Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed

by Stuart Howarth

  I always wanted to protect him. I would constantly tell him that he mustn’t let anyone touch him or look at him, that it ‘wasn’t right’. I didn’t even like it if there were other people around when Angela was changing him as a baby When I was in the bathroom with him I would even worry about whether that was wrong. It was all such new territory. When we were tiny, Christina and I used to bath together. But Dad would spy on us, and one day he overheard us talking about looking at each other’s private parts. He used it as an excuse to get angry with us and to talk about personal stuff, which led to other things as always. So I felt guilty about enjoying bath time with Matthew, dirty by association.

  There were so many conflicting messages fermenting in my mind. With Angela I felt I should always give her pleasure in order to show her I loved her. I didn’t want to give myself pleasure because that would be dirty, but Dad had taught me that you should do it a lot if you cared about someone. Sometimes Angela would do something to please me and I would scream at her and call her a slag, telling her to get off my back, or whatever the trigger had been. Everything was twisted in my mind and I just couldn’t untangle the wrong from the right, the truth from the lies.

  Angela’s mother was a receptionist at a hospital with access to the phones and so she used to call Angela every day. I would get quite frustrated trying to get through sometimes. I liked to phone home, sometimes as many as twenty times a day, to check they were OK since I was often quite a long way away on a job. I felt guilty about leaving her alone in the house for so long. I knew I could never have stood it, being alone all day with my thoughts. Sometimes I would have so much trouble getting through I would end up phoning the hospital to ask her mother to hang up so I could get through to my own home phone.

  All the stress was coming through in other areas of my life and I fell out with my bosses. Knowing that I was good at the job I immediately went into business for myself with a couple of partners, setting up an office in Nottingham and travelling all over the country again. If I kept myself busy every hour of the day I could at least keep the memories and bad thoughts at bay, distract myself with activity and prove my worth by being successful. I worked hard simply to win the approval of those around me. It felt fantastic to set off in the morning in my suit and tie, with my company car and my mobile phone, something that very few people had at that date. I was employing about twenty people, many of them mates whom I knew needed the work. I felt like a thoroughly upstanding member of society, an all-round good guy. But all the time the pressure was building up inside my head, and the demons were swirling around.

  One Boxing Day I was messing around with Angela and a couple of friends. I’d had some drinks and I was probably being a bit too boisterous.

  ‘Stuart,’ Angela’s friend shouted, ‘will you pack it in.’

  I exploded, hurling the Christmas tree across the room and screaming abuse at them, telling them I’d never liked them and ordering them out of my house. ‘You’re an animal,’ she said and left the room, leaving me feeling so sad and sorry that I had allowed the demons to overpower my self-control.

  The only other time Angela had ever seen me lose it quite like that was a few years before, when a bus driver pulled out in front of us when we were in the car. At the next set of lights I leapt out and ran to the front of the bus, opened the emergency door and punched him. I looked round and everyone in the bus was staring at me in a stunned silence.

  ‘Well, my wife’s pregnant,’ I said, with all the righteous indignation I could muster. ‘And he just pulled out in front of us.’

  Angela was sitting quietly in the car when I got back. ‘Stuart,’ she said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve just done that.’ I was convinced that the driver had done it on purpose and that he should have known Angela was pregnant. So I was justified in protecting my wife and unborn child. Mentally and physically I might have become a man, but emotionally I was still a little boy, sure that I was justified in behaving the way I did because of what had happened to me in the past. Because I never talked to anyone about what had happened, no one was able to explain to me that I was wrong. I believed what I believed, and anyone who disagreed with me was out of order. Whenever we had a row I would storm off like a child, swearing that the relationship was over and that I didn’t want to know her any more. If she upset me in any way I would just stop speaking to her. I had no coping mechanisms for any emotional situations.

  In the midst of all this unhappiness, however, Angela told me she was pregnant again. She was pregnant just before Shirley died but had lost the baby. At the time she had accused me of not being bothered, but she was wrong. I was bothered and my way of dealing with it was to keep busy and keep working and distracted, when I should have been at home more, comforting and reassuring her. I did want another child, however, because having Matthew had been such a great experience.

  Always being on the road, away from Angela and Matthew, added another layer of pressure. I started to doubt that Angela could possibly love me — how could she when I was such a naughty boy? She had never given me the slightest reason to doubt her, but still I did. The pressure built and built inside my head and one day I came home having made a decision. ‘I don’t want to be married any more,’ I announced.

  I can only imagine what a shock it was for Angela. She came from a very stable background with parents who had always stayed together and she had never thought for a moment that she would be any different. She cried when I told her and I stayed away for a few nights in Nottingham to give us both space to recover. I had never told her about my childhood, although I later discovered she had worked it out from the things I would shout out in my sleep or when I was drunk, and she had no idea that I didn’t intend for us to stay together forever. Until that moment I had no idea we weren’t going to stay together, either, but suddenly I knew I couldn’t cope with everything. Something had to give if I wasn’t going to lose my mind. Nothing Angela had ever done had merited such treatment. She was the perfect wife and the perfect mother; all the problems lay with me.

  Angela gave birth to our daughter, Rebecca. Here was another tiny, innocent person for me to care for and guard from all the evils of the world. But I hadn’t been able to do anything to protect my friend Mark, or Shirley, so what hope did I have of protecting my own children? I really wanted to be there for the birth, as I had been for Matthew’s, but I felt I didn’t deserve to be. Because of the way I had treated Angela I had shown I was a naughty boy after all. I couldn’t bear the idea of what her parents must think of me and I chickened out of facing them.

  All I could see was that I had to keep on working every hour that I wasn’t asleep, keeping myself distracted, proving that I was a good boy. I was unable to spend even a few hours on my own for fear of what thoughts would rise up and haunt me. I was even willing to sacrifice the bond I had with Matthew, and the one I wanted to build with Rebecca, if it meant I could escape my own thoughts and memories. It was madness but it took me six months to realize what a mistake I’d made, and by that time the damage was irreparable. I had pushed

  Angela too far and there was no way she was going to take me back.

  I fell out with my partners at work and left the company, leaving myself with endless time to think about everything that was wrong with my life and what a terrible person I was. Unable to exist on my own I started going out with other girls, and Angela found out. She was so angry she started making it difficult for me to see the children. I now had no work and no home, no marriage and no access to my kids. I was back with Mum. Knowing that I had let everybody down, I felt like I had nothing left to live for and killing myself began to seem like a good idea.

  I went down to the railway and stood beside the line waiting for a train to come, ready to throw myself under the wheels. But when it came to it I couldn’t do it. The train roared on by and I felt I had failed yet again. I went home and tried again to end it with a bottle of paracetamols. When Mum couldn’t get any response from me she phoned an amb
ulance. I spent three days in hospital, during which I got to see a psychiatrist who suggested I go into counselling. I thought it would be a good idea and he said he would put my name on the waiting list. ‘We’ll call you,’ he said. But they never did. It was a moment when I might have been able to let it all out, but once I was back home again the mental wounds scabbed over once more and everything was shut in as it always had been.

  Every day seemed the same. I would wake up, throw open the curtains every morning and life would still be shit. I slashed my wrists, to show how much I hated myself, the same day I was due to go to court to try to get some sort of structured access to my children. The judge told me I wasn’t mature enough to be responsible for small children. I felt like they were branding me as being like my dad, as being like all the paedophiles I had come across and read about in the papers. As I listened to his words I could feel the blood dripping down inside my sleeves from the wounds I had inflicted on myself and I knew he was right. I wasn’t mature enough to be put in charge of my children; I was still a very naughty boy.

  It was as if I was drifting away from the real world, with no one there to act as my anchor — no Shirley, no Angela, no Matthew. Mum and Christina were there, but they were as damaged as I was. I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on in my head, so I was left alone with my horrible thoughts.

  Christina had had another baby, with more post-natal depression, and had also developed a need to be constantly cleaning her house. If you asked her about it she would say it was because Mum always kept such a dirty home and she never wanted to be like that. She and Seb finally separated, which was Christina’s choice. I still thought Seb was an amazing guy and I respected the way he tried to comfort and support her. In the end she was just too damaged and scarred by her own past for the relationship to ever stand a chance. We were both too messed up to be able to handle relationships with anyone.

  I had a few relationships with women, but I was so needy they never worked out. I was using them, like drugs, to try to change the way I felt, needing my girlfriends to be constantly telling me they loved me, constantly comforting me and telling me I was doing well. I would do anything to please them, but I had to have the praise in return. They never lasted long. During one relationship I became so distressed I got drunk, slashed my arms, swallowed tablets and ended up in the special unit of a hospital for three or four weeks. Although some people close to me had guessed at what might have happened in my past, I still hadn’t talked to anyone about it properly. I was ready to talk then, but the doctor didn’t agree. He thought I was ready to leave.

  ‘Don’t you realize,’ I said, ‘one day I could end up killing somebody.’

  He didn’t want to know. I expect he had more than enough cases to deal with as it was, and he didn’t want to get involved with someone as needy as I seemed to be. He gave me some anti-depressants and sent me on my way. I was a time bomb, just waiting to go off.

  Chapter Twelve

  TRACEY

  Somehow I kept going. Knowing that I had always managed to find some release in my work, I approached an old friend who ran a steeplejacking company and asked if he would be interested in having me set up a lightning protection operation for him. He was happy with the idea so I was back in business and able to distract myself for at least a part of each day. All the guys who had worked with me in my last two companies came with me and the operation was up and running from day one.

  I started a new relationship with Louise, the daughter of the landlady in the pub where I had battered the guy, and I moved in with her. She had an eight-year-old son called Andrew whom I got on with well, playing football and all that father-son stuff. I was still searching for the perfect family unit, even though I’d had it before and messed it up.

  Angela began to relent about me seeing Matthew on Sundays. I wasn’t allowed to take him to my Mum’s or to Louise’s or to any other members of the family, which made it hard to pass the time with him. Nothing was open on Sundays, so we would end up just sitting by the local duck pond in the rain with him asking what we were going to do next. Louise was very keen for us all to be a family and I could see her point, so eventually I took Matthew home. When Angela found out she was furious and after that Matthew didn’t want to come out with me at all. Angela still wasn’t willing to allow me to take Rebecca out, although she would sometimes let me into the house to play with her for an hour or two. Angela was such’ a good mother to the kids I never wanted to argue or fight with her, I just hoped eventually she would relent. I wanted to share in their lives.

  Things weren’t going as well as I’d hoped at work, so I left and joined the local electricity company, Norweb, as a health and safety sales engineer. It was a really good job and I felt proud of myself, despite feelings of being rejected by my previous employer.

  A friend of mine moved in with Angela, which I was perfectly OK with, but he didn’t like me coming round to the door and talking to the kids. The situation went from bad to worse until one day when I turned up to see the kids the police were called to escort me away from the door. A few days later I received a solicitor’s letter telling me that in future I was to draw up outside the house in the car when I came to take Matthew out and beep the horn once. It made me feel like I was a paedophile or some other sort of criminal who couldn’t be trusted around children in the normal way. It made me feel like my dad. Determined to fight my corner, I went to court to try to get proper access. In the end I was told that Matthew had been interviewed and he didn’t want me to take him out any more because of an incident when I pushed a man who had walked into him, and another when I shouted at someone from the car. I had no idea either of these incidents had had any effect on him at all. I was left feeling like some horrible man who didn’t know how to treat kids. Yet again, it seemed, I had been a naughty boy.

  Angela then read out a statement in court saying that she knew I had been physically abused and tortured as a child, and that she thought I had been sexually abused as well. I couldn’t believe she was saying these things out loud in front of other people and in a fury I stormed out of the court. I drove out into the country, feeling completely despairing, parked up and slashed my wrists. A friend’s girlfriend found me and took me to the hospital to be stitched up yet again. They always wanted to freeze my arms when they stitched me but I would never allow them; I thought I deserved to suffer. Sometimes they used staples and they really hurt. Yet again the doctors promised they would contact me about my seeing a psychiatrist and yet again nothing happened.

  By the time I went back to work it was high summer, but I had to wear long sleeves all the time to cover up the growing patchwork of scars I had given myself. My relationship with Louise ended and I found someone else, still searching for the fairy-tale ending, still making all the same mistakes. It ended up with me getting drunk on whisky and slashing myself with a carving knife. The police were called and I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital.

  I met a girl working in there, Lorraine, whom I had known a little before. I told her I had been abused and that was at the root of all my problems.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’ I was startled.

  ‘You told me, a long time ago, after you’d had a few drinks. I told you then you needed to talk to someone. You wanted to talk to me but I wasn’t really the right person, and I knew you as a friend so I couldn’t really do it.’

  But all they did was drug me up to calm me down enough to discharge me. There was a shortage of beds and they wanted to move me on. I was sat in front of a panel of experts who pontificated a lot and then basically told me I had to leave the hospital. ‘Can’t you see the way my life’s going?’ I pleaded. ‘I could end up killing someone.’

  I was now being permanently haunted by flashbacks and nightmares, as if someone had broken open every box that I had so carefully locked away at the back of my mind. Now the memories were out it was impossible to get them back into the boxes. The occupational h
ealth people at work sent me to be assessed and I thought maybe they would get me some counselling, but all they said was that I was fit to go back to work. I slunk back feeling humiliated, certain that everyone now knew all about my past and my life.

  I split up with my girlfriend and didn’t know where to go. Mum had settled in permanently with Trevor by then and I knew they didn’t want me back. I didn’t feel I was wanted anywhere. I didn’t like living on my own — it gave me too much time to think. I soon started another relationship and I also met up with someone I hadn’t seen for a long time. When I’d known him before he had been a puny little fellow and I was shocked to see that he had developed into a really strong, muscular-looking man.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked when we got talking.

  ‘I’ve been going to the gym,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of trying that.’

  ‘Why don’t you come with me,’ he suggested.

  Even though I was a big man, and strong enough to win virtually all the fights I got myself into, I always felt vulnerable and weak because of what had happened to me. Within weeks of going to the gym I was hooked on making myself as big and muscular as I possibly could. I wanted it to be obvious to anyone who looked at me that I wasn’t to be messed with. I wanted to be invincible and invulnerable. I wanted to be free of all fear. I started working out five or six times a week and my friend worked me out a diet. He also suggested I take some steroids to hasten the process up. I agreed and let him inject me in the backside. There weren’t many people I would have trusted to do something so personal for me, but I had complete faith in him, having known him since he was a kid. He was one of the funniest guys I’d ever met, always able to make me laugh uncontrollably. He still did mad things, like shoplifting manikins and other eccentric items, and he allowed me to be a kid again in a stupid, funny way.