Mummy Knew (15 page)

‘Mum,’ I sobbed, ‘You don’t understand. He hits me if I don’t do as he says. It’s not my fault.’

‘Well it ain’t fucking mine.’

We didn’t talk after that. I pressed my forehead against the window, closed my eyes and wished I’d never been born. How could she blame me? What could I possibly have done differently?

After we got off the bus at the other end, we walked along a busy main road. Mum looked at the piece of paper to check the address and we stopped outside a dilapidated house set back from the road behind a dense, overgrown garden. Lots of the windows were smashed, and black bin liners used as curtains fluttered in the breeze.

‘This can’t be it,’ said Mum. ‘What the fuck’s she doing living here?’

She pushed open the rusty front gate and we picked our way up the front path, careful to avoid the broken glass and empty lager cans. We had to climb some steps to get to the front door, which had FUCK OFF scrawled on the front in black felt tip. Mum hesitated but before she could knock at the door, it opened to reveal a youth in his early twenties. He had curly ginger hair, spots around his protruding jaw, and bad teeth.

‘Is Diane in?’

‘Diane be here soon,’ he said nodding. He had a strange manner about him and when he led us through to the front room, Mum whispered to me that he must be ‘a bit simple’.

The room had an old brown sofa and a gas fire in the corner. I recognised a couple of Diane’s ornately beaded handbags hanging on the wall as decoration. A friend at her first job had brought them back from a trip to India. I remembered holding them when I was a little girl.

Mum asked the boy, who had introduced himself as Ewan, if she could use the toilet. He pointed to an open doorway, which led to the back of the house. It was then I noticed the word BOG scrawled at the top of the doorway in the same handwriting as the FUCK OFF on the front door. Mum noticed too, and her mouth fell open for a moment.

Ewan began to laugh. ‘Bog, bog,’ he kept saying.

It wasn’t long before Diane arrived home. I flew into her arms, tears streaming down my face. She looked just the same as I remembered her: long dark hair, parted in the middle, the
same colour eyes and skin as Mum. She was even wearing the same Afghan coat she had on when I last saw her. I sat glued to her side and ran the soft white trim through my fingers.

It wasn’t until Diane shrugged off her coat that I noticed she was expecting a baby. She had just been for a scan and she spent a while explaining in detail to Mum what position the baby was in. Watching the two of them together, it was as though they had never been parted. I could tell from the conversation that they hadn’t kept in touch but even so, their bond was so strong they seemed to pick up where they had left off. I didn’t know how Mum had Diane’s address but guessed someone must have passed it to her behind Dad’s back.

Diane explained they were only staying at the house until they found somewhere else.

‘I should bloody well hope so, too,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a right dump. Who’s Ewan, when he’s at home?’

‘He came with the house,’ Diane laughed. ‘He’s alright though.’

When Diane suggested I go and put my bag upstairs in her bedroom, I knew they were going to be talking about Dad and me. I planned to listen to what they said outside the door but the floorboards creaked, and besides, I didn’t think I could bear to hear them talk about it. I felt too ashamed.

I walked up the stairs and found Diane’s bedroom on the left. It was pretty, and there were more things I recognised from years ago–knick-knacks and framed photographs that showed Diane and Cheryl standing beside Mum, who was wearing three-quarter-length Capri pants and a scarf over a small beehive. It must have been taken in the early 60s.

‘Hello, Lisa.’

I spun round to see Diane’s boyfriend Martin standing in the doorway. ‘Christ, you were only this high when I last saw you,’ he said, holding his hand at waist height.

‘Hello, Martin.’

‘What’s Frank been up to this time, eh?’

I just stared at the floor and felt my face burn bright red.

When I went back downstairs, Mum and Diane were still talking over a cup of tea.

‘Anyway, I thought it best to bring her here for a while, ’cos he said if I take her home he’s gonna fucking kill her.’

Diane shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’ll be alright here with us for a while, won’t you, Lisa?’

I covered my face with my hands, so sick of crying. I was confused. I didn’t understand who knew what, and because I didn’t want to be judged as dirty, I couldn’t bring myself to speak about the things that were tearing me apart inside.

When Mum stood up to go, she gave me a casual wave of the hand, but I flew across the room and hugged her tight. It felt odd to rest against her softness and breathe in her smell. She never hugged me herself, just stood with her hands held awkwardly to the side. I wished with all my heart that she would love me the way I loved her. No matter how cold she was, how abruptly she treated me, or how many times she let Dad take me up to his bed, I couldn’t stop the love I felt. I knew she was a bad mother, but I still yearned for her love and would have done just about anything to please her.

‘I’ll come and get you when he’s calmed down,’ she said.

I nodded and Diane passed me a bit of toilet roll to blow my nose. I wanted to ask why Dad wanted to kill me but I was frightened of the answer, so instead I stood with Diane at the front door and waved Mum off back down the glass-strewn path.

‘Simple Ewan’ turned out to be really nice. We played Monopoly and card games together. Every day I’d ask Diane if Cheryl and Davie might come to visit, or whether we could go and visit Nanny and Jenny, and she promised we’d see them all soon.

The house may have been ramshackle, with broken doors and windows, but I noticed it was very clean–much cleaner than at home–and cosy in its own way too. Every morning I’d wake up in my sleeping bag on the sofa and the first thing I’d notice was an absence of fear. Each day that passed brought a lightness of feeling. I wasn’t weighed down with the thought of Dad. I didn’t have to worry about the filthy things he did to me in the bedroom, and I didn’t have to worry about his violence.

It was like being on holiday. If I walked in front of the television while someone was watching a favourite programme, there wouldn’t be a kick on the back of my legs as punishment, or if I accidentally knocked over a glass of water there would be no slap to the head. But most importantly, my private places were my own. I began to dread Mum arriving to take me home.

‘Can’t I stay here with you, Diane?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be silly, Lisa. You belong with Mum.’

‘Mum wouldn’t mind,’ I said, thinking to myself that she might actually be pleased with the idea.

‘No,’ Diane said, and I realised I shouldn’t have asked. She had her own life to lead. ‘It’s just, you know, what with the baby coming.’

‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

I began to resign myself to the fact I would have to go back to Dad, although I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. A small part of me hoped that Mum would simply forget about me–but she didn’t. I had been with Diane exactly a week when I saw Mum walking back up the path towards the house and my heart plummetted. It was time to go home.

Diane walked us to the bus stop. By the time the bus arrived I had run out of tears, and I felt as though I was wearing a tight salt mask.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ said Diane softly. ‘You cried when you got here and you’re crying when you’re going home. What is it? Why are you so upset?’

I realised then that she didn’t know about what I had to put up with at home. Mum held my arm and I felt her grip tighten as she manoeuvred me onto the bus.

‘It hurts,’ I said, then called over my shoulder. ‘I’ll miss you.’

‘We’ll visit. Promise,’ shouted Diane as the bus started to pull away, but I knew she wouldn’t. I stood on the open platform clinging on to the white pole and watched Diane waving goodbye.

‘Could I go and stay with Nanny and Jenny instead?’ I asked Mum on the way home.

She gave a nasty laugh. ‘You must be bleedin’ joking. They wouldn’t have you.’

I didn’t want to believe her, but a niggling voice at the back of my mind reminded me that nobody ever came to see if I was alright, and a sharp pain jabbed inside. I knew that everybody was scared of Dad, but he was only one person and they were a group of adults. I imagined them all turning up with burning torches like they did in films when they wanted to drive the baddie out of the village. If only they would do that, life would be so different. We could all be together, happy again.

W
hen we arrived home, my stomach flipped in fear as Mum put her key in the lock. The house was very quiet because Kat was still at school.

‘You better go up and say hello to him,’ said Mum before I had even taken my coat off.

‘I don’t want to,’ I mumbled, afraid he might hear.

‘You get up there,’ she commanded. ‘Don’t you start him off again. My nerves can’t take it.’

I dragged my feet up to the first floor, where I heard the faint mumble of the television. He was sitting on the sofa in the front room wearing a short towelling dressing gown. He flicked the TV off as I came in.

‘Alright, Dad,’ I said, sitting opposite him in the armchair. This felt odd in itself because normally I had to sit at his feet.

He didn’t say anything to me, only stared, the expression on his face close to absolute hatred. I couldn’t believe Mum had sent me up to see him knowing he was still in his ‘gone mad’ mood. I sat in the chair and stared at my lap, occasionally looking up in the hope that his expression had softened but it remained the same. I remembered all the times in the past when
he’d given me the hot and cold treatment, and I knew eventually he would call me over to him. I didn’t want to be sitting there in a stuffy room, not knowing if I was going to be hit or pawed and slobbered over. But I knew if I got up and said ‘See ya, I’m sick of all this,’ I wouldn’t even make it to the door.

True to form it wasn’t much longer before he stood up, flashing his genitals as he tightened the belt on his dressing gown, and said, ‘I’ll be in the bedroom.’ I understood that he meant me to follow him and, with a heavy heart, I obeyed.

‘Get your clothes off and get your nightie on then,’ he instructed as I walked in the door.

I obeyed slowly, without looking at him.

‘Hurry up!’ he urged cheerfully. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

The next morning I woke up to find that overnight I had become a pariah. Dad, Mum and little Kat were in their bedroom having a cup of tea and he was screaming obscenities through at me.

‘Little cunt features’, ‘shit-face’, ‘piss-arse’ and ‘Fuck off out of it with the other cunts’, he yelled.

I sat and sobbed, wishing there was a way I
could
fuck off out of it.

As Dad shouted his insults through the thin bedroom walls, I heard Mum chuckling and making light-hearted comments. Maybe she was trying to calm him down, but a part of me knew she was pleased when I was out of favour because Dad paid more attention to Kat and her.

I felt as though my head was going to explode. I had to get out. I would run away and live under an arch somewhere. It couldn’t be any worse than this.

As quickly as I could, I pulled on my clothes from the day before and pushed my bare feet into my plimsolls. I ran down the stairs two at a time, stopping briefly in the dining room for my anorak, which I’d last seen hanging on the back of a chair. I grabbed it and turned to leave but the way to the front door was blocked by Dad, wearing only a pair of Y-fronts. His chest heaved up and down as he tried to catch his breath. He had obviously run down the stairs after me.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said menacingly.

‘I am,’ I said, surprising myself with a tone of defiance I’d never used before. ‘You hate me, and you’re…you’re always hurting me.’ I wanted to say I didn’t like the way he touched me between the legs and masturbated himself at the same time, but I wasn’t quite that brave.

He sprang towards me and I braced myself for the usual blows. Instead, he caught me in a huge bear hug that hurt almost as much as a slap or a kick. I could hardly breathe. My face was buried in his right shoulder so I couldn’t see the expression on his face. I wasn’t sure if what he was doing was meant as a form of affection or punishment. When he put me down I saw that his eyes had misted over.

‘You know I love you,’ he said, ‘but if you ever try to do anything stupid like run off somewhere, I’ll fucking kill you, and you know that as well, don’t you?’

I nodded. I knew it, alright. To me, Dad was all-powerful. I had never seen anybody stand up to him. Everybody was frightened of him. What chance did I have?

Anything I valued, Dad would, at one time or another, rip to shreds as punishment for some imagined misdemeanour–either before or after a slap, but never instead of. I tried not to show an attachment to any particular possession because I knew it would be the first thing Dad went for. He brought me a guitar once, which he said he had found in the bin at a recording studio where they had a cleaning contract, and insisted I learn how to play it. He sent me to the library for a how-to book and stood over me as I tried to learn the chords. The strings bit into my fingers and I hated every minute of it. One day he became angry when I couldn’t stretch my fingers into the right position on the frets so he snatched it from me and booted it across to the other side of the room. It made a loud twang as the base splintered on the toe of his shoe. At least I didn’t have to endure any more guitar lessons after that.

Although Dad had always drunk quite heavily, during this period he stepped it up a gear and began a particularly heavy phase of drinking spirits. He’d keep cans of chilled Special Brew as a chaser to wash down as much brandy or gin as he could guzzle, and every few days he would send Mum over to the off-licence to replenish his stock. She’d have to make sure there was a constant supply of sliced lemons and ice too. At Christmas he would fill the drinks cabinet with bottle after bottle of different spirits, even though he would be the only one drinking it. The most Mum would have is an occasional weak Martini and lemonade. She couldn’t trust herself to drink because she had a very low tolerance for it, and in the early days of their relationship Dad had mistaken her giggles
for flirtatiousness with other men. He had knocked her about so much over it that now she hardly dared touch the stuff.