by David Louden
“Do not talk to me like that Ruth!” he replied, mostly with spit “I will not take this shite from a woman!”
“Well fuck off then and find yourself a man to take it from!”
The thump sounded louder than the explosion as I sat at the foot of the stairs by the living room door listening. I could see Mum fall in the reflection, cast darkly across the glass panel in the living room door which sat half open. Dad stood over her, his hand turned to rock on the end of his wrist and shaking with adrenaline.
“Is that all you got in you, you fucking drunk!” she threw back.
He hit her again and again. She had a delicate little face and he was set on altering it forever. She’d get vertical enough to push him off her and would rush past me in a blur quickly followed by him screaming you want more woman, I’ll give you fucking more. The stairs sat between the doors to the kitchen and the living room, I turned on the stair and had a direct view into the kitchen which still looked like a shop. He caught up with her at the worktop and spun her around on her heels. She was prepared though. Make no mistake about it, Ruth Morgan had a temper too. What chance did I stand? Her right hand came round as he rotated her and slammed down on his chest. Jack took a step back, shocked at the sight of a fish fork sticking out of his barrel, a matter of inches from where his heart may have been. He hit her again and she dropped to the ground, her lip was fat and her left eye purple by this point. As he contemplated yanking the cutlery from his chest she rose with a hammer and took a swing for his face. She missed and he got out of there fast.
“You touch me again Jack Morgan and I will cave your bastard head in!” she screamed chasing him out of Rosapena and on to the Oldpark Road.
I stood by the door as houses and shops evacuated in a show of extreme curiosity as my parents tried desperately to kill each other. An elderly woman threw me a look of sympathy as she dithered by our front door. Me, this dirty little child covered in soot like a Victorian chimney sweep, my mum with her multi-coloured punch-bag face swinging a hammer at a drunk with a fork in his chest. She shook her head and pitied my situation, pitied my life before it had even begun. Defiantly I snarled back at her and give her the finger; my three year old stumpy little middle finger cocked and loaded with a big old fuck you. I turned and walked back into the kitchen and helped myself to a pocket full of sweets. Mum hadn’t learned yet what Clive knew. I sat and raged at that sorrowful sign of compassion from that stranger all the while eating cola cubes.
2
MY PARENTS HAD been childhood sweethearts, pulled apart by the fluidity of the Northern Ireland working man’s job market. Mum remained in Belfast, Dad shepherded by his disciplinarian/borderline alcoholic father to Coleraine, then Bangor, then Larne before eventually turning twenty-one and severing the ailing chord. He returned to his native Belfast and a chance encounter with the newly single Ruth, my poor mother; they’d call it fate, if anything it was bad luck.
Mum fell pregnant with my big sis not long into their second turn around; she was still very much in love, the smitten kitten of the Cliftonville. She wasn’t experienced or objective enough to see that Jack cared for two things, Himself and The Liquor. There was barely room in his tobacco-stained blood-clotted heart for her, let alone a child and definitely not for two. Jack got the son he instinctively desired a few years into married life when my mum pushed me out the tunnel and into the ‘World according to Jack Morgan’.
Nineteen-eighty was a tough year. Money slipped away from the family like quicksilver. On Tara’s birth certificate it stated the father was Jack Morgan – Occupation: Building Contractor, by the time it came around to declaring my existence to the world of the British Government it had become Jack Morgan – Occupation: Labourer. He had long since lost the ability to see a project from conception to fruition thanks to him going weak at the knee at the mere sight of a bottle of Grey Goose. By the time I was three turning four he was down to casual hours; being called in when another more reliable guy had broken his arm or fallen sick or ditched his family to run away with the babysitter. Something had to give and that something was the profit margin of my mum’s little house shop. It became the Jack Morgan benefit fund for the weeping liver. He’d go busking, and on those days when we were lucky would forget to darken our door. On the occasions when he did remember how to get home he always stank of basement shelf scotch and sported those Charlie Manson eyes Mum hated so much. They fought more and more, he’d slap her down she’d kick the shins off him while she was there. He put the hurt on her pretty thorough one time which took her a few weeks to fully recover from and each time after that she fought back a little less until she was little more than a cowering lamb, an imitation of the woman who’d tried to cut her Father-in-law’s head off with a sword for calling her a Stupid Wee Woman. Unrecognizable to herself never mind her offspring.
Nineteen-eighty was a tough year for sure. When Mum told us we were to expect a little brother or sister to play with Tara clapped her hands and prayed it wasn’t a stinky little boy.
“Mum, if it’s a girl can we dress her up? Can we call her Sue-Ellen, Mum?”
I met the news with indifference. It might be cool to have a brother to play with. Someone to dispense my four year old wisdom to, someone to join the alliance against Tara, though the thought of drawing out more borders in the already cramped bedroom was terrifying.
“Can it not live somewhere else?” I asked.
Jack’s hands tightened around the corners of the newspaper he had propped in front of his face while he sat smoking in his undershirt. After that, Dad was just angry. Angry all the time, he’d stop by Copperfield’s or Kelly’s Cellars when his tab was too huge to barter another drink and fuel up his anger engine and give off about the brood at home that was sucking the marrow from his whiskey-damp bones.
“I would be playing music by now, playing music instead of being this…” whatever this was.
Most of all he was angry at how hopelessly trapped he was; how the woman and the two (soon to be three) brats expected so much from him. During the fights he had taken to accusing Mum of trapping him in this life and trying to fix their problems with another mouth to feed. The Mum of old would have spat back with something about being able to afford another baby if everything didn’t go down his neck but the line never passed her teeth. The stealing would become more constant, soon the bottom line was too thin for anything other than the basics and soon after that it was gone.
When Jeff was born Tara and I had to go and stay with Mum’s sister Beth for a couple of days. Beth would take Tara up to the hospital to see them both and she’d come back glowing with happiness, most likely because she knew more than me but she claimed it was because she was helping Mum raise the baby.
“Where’s Dad Aunt Beth?”
No response came so I asked again and threw in a tug at the bottom of her skirt for good measure as she went about her daily grocery shop. It had become her and my daily grocery shop even though I hated grocery shopping. I wanted to go to Leisure World yet somehow nobody fucking saw that.
“Where’s my dad Aunt Beth?” tug, tug.
“Your dad’s away working at the moment son, he’ll be back soon but it’s very important that you help me here.”
It didn’t make sense to me; Jack didn’t need to go away to work. If anything Jack worked closer to home than ever now that the Oldpark was getting two dozen new houses erected on it.
“Working where?”
Nothing.
“Working where Aunt Beth?” tug, tug.
“He’s making movies darling now c’mon stop being an annoyance and help me with this.”
Beth handed me a blue bag full of potatoes and the like. I carried them without a word, not because I was looking to change my ways – there are some things too deeply rooted to turn around. I was in my head. I was familiar with movies but I’d never known anyone who had been in one. I wondered how it came about and when I realized that Tara hadn’t boasted about this I smiled.
It warmed me to think of my dad the movie star, it warmed me more knowing I knew more than her. I’d hold it over her good and proper, I smiled all the way home.
Mum came home with our baby brother so we ended up back at our house. It was good to be home. I had my own room in Beth’s house; it was enormous – four storeys and the top floor had been turned into one large room. Scaffolding sat in corners to support the beams that no longer had walls to hold them up. My uncle was a world-class squirreler. He emptied old houses in his youth and in lieu of payment was allowed to take whatever took his eye. He’d make a lot of money at auction, he could have made a lot more if he stopped bringing so much of his junk home – nobody needs a room full of spare tires. He had two little cars that looked like Sinclair C-5s before the C-5 was out which he got from a Japanese guy. One was little more than a shell but the other was in perfect working order and I drove it around and between the scaffolding in the top room for hours.
Dad was still gone. Mum had been home a few hours when I jumped on her, rupturing her stitches and sending her back to hospital for the night. She took Jeff with her; me and Tara had to go back to Beth’s. I felt bad about it but played in the Japanese C-5 for most of the night anyway.
3
JACK PITCHED in more for a little while when Jeff came along but it didn’t last. It never lasted; not while there was a spot saved for him at Copperfield’s. I was four years old and not playing well with others in my Nursery school. One day amongst the brightly coloured walls and finger paintings of suns with large smiles wearing Roy Orbison sunglasses I played with a bag of green plastic soldiers in the sandbox. I was re-enacting a scene I had watched on TV from a film called The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday. There was a tall dark haired actor in it with a brooding face. I was pretty sure in my own mind it was my dad and I watched with awe. A small smelly kid with nostril frosting all over his face stepped into the sandbox while one set of green men were chasing after another. He stood before me like he was about to say something then proceeded to piss himself; the patch spreading dark in a circle around his crotch before fleeing down the leg and out the bottom of his trousers. He had done this on purpose, he’d ruined my game and not only that he had drowned half a dozen plastic men in his dribbling cock juice. I stood up and slugged him square on the nose setting him off on a wailing tear-soaked cry.
Mum and Dad would come to the Nursery at the end of the week to discuss my behaviour. For a man who liked to throw his dukes around Jack looked pretty pissed when he fired a glance towards me as Mrs. Martin explained all.
“Though this is the first occurrence of Douglas using violence as a means to communicate his general behaviour is, shall we say, troubling.”
“Troubling? How so troubling?” quizzed Mum protectively.
“He seems to spend his days playing by himself, he rarely gets involved in group activity and doesn’t demonstrate a great deal of social skills. Have you ever considered having him tested?”
Mum sprang to her feet like someone had just plugged her blue padded chair into the wall.
“That’s quite enough,” she said grabbing my hand and yanking me out of my seat. Even the old man followed her lead “there’s nothing wrong with Douglas, he’s a quiet boy that is confident enough to enjoy his own company. Maybe the activities you’re trying to engage him in don’t stimulate him enough to want to get involved. What about the kid who can’t control his bladder? You going to advise his parents have him tested? What kind of four year old still pisses himself, huh?”
Martin sat in her chair stunned at the debris from the verbal landmine she had just trod on before finally offering “Well Mrs. Morgan his toiletry habits are a concern but not as much…”
“We’re done here. Douglas will be going somewhere else before he’s enrolled in Primary school, one more word!” Mum barked cutting the administrator down with the point of a finger.
We’d stop for ice cream on the way home and Mum would try desperately to ruin my licking rhythm by continuously petting my mop of black hair as though I was a pound puppy. Dad left after the ice cream, he had been co-opted into coming along because I was his child too but he wasn’t back in the house full-time yet. He mustn’t have wanted to be back in Rosapena otherwise it would have been a different case.
That night I felt Mum’s eye burn white hot into the back of my head as I played in the corner of the living room while Mum, Tara and now Jeff interacted as one entity. She burned a hole in my melon for weeks after the meeting with Mrs. Martin but she never sent me to be tested and I never asked what for.
It was the beginning of the summer and I had said goodbye to the Nursery school, come August I’d be heading to Primary school and a whole new pecking order. Dad was back in the house though he didn’t take us into town with him at the weekends anymore, which was no big deal for me or Tara as we never got to go to fucking Leisure World anyway.
“I’ll work the shop with you Mum.” Tara announced on Friday night.
“Awk no darling, you have your weekend.”
“But you need the help Mummy, I’ll take the orders.”
“We’ll see what suits you best, how about that?” Mum haggled.
It was another thing she’d hang over me in her quest to be the most loved, superior child of Ruth and Jack Morgan. Maybe she thought there was a prize, if there was a prize it was never announced so I never competed. Saturday would come and the house would fill from the back door with the chittering and chattering of children all queuing up to give away their pocket money. I had gotten into art by this stage so I spent most of my time with a yellow pencil and a blank sheet of paper under my hand drawing. I was going to be an artist, Mum did her best to steer me towards Graphic Designer or Architect. Architect pleased the old man because it was a skill, a trade.
“You’ll not get anywhere with all that artsy fartsy shite. There’s no money in it, that’s why it’s best left to those la-de-da puffter lot!” he’d state sucking down on a cigarette.
I had grabbed myself a bag of sweets from the counter and had taken to spreading them out on to the floor to sketch them. Mum worked the register while Tara busied herself bagging up people’s orders only for Mum to have to go over and fix them because Tara had given them £5 worth of sweets when they only had 25p to spend. I’d grin at her each time I’d see Mum having to redo what she was supposedly “managing” and she’d say something about how I was “ruining the stock” and “pouring it all over the floor”.
“Leave your brother alone Tara, he’s not doing any harm.”
She’d then mutter “unlike some people” under her breath and it would make me laugh. Tara was no more useful on shop days than the old man, or Jeff, or me for that matter.
In the summer months we ate the best. Every day kids would be given money to get them out from between the legs of their parents and they’d come to ours to spend it. Sunday came and we got dragged to Beth’s house. Mum had started taking us there every Sunday which was a real pain in the ass. I wasn’t allowed to play with the sort-of-C-5 when Mum was there, all of Beth’s children were a lot older so they had no toys and we were always put in front of the TV to watch whatever was on and for some reason it was always a Bollywood film. They never made a lot of sense to me back then; I’d spend most of the time staring at the clock willing it to skip forward an hour while Mum and Beth chatted about boring shit that somehow wasn’t allowed to be interrupted. When we’d leave Beth’s house it would be late in the evening, the older kids would be out playing football and I’d know it was time to go straight into the house, start fighting against the bath-time and then be put to bed before I was tired. Even back then I was a night owl and would spend hours under the covers reading, stopping every page to come up for cold air before diving back into my child-made literary womb.
Jeff didn’t do much at this point. I barely saw him and he was hardly even on my radar. During the week Mum took the three of us to Leisure World. The moment we stepped in through the doors I raced
to the boy half of the store and was struck dumb by just how much of everything there was to choose from. There was almost too much. It got to the point I didn’t even want to take anything down from the shelves all I wanted to do was stare at it all and imagine what it would be like to play with them. Tara ran back to Mum’s side with a Barbie.
“That’s all I want Mum, can I have it?”
Pissing little kiss ass. I wanted everything, I wanted to take it all home and cover the walls of my room with them and just stare unblinkingly at them and marvel in the world of possibilities that lay inside the plastic sealed packaging. Already I knew I’d be disappointed. I wanted it all. I settled for a Batman with a cloth cape and a batarang with a wicked recoil. Jeff lay in his pram clawing at his feet; not even one and already he was cherished enough to be able to squander his first trip to Leisure World. In years to come when he’d spent countless Saturdays in the dark, urine scented corner of Copperfield’s, when he’d spent so much time there he couldn’t even remember what Leisure World looked like, when that happens he’d regret wasting this opportunity and I’d laugh. I’d laugh and strain something trying to recall all the imprisoned plastic heroes that lined the walls waiting for their chosen one to come along and take them home.
The cab ride home was the beginning of Jeff’s hate/hate relationship with travel. His childhood would see him drown us all in chunks of what looked like carrot and rancid slime water as the slightest motion would cause him to projectile vomit everywhere. In this instance all he could muster was a hiccup and grey slippage down the front of his bib.
When we got back to Rosapena the house was like a bombsite. Mum quickly backed out telling Tara to take Douglas and Jeff next door right now. She grabbed the pram and raced to our neighbours; I followed for a moment but then wondered what Batman would do, or my dad. I had seen a movie he was in where he and three others ran around with swords fighting people in funny costumes. I ran back to the house, in through the front door and as far as the stairs. I could see my dad; he was blind drunk and ripping the cupboards out of the wall. Mum’s cash box lay empty and discarded in the middle of the tiled floor as he roared about the rest of it.
