The older I got, the harder this kind of treatment got to bear. I remember when Choppers and Grifters were the big things. Well, of course, we never, ever had a new bike. On birthdays, I used to get a £3.99 Airfix model kit. However much I enjoyed putting those things together, you could tell they’d come from somewhere like the Ragmarket, which was Birmingham’s version of the Barras. There’d be half of it missing, or the cardboard box it came in would be so wet and soggy that you wouldn’t have wiped your arse with it. Christmas was terrible. When we were older, Mum always used to work in a nursing home, doing as much double-time as she could, sometimes not even coming home on Christmas Day. I used to dread Christmas.
And then the bailiffs would show up. We’d be evicted, Dad’s van would be loaded up, and that would be it. Off to the nearest refuge, or round to the social services pleading homelessness. He was always telling them that he was ill, trying to get sickness benefit. In reality, though, he’d be out gigging three or four times a week.
As a teenager, I used to be ashamed of some of the places we lived. We always seemed to end up in the worst of places: the ones that were riddled with damp, with nails exposed everywhere, the ones that had been left like pigsties by other families. I never used to let on to girlfriends – I’d make them drop me off round the corner. It wasn’t so much that I was embarrassed about living on an estate, or in a tenement block. It was more the state of our home itself. Every time he got violent, any ornament, any present we’d bought for Mum, a vase or a picture frame – anything nice – would be smashed or thrown through a window or destroyed, simply because it belonged to her.
I think we built up a lot of insecurity as children. I used to find it so intimidating, walking into yet another new school. Academically, we were never in one place long enough to develop any kind of attention span – and in any case, Dad was hardly the kind of man to insist on you doing your homework. Only poofs did homework. The same way only poofs went into catering. No, he was much more interested in trying to turn us into a country version of the Osmonds. Diane, Ronnie and Yvonne, my younger sister, all sing and play musical instruments. They didn’t really have any choice about that, Dad was obsessed. But something in me wasn’t having it, and I never went along with his plan. That’s not to say I wasn’t just as scared of him as they were. My tactic was to keep my head down and my nose clean. I never drank or smoked, and when I was asked to lug his bloody gear about the place, I just got on with the job. It’s ironic, really, that people think of me as so forceful and combative, a real aggressive bastard, because that’s the precise opposite of how I was as a kid. Until I was big enough to take him on in a fight, I wouldn’t have said ‘boo’ to a goose.
His favourite punishment was the belt. You’d get whacked on the back of your legs with it for something as innocent as going into the fridge and drinking his Coke. I say ‘whacked’. The truth is, I would get completely fucked over for that sort of thing. But what would really set him off were lies. I’d lie about things because I was too scared to tell him the truth, ‘Yeah, Dad, it was me who went in the fridge and took your Coke’ – and then he’d go absolutely fucking ballistic. Of course, what I didn’t realise at the time was that it wasn’t so much the Coke he was bothered about as the fact that he wouldn’t have a mixer for his precious Bacardi. He was the kind of drinker who couldn’t open a bottle without finishing it. You’d watch the stuff disappear, and your heart would sink.
Yvonne was born in Birmingham. One night, when Mum was six months pregnant, a neighbour had to call the police as Dad was dishing out some domestic violence on Mum. He was taken away. Mum was taken to hospital and ended up signing consent forms for the three of us to be taken into a children’s home for ten days. She visited every day. Then Dad was released and he came back home.
Next stop was Daventry, where we had quite a nice council house. It even had a garden. This time, Dad got a job as a rep, but he was still doing his band work and, thanks to the buying of yet more equipment, the debts were building. One day, he told Mum to pack – only the belongings she could fit in his precious van – and we were off again, to Margate where, for a time, we lived in a caravan. He never explained, or tried to justify his behaviour. We did as we were told. That was easily the worst place we ever lived, horrendous. I shudder to think of it. We didn’t even have enough money for the gas bottle to keep the place warm. The rain just came pelting down, while inside we shivered, and wondered how long we were going to be there. We were saved by the council, who put us back into a bed-and-breakfast.
Then it was back up to Scotland again, followed by another stint in Birmingham, and then on to Stratford-upon-Avon. Dad had somehow managed to get another job at a swimming pool. But he couldn’t settle. Off he’d go: off to France, to America. He never sent money home; it was up to Mum to earn our keep. When he came back from his stint abroad, we moved to Banbury, Oxfordshire, where he was going to run a newsagent’s shop. Everything was great for a while. We lived above the shop, and the guy who owned it was lovely. This was Dad’s big chance to get it right, if you ask me. But no, he had to screw it all up. One day, while I was getting something out of the fridge, I noticed that the lining of the door was loose. Unnaturally loose. And something was hidden in there – a wad of cash, it must have been at least £300. I remember feeling very sick, I nearly threw up then and there. Dad was on the fiddle. Not long after that, of course, the owner found out, and we were out on our ear again.
So then it was back up to Scotland – Glasgow. Dad had heard that the country and western scene was better up there. But I was a teenager by now, and I decided not to go. The council gave Diane and me a flat and so we stayed put. I was doing a catering course at college, sponsored by the local Round Table who’d even helped me to buy my first set of knives – but, in any case, I don’t think Dad wanted either of us around. He just couldn’t control Diane the way he’d controlled Mum, and that left him feeling frustrated because in the old days she’d sung with him, been dragged around all the seedy clubs. He had thought she was his, and when it turned out that she wasn’t, that she had a mind of her own, he just couldn’t take it. Later, when Diane got married, she didn’t want him anywhere near her. It was me who gave her away.
As for me, I was public enemy number one. Up in Glasgow, Mum would have to sneak out of the flat if she wanted to ring me. I certainly wasn’t allowed to ring her. I had finally crossed a line when I was fifteen. I was going out with a girl called Stephanie, and one night I came back late – too late, in his eyes.
‘Get your stuff out of my house, and go and live with her,’ he said.
‘I’m sixteen next week,’ I said. ‘I can go where I like.’
I’d already been given some kind of big radio for the upcoming birthday, and he threw it at me, from the top of stairs. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done that,’ I said. ‘You know damn well that Mum bought it for me.’ I knew she’d got it on hire purchase, which was costing her £8 a month, and I couldn’t bear it. ‘I’d rather you did that to me than to something that hasn’t even been paid for,’ I said.
At that, he came storming down the stairs. At first, I stood my ground. Then I saw the look in his eyes. That was why I bolted, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I don’t think that I would be here today if I’d stopped and tried to confront him. For the first time, I felt that he really might kill me. I remember him teaching me how to swim by holding my head under the water for minutes on end – I’d end up struggling and gasping for air – so I’d always known he was a sadistic bastard. But I saw something different in his eyes that day – a glint that chilled me. There was nothing there. It was a kind of madness.
Of course, once Diane and I were out of the way, he turned his attention to whoever else was available. Ronnie was his pal, mostly, so now it was Yvonne’s turn to take the sort of treatment that I had suffered previously.
By that time, I was already trying to make headway as a cook, on the first rung on the ladder, busting my nuts in a kitchen, and it was unimaginably painful – hearing this stuff from