“He’s all right,” he said, running a comb through his hair as he looked in the mirror.
“You’ve gone too far, Ali,” my mum replied as he disappeared out the door.
Aside from visits to family, our holidays together were mostly to caravan parks in seaside towns in other parts of Scotland. I remember when I was about seven we went to Dunbar on the southeast coast and I got to play on the go-karts.
This is a photo of me, beaming in my shorts and crew cut, looking towards my mother and my father, who most likely took the picture. So it’s not that every second of my childhood was filled with doom. But every second was filled with the possibility that in an instant my father’s mood would plunge into irrationality, rage and ultimately violence. This very feeling, this possibility, is what darkens the part of my mind where my childhood stories live.
It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down.
Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I’m sad to say that this method works. If you don’t give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you.
I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. I’ve certainly made up for it since, and for this, I am proud and grateful.
Like any tyrant, my father was an expert at knowing how to hurt you most effectively and quickly. If Tom or I became too keen on any hobby or person, our father would ensure that they were removed from our lives instantly. Tom was a great football player, and played for a local boys’ club. Eventually he began to receive interest from a professional team’s scouts. Immediately our father banned him from attending the football club altogether. I had a friend from school who lived in a local village, an arty girl who played the harp and whose parents were doctors. My father became convinced, based upon nothing more than a look in her eyes, that she was a drug addict, and I was never allowed to see her again. Both instances, I realise now, screamed of my father’s insecurities—of me mixing with educated people whom he felt he could not relate to, and of Tom succeeding in a field in which our father himself once had aspirations.
His actual violence towards us rarely lasted beyond one or two really hard whacks, the odd kick. I actually think the prolonged period of tension before landing his blows, as we were systematically inspected, chided and humiliated, had a far worse effect than the actual hits. This certainly contributed more to our need to shut down, as we all learned early that the best way to cope in that time when his ire was building and his cruelty unfurling was to give nothing away, to try and become nothing, the nothing he both thought of us and wanted us to remain.
But looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, I see that there was a definite sea change in my father’s behaviour.
I think I was about eight or nine. Something transformed in him. He had always been prone to outbursts of rage, but now a darkness descended upon him that meant the glimmers of light between the outbursts disappeared. It was as though my father was deeply depressed, and now I think perhaps he was. He obviously did not want to be in his marriage, he seemed to be perpetually irritated by the existence of his children, and nothing ever seemed to please him. Indeed, the only signal we got that something did not displease him was his silence, his inertia.
Now began what I remember as a time of constant darkness, silence and fear. Being around him was like navigating a minefield. We could never relax. We were never safe. He began to go out every night. I remember sitting in the living room with my mum, hearing him getting ready upstairs. Eventually the door would open and his head would appear.
“That’s me away!”
But he would be gone before the words had left his mouth, his eyes not even seeing us. It was like he was saying good-night to a pet, and eventually he stopped saying it altogether.
I didn’t understand what had happened, but of course I assumed it must have been something I had done. I was always being told by him how much of a disappointment I was, both in my appearance—my hair, of course, but also my posture, my weight, my nose, my moles—as well as my inability to perform the simplest of tasks, though his lack of detail in explaining what he wanted me to do or the physical enormity of what was entailed guaranteed I would fail. Once he actually demanded I drive a tractor, though I had never done so before nor had any coaching on how to do so by him or anyone else. I tried to reason with him. Often he gave me tasks that were huge and would take till nightfall and beyond, but this was another level. Now he was asking me to actually endanger my life by operating heavy machinery and I became very, very scared. My father began to shout at me and I knew I had to meet his demand. I clambered up on the high seat. My feet didn’t even reach the pedals. Of course I made a mess of it and the tractor lurched into a hedge and stalled. I was hit, and perhaps that was the first time I was relieved by the violence, because it meant the conclusion of an impossibly difficult and stressful experience.
One night, as he popped his head round the door and lobbed his customary “That’s me away”, I asked him, “Where are you going?”
My mum looked up from her knitting; my father stopped in his tracks. There was no malice in what I had asked. I was genuinely curious. But nobody ever questioned my father, and I could see I was on stony ground.
“D’you want to come with me?” my father replied, defensively.
“But where are you going?” I asked again.
“You tell me if you want to come and I’ll tell you where I’m going.”
I considered this for a moment. I knew my father was going out. He was dressed up a bit and he smelled of Old Spice and his hair was Brylcreemed. If he was going to the pub I wouldn’t be allowed in and would have to spend the evening in his van, something I did not want. But I sensed that perhaps there was more to it than that, and I think my parents could tell.
My mum said nothing.
“So are you coming or not?” my father said after a few moments, knowing he had won.
“No,” I replied, meekly.
I can’t remember how I came to know, whether it was kids gossiping at school or something I overheard at home, but soon I understood that the change in my father’s behaviour was because he was seeing another woman, and that Tom and I were a constant reminder of the life that trapped him.
Soon after, one sunny Sunday afternoon, we all went to the beach at Carnoustie. As I’ve said, it was rare we did anything together, let alone anything as carefree and exciting as a trip to the seaside. Summers are short in Scotland and we tend to take advantage of the slightest hint of sun, and that day was no exception. Every time the sun peeped out from behind the clouds we raced over the sand into the freezing North Sea, ducking under the waves for a few moments before rushing back up the beach again to the shelter of our striped windbreak, an essential component of any Scottish beach excursion.
My mum opened the Tupperware box of sandwiches she’d made and we tucked in. Just then, a woman and her son appeared. We knew them locally and they greeted my father very cordially, but I could see that the woman avoided my mother’s eyes. They were invited to sit down and eat with us and they did so. Conversation was stilted, and I did my boyish best to smooth things along. But I knew. This woman was having an affair with my father. That’s why we had taken this rare family outing to the beach. And not only did he have the audacity to arrange this encounter and walk