and he looked enormous. I held my breath and wondered just how angry my father and uncle were going to be. Clearly, being kidnapped was something even more serious than I’d realised.

As the cars behind us sounded their horns, anxious to get through the lights before they turned red again, Chris and I answered the man’s questions and apologised for being what my father later called ‘fucking stupid’. Finally,
the man seemed satisfied and he got back into the car with his friend and they drove away.

Throughout our interrogation, my father had turned in his seat and glared silently at my brother and me. But as soon as the man had gone and we were driving along in the car again, he released all his pent-up fury. Luckily though, his opportunity to shout was short-lived, because a few minutes later we arrived at the hall attached to the pub where the wedding reception was being held.

The next morning, I woke up in the little bed in my uncles’ room with my body covered in what appeared to be crusty, foul-smelling scabs. Horrified, I tiptoed into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and began to cry. With my heart pounding, I tried to wash them off, but it was as though they were glued to my skin. I started picking at them frantically with my fingernails, and had managed to loosen one or two of them when I heard my grandmother calling me to come down for breakfast. I felt sick. I thought I must have developed some terrible disease in the night, and I knew that my father hated illness of any sort. I was sure he’d be furious with me. It was the first time he’d seen me in months, and the fact that I was now covered in horrible, stinking scabs would simply serve to confirm his opinion that I was nothing but trouble.

I crept down the stairs and stood silently in the doorway that led into the kitchen, where my grandmother,
father and brother were already sitting at the table eating their breakfast. I was too embarrassed and humiliated to go into the room, and when they eventually looked up and saw me, I could see genuine alarm in Chris’s eyes. I began to sob. But instead of the tirade of abuse I was expecting from my father, he just smiled at my grandmother in a private sort of way, pointed towards a place that had been set for me at the far end of the table and said, ‘Sit down and eat your breakfast.’

Chris looked at my father in amazement, as surprised as I was by his non-reaction. Then he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the smell that had accompanied me into the room.

Suddenly, my father smiled a strange, humourless smile and leapt to his feet shrieking, ‘What the fuck is that revolting stink? Jesus, girl, is that coming from you?’

I felt an involuntary spasm contort my face, making my eyes snap shut, and a shudder like an electric shock passed through my whole body.

My father laid his hand on my brother’s shoulder in a subtle indication of the fact that the two of them were united against me and said, with a sneer, ‘What’s the matter with your sister, Chris? Does she always stink like this?’

Although Chris wriggled in his chair, trying to edge it further away from where I was sitting, he didn’t answer.
Perhaps he didn’t want to be on my father’s side, or perhaps he was afraid – as I was – that I’d caught some horrible disease. I couldn’t understand, though, why neither my father nor his mother seemed worried about what was wrong with me. At home, my ‘real’ grandmother would have placed a cool hand on my forehead to see if I had a temperature. And then, talking to me in her calm, reassuring voice, she’d have led me back up the stairs and tucked me up in bed while my grandfather made a phone call to the doctor.

At my ‘other’ grandmother’s house, though, I just sat at the table, with no appetite for any breakfast, and tried to endure the taunts until the time came for my father to drive us home.

In the car, my father made me sit on newspapers, which he’d spread in a thick layer across the back seat. Then he opened all the windows and told Chris to sit beside him in the front. My cheeks burned with shame as my father kept up a steady stream of cruel jokes and comments all the way back to my grandparents’ house. When we finally arrived and he stopped in front of the house, I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Then the father I had so looked forward to seeing said goodbye to my brother and, without a word to me, drove away.

I ran up the path ahead of Chris, anxious to show the terrible scabs to my grandparents, who I knew would give
me the sympathy and reassurance I so desperately needed. When my grandmother opened the front door, I burst into tears and she stood for a moment with an expression of shock on her face that confirmed my own worst fears. Then she called to my grandfather as she pulled me gently into the house, and I stood in the hallway, sobbing loudly, while my grandparents examined me and asked me questions, their dismay turning slowly to anger.

I had never seen my grandmother as furious as she was that day – not even on any of the occasions when my mother was ranting and raving at her and my grandmother was trying to make her ‘see some sense’. It was anger that was fully justified, because it turned out that the evil-smelling ‘scabs’ covering my body were excrement and that the little bed I’d been so proud to sleep in belonged to my other grandmother’s ancient, incontinent dog.

That was the last time during my childhood I was ever allowed to see my father. I didn’t forget him, though, because my mother talked about him constantly, particularly about how it was his hatred of
me
that had caused him to treat
her
so badly. According to my mother – the one person who should have loved me, come what may – every bad thing that had ever happened to her was due to my birth and to the fact that my father hadn’t wanted a girl. I was a worthless, vindictive little bitch who should
never have been born, the root of all her problems and the reason she was drinking herself to death. And it was me – not her – who was responsible for all the many miserable, negative aspects of her life.

Over the next few years, my mother’s drunken, rambling, tearful rants were just one of many humiliations for me. I could never confide in her, or tell her anything personal at all, because she had absolutely no respect for my privacy. Every single aspect of our lives became a topic for general discussion, although, in her eyes, the ‘best’ stories were the ones that were embarrassing or pitiable enough to encourage people to buy sympathy drinks for her. She’d happily relate the most confidential details about us as she bemoaned her lot to anyone in the pub who’d listen, which meant that every sleazy, drunken, low-life loser my mother befriended knew how vulnerable and defenceless we were. And they all took their cue from her and treated me with abusive disdain, even in my own home.

My mother’s resentment of me underpinned her attitude towards me throughout my childhood. She and my father considered me worthless, and for years I wished for her sake that I hadn’t been born. If she’d just had my brother, I felt that she and my father would have lived happily together, he’d never have treated her so badly, and she wouldn’t have had to turn to drink and pills in an
attempt to blot out the unacceptable truths of her life. In reality, though, I was just a scapegoat, and all the things she blamed me for were really the result of her own selfish irresponsibility.