The meal has been bad enough the night before when it was warm and freshly cooked, but cold fish and rice for breakfast are disgusting. Yet the next morning, there it is, waiting for me. I struggle to get it down, doing everything in my power to stop myself throwing up.
This teaches me a lesson: not to upset Mum and to do exactly as I am told. From then on, I do this to the best of my ability, both through fear of reprisal and because, strangely enough, it makes me feel close to her. I rarely defy her and am always excited when she pays me a compliment.
* * *
The first Christmas after we move into the house on the far end of the block at Calder Bridge, Mum works very hard to turn it into something special: we decorate the house with crêpe paper and baubles on the tree, and there’s a big bag of gifts on Christmas morning. The decorations are cheap but plentiful and we put them all over the house. Mum takes small items like chocolate bars and wraps them up in Christmas wrapping paper. It may not be quite the same thing as a real present but it helps make the bag look bigger and that’s what matters to me.
I sneak down early on Christmas morning and start opening my presents. I feel a warm, glowing excitement and I want the day to go on forever. But I know this day will end and that sooner or later the Dark Mummy, the one who comes to me at night when she has been drinking, will return. And although I’m only six, I’m starting to realize that what she is asking me to do for her, and do to her, is very wrong.
My mother is drinking more than ever – I know that, because she is making me do things to her more often. It only seems to happen when she drinks and she never comes to me until she is badly drunk. That seems to happen quickly as soon as she starts drinking brandy.
It is always the same. She wants me to make her happy by rubbing her minnie. She never touches my willy or shows any interest in doing anything more than that. She takes my hand and places it on her minnie and rubs it.
But one thing is different now. Before, she needed to guide my hand and do it for me. But now that I’m older, I am learning to do it with less help from her. That seems to give her more pleasure and so it pleases me more.
I am totally unaware of the sexual and moral implications of what I am doing. I am just happy that Mum and I are doing something together that feels intimate. I am an affectionate and tactile child, loving to cuddle and be cuddled. And I feel that what has happened between us is a natural extension of that. But why she drinks and why she wants me to do these things for her is a closed book to me.
On the other hand, even as a six-year-old I know that Mum has been very lonely since she and Dad split up. Things have been difficult for her and yet she has driven Dad away through her difficult behaviour. I think she truly did love him and expected to spend the rest of her life with him. She is now solely responsible for bringing me up, and without any career or job to support her.
Mum can still be great company. She’s in her late twenties and I sometimes see men looking at her and wanting to talk to her, but a few years later when I look back at this period it dawns on me that it must have taken an unusual man to accept her with all her problems, especially as at this stage she’s had a six-year-old in tow.
From this time onwards, I begin to realize that the men closest to Mum are much older than her. They are the only ones who seem to be able to cope with how she is when she drinks. And around this time, something terrible happens as a result of her drinking which I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
* * *
Mum has a friend called Charlie who lives in a small terraced house in a village called Mystendyke, not too far from where we live. Charlie has a beard and is tall and thin. To me, he seems very old but he’s probably only in his sixties – certainly a lot older than Mum – and I’m not sure of the nature of their relationship. He’s good company and I enjoy going there as he is always nice to me, telling me stories and jokes.
One night when we’re there at his house, Mum gets steaming drunk and their conversation becomes really heated. Even though I’m only six, I have already seen this many times before and I know what’s coming. They begin arguing and as each minute goes by, I can sense that it’s about to get completely out of control.
Mum is now beside herself with rage. When drunk, she has no idea at all what’s going on or any control whatsoever over her actions. Anything can happen and it often does.
She doesn’t care about me either when she’s like this. She’s not a distant, unfeeling mother when she is sober, but on this night I can sense that I am surplus to requirements. Then something happens that changes all that. Somehow, in the course of the argument, she gets locked outside the house with me on the inside.
She is shouting bad words, banging on the window. I am completely bewildered by what is going on and just sit there crying. Of course, Mum hasn’t tried to explain it to me and all I want is for her to be back inside the house.
‘Charlie,’ I’m crying, ‘please let my mummy in!’
‘No,’ he shouts, ‘she’s not coming back in.’
By now she’s at boiling point.
‘Let me in, you old bastard!’ she screams at Charlie through the glass.
‘Not a chance!’ he shouts back at her from inside.
She bangs harder until there is a sudden almighty crash as her fist goes through the window. Glass shatters all over the floor and my mother’s head appears at the hole, her hand covered in blood where the glass has sliced it, blood dripping on the window ledge.
When, years later, I see Jack Nicholson’s manic portrayal of the disintegrating writer Jack Torrence in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining, I can’t help being struck by the similarity of the scene where Nicholson takes an axe to a wooden door, finally breaks through, pokes his heads through the shattered door and jeers at his terrified wife, ‘Here’s Johnny!’
But, for me, at the age of six, the reality of seeing my demented mother’s blooded fist breaking through the glass to be followed by her head is far more terrifying than any movie and it’s a vision that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
She points and shouts abuse at Charlie at the top of her voice, telling him to let her in.
When he refuses, she turns on me.
‘Open the door, David, now!’ she screams.
I can see the obvious desperation of the situation even if I don’t understand it, and I badly want to help her. I run to the door, trying to reach the latch, but can’t quite make it.
‘Come on, David,’ she is shouting at the other side of the door. ‘Come on!’
On the third attempt I succeed and release the latch. As Mum has been leaning on the door, and I have no time to move out of the way, it immediately swings open, bringing her full weight crashing down on me, knocking me to the floor. Completely oblivious to this, she leaves me there and, staggering along, pushes herself from one piece of furniture to the next, her hand dripping blood on the carpet, screaming at Charlie.
‘You fucking bastard. Why wouldn’t you let me in?’
Without giving him a chance to reply, she lunges at him, raining punches down on him again and again. They are inaccurate but he is an old man and he just sits in his chair, hardly able to defend himself. All he can do is curl up, trying to push away her flailing arms.
He is too old to retaliate.
She is too drunk to be reasoned with.
I am too frightened to speak.
All I have been trying to do is help her, but it feels as though in the process I have made things worse; and now Charlie is getting hurt too.
What is