My father didn’t see Sam again until he was nine months old. But, by that time, everything had changed, nothing would ever be the same again, and I could hardly bear to watch him put his hands on my beloved son.
Chapter Three
Although I’d had little contact with my father for several years by the time I discovered I was pregnant with Sam, and he didn’t play much of a role in my life, it had been a few weeks before I’d plucked up the courage to tell him. I knew he thought Tom wasn’t ‘good enough’ for me – which was particularly ironic considering the fact that his own background had been even more humble than Tom’s. But, whereas Tom was perfectly comfortable in his own skin, my father had spent years climbing the social ladder, and he was proud that he’d ‘risen above’ his early life on a council estate and become a wealthy, successful and powerful businessman. Status, money and appearances were all that mattered to him, which was why, when I did finally tell him I was pregnant, I was surprised that he declared himself to be pleased and said he was looking forward to becoming a grandfather for the first time. Clearly, though, any grandfatherly feelings he might have had had evaporated that day he came to the hospital, when he decided that the name of my child mattered more than the child himself.
Tom and I had taken out a mortgage and bought a house together when I was four months’ pregnant. Although I’d been happy living with Tom’s parents, having a place of my own was really important to me. I’d bought my first flat when I was just 21 and was working as the manageress of a shop. It was a financial stretch on the salary I was earning, but it was worth it. I’d furnished it with bits of furniture my dad had been going to throw out, and I’d painted the walls, put curtains up at the windows and kept it spotlessly clean. I was really proud of that flat, partly, I think, because it seemed like a visible representation of the fact that I’d overcome the problems I’d had as a teenager and had proved my teachers – and my father – wrong by actually achieving something. It was the first place I’d ever lived where I felt safe, because I knew that I could close my own front door and choose who I invited into my home, and into my life. I’d had a horrible childhood and, until I bought that flat, nothing I’d ever done had felt as though it was my choice.
As a child, every aspect of my life had been entirely controlled by my father, and even as an adult I still felt the effect of his influence in many ways. My father’s parents had had very little money when he was growing up, but he’d worked hard to become a well-off, successful businessman and he was so determined to be someone that he didn’t care what it took for him to achieve that goal.
He had two sides to his character. To his friends he was eccentric, fun-loving and flamboyant, an amusing raconteur who had a way with the ladies and was the generous host of countless extravagant parties. To his family, however, he was a frightening, self-centred, violent alcoholic, a strict disciplinarian who despised women, hated foreigners, Catholics, poor people, homeless people, people who showed weakness or inadequacy in any way, people who smoked … The list was almost endless.
He regularly abused my mother, both mentally and physically, bullied and beat my brother and me, and cast a shadow over my childhood from which I never truly emerged. By the time he and my mother divorced, when I was seven, the damage he had done to me seemed irreversible: I was a nervous, bewildered, insecure little girl without one scrap of self-confidence, who became a deeply depressed and confused teenager.
My mother was a shy, pretty young woman who’d had a sheltered upbringing in an affluent family, and who’d grown up to be both naïve and unsure of herself. When she met my extrovert, confident, flamboyant father, she was swept off her feet, overwhelmed by him, and she fell madly in love. She was devastated when she found him in bed with another woman on the night before their wedding. But he could talk his way out of any situation, however incriminating it might seem, and she really did love him. So she forgave him and married him anyway. And it was only after they were married that she began to realise that the man who had seemed so loving and caring was, in reality, a self-centred, violent bully with an almost inexhaustible and perverted sexual appetite.
My father had always been a heavy drinker who progressed through various stages of drunkenness. During the first stage, he’d be charming and affectionate and he’d tell exaggerated stories that made everyone laugh and say to each other what a great bloke he was. But the final stage – which usually didn’t start until he was alone at home with my mother – was at completely the other end of the spectrum, and he’d be vicious, aggressive and frightening.
It was the early 1960s when my parents got married and, even had my mother been able to pluck up the courage to leave my father when she began to discover what he was really like, her parents – as well as everyone else who knew her – would have been totally horrified by the idea of a divorce. And, unfortunately, unlike my father – who was ruthlessly determined to do and to have whatever he wanted, and apparently completely indifferent to what other people might think – my mother was timidly anxious to do the right thing, and she would never have considered bringing such shame on herself or on her family.
After my parents were married, my mother worked to support my father through university. She didn’t earn very much, but just four years after my father graduated, they were able to move with their newborn son into a five-storey house in one of the most prestigious addresses in town. And that’s where they were living when I was born, a couple of years later.
The house was huge. It had a large, old-fashioned kitchen in the semi-basement, with a range cooker, an enormous pantry and an adjoining laundry room. Above it, on the ground floor, were the family living rooms, although it was the dining and drawing rooms on the first floor that were most impressive. They were furnished with beautiful, polished antique furniture and oil paintings in elaborately carved and moulded frames, and their high ceilings and tall, elegantly proportioned windows looked out on to the leafy square across the road.
My father loved paintings, and there were two in particular that I remember. One of them was of him as a child, aged seven years old, and the other was of his mother. The painting of my father was in a heavy gilt frame, with his name, age and the date engraved on a plaque at the bottom. It hung on the wall above the Georgian fireplace in the drawing room – and in equally prominent positions in every other house he ever lived in. I don’t know whether it was actually painted when he was a child. Apart from the fact that his parents had very little money, they didn’t really seem to be the sort of people who would commission an oil painting of their son – however much his mother might have adored him. Perhaps my father had had it painted himself, from a photograph, when he was an adult. Having a portrait in oils of himself as a child would have fitted in with his aspirations to become someone of substance and with his idea of who he really was – or who he felt he should have been.
My father was very strict with me and my brother Ian, and I don’t remember him ever playing with us or taking us out anywhere when we were children. When he wasn’t at work, out playing tennis or socialising, he was sleeping, and he had no time and certainly no inclination to bother much with us. In any case, he believed that children should be seen as little as possible and never heard. So he rarely spoke to us, although he shouted at us constantly, particularly at my brother, who he called a wimp and a cry-baby.
My mother used to try to hustle us out of the way as soon as she heard him coming home from work. Then he’d vent his bad temper on her instead – and it did seem as though he was almost always in a bad temper when there was no one else in the house except us. He’d criticise my mother and sneer at her until he reduced her to tears, and as soon as she was crying, he’d be more annoyed than ever.
He was totally different with other people, though. He had a loud, infectious laugh and could be charming when he wanted to be; and he loved giving parties. So, while my brother and I were looked after by the au pair of the moment, my mother would shop, cook and clean and then fix her hair and make-up, put on a pretty dress and smile as she handed round food to my father’s friends and colleagues, their wives and girlfriends.
Despite his love of parties, however, my father didn’t believe