Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed. Stuart Howarth
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to Mum as possible on the way back, without him seeing, just touching her arm or trying to smell her. It felt wonderful to have a bit of softness and kindness, even though I knew by then that she couldn’t protect me from him.
There was a hatch in the floor under the stairs at Cranbrook Street, leading down to the cellar. Sometimes when I came in from playing and deserved to be punished Dad would beat me and strip me off and send me down the concrete stairs into the cold and damp room below instead of sending me up to my room. It was dank and there was always a puddle of stale water at the bottom of the stairs, which I had to paddle through in bare feet, trying to find a dry patch.
‘You stay down there with the rats,’ he would shout, before slamming the hatch shut, extinguishing the last sliver of light. I would feel round in the darkness with my bare feet, trying to find a dry patch to stand in. I would try to hug the walls for comfort but the damp made the plaster flake and it would come away to my touch, crumbling in my hands. It felt like even the wall was rejecting me and I would cry uncontrollably, realizing Dad must be right and I must be really, really naughty.
I had no way of knowing how long I was left down there, but it felt like hours. The chill would spread through my bones as I crouched there, hugging myself for warmth, teeth chattering and muscles trembling, waiting for the moment when he would decide I had learned my lesson and could be allowed back up into the light.
He started bringing things that he could use to hit me home with him from the rounds – a heavy buckled belt one day, a brass fork the next. He would keep these weapons beside him as he sat in his chair, lashing out at me with them whenever I displeased him, claiming he’d asked me to turn over the television or make him a drink and that I had ignored him. I knew it was all lies because I listened for every word, terrified of making a mistake. He didn’t care how hard he hit, leaving bruises all over my legs.
He had his booty on display on the walls, everything from brass plates to ornamental swords with jewels in the handles, and nearly all of it could be used to inflict pain when he wanted it to.
‘See this brass crocodile?’ he’d say when he got home with some new trophy. ‘It’s for you.’ And then he’d hit me with it.
The buckle on the belt used to cut my skin so deeply I would have to sit in a cold salt-water bath afterwards to bring down the marks he’d left. No matter how hard I fought to keep control the salt would sting and make me cry.
‘See,’ he’d say, standing over me as I shivered and sobbed in the cold water, ‘this is what happens when you’re a naughty lad. Why can’t you be good?’
The teachers at school used to ask me where my bruises came from, but I didn’t want them to know what a naughty little boy I was in case they sent me away to a special school. ‘I’ve been out,’ I would lie, ‘playing army, climbing trees and that.’
It was easy for them to believe, I guess, because I used to fall over a lot at school, banging my head. Sometimes I even did it on purpose because I liked the attention it got me from the teachers when they put me on their knees and rocked me to comfort me and stop my tears.
Bath times were always frightening because I felt so vulnerable, being wet and naked. Sometimes he would come into the bathroom, tell me to open my mouth and then pee into it, thinking it was funny. Or he would grab hold of me, shove me under the water and hold me there. I would thrash around in panic, trying to get back to the air, certain he was trying to kill me.
Often he would pee in the sink in the kitchen; sometimes he would do it while Christina was trying to wash up, doing it all over the pots and all over her hands. She used to make a huge effort to be cleaner and tidier than the rest of us, scrubbing her trainers and socks every night. She was mature for her age.
At other times he would make me eat some of the swill he had made for the pigs, or he would make me come downstairs in just my underpants.
‘Sit there.’ He would indicate the floor. Then he would feed the dogs next to me and ask if it smelt nice. I didn’t know what to say because I knew he would hit me whatever I said. I would try to nod and shake my head at the same time, so it wasn’t a yes or a no. Then he would rap his knuckles on top of my head over and over and say, ‘You’re a naughty little bastard. Nobody likes you.’
Sometimes I would just be sitting at the table and he would ram my face into my dinner with no warning. ‘You’re a naughty little bastard, aren’t you?’ he would say as I sat there with food all over my face.
‘Yes, yes I am. Sorry, Daddy.’
If Christina had angered him he might punish us together, like the times when he would feed the dogs and then make us eat bread and milk out of the same bowls. ‘This is what you would be eating if you were in prison,’ he’d tell us. ‘Make sure you eat it all up. Lick the bowl clean.’
He didn’t seem to punish Shirley in the same way he punished us. I would see her crying sometimes and would wonder why, but I would never ask; we all knew better than to talk about personal things like that. Besides, I wouldn’t have known how to start.
At night I used to make Christina tell me stories before I went to sleep. She had always been a bit of a reader when she could get hold of books, particularly at school. ‘Tell me a story, Christina,’ I would wheedle. ‘Tell me about Goldilocks.’
If she didn’t tell the story exactly the same way each time, forgetting some tiny detail, I would pick her up on it. If she tried to get out of her storytelling duties I would threaten to tell Mum and Dad that she’d been swearing, because she always was. ‘I’ll go downstairs and tell them,’ I would threaten, although she must have known I would never have dared. She was always there for me, Christina, at home and at school, and I will always be grateful to her for that.
She was becoming like the mother of the house, especially when Mum was out at work, but she still cried a lot, like a little girl. She would try to cook my tea while I was out playing, heating up beans and stuff even though she couldn’t really reach the stove properly. It always tasted pretty bad but I was happy to eat it; all the food in our house tasted bad so it made no difference. If you are hungry enough and you know there is nothing else coming, you’ll eat whatever you’re given. We used to pick chewing gum up off the streets and pop it into our mouths, chewing and spitting out the stones and dirt until it was clean and we could walk around feeling posh, like we were able to afford gum of our own.
The council gave us the money to build an extension in order for Shirley to have a room of her own with a lift, so she didn’t have to share a bedroom with Mum and Dad, giving them more privacy as a couple. Shirley had had an operation and had a bag fitted so she didn’t pee everywhere any more. The bag would fill up and we would have to empty it for her every few hours. We also had to try to keep her clean so she didn’t get an infection where the tube went into her. It was an improvement to her life, but it hurt her sometimes because her skin would become sore where the bag was attached to her with stickers and we would have to clean her with surgical spirit and friar’s balsam. The little stickers looked like silver smiles and Christina and I used to stick them over our mouths to make it look like we were smiling.
One afternoon I came in at the usual time, hot and tired from school and playing. Dad didn’t attack me and seemed in quite a good mood for once, so I asked if there was any pop. He gave me a bottle of what looked like lemonade. Thirsty, I took a swig and immediately gagged, realizing he had tricked me with some of Shirley’s urine. Not content with having executed his practical joke, he then forced me to keep drinking it. Seeing how much I hated it he added it to his list of regular tortures for me.
When Mum discovered she was pregnant again, Dad told me that this time he was going to have a proper son, one who would be good. His words hurt, but I still looked forward to having a brother. The day Mum went into hospital, Dad came back home alone.
‘Your mum died in childbirth,’ he told us, collapsing