The Life of Lee (4 page)

Dad in the army, stationed in Bristol.

Dad viewed the world through cynical, angry eyes and had a sardonic way about him that could be hurtful. It was not nice to witness in those days. But, seen from afar, his rages must have seemed quite comical. So people would often be doubled up with laughter at his desperate, self-defeating attempts to gain respect.

You knew when he was about to blow a fuse because his whole body would change. A spasm of irritation would cross his face and he would stretch his neck forward, pulling his shoulders back. Then he would bunch up his fists so tight that his knuckles would turn white. At the same time, his wild glare was magnified by thick glasses that made his eyes look like rolling hubcaps on a clown’s car. The final tell-tale sign he was about to blow was that he would calmly push his glasses back up his nose with his finger. Then – boom! – ‘Right, that’s it!’

And he was off.

Terror would permeate every part of my body at those moments. It wasn’t just Dad’s fury that scared me, but the sounds that always accompanied his eruptions. Hearing Mum desperately screaming his name over and over a few feet away – as if she were the increasingly unhinged corner-man standing behind the ropes at a prize fight – only seemed to inflame his demons even more.

These outbursts would always come out of nothing.
A perfectly innocent remark would set Dad off on an expletive-laden excursion into the land of the red mist. It was as if I had pulled the pin from a hand grenade or flicked an angry switch. Nowadays I would find it really funny, but back then it was pretty scary.

If we went anywhere by car, for example, there was always the risk of an explosion. Once behind the wheel, in an instant Dad could metamorphose into a raging bull. As we drove along, we would watch him change from a mild-mannered, hilariously funny man into a shrieking maniac. Mum would sit, terrified, in the passenger’s seat next to him, living in fear of the next flare-up.

I remember on one occasion, some smart-suited commuter driving a flash motor made the terrible mistake of inadvertently cutting Dad up at a roundabout. That was it. Dad was instantaneously livid. His anger went from nought to sixty in about two seconds.

For Dad, that perceived slight was like a gauntlet thrown at his feet – there was no way he’d let anyone get away with that. ‘I’m gonna kick that bloke’s teeth in as soon as he stops,’ he muttered, with barely suppressed rage.

As Wayne and I cringed in terror on the back seat, Dad became consumed by the idea of following this commuter all the way back to his house and having it out with him. After half an hour of frantically pursuing the guy home, we watched on in horror as Dad jumped out of the car, his blood still boiling. The innocent commuter parked up on his drive, only to be confronted by a snarling Dad leaping out of a nearby privet hedge.

‘Who are you?’ the guy asked.

‘Never mind who I am, who’s this?’ Dad replied, holding up his fist threateningly.

The poor, unsuspecting commuter – whose only mistake in twenty-five years’ driving back and forth to work had been unwittingly to cut up this nut case – then received a punch up the pinstripe on his own driveway. Blood dripping from his nose, he was only able to mumble, ‘What was that for?’ as Dad stormed back to our car.

‘Nobody gets away with cutting me up!’ replied the Incredible Hulk – sorry, Dad.

But just ten minutes later, he would be back to being riotously funny. He would spot a helicopter overhead and take on the guise of a policeman, pretending to talk into his crackly radio or swerving on to a grass verge as if in pursuit of a rogue terrorist.

He also had a very loud laugh – you couldn’t sit with him in public because it was too embarrassing.
Round the Horne, The Goons, Hancock’s Half-Hour
and
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
were always on in our house – like they were on a loop – and he would sit in the lounge laughing uproariously. Then, a click of the finger and – boom! – he would explode again.

That was life with Dad. It was always lively, and you never quite knew where you were. It was like living on the slopes of Mount Etna. It was beautiful and sunny at times, but you were constantly living in the shadow of the volcano and you could never quite be sure when it would next erupt and engulf everything in its path. No wonder I grew up a nervous wreck!

The other huge character who bestrode my childhood was my elder brother, Wayne. Although he is only two years older than me, he would always fearlessly spring to my defence – and sometimes get a beating for his troubles from much bigger lads.

Wayne and me in Prestatyn, North Wales.

But we were very different characters. I was constantly on edge and would always think of the worst-case scenario, whereas Wayne was the life and soul of the party – he had much more of a ‘live and let live’ disposition. He has always been a very funny man to be with and would constantly play jokes on me when we were growing up.

For instance, when we were teenagers and Dad was out working the pubs and clubs in the evening, Mum would like to go with him, leaving us alone in the flat. One time, Wayne got hold of a copy of the film
The Exorcist
. After watching it together, unbeknownst to me, he sneaked into our shared bedroom and loosened the legs of my bed. Then, when I got in that night, my bed shifted violently across the room, just like the girl’s in the film. After the bed finally settled, all I could hear through the darkness was Wayne giggling uncontrollably.

Then there was the old ‘Lee, look out, there’s a car coming!’ gag he used to love to pull. He’d shout that to me every time we crossed an empty road together, ensuring that I would always leap into the air with shock while he would fall about clutching his sides with mirth. It usually had the desired effect.

Feeling flush one day when we were about twelve and ten, Dad bought us a couple of small fishing rods, as well as all the bits and bobs one might need for a spot of angling. Not a massive fan of fishing, I did ask if I could
have the money to spend on something else – like a giant bag of sweets – but was outranked by Wayne’s more elevated position. Wayne and I got on pretty well, we always liked to banter and laugh together. But there was never any doubt about who was the senior partner in our relationship.

Early the next morning, the decidedly more excited Wayne and I quietly slipped out of bed and began preparing for the day’s fishing with the newly purchased kit. Wayne readied the rods out in the hall, priming them with floats, hooks and weights. ‘It’ll save messing about when we get there,’ he whispered through gritted teeth.

As Wayne set up the rods, I was ordered to make sarnies for later on in the day. I made Wayne the snack he liked best, cheese and onion crisp sandwiches, and then prepared my own favourite: a thick layer of tomato ketchup between two hefty slices of bread. But I had no intention of waiting till lunchtime to eat it. I was eager to have it for breakfast. Once the intoxicating scent of that ketchup had wafted up my hooter, I just had to start munching on it as soon as possible. There was no thought about what I might have for lunch. Once the olfactory receptors in my nose were stimulated and sending signals to my belly, it was curtains for that ketchup sandwich.

Closing the back door carefully, so as not to wake Mum and Dad, we loaded up for the long walk across the vast field to the reservoir. As usual, I seemed to be the designated packhorse, the one who had somehow ended up having to carry most of the stuff. ‘Come on, hurry up,’ Wayne groaned at me, before disappearing off carrying
only his rod. He left me looking like a walking display stand at a fishing show, with a tackle box, two fold-up chairs and a fishing rod all hanging off me. But, at the same time, my hand conveniently slipped into a carrier bag and located my tomato sauce sandwich. There and then I decided I would have a chew on it during the long walk across the field.

I rattled around the flat to where Wayne was already waiting impatiently to cross the road over to the field on the other side. With the beautiful-smelling sandwich bobbing around in front of my face, I staggered along the short front garden path, weighed down with all that stuff. I joined Wayne at the kerbside, and he held his arm across to stop me – Mum and Dad always told him, ‘Whatever you do, look after Lee.’ We looked both ways, up and down the road. Nothing coming. But I wasn’t paying much attention. I was too busy concentrating on taking a bite out of my delicious sandwich, so I left the Green Cross Code to Wayne as we stepped off the kerb.

As we reached the middle of the road, right on cue, Wayne turned to me and did his customary ‘Lee, look out, there’s a car coming!’ joke. As usual, for dramatic effect after shouting, he darted off to the other side of the road and the safety of the pavement. I, of course, by now knew his little game and decided this time I wasn’t going to fall for it – after all, how could I run anyway with all the weight I was carrying? So I stood my ground in the middle of the road, looking at Wayne and triumphantly taking a big bite from my sandwich. With a mouth full of ketchup, I laughed at him, waving the slices of bread in front of my face, scoffing at his little game.

‘Buuuuuttttt … Theeeeerrrree’s aaaaaa caaaaaarrrrr, Leeeeeee …’

BAM!

I had never heard the story of ‘Cry Wolf’.

And I never saw it coming. The car thudded into my side, and everything went black. According to Wayne, I bounced off the front of the vehicle, flew ten feet into the air, completed a full flip, then swallow-dived to the ground. I landed with a crash, like a sack of spuds, on my back twenty feet away from the car.

Wayne looked on, stunned. He was rooted to the spot as the driver, an elderly man with white shoes, grey hair and beard, climbed distraught from his car. Stumbling along the middle of the road towards me, he began crying out, ‘Oh my God, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going, I’m so sorry.’ He reached down to where I was lying on my back in the road, surrounded by fishing tackle and with my eyes firmly shut. Suddenly he stopped, pinned to the spot, and his jaw dropped open. Wayne told me later that the poor man’s heart must have skipped a few thumps. My face appeared a terrifying mess, completely soaked in blood.

The man fell to his knees. Crouching over me, he began swaying, moaning and wailing, ‘What have I done? Oh God, look what I’ve done!’

Wayne snapped out of it, ran over and stood looking down at the man knelt over me. Wayne was angry with him. ‘All right, mate, give it a rest. Lee? Lee? You all right, mate?’

I flapped my eyelids open, the blue sky and clouds came into focus and there was a white-haired man
hunched over me, raving and rambling on about God and stuff. I looked down and saw that his palms were facing the sky. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, what am I going to do?’ he shouted. For a moment, I thought I must have died and gone to heaven.

I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, if I’m dead, Dad’s going to kill me!’

I began frantically feeling parts of my body, checking to see if I was all in one piece. My face felt cold and wet. I wiped it with the back of my hand. Then I held my hand to my face to take a look.

Blood! Lots of it!

A cold chill ran right through me. My face must be mushed, I thought, that’s what this bloke is moaning about. Alarmed, I sat bolt upright in the road, stared at the man and screamed for my life. The man looked at me for a moment then began screaming back at me. That scared the living daylights out of me, because now I didn’t know who or what he was screaming at. I thought that maybe my face was in an even worse mess than I’d thought, puréed perhaps. So I screamed even louder back at him.

While we yelled at each other there in the road, instinctively I brought my hands back up to my face and felt the cold blood dripping down it. Reacting instantly, I pulled my hands away and looked down at them, drenched in bright red liquid. Wait a moment! Ever so gingerly, I licked the end of my fingers. Ketchup!

I stopped screaming and looked up towards Wayne for help. He had already twigged about the ketchup and smiled knowingly. He dropped his fishing rod to the floor
and buried his face in his hands, perhaps out of relief that I was OK, perhaps to hide his giggles. The man looked at Wayne, then at me. Puzzled, his screaming petered out into a small whimper and then fizzled out into silence. He knelt there for a moment, quietly scrutinizing my face. Then his big grey bushy eyebrows locked together in the middle of his forehead and his tiny ice-blue eyes narrowed to the size of pinheads. He dipped one finger into the ketchup covering my hands and licked it. A look of fury suddenly crossed his face, as he realized he’d been duped.

But I didn’t wait around for his reaction. Knowing I would be in trouble, I jumped to my feet and ran home at full speed, leaving a trail of fishing tackle, fold-up chairs and a rod behind me.

Wayne said the old man got even more angry after that, clambering back into his car, ranting on about bloody kids not crossing roads properly and smearing themselves in ketchup and giving decent citizens like him a right old shock.

I never went fishing again.