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Sometimes I did know I was being naughty, and just wasn’t able to resist temptation. We were nearly always hungry and he would eat chocolate biscuits in front of us and forbid us from having any; then he would go out, leaving the packet in full sight. Like most small boys I was unable to resist sneaking one, not realizing he had marked the packet before he went, and would receive a battering when he came back.
‘Your dad’s going to adopt the girls now,’ Mum told me soon after we moved into Cranbrook Street, ‘so we can be a proper family. Even though you really are his son, Stuart, we’re going to play a game. We’re going to go to the courts and pretend that he’s adopting all three of you together, so the girls don’t feel upset.’
I was willing to go along with that; it was a game we had been playing at home for as long as I could remember. When we got to court, playing the charade of a happy family, wearing the first brand-new clothes I think I’d ever had bought for me, we were sat in front of two men and a woman. They asked a few questions.
‘So, Stuart,’ the lady said, ‘do you like your new daddy?’
‘I like my daddy,’ I replied politely, ‘but I don’t like it when he hits me and hurts me.’
I glanced over and saw the look of anger flickering across his face. I smiled quickly, as I always did when I was afraid, and everyone started laughing, seeing the little exchange as proof that my dad and me could laugh and joke together. The adoption was approved.
Our days fell into a regular routine. After I came back from school Mum would be at work and I would be sent out to play, even though he would insist that Christina and Shirley went to bed with him for an hour for a rest. Now and then I would be allowed to join them for the rest and on one occasion Shirley started playing with my private parts.
‘Gerroff Shirley,’ I said, indignantly.
‘Stop fucking about, you two!’ he barked. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘She keeps playing with my widget!’ I protested.
Shirley was always there in the afternoons after being brought back from her special school, a constant scowling presence in the corner of the sitting room in her wheelchair, her arms folded and her face unhappy.
On the afternoons when I was sent out I knew that if I came back before I was allowed, which was seven o’clock, I would be in for a battering, so I never did. Even if I needed to go to the toilet I would find somewhere outside rather than disobey him and go into the house. I was not allowed to use the front door, always coming in through the back garden, which was the one part of our home that was kept neat and tidy, bracing myself for the expected battering.
I seemed to be an outcast from every group of children in the area, so it was hard to find things to do to fill the hours until I was allowed back into the house. I didn’t look like the others at my new school because I was so dirty, I didn’t sound like them and I didn’t dress like them. But I no longer fitted in with the kids from Smallshaw either, because they thought I believed myself better than them.
There was a disused railway line running not far from Cranbrook Street and some of the older kids would make dens in the arches along the side, where they would meet to smoke and drink and sniff glue. If I couldn’t find anyone else to play with I would wander up there on my own, finding some comfort in the wind that always seemed to whip along between the embankments. I was only five years old and the bigger boys would watch me from their dens, taking the mickey but not in a threatening way. They all had plastic bags and I would watch as they put them over their faces from time to time and breathed deeply of whatever was inside. They seemed quite friendly and I hung around on the edge, partly curious, partly desperate for company.
As I grew braver I would go into the dens with them when they invited me, pick up the bags and breathe deeply, as I had seen them doing. The fumes from the glue bottles inside the bags would make my ears buzz in a pleasant way, and my unhappiness and pain seemed to become fuzzy around the edges. I got a feeling of love and peace and nothing seemed to matter quite as much. By the time I got home I was walking in a semi-dream. When I got inside and Dad hit me it didn’t hurt so much because I was already partly numb, and the glue would help me to fall asleep after my beating.
Once I had discovered it I liked the feeling and I would go back to the railway lines almost every day for the next five or six years. The bigger boys became used to having me around and were happy to share their escape route with me because they thought I was funny, like a live toy, a sort of mascot I guess. They all knew who I was and what my family was like. We were easily recognizable because of Shirley being in her wheelchair whenever we were out. Sometimes I would bring the glue home with me and take it up to my bedroom, so I could keep the feeling going later, when I needed it.
I always knew when Dad was angry with me because his upper lip would curl up at the sides, and the night that things got worse he was waiting for me inside the back door with that familiar look on his face.
‘What fucking time do you call this?’ he snarled.
I couldn’t properly tell the time by then, but I had taught myself to recognize seven o’clock and I could see the hands were in the right place on the kitchen clock behind him. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t naughty, that I had got it right, but he didn’t seem able to listen to any reason and started to lay into me with a ferocity I had never experienced before, kicking and punching me so hard I was thrown around the room as if I weighed nothing and as if he didn’t care how damaged I might become. Whenever I was terrified, which by then was most of the time, I used to experience a sort of buzzing noise all around me, like a static charge. It would get inside my head as well, as if all the sounds around me were slightly distorted. The fear constricted my throat, making it hard to talk or swallow. My chest would always hurt from sobbing.
‘Get upstairs and get cleaned up, you little bastard,’ he shouted, kicking and pushing me towards the stairs. ‘And get to bed.’
I struggled to obey, my body feeling broken and painful. I was so cross with myself for being naughty again and making my father so angry. Why couldn’t I just be a good boy? Why did I have to make him have to punish me? I had an overwhelming feeling of being so sorry as I sobbed into my pillow, wishing Mum would come home and give me a cuddle and tell me everything was all right. I tried to hug the wall, which was covered in footballing wallpaper, left over from when my aunt and uncle lived there. All I wanted was for my mum and my dad to love me, but I understood they couldn’t for as long as I went on being such a bad little boy. I knew my mum wouldn’t be able to cuddle me, because I’d heard Dad telling her not to. He said I needed to toughen up. Looking back now, I realize he was jealous of my relationship with her even then.
I don’t know how long I lay there that night before he came upstairs to my room, pushing the door shut after him. I stayed as quiet as I could, determined not to do anything else to anger him. He lay down on the bed beside me and the familiar odour of his stale sweat enveloped me. He had never hugged me in his life, but he put his arm around me. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming again.
‘You know you’re a naughty boy, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You know I don’t want to shout at you, but you have to learn.’
He started stroking me, which was comforting and strange. Then he took my hand and held it against himself, moving it rhythmically back and forth. The bed started shaking and after a few moments I could feel that he had peed on to my hand. He wasn’t cross with me any more and I felt very happy to have been forgiven. It felt great to know that he thought I was a good boy.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
I was always hungry.
‘Wait up here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll make you some potato hash. Come down in a bit.’
I lay there feeling happy with myself for the first time in a long while, wondering how long ‘a bit’ was, not wanting to spoil things by going down too soon or too late. I must have drifted off to sleep because he had to send Christina up to tell me the food was ready. I rushed down, expecting to be in trouble again, but he was still in a good mood when I got to the kitchen.
To have him pleased with me and to be given something to eat was wonderful. Even to this day I can’t eat potato hash without remembering that first time. We used to eat it a lot, with meat that the butcher sold for pets, and vegetables, anything that was cheap. Nothing was ever thrown away or allowed to go to waste; everything was fried up again and again until every last scrap had been eaten. Sometimes I tasted the stuff he prepared for the pigs and it was nicer than the stuff we all ate.
Chapter Five A VERY NAUGHTY BOY
That first time was the gentlest time, and although it was a little while before he became really violent, from then on the abuse in my bedroom became a regular feature of our daily family routine. The glow of approval after the first time didn’t last long and his verbal abuse towards me escalated as quickly as the physical abuse.
‘You’re fucking ugly.’
‘You’re a bad boy and I’m getting the police to come and take you to a fucking home!’
‘Your mum doesn’t fucking love you.’
‘I’m gonna give your mum a fucking beating, I’m really gonna hurt her, and it’s because of you, because you’re such a naughty little bastard.’
Every day was like a test, a horrible repeat of the day before but with some new insult or pain added on. He was becoming almost as bad towards Christina as well, even though I knew she wasn’t naughty like me and worked really hard to try to keep the home going when Mum was at work. He used to shout for us to come in when he was sitting down in the front room, and we would hurry to do his bidding. I was always smiling in the hope of defusing his anger, looking up at him, my head bowed, waiting docilely for whatever would come next. I was always nervous about looking at him directly. ‘Are you eyeballing me?’ he would demand if I looked up, and my eyes would shoot back to the floor.
‘Fight each other,’ he would order me and Christina. ‘You both need to toughen up.’
There was no getting out of it, because if we didn’t fight each other, really punching and kicking and slapping, then he would hit us, and he hit much harder than we did. Even if Mum was there, witnessing it, he didn’t care.
‘Stop it, David,’ she would protest, but he overruled her, shouting encouragement at us like a trainer beside a boxing ring. All the time Shirley would just be sat there, in her wheelchair, watching the horrors going on around her, looking bored and bemused and sulky. If it was bad for Christina and me, God knows what it was like for her, day after day after day just sitting or lying around stinking of piss, listening to the shouting and watching the beatings.
After one of those fights he would send us up to bed, and I would be able to hear Christina sobbing in her room, just as I was in mine.
‘Are you all right?’ I would whisper, trying to send my voice across to her room but terrified he would be listening in and would exact some extra punishment.
‘Yes,’ she would gulp. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too.’
We would keep on telling each other how sorry we were until one of us eventually fell asleep.
Whenever I came in the back door of an evening he would be lying in wait for me with some new complaint about my behaviour, and he would start shouting and punching and hurting me, spitting at me to show his contempt. It was all about power. I was never allowed to do anything without asking his permission.
‘Dad, can I go to the toilet?’
‘Dad, can I have a drink of water?’
‘Dad, can I stand up?’
‘Dad, can I sit down?’
I always assumed that he was right about everything, because he was a grown-up and he was my dad. If he said I was bad, then I must be. He watched my every single move, just waiting for me to put a foot wrong, constantly thinking up new rules that I mustn’t break. If I sneaked myself a butty to eat and left a few crumbs, I would have to be punished in a frenzy of anger. If I had a slice of bread or a piece of cheese, or if I left a cup out, it didn’t matter what I did, it was always wrong and meant I had to be taught a lesson, ‘for my own good’. He took to checking my underpants and if I had left any sort of stain, which I often had if I had been to the toilet outside, I would have to be punished again. The questions he asked me made me squirm with embarrassment; no part of my life was private from his probing.
‘Have you been shaking your willy after you’ve been for a wee?’
He would inspect me all over, checking my willy, then taking his own out to show me what it should look like. ‘Feel it, so you know what it should feel like.’
He started stripping me naked in front of the girls and tying me up with ropes after beating me up at the back door, so tightly I couldn’t get free however much I struggled or cried. Sometimes he would tie my hands and my neck to my feet so I would be twisted into painful shapes, as the dogs ran around me, barking with excitement at all the noise.
‘Try and get out of that!’ he would sneer as my panic mounted. ‘Look at him, Shirl, look at him!’
Shirley would stare at me with blank eyes and an unchanging expression, knowing that if she said anything she ran the risk of him turning his wrath on to her.
My greatest priority was to be a good boy and make both my parents love me, so I never told anyone outside the family what was going on. I assumed it went on in lots of other houses as well and no one would be that interested anyway; they would just tell me not to be so naughty. And then there was the fear that if they found out how bad I was someone would tell the police and I would be taken away to a children’s home. However bad my life with my dad might be, the unknown was even more frightening. At least in Cranbrook Street I had Mum and my sisters. If I was taken to a home I wouldn’t have anyone to love, nothing familiar to cling on to at the lowest moments.
Some days he would send me up to bed the moment I came in and then come up to batter me there, away from the girls. Then he would come up and lie next to me, telling me to masturbate him. I didn’t like it, but at least it didn’t hurt and I knew it would make things better – it was part of my punishment and afterwards he would be pleased with me. I would have done anything not to be battered any more.
There was an old sideboard in my room, which he’d brought back from his rounds but had been unable to sell, and sometimes I would open the cupboard doors and squeeze myself inside, holding my breath and hoping he wouldn’t find me when he came up. But then I would become too scared of what would happen if he did catch me trying to hide from him and I would come back out and get into the bed to wait. Other times I would get into the walk-in cupboards that Christina and I had thought were such a game when we looked round the house. The place I felt safest was on the floor under the bunk bed, staring up at the slats, feeling like I was in a prison cell and couldn’t be touched, but my nerve would always go before he actually came up to deal with me and I would crawl back out to face whatever was in store for me.
Given a choice between a battering and masturbating him, masturbating was always preferable. But after a few months it wasn’t enough to satisfy him and he told me to put his penis in my mouth. Then he started masturbating himself over me, hurting me while he did it, pushing my face down so hard into the pillow that I had to struggle to get enough air, hitting and shouting abuse at me at the same time as relieving himself: ‘You dirty little scum! You fucking maggot bastard!’ The power he had over me with his great strong hands seemed to drive him to a frenzy of excitement.
Having started with checking my underpants he went on to inspecting my bottom whenever I came in, making me bend over so he could see if I was clean. I was always sore because of the worms and bad hygiene and he got some cream to treat the sore patches. He insisted on applying it, as if he were really a caring dad, but he actually played roughly with me with his fingers while he did it, which made me bleed when I went to the toilet. He started putting his erection between my legs and then moved on to pushing it inside my bottom, spitting into his hand to provide himself with the necessary lubrication. The sound of men hawking up phlegm still makes me shiver. The pain was immense and made me cry even though he wasn’t being as vicious as before, as if he was trying to coax me into letting him do new things. Whenever I went to the toilet, once he had started penetrating me, there was usually blood in the bowl, which frightened me.
When he was doing things to me I would detach myself from what was going on, staring at the footballs on the wallpaper, just wanting it to be over as quickly as possible. I wished I wasn’t such a bad boy all the time, so that I didn’t always have to be punished.
After he had finished he would usually be quite nice to me for a while. He would sometimes put me in a warm bath and even to this day I still find it comforting to be immersed in warm water. Some nights he would take me with him in the van to pick Mum up from work at the bakery where she did her shifts. I used to like sitting between them on the engine cover on the way home because it was warm and it soothed my soreness through my pyjama bottoms. I would try to cuddle up as close to Mum as possible on the way back, without him seeing, just touching her arm or trying to smell her. It felt wonderful to have a bit of softness and kindness, even though I knew by then that she couldn’t protect me from him.
There was a hatch in the floor under the stairs at Cranbrook Street, leading down to the cellar. Sometimes when I came in from playing and deserved to be punished Dad would beat me and strip me off and send me down the concrete stairs into the cold and damp room below instead of sending me up to my room. It was dank and there was always a puddle of stale water at the bottom of the stairs, which I had to paddle through in bare feet, trying to find a dry patch.
‘You stay down there with the rats,’ he would shout, before slamming the hatch shut, extinguishing the last sliver of light. I would feel round in the darkness with my bare feet, trying to find a dry patch to stand in. I would try to hug the walls for comfort but the damp made the plaster flake and it would come away to my touch, crumbling in my hands. It felt like even the wall was rejecting me and I would cry uncontrollably, realizing Dad must be right and I must be really, really naughty.
I had no way of knowing how long I was left down there, but it felt like hours. The chill would spread through my bones as I crouched there, hugging myself for warmth, teeth chattering and muscles trembling, waiting for the moment when he would decide I had learned my lesson and could be allowed back up into the light.
He started bringing things that he could use to hit me home with him from the rounds – a heavy buckled belt one day, a brass fork the next. He would keep these weapons beside him as he sat in his chair, lashing out at me with them whenever I displeased him, claiming he’d asked me to turn over the television or make him a drink and that I had ignored him. I knew it was all lies because I listened for every word, terrified of making a mistake. He didn’t care how hard he hit, leaving bruises all over my legs.
He had his booty on display on the walls, everything from brass plates to ornamental swords with jewels in the handles, and nearly all of it could be used to inflict pain when he wanted it to.
‘See this brass crocodile?’ he’d say when he got home with some new trophy. ‘It’s for you.’ And then he’d hit me with it.
The buckle on the belt used to cut my skin so deeply I would have to sit in a cold salt-water bath afterwards to bring down the marks he’d left. No matter how hard I fought to keep control the salt would sting and make me cry.
‘See,’ he’d say, standing over me as I shivered and sobbed in the cold water, ‘this is what happens when you’re a naughty lad. Why can’t you be good?’
The teachers at school used to ask me where my bruises came from, but I didn’t want them to know what a naughty little boy I was in case they sent me away to a special school. ‘I’ve been out,’ I would lie, ‘playing army, climbing trees and that.’
It was easy for them to believe, I guess, because I used to fall over a lot at school, banging my head. Sometimes I even did it on purpose because I liked the attention it got me from the teachers when they put me on their knees and rocked me to comfort me and stop my tears.
Bath times were always frightening because I felt so vulnerable, being wet and naked. Sometimes he would come into the bathroom, tell me to open my mouth and then pee into it, thinking it was funny. Or he would grab hold of me, shove me under the water and hold me there. I would thrash around in panic, trying to get back to the air, certain he was trying to kill me.
Often he would pee in the sink in the kitchen; sometimes he would do it while Christina was trying to wash up, doing it all over the pots and all over her hands. She used to make a huge effort to be cleaner and tidier than the rest of us, scrubbing her trainers and socks every night. She was mature for her age.
At other times he would make me eat some of the swill he had made for the pigs, or he would make me come downstairs in just my underpants.
‘Sit there.’ He would indicate the floor. Then he would feed the dogs next to me and ask if it smelt nice. I didn’t know what to say because I knew he would hit me whatever I said. I would try to nod and shake my head at the same time, so it wasn’t a yes or a no. Then he would rap his knuckles on top of my head over and over and say, ‘You’re a naughty little bastard. Nobody likes you.’
Sometimes I would just be sitting at the table and he would ram my face into my dinner with no warning. ‘You’re a naughty little bastard, aren’t you?’ he would say as I sat there with food all over my face.
‘Yes, yes I am. Sorry, Daddy.’
If Christina had angered him he might punish us together, like the times when he would feed the dogs and then make us eat bread and milk out of the same bowls. ‘This is what you would be eating if you were in prison,’ he’d tell us. ‘Make sure you eat it all up. Lick the bowl clean.’
He didn’t seem to punish Shirley in the same way he punished us. I would see her crying sometimes and would wonder why, but I would never ask; we all knew better than to talk about personal things like that. Besides, I wouldn’t have known how to start.
At night I used to make Christina tell me stories before I went to sleep. She had always been a bit of a reader when she could get hold of books, particularly at school. ‘Tell me a story, Christina,’ I would wheedle. ‘Tell me about Goldilocks.’
If she didn’t tell the story exactly the same way each time, forgetting some tiny detail, I would pick her up on it. If she tried to get out of her storytelling duties I would threaten to tell Mum and Dad that she’d been swearing, because she always was. ‘I’ll go downstairs and tell them,’ I would threaten, although she must have known I would never have dared. She was always there for me, Christina, at home and at school, and I will always be grateful to her for that.
She was becoming like the mother of the house, especially when Mum was out at work, but she still cried a lot, like a little girl. She would try to cook my tea while I was out playing, heating up beans and stuff even though she couldn’t really reach the stove properly. It always tasted pretty bad but I was happy to eat it; all the food in our house tasted bad so it made no difference. If you are hungry enough and you know there is nothing else coming, you’ll eat whatever you’re given. We used to pick chewing gum up off the streets and pop it into our mouths, chewing and spitting out the stones and dirt until it was clean and we could walk around feeling posh, like we were able to afford gum of our own.