Life

Dad was usually up and gone to work when me and my brothers were getting ready for school. A good thing too, because when Dad was running late, everyone knew about it.

‘Come here with that milk! No wonder your mother’s skint!’

Dad snatched the cereal bowl from under Mike’s nose and poured half the milk, plus a few cornflakes, back into the bottle. Mike’s unhappiness at being left with a dry breakfast didn’t rise above a murmur, but that was tantamount to rebellion in Dad’s eyes and worthy of a warning. ‘And don’t come the Upbury Manor with me!’

Why Dad ever had kids was one of life’s great mysteries. It made no sense. Sometimes, I wondered if he even liked us, as father and son bonding rarely extended beyond a crack round the lughole. In between, an endless tide of disapproval kept us on the straight and narrow and crippled us with inferiority. Yet the same man would rouse us from our sleep, once in a while, to go downstairs and share the chips he’d bought on his way home from the social club.

I didn’t know what kind of pressure Dad lived under, and I never gave a thought to his responsibilities. I was naive about a lot of things and not just at home. When I posted one paper at a house on Waltham Road, and the next paper at a house on Begonia Avenue, I didn’t see a council house and a private house. I saw two letterboxes and nothing else. As a kid on the Twydall Estate I thought the world was equal and much of my world was. Adults had always talked down to me because they were tall and I was small, but now that I was fifteen years old, six feet tall and about to enter the adult world, it wasn’t so clear why some people thought they could talk down to me. And then there were girls. I didn’t know much about them either, only that if you asked them out and they didn’t like you, they told you to eff off and then blabbed about it to the whole school.

At school, I’d drifted away. Socially, I hadn’t got off the ground. While my mates were out chasing girls on Saturday evenings I was playing football on Eastcourt Green, often in the dark. Later, I’d nip over to The Sportsman for a packet of crisps and bottle of cream soda before settling down for Match of the Day. What did I care, I was happy.

Unless something special was on the telly, like football highlights on Sportsnight with Coleman, I was rarely late to bed during the week. Usually, I’d be tucked up in bed for ten o’clock. A few minutes of listening to songs like Wanderin’ Star and Both Sides Now – through an ear plug on my transistor radio – was the perfect way to end the day. I just had to make sure I switched it off before I fell asleep, or the battery would be dead in the morning.

What time Dad rolled home was his business. A hard working man who burned the candle at both ends, he liked a pint and thought nothing of a midnight fry up, yet he’d usually be up first in the morning. Most days we didn’t see him at all, till he came home from work at tea time.

Then one night something special happened. I was still awake when I heard Dad coming up the stairs. I measured the sound of his weary footsteps on the landing as he went to the bathroom, and then to the bedroom where the little ones slept. A minute or so later my door opened. I kept my eyes shut and lay still, sensing his presence over me. Then I smelled his boozy breath. After kissing me gently on the forehead, he leaned across the bed and kissed my little brother Garry. Then he crept from the room and carefully shut the door behind him. For a few seconds I opened my eyes, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.