Nobody's Child

by Father Michael Seed

  One day, when I was four, I went down and grabbed a bottle of milk that turned out to be completely sour and curdled. It made me very sick and I have never drunk milk on its own since then; occasionally in tea or coffee, but never alone. But already I had learned that complaining made no difference. It was not, I think, because Mammy didn’t care. She just didn’t seem to know I was there. Most days, it was just as though I was invisible. Her eyes would be open but she didn’t seem to see me or hear me.

  From overhearing neighbours’ gossip, I knew that Mammy suffered from something called ‘depression’ and that she was taking lots of very strong tablets called ‘anti-depressants’ and ‘tranquillisers’. These had a very odd effect and she would go for long periods as though she wasn’t really there.

  When this happened, I would tell myself that Mammy was switched off. She wasn’t working properly. And I knew not to pester her with questions, because I knew also that I would either get no reply at all, or mixed-up answers that most of the time didn’t make any sense at all.

  Often it was just like having a beautiful, big, walking doll in the house. She moved around but you couldn’t speak to her.

  I stopped telling Mammy that there was nothing to eat when I was about four, because usually all she would do, if she acknowledged me at all, was point vaguely down in the direction of the shop.

  Occasionally, a new box of cereal would appear in the kitchen and I assumed she had been shopping. But there was no pattern to this and sometimes for weeks on end there would be nothing upstairs for me to eat. More often than not a banana or an apple would be my breakfast – and dinner too.

  Mammy never prepared an evening meal for Daddy either – and that was the cause of many of their rows. I learned much later on that, in the early years of their marriage, when romance was still alive, she used to cook meals for him like any other wife. But 15 years of a brutal marriage and the eventual onset of serious clinical depression had dramatically altered that. By the time I became aware of what was going on, she had stopped cooking for Daddy entirely.

  At lunchtime, there was a set routine. I would go down to the shop and be given a sandwich. Mammy made sandwiches, using the cheapest sliced bread, behind the counter for the local workmen, and, as a small boy before I started school, I survived mainly on a daily diet of cheese and pickle or ham and tomato sandwiches and odds and ends of fruit.

  I came to hate the taste of cheese and ham but I would force myself to swallow them down rather than go to bed hungry. By then, I knew that there was very little chance of getting anything substantial to eat before I went to bed. And I was only too aware of the hunger pains that accompanied a rumbling, empty tummy while waiting for sleep to come.

  Luckily for me, we were surrounded by good neighbours, and I’m sure most of them must have been aware of my mother’s haphazard catering arrangements for her family. I don’t think any of them were better off than us – most of their homes were just as sparsely and shabbily furnished as ours, and they had more hungry mouths to feed – but the local mums nearly always offered me some titbit or other when I went round to play with their children. I could usually count on being given a currant bun or a slice of home-baked cake or some other treat to supplement my meagre home diet, and told, ‘Come on then, love, tuck in now.’ Usually this was accompanied by a pat on the head and a comment like ‘poor little mite’ or ‘poor bairn’.

  At the time, I couldn’t understand why I was such a poor creature but I welcomed the food and all the impromptu hugs the other mums gave me. Hugs were something to cherish. I never got them at home. Mammy never cuddled me or kissed me. I think she only ever held me for her own comfort when she was frightened or hurt. And the only times then that Daddy ever touched me was when he lashed out in anger.

  During the day, I used to spend hours alone in the living room watching television. Mammy never seemed to care what I did or what I watched, and in fact most of the time I don’t think she even knew where I was. After a while, it became obvious to me that the families on television were all very different from mine. The mothers all seemed to be happy and smiling and spent lots of time playing and talking with their children, and cleaning their homes, and the fathers nearly always seemed pleased to see them. The dads took their children out to play ball games in the park.

  I asked Mammy one day, ‘Why doesn’t Daddy like us?’

  It happened to be one of her more communicative days and she told me, ‘He loves us really. He just gets very angry and can’t help himself. It’s the devil in him, mixed with the drink.’

  I didn’t know much about the devil but I reckoned, if that was who was making Daddy beat us, he wasn’t very nice.

  I also knew that if Daddy came home smelling of beer – a smell I knew from when he drank bottles of the stuff in the living room – he was more likely to start shouting and hitting out than at other times. If I caught an early-warning smell of beer on his breath, I would either run out to play in the yard or sit down very quietly behind the settee.

  Anything, however small, could trigger an explosion, but one of the things which often made him angry was the way Mammy dressed, and the make-up she wore. She was very pretty and people said she didn’t need to wear the amount of mascara, powder and lipstick she sometimes used. She liked her skirts just above the knee and most of her blouses and dresses were low-cut at the top and showed a lot of her breasts. She also loved cheap imitation jewellery.

  Mammy said that how she dressed was one of the few ways she had of brightening her life. Daddy said she tarted herself up like a slut and beat her because of it.

  Chapter Two

  Daddy was a warder at the notorious Strangeways Prison in Manchester, and in uniform he always looked a bit scary, not just to me but to the other kids in the neighbourhood too. Some of those kids would be cheeky to almost anybody. But not to my father. Perhaps they had heard stories about the beatings he gave Mammy and me, but they seemed to know not to mess with him.

  His black uniform jacket and trousers were like a policeman’s and were complemented by a shiny, black peaked cap, white shirt and black tie. Daddy always kept his hair very short at the back and sides, which helped to make him look very fierce. At that time, he always seemed to be angry about something and I don’t remember ever seeing him smile.

  He carried a whistle, which he once let me blow, and a black baton, and wore a thick, black leather belt with a large buckle. He was a tall man and quite slim, though his arms were hard with muscle. Daddy often told me he was the fittest and toughest man at Strangeways, including the prisoners, and that he was a match for any of them.

  I don’t know if that was true because, apart from a crazy situation when I was older, I only ever saw him hit Mammy and me – and neither of us could put up much of a fight.

  The first beating that was different, and I can still remember it vividly, was when he made me bleed for the first time and dragged Mammy into the bedroom to do things to her. As usually happened, she was half-asleep in an easy chair when he came in, and I was watching Dixon of Dock Green on television. I heard Daddy’s footsteps coming up the stairs and I shuffled myself as far back into my chair as I could, trying to make myself less noticeable. I had long since learned that out of sight meant out of mind and that I was less likely to receive a slap if he didn’t notice me.

  Mammy didn’t look up when he came in. Perhaps she didn’t even know he was there. That often seemed to be the case with her. Her eyes could be open but she didn’t appear to see what was happening around her.

  Daddy marched over, still wearing his cap, and stood, legs apart, in front of her, just staring down. Then he reached down and shook her by the shoulders. ‘Can’t you ever be bloody normal when I come home?’ he shouted. ‘Well, don’t think you can get out of your duties by doping yourself into stupidity, ’cos you can’t. You’re like a bloody zombie. Absolutely useless. It’s like being married to a corpse.’

  Mammy seemed to understand something and tried to push
him away. ‘Stop it,’ she said in the sort of singsong voice she sometimes used. ‘I don’t want you to touch me. You hurt me.’

  ‘I’m not hurting you,’ he yelled, his face only a few inches from hers, ‘but if you like I’ll give you something to hurt you,’ and he slapped her hard across the side of her face with his right hand.

  Mammy screamed and I jumped from my chair and rushed over to him. He was still leaning over her and I grabbed hold of his sleeve and pleaded with him. ‘Please, Daddy, don’t hit Mammy any more. You’re hurting her.’

  ‘What the hell do you want, you stupid boy?’ he snarled. ‘And what are you doing here anyway? You’re nobody’s child. Don’t you understand that, you little brat? You’re nobody’s child.’ He glared at me, then undid his belt buckle and began to take off his belt.

  ‘Please don’t hurt us,’ I said again, but it was far too late for that.

  He pulled his belt free of his trousers, folded it in half lengthwise and suddenly swung it violently at my legs.

  The pain was awful and I couldn’t help screaming. ‘Please don’t, Daddy,’ I yelled again.

  But he was too angry to listen and he lashed at me again. This time the belt landed across my shoulders and the buckle end wrapped around my head and smashed into my face.

  I screamed again and put my hand up to my face. I was in agony. I felt my face was wet and thought it must be tears, but when I took my hand away it was red with blood. The big metal buckle had split my cheek.

  Daddy was already raising his arm for another blow, but when he saw the blood he paused with his arm in the air.

  Mammy was still crying – but not for me. Although she was staring towards me, I don’t think she knew what was happening. Usually, if she wasn’t drugged, she would try to stop him when he started beating me. But this time Daddy seemed to think I had had enough.

  ‘Stop your bloody snivelling, boy, and go and wipe your face,’ he said, and returned his attention to Mammy.

  ‘Please don’t hit her again,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Just do as you’re bloody told, you stupid brat,’ he shouted. ‘I want my dues. She’s going to do her damned duty one way or another, or I’ll wring her bloody neck.’

  Then he reached down and pulled Mammy to her feet by her shoulders. She tried to sit down again and he hit her across the face again. With a scream, she dropped to her knees in front of him. Her lovely face was now all red and blotchy and she was crying.

  I thought then that he was going to punch Mammy, but I was just too terrified of what he might do to me to try to help her.

  Instead, he grabbed her by one arm and the scruff of her neck and dragged her, her heels scraping across the floor, out of the living room, cursing her all the way.

  ‘Now we’ll see who’s the master here,’ he yelled and hauled her into the bedroom and slammed the door.

  I found a dirty teacloth in the kitchen and held it to my cheek, which was still bleeding and really smarting. I crept into Mammy’s armchair and curled up into a ball. Dixon of Dock Green was still on, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sounds of Mammy’s cries and Daddy’s curses.

  I don’t know what he was doing to her to hurt her, but I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to help. And I was too frightened anyway.

  Eventually, I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I remember it was daylight and the television was fuzzy and making a funny high-pitched noise. From the bedroom there was not a sound.

  Chapter Three

  Whether Daddy had stayed the night or gone to work early I didn’t know, but that morning Mammy must have forgotten to take her pills because she was talking and acting quite normally.

  I thought that perhaps something had happened with Daddy the previous night which had changed her, but it didn’t really matter. I was just so pleased to have her with me once again after such a long time. The real Mammy, not the half-asleep person who looked right through me.

  I didn’t dare to hope that the change would be for ever. On the other rare occasions when she had acted normally, it had lasted for at most a day or two but usually for only a few hours.

  All I could do was make the most of it. As soon as she emerged from the bedroom, she came over to me, where I was still sitting in the easy chair with my blanket wrapped tightly around me. Her face was still red where Daddy had slapped her, and one cheek was a little bit swollen. Her eyes were puffy the way they always were when she had been crying. There were also blue bruises on her neck and I thought that Daddy must have hit her there as well.

  Her voice was very calm when she spoke to me. ‘Michael,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we can go on like this. You deserve a lot better – and so do I. I didn’t have you so that you would be hurt and miserable and frightened all the time. We’ve got to get out of here, you and me, even if it’s only for a while. We have to do something nice for a change.’

  It was the first time Mammy had ever talked about getting away and doing something nice and it sounded wonderful to me.

  ‘I have a friend called John,’ she told me. ‘He has a nice big car and he has offered to take me and you out for the day if we like. Well, I’m going to speak to him today and tell him that we’d both like that. Would you like that? To go out with someone nice?’

  To me it sounded almost too good to be true. ‘I’d love that, Mammy,’ I told her. ‘Just you and me, though. Not Daddy.’

  ‘No, definitely not Daddy,’ she said with a kind of shudder. ‘It’s Daddy we need to get away from.’

  She led me into the kitchen and took a cloth and bathed my face, which was still coated with dried blood. Then she rubbed some ointment into the cut and put a plaster on my cheek.

  I was overjoyed. It was the most attention Mammy had paid me in weeks. Sometimes she went a whole day without speaking a single word to me. And weeks, or so it seemed, without touching me. I found myself actually daring to believe that she might stay normal this time. That my Mammy had actually come back to me.

  The next day, she was still acting normally. Daddy hadn’t been home. He sometimes stayed away for a day or two after they’d had a big fight and on those occasions Mammy would let me sleep in the big bed with her.

  She woke me up bright and early and made sure I washed properly and put clean clothes on. Then she brushed my hair down flat with the big brush she used to do her own hair. My hair was already curly and it took a lot of brushing to make it lie down.

  I could feel that she was excited, and I was too. She had put on lipstick and the rest of her make-up and was wearing perfume that smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. That, and the fact she was spending so much time getting me ready, was so rare it had to mean something very special was going to happen. And I was right.

  Soon after she had gone down to the shop, a big silver car pulled up outside. I was sitting in the window, from where I liked to look down on the busy street below, and saw it arrive.

  A few moments later, Mammy came rushing up the stairs shouting, ‘Michael, Michael. It’s time to go. Come on, quickly. John is here to take us for a drive in the country.’

  I followed her downstairs, where she hung a ‘closed’ sign behind the glass panel of the door and turned the key behind us.

  Mammy’s friend was standing by the big silver car, which he told me was called a Jaguar. John was shorter than Daddy, and a bit fatter and had a bald patch, but, unlike Daddy, he gave me a big grin and said he was very pleased to see me and hoped we would become friends.

  He opened the back door of the car and suggested I sit there. The back seat seemed very wide and had an armrest in the middle. There was an odd smell, which John explained was the smell of the leather seats. After he had fussed about Mammy and got her settled in the front, John slid in behind the wheel and we were on our way.

  The Jaguar was so much more smooth and comfortable than Daddy’s second-hand old banger, which used to rattle and shake all the time. It was different from driving with Daddy in other ways too. He h
ardly ever said a word to us, unless he was in a bad temper and shouting, but John kept up a constant stream of chatter. Mostly he spoke to Mammy, who seemed to be really enjoying herself, laughing out loud at some of his remarks, and sometimes he spoke to me.

  John wanted to know all about me, he said. Did I go to school, because I looked so big and grown-up. What games did I like to play? He seemed to be genuinely interested in me and I found myself chattering away in a way that wasn’t like me at all. It felt very strange. Normally, when I spoke to people, I said just a few words, and those usually out of necessity. We didn’t talk much to one another in our family and I had learned to keep everything hidden away inside. But it was nice talking to John. He had a way of making even the most ordinary things sound funny and he treated me more like a grown-up and not like a little boy.

  We eventually stopped in the countryside, where there were no other people, and we sat down beside a stream which gurgled along between grassy banks and big shady trees.

  John showed me how to make boats by folding squares of paper and we raced them down the stream, running alongside and whooping and cheering. I managed to fall in twice, but Mammy wasn’t cross at all. John said he had fallen into the beck which ran through his village every day when he was young. It was all part of being a boy. Mammy took off my shoes and socks and put them on the grass to dry while we had our picnic. I didn’t even mind that the sandwiches were ham and tomato.

  I wondered if other boys and girls did this with their parents all the time. It would be so nice to permanently feel this happy, I thought.

  All too soon, it was time to go home. By mid-afternoon, we were back in the Ashton Old Road.

  John gave me a pat on the head and told me he hoped to see me again soon, so we could play some more games. When I told him I hoped so too, he grinned back at me. Then he kissed Mammy on the cheek and was off.

  As soon as we were in the shop, Mammy became very serious. She took me by the shoulders and bent forward so that her face was level with mine. ‘This has got to be our secret, Michael,’ she told me. ‘Nobody must know about our trip with John, especially not Daddy. I know you’ve enjoyed it, and so have I, and it will be nice if we can do it again. But we won’t be able to if Daddy finds out. So you mustn’t say a word. Will you promise me?’