I Remember, Daddy (2 page)

Strangely, it seemed that as soon as he had a name, Sam had his own identity. It was a thought that, for some reason, sent a bolt of pain through my heart. And then I realised that what I was feeling wasn’t pain but fear: I was afraid of the enormity of being responsible for a life that was already far more precious to me than anyone else’s, including my own.

At visiting time the next day, the double doors at the end of the maternity ward crashed open and I looked up to see my father striding towards me. He was almost completely hidden behind a huge bouquet of flowers and his girlfriend, Gillian, was scurrying along behind him, looking tentative and hesitant.

I glanced anxiously at my mother, silently cursing my father for flaunting Gillian in front of her in a clearly deliberate act of spite that was completely out of place at what should have been a family time. My mother took a step away from my bed and started fussing with her handbag, as though to indicate that she had no intention of trying to fight for her rightful place in the pecking order.

‘So, what are you calling it?’ my father bellowed, leaning down towards me and offering his cheek for me to kiss. The whole ward had fallen silent. Even the sucking sounds made by the newborn babies when they were feeding and their gentle murmuring when they weren’t seemed momentarily to have stopped. Everyone’s eyes were on my father. Some people were regarding him with open admiration, and some were watching him with expressions of hostile disapproval at the loudness of his self-assurance. But it was clear that all of them were impressed, despite themselves.

‘We’ve decided to call him Sam,’ I told my father, reaching out to place a subconsciously protective hand on the cot beside the bed.

‘Sam!’ My father almost spat out the word in disgust. ‘What sort of a name is Sam for Christ’s sake? It’s a fucking dog’s name. I thought you’d call him Harold, after me and after my father. You’re fucking useless.’

Then, without even glancing towards his first-born grandchild, he threw the ridiculously ostentatious bouquet of flowers on to the bed, turned on his heels, barked ‘Gillian!’ and marched back down the ward, letting the doors swing shut behind him.

My father didn’t see Sam again until he was nine months old. But, by that time, everything had changed, nothing would ever be the same again, and I could hardly bear to watch him put his hands on my beloved son.

A
lthough I’d had little contact with my father for several years by the time I discovered I was pregnant with Sam, and he didn’t play much of a role in my life, it had been a few weeks before I’d plucked up the courage to tell him. I knew he thought Tom wasn’t ‘good enough’ for me – which was particularly ironic considering the fact that his own background had been even more humble than Tom’s. But, whereas Tom was perfectly comfortable in his own skin, my father had spent years climbing the social ladder, and he was proud that he’d ‘risen above’ his early life on a council estate and become a wealthy, successful and powerful businessman. Status, money and appearances were all that mattered to him, which was why, when I did finally tell him I was pregnant, I was surprised that he declared himself to be pleased and said he was looking forward to becoming a grandfather for the first time. Clearly, though, any grandfatherly feelings he might have had had evaporated that day he came to the hospital, when he decided that the name of my child mattered more than the child himself.

Tom and I had taken out a mortgage and bought a house together when I was four months’ pregnant. Although I’d been happy living with Tom’s parents, having a place of my own was really important to me. I’d bought my first flat when I was just 21 and was working as the manageress of a shop. It was a financial stretch on the salary I was earning, but it was worth it. I’d furnished it with bits of furniture my dad had been going to throw out, and I’d painted the walls, put curtains up at the windows and kept it spotlessly clean. I was really proud of that flat, partly, I think, because it seemed like a visible representation of the fact that I’d overcome the problems I’d had as a teenager and had proved my teachers – and my father – wrong by actually achieving something. It was the first place I’d ever lived where I felt safe, because I knew that I could close my own front door and choose who I invited into my home, and into my life. I’d had a horrible childhood and, until I bought that flat, nothing I’d ever done had felt as though it was my choice.

As a child, every aspect of my life had been entirely controlled by my father, and even as an adult I still felt the effect of his influence in many ways. My father’s parents had had very little money when he was growing up, but he’d worked hard to become a well-off, successful businessman and he was so determined to be someone that he didn’t care what it took for him to achieve that goal.

He had two sides to his character. To his friends he was eccentric, fun-loving and flamboyant, an amusing raconteur who had a way with the ladies and was the generous host of countless extravagant parties. To his family, however, he was a frightening, self-centred, violent alcoholic, a strict disciplinarian who despised women, hated foreigners, Catholics, poor people, homeless people, people who showed weakness or inadequacy in any way, people who smoked … The list was almost endless.

He regularly abused my mother, both mentally and physically, bullied and beat my brother and me, and cast a shadow over my childhood from which I never truly emerged. By the time he and my mother divorced, when I was seven, the damage he had done to me seemed irreversible: I was a nervous, bewildered, insecure little girl without one scrap of self-confidence, who became a deeply depressed and confused teenager.

My mother was a shy, pretty young woman who’d had a sheltered upbringing in an affluent family, and who’d grown up to be both naïve and unsure of herself. When she met my extrovert, confident, flamboyant father, she was swept off her feet, overwhelmed by him, and she fell madly in love. She was devastated when she found him in bed with another woman on the night before their wedding. But he could talk his way out of any situation, however incriminating it might seem, and she really did love him. So she forgave him and married him anyway. And it was only after they were married that she began to realise that the man who had seemed so loving and caring was, in reality, a self-centred, violent bully with an almost inexhaustible and perverted sexual appetite.

My father had always been a heavy drinker who progressed through various stages of drunkenness. During the first stage, he’d be charming and affectionate and he’d tell exaggerated stories that made everyone laugh and say to each other what a great bloke he was. But the final stage – which usually didn’t start until he was alone at home with my mother – was at completely the other end of the spectrum, and he’d be vicious, aggressive and frightening.

It was the early 1960s when my parents got married and, even had my mother been able to pluck up the courage to leave my father when she began to discover what he was really like, her parents – as well as everyone else who knew her – would have been totally horrified by the idea of a divorce. And, unfortunately, unlike my father – who was ruthlessly determined to do and to have whatever he wanted, and apparently completely indifferent to what other people might think – my mother was timidly anxious to do the right thing, and she would never have considered bringing such shame on herself or on her family.

After my parents were married, my mother worked to support my father through university. She didn’t earn very much, but just four years after my father graduated, they were able to move with their newborn son into a five-storey house in one of the most prestigious addresses in town. And that’s where they were living when I was born, a couple of years later.

The house was huge. It had a large, old-fashioned kitchen in the semi-basement, with a range cooker, an enormous pantry and an adjoining laundry room. Above it, on the ground floor, were the family living rooms, although it was the dining and drawing rooms on the first floor that were most impressive. They were furnished with beautiful, polished antique furniture and oil paintings in elaborately carved and moulded frames, and their high ceilings and tall, elegantly proportioned windows looked out on to the leafy square across the road.

My father loved paintings, and there were two in particular that I remember. One of them was of him as a child, aged seven years old, and the other was of his mother. The painting of my father was in a heavy gilt frame, with his name, age and the date engraved on a plaque at the bottom. It hung on the wall above the Georgian fireplace in the drawing room – and in equally prominent positions in every other house he ever lived in. I don’t know whether it was actually painted when he was a child. Apart from the fact that his parents had very little money, they didn’t really seem to be the sort of people who would commission an oil painting of their son – however much his mother might have adored him. Perhaps my father had had it painted himself, from a photograph, when he was an adult. Having a portrait in oils of himself as a child would have fitted in with his aspirations to become someone of substance and with his idea of who he really was – or who he felt he should have been.

My father was very strict with me and my brother Ian, and I don’t remember him ever playing with us or taking us out anywhere when we were children. When he wasn’t at work, out playing tennis or socialising, he was sleeping, and he had no time and certainly no inclination to bother much with us. In any case, he believed that children should be seen as little as possible and never heard. So he rarely spoke to us, although he shouted at us constantly, particularly at my brother, who he called a wimp and a cry-baby.

My mother used to try to hustle us out of the way as soon as she heard him coming home from work. Then he’d vent his bad temper on her instead – and it did seem as though he was almost always in a bad temper when there was no one else in the house except us. He’d criticise my mother and sneer at her until he reduced her to tears, and as soon as she was crying, he’d be more annoyed than ever.

He was totally different with other people, though. He had a loud, infectious laugh and could be charming when he wanted to be; and he loved giving parties. So, while my brother and I were looked after by the au pair of the moment, my mother would shop, cook and clean and then fix her hair and make-up, put on a pretty dress and smile as she handed round food to my father’s friends and colleagues, their wives and girlfriends.

Despite his love of parties, however, my father didn’t believe in celebrating our birthdays or even Christmas – I can’t remember one single Christmas Day of my childhood – and he didn’t believe in presents. On the one occasion when I did have a birthday party, all the gifts that had been bought for me were collected into black bin bags as soon as the guests had gone home, and then they were given away.

The only time my father showed any interest in me and my brother was when he made us perform for the entertainment and amusement of his guests. We were like little puppets, only really coming to life in my father’s eyes when he decided to tug at our strings and show us off. From the time I was three years old, he used to teach me fables in French, which I had to recite on demand to his friends. They’d all stand around me in a circle, sipping their whisky from crystal glasses and smiling benevolently as I spouted words I didn’t understand, which my father had taught me, parrot-fashion.

I can’t remember the fables now, although I can still remember clearly how afraid I used to be of my father’s sudden impatient anger whenever I made a mistake while he was teaching them to me. I can remember how my whole body used to shake and how I’d clench my little fists until my hands were damp with sweat and my fingernails were digging into my palms, and how my father towered over me like the embodiment of a threat as the strange, incomprehensible sounds tumbled from my lips. The fear I felt was well founded, because if I made just one mistake, my father would tell me to pull down my pants and lie across my bed and then he’d beat me with his belt, shouting at me that I was useless, before sending me to bed without any supper.

One of my earliest memories is of something that happened just before I turned three. My brother and I weren’t allowed in the rooms on the first floor of the house. We had a playroom on the floor above, which was the only place we were supposed to play. But, when my father was at work, my mother used to let us do more or less what we wanted, and one day we decided to play trains in the drawing room. Ian was leading the way, making a very satisfactory steam-train noise, and I was holding on to his waist, following behind him and singing out ‘Oooh-Oooh’ every few minutes, in a not quite so realistic imitation of a train’s whistle.

Suddenly, Ian tripped and fell headlong against one of the huge windows. There was an ear-splitting roar as the glass cracked and then dropped, in a massive sheet, to the ground, only just missing decapitating him. I screamed, but Ian just stood there in silence, too shocked to react. After a few seconds, he touched his hand to his forehead and looked at the blood on his fingers as though he couldn’t understand what it was.

I was still screaming when I heard my father shout and, at the same moment, the drawing-room door flew open and he burst into the room, followed closely by my mother.

We found out later that he’d been walking home along the edge of the leafy square when he’d seen my brother fall against the window and had watched as the glass splintered and smashed. But, instead of being concerned about the long, deep gash on my brother’s head, which was now spurting forth what looked like pints of blood, or about the fact that Ian had come very close to being killed, my father was almost ballistic with fury because we’d been playing in the drawing room.

Ian was still standing, dazed and completely still, near the empty window frame when my father came into the room. Finally, though, as the initial numbness of the shock began to wear off, his whole body started to shake violently. And it was at that moment that my father almost ran across the room and grabbed him by the shoulders.

‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’ he bellowed into my brother’s blood-covered face. ‘You are not allowed to play in the drawing room!’ With each shouted word, he punched Ian on the arm and then he screamed, ‘How many times do you have to be told something as simple as that?’

My brother flinched and leaned away from him.

‘Please, Harry,’ my mother said, touching my father’s shoulder and then quickly pulling her hand away again. ‘We need to get Ian to the hospital. It’s a really serious cut.’

‘The hospital?’ My father’s face was a deep-red colour and I knew he was on the verge of losing control completely. ‘The fucking hospital?’ he shrieked again. ‘Get to your room! Both of you!’ He swung round, took a step towards where I was cowering on the floor at the side of the chintz-covered sofa and shouted, ‘Now!’

As I fled from the room, I heard my mother pleading with him again, ‘Please, Harry.’ Then she gave a sharp cry, and I knew my father had punched her.

I sat on my bed, sobbing with shocked distress because of what had happened and because I was terrified of what was to come. A few minutes later, my father walked into my bedroom and slowly undid the buckle of his belt. Without having to be told, I pulled my pants down to my knees and lay on my stomach across my bed while he gave me ‘ten of the best’. Then I struggled to my feet and tried to pull my pants back up over the bleeding rawness of my buttocks.

‘Go to your brother’s room.’ My father spat the words at me, his face a contorted mask of hatred and fury.

I limped along the corridor and stood helplessly beside Ian, who was sitting on his bed crying, his tears diluting the blood that was still seeping from the cut on his head.

When I looked up, my father was standing in the doorway, surveying us both with an expression of disgust. ‘You will stay there without food or water until Monday morning,’ he said coldly, and then he turned and left the room, locking the door behind him.

It was a Friday evening. But I was just two years old and Ian was five, and we had no concept of how long it was until Monday.

A little while later, my mother came into the room carrying a tray of sandwiches and two glasses of water. As soon as she opened the door, my father appeared behind her, as if by magic.

‘I thought I had made it clear that you are not to give them anything to eat or drink,’ he said, in a slow, menacing voice.