When dad returned to the parental house after what became his last trip to Ireland in the Autumn of 1971 we had no prior notice of his arrival. He arrived out of nowhere early one evening, and he was obviously tired from his journey. The television was off, the table and chairs were pushed back as far as possible and me, Mother and my sister were absorbed in a game on the floor as if the room had reverted to being something nearer the nursery it was before dad bought the furniture that overfilled the room. Mother was sat on the carpet with one of us each side of her. We had no time to react and change the house back to how he we knew he would want it to look like. His reaction was immediate, he hit the roof and did not come down from being so angry that everything was so disarranged from how he wanted it to be.
Mother tried to stand up to him verbally, and-literally-tried to stand up for us having a right to be at ease in what was our house too. At first he just argued back. We could hear the horrible jealous sulky child he could be speaking through his anger if we were brave enough to acknowledge him that way, but at the time we were mostly too scared to do so.
With the table being folded down and chairs pushed back the argument seemed less claustrophobic because, literally, it had more room to breathe in than previous arguments. But when Dad saw that he was not winning the argument logically and believed that he was the more deserving of the two of them then he hit her, hard and across the face, with his open hand rather than with a fist. Even with more room there was not sufficient space in the living room to swing a cat, never mind for Dad to swing his fists with any precision. But within any relatively small space the impact of physical violence will seem exaggerated. As he stood over her she crumpled into a nearby hard backed chair which was backed against a wall. She subsided into whimpering and crying. It was not the first time he had hit her, nor would it be the last. For the effect he had on her she could have been me arguing about being unable to go to Sunday School, except that she was crying indoors and I had cried outside.
With the table being folded down and chairs pushed back the argument seemed less claustrophobic because, literally, it had more room to breathe in than previous arguments. But when Dad saw that he was not winning the argument logically and believed that he was the more deserving of the two of them then he hit her, hard and across the face, with his open hand rather than with a fist. Even with more room there was not sufficient space in the living room to swing a cat, never mind for Dad to swing his fists with any precision. But within any relatively small space the impact of physical violence will seem exaggerated. As he stood over her she crumpled into a nearby hard backed chair which was backed against a wall. She subsided into whimpering and crying. It was not the first time he had hit her, nor would it be the last. For the effect he had on her she could have been me arguing about being unable to go to Sunday School, except that she was crying indoors and I had cried outside.
Of course it triggered the memory of the Christmas card from Brandy. How could it not? Though at least this time I was clearly not quite the same catalyst to the event, unawares, as that time. Even with Dad away and me at my best, my strongest, my physical co-ordination had been quite poor, I felt wretched doing school sports and my ability to follow the logical explained arguments was also quite weak. I was too slow at writing in class to complete many of the writing exercises that were set and the school was openly critical of me for some of the description in my flights of fancy. I am sure I was quietly thought to be 'agreeably backwards' at best by some teachers for how I interpreted their instructions to the class, which seemed to be different to how other boys read the same instruction. After that second time dad hit Mother in front of both my sister and I, some inner defence in me collapsed. The collapse was not immediately or total, but it began a period of me losing my bearings all to easily as to where I was and who I was with and what I was meant to be doing in school.
All it took for me to totally lose my bearings was one school class to go utterly wrong for me. It happened in November 1971. Snow had settled all over the playground which meant that the headmaster had instructed both pupils and teachers to stay in the class during morning break, and for the staff to supervise the children's break indoors. Apparently the school was not insured for us to play outside, and the headmaster cited the worry of what might happen if one pupil pushed another in the artificial outdoor goldfish pond. I would have been more worried for the fish with the cold weather.
My teacher that morning was Miss Venables, she was a temp. She disobeyed the headmasters instructions about staying in the class to mind the pupils, all thirty or so of us. Instead she disappeared for the ten minutes of morning break to check on her bedridden elderly mother. In the class where now there was no supervision I was sat two thirds of the way to the back, in the middle. Many pupils stayed at their desks but the bigger boys were always the first to get up walk around and act as if they ruled the roost. There was a lot of noise which came from the opening and closing of desks. Children had to raise their voices over each other and over the noise of banging desks if they wanted to heard, and the more voices were raised the more they had to be raised still if one of us was to hear another. The noise quickly rose to a crescendo which echoed back at me in the enclosed space and I was hypersensitive about random loud noise.
The noise hit me like the arguments my parents had at home, or like the horrible school swimming lessons in the swimming pool where the noise echoed off the walls and nobody ever learned to swim. Then somebody pushed me from behind whilst I was sat in my chair and another boy grabbed me by my tie, and threatened me. I misheard his threat but understood the tone. What before was all scary noise had closed in on me had now become scary touch. I sat, frozen, at my desk feeling deeply intimidated and I had to make a decision. I think some bigger boy had a pair of scissors and as one of a group of three of four was threatening/offering to cut other smaller boy's ties. I had been through the cutting/ punishment thing before when I, rightly, got the blame for the short trousers I did not like being cut. I feared my tie being cut by others and me getting the more blame, and being caned again. Being sat down I was at a physical disadvantage with the boys who stood up and moved around. To escape the threat I got out from behind my desk and stood up like the bigger boys. But unlike them I left the class for what I might have hoped was quiet. But the noise was somehow trapped in my head, it would not go away, it would not leave me. It just went round and round, and round again like a recording of an anxiety that I could not stop.
I found my coat in the cloakroom, a few doors down from the classroom. Since there was nobody about, because all the pupils were in their own classrooms, then there was nobody to see me leaving or stop me from going. The snow was still coming down, but more slowly. Nobody would have known to look through the classroom windows to see me leave. The teacher did not miss me because she was a temp, and did not know I was gone, or count the number of pupils in the class after she returned. Nobody said anything to her. She assumed that all the class were there. And besides, she was too distracted by thoughts about the poor health of her mother to notice the empty desk where I should have been.
I found my coat in the cloakroom, a few doors down from the classroom. Since there was nobody about, because all the pupils were in their own classrooms, then there was nobody to see me leaving or stop me from going. The snow was still coming down, but more slowly. Nobody would have known to look through the classroom windows to see me leave. The teacher did not miss me because she was a temp, and did not know I was gone, or count the number of pupils in the class after she returned. Nobody said anything to her. She assumed that all the class were there. And besides, she was too distracted by thoughts about the poor health of her mother to notice the empty desk where I should have been.
With the noise replaying itself in my head I don't know what I did or where I went when I left the school. I am guessing that I must have I hung back a bit and watched for all the other pupils leaving the school, for lunch at their parents houses. I went the parental house at the same time they did. My parents must have been highly unobservant of my vacant/nervous state, but then again they could be like that with each other. By the time I was due to go back to school from the parental house the snow was clearing. I left my parents house to go to school, but the nearer I got to school the louder the noise started coming back into my head and the less I could will myself to go through the school entrance and join in the afternoon lessons. Apparently my absence was noted, but I was still not missed. Instead of being in school I wandered the back lanes near the school on my own, trying to find some relative calm in my head, instead of the sense of numbness and noise. I did not have a watch and I lost all sense of time as I walked until I was lost in myself, the noise in my head would not retreat and go away. By the time school broke up that day I was far enough from the school to not be able to hear when the bells went for the end of classes that afternoon so I did not know when to return to the parental house. Where ever I was I had no way of knowing when to come home to cover up that I had not been in class, but I was well beyond caring about covering up. I was that deeply shut down inside my head that I was far past caring about myself or anyone else.
I was told by Mother that Mother raised the alarm by visiting the headmaster when I did not return home on time in the afternoon. When Mother met him, the headmaster told her that he thought I was with her. He was lying by omission to buy himself time to check with his staff. Since calling the police would have been alarmist they didn't do that. I don't know where they found me, or when. But who they found when they found me was somebody they they barely recognised. My mind had gone blank, blank to me, blank to everyone and everything around me. The child who went back to the house was a shell of the child who had attended school in the morning.
Naturally there was a blame game that went over my head, which included Mother claiming to be a victim because of what other boys had done to me which then and now I find galling. She had a part to play in how my life had come to this, and she was passing the buck as if it should stop with the school who also tried to pass it back to her. I would accept now more than back then that people power meant being able to buck whilst claiming to behave responsibly, and the more anyone claims to be responsible whilst saying others have not pulled their weight, then the more powerful they are. I was the one who could blame others least. From then I was watched at school, for-my attendance more than my attention span which was vastly reduced.
Naturally there was a blame game that went over my head, which included Mother claiming to be a victim because of what other boys had done to me which then and now I find galling. She had a part to play in how my life had come to this, and she was passing the buck as if it should stop with the school who also tried to pass it back to her. I would accept now more than back then that people power meant being able to buck whilst claiming to behave responsibly, and the more anyone claims to be responsible whilst saying others have not pulled their weight, then the more powerful they are. I was the one who could blame others least. From then I was watched at school, for-my attendance more than my attention span which was vastly reduced.
I became alternately cringey and angry at home, with few balanced and friendly moods between those two unsettled states. I felt defeated and broken inside, and unable to rest or find comfort even in the slightest sense of agreed retreat. I was watched to make me perform/conform at home too. But whatever anyone said or did there was no obvious way of pushing me back into the shape I was before the worst day ever at school. The expectation of some instant cure for my complete recovery by my parents, particularly dad, made things worse for me. I kicked out at the hardboard furniture in my room, I broke the bottom plate of frosted glass, one of three panels, in the door between the kitchen and the porch because I was so deeply angry. I was made to pay for the replacement too, my pocket money was forfeited until the money the glass cost to replace was repaid in full. Knowing how little I got it must have been a good two month's pocket money. I kicked and hurt other children in school, fought off the few girls who genuinely wanted to comfort me, not knowing that I was beyond their help. The constant discomfort and being untouchable with family and school gave me my own equivalent to the pub-shaped nimbus that there was around dad. But only one of was allowed to be detached and difficult, and dad had got there first and he owned the house, outright. Soon afterwards, and partly to make Christmas a more bearable prospect for the family, I was put on adult strength antidepressants for seven months. The medication shut me down more successfully than anyone could have conceived, the pills certainly made me falsely amenable than anyone could conceive. The doctor chose the strength, Mother administered it and that was me both safe and gone, completely disappeared as a person, at the same time. Mother got what was possible, whether it was what she wanted or not.
In this strung out state television became the nearest thing I had to a true friend. Dad stayed in the parental house more, partly to watch me and relieve Mother of the same watchful duty, and partly to outwardly appear more like a father he did not really want to be. He was also so overjoyed at being reunited with his television that would not let it be turned off. With him minding me more, we both watched more television. He liked glossy and violent American shows like the sub-James Bond television show 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea', a drama set in a privately owned nuclear submarine (!) where all the characters were male and collectively set out to right wrongs of the world. There was clammy cold-warrior/McCarthyite theme to the drama, heightened by the limits of the setting and lack of daylight, which was apparent to even my dimmed state of awareness at the time. If nothing else sent bad signals to me, then the sound of submarine's sonar spooked me. After that, the more macho, violent and illogical the action in the submarine got the less I could process it. The more frightened I got and the quieter I got and the more dad thought he was taking good care of me.
In the 1960's the cliche that grown ups used to ask children was 'Did you hide behind the settee when you first saw the Daleks?'. Well, if your parents held your hand when the Dr Who was on and the Daleks appeared, then you didn't hide because as a child you were reassured by the hand you held. But if you were sat apart from your parents when the Daleks appeared then there was nothing to stop you feeling afraid and hiding, least of all your parents. I wanted to hide from much of what Dad watched as I sat separate from him. I didn't, but only because I was not allowed to. Star Trek was the median point between us. I liked 'Star Trek'. I could follow it and with its controlled absence of violence, and it's progressive, if not Utopian, values, it seemed positive to me. He found the series repetitive, boring, and cheesy. On the other hand since it was American it was glamorous enough to be okay by him.
With other series that we watched together the more Dad misread my silences as acceptance of his care when they were actually quiet fear, including a fear of him, the more we watched and the more he built up problems I would later have to struggle through understanding separately on my own. The peak for problem television programmes was the World of Sport television wrestling and similar strongman type series where large men wore tight clothing or just trunks. Dad would insist these programmes be on, even when they were on at the time the family ate a meal at together and none of us could see the screen.
With other series that we watched together the more Dad misread my silences as acceptance of his care when they were actually quiet fear, including a fear of him, the more we watched and the more he built up problems I would later have to struggle through understanding separately on my own. The peak for problem television programmes was the World of Sport television wrestling and similar strongman type series where large men wore tight clothing or just trunks. Dad would insist these programmes be on, even when they were on at the time the family ate a meal at together and none of us could see the screen.
'Dibby' was the local word to describe children who were mentally ill and that is what I now was. Mentally absent. Dad had been physically absent with work, now he was staying in the parental house for good. Soon I would soon be physically absent from the house, mentally I did not know where I was. I would be half a person for over two decades to come, and I would always feel a faint of being absent in even the best of company.
Find Chapter 10 here
Find the introduction and chapter guide here.
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