Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive.. David Thomas
do what he tells her.
I look at him in horror. I don’t quite know what’s going on but I do know this is really bad. Reg shouts at me again and starts coming towards me, eyes blazing, fists clenched. I jump up and run upstairs to my bedroom, shutting the door and putting my back against it, hoping in my childlike innocence that I can hold him back if he comes up the steps.
I can hear Reg, nearly 70 years old, fat and wheezing, climbing the steps. He stops at the top to regain his breath and balance, then slowly plods towards my room, pushes down the handle and tries opening the door with his arm. He can’t do it as I am pushing with all my might on the other side. He leans against the door a second time but this time puts his shoulder and all his weight into it. My weight is no match for his and he sends me flying into the middle of the room, falling into a heap on the floor, as he crashes through the open door.
I look up into his eyes and can see that he’s really mad. I have no idea what I’ve done to make him so angry but know I need to get away from him. I fling myself into the far corner of my bedroom, crouching down as low and far away from him as possible, instinctively curling up into a tight ball. I don’t know why I am so scared. After all, he has never hit me before. I just assume he’ll shout at me but I want to put myself into a protective position, just in case. He comes across the room and leans over, his eyes raging, and slowly inches towards me.
‘Think you can get away from me, do you?’ he puffs, still out of breath from climbing the steps.
‘No,’ I say, not daring to look at him for fear of making him even more angry.
‘Well, you can’t, so take that.’ He raises his fist and swinging it fast, brings it crashing down on top of my arm near my shoulder.
I let out a cry. ‘Stop, Grandad,’ I plead, ‘please stop.’
‘I’m going to teach you a lesson,’ he says.
I will hear these words many times again.
Reg then swings his left arm and punches me in the stomach. I move my arm to protect my stomach but then he punches me again on the arm. As he keeps on punching me I do my best to protect myself, but I can’t do so everywhere and he keeps punching me where I’m not covering myself. After ten or fifteen punches rain down, he stops and looks at me.
‘Right, don’t cause any more trouble or you’ll get it again.’
It’s as though whatever I’ve done to switch on his anger, it seems to be all but burnt out by the time he has finished cornering me and giving me a good hiding.
He wanders off downstairs. All the way down I can hear him trying to regain his breath.
From this time on when he beats me I come to wish he would stop breathing altogether and keel over. He always looks like he’s about to have a heart attack or a stroke when he’s hitting me and I sometimes think that that would be a suitable punishment for someone who picks on and hurts a young boy for almost no reason at all.
I stay in the bedroom, waiting for him to calm down, not daring to go downstairs until I feel at least a little confident that he won’t hit me again.
In my mind, I’m trying to work out what is going on, trying to understand what has triggered his anger and the violence. And I want to wait until the pain has gone away. No-one has hit me like that before and I’m hurting really badly. My arms throb and my stomach hurts. I sit there in the corner of my bedroom, quietly sobbing to myself, nursing my bruised and painful body, rocking myself back and forth.
* * *
I am eight years old and I don’t know what has triggered this assault. I have done nothing wrong. As a child, I have learned to be highly submissive with my mother and I’m the same with Reg. I am keen to please and often look to do something to make him happy, not make him mad. Besides, Mum has already given me the hard word, telling me I must behave when she isn’t there as she is having to go out and work to earn money for the family. I understand this and don’t want to rock the boat. I just assume I’ve been a naughty boy and deserve to be punished.
When I have time to think about what’s happened I start to wonder if it’s because of Reg’s upbringing and background. He is a fat man but also big and strong, even for his age. He has done hard manual labour all his life, working in farming, joinery and mill work. He lost the sight of one of his eyes as a child after an accident with a bike pump and has even chopped one of his fingers off in a circular saw. His fists are huge and rock hard.
As a child he lost his mother at the age of twelve and was brought up by his father on a working farm. He has already told me how he had to work very long hours as a boy and has spoken about fights he used to get into as a young lad and even though he was quite a fanciful storyteller, it’s obvious he has learned to handle himself. He’s come from the school of hard knocks and I’m a very soft boy. Maybe he thinks I need toughening up. But one thing’s for sure. It can’t have been because I am habitually naughty. Like all kids, I do something naughty occasionally but I’m never malicious or nasty and I’m not a naturally feisty or argumentative child. My school reports indicate that I’m well behaved at school, never rude or cheeky.
Maybe I blame myself for being too weak and submissive; maybe deep down I believe that I somehow allowed Reg to beat me up, almost invited him to, just as I wonder if it’s possible that in some way I have allowed what goes on between Mum and me to happen. Maybe my lack of self-esteem has something to do with my Special Time with Mum: I want to please her but I also fear displeasing her.
In the regular beatings he gives me from now on Reg never hits me in the face. I presume this is so that Mum won’t find out. Considering she might see me with no clothes on at some stage, I hardly think this is a guaranteed way of keeping my beatings hidden, but that isn’t the point. Reg can’t control himself when his inner rage spills over. When he feels the need, nothing less than punching the hell out of me will do. The look says it all as his eyes reveal the disgust, malice and venom he feels towards me. Whatever I have done to make him feel like that isn’t going to go away by his counting to ten.
But even he knows that letting Mum see me with a smashed-up face will be too much.
* * *
The beatings start slowly and gather pace. He never does it on a daily basis but they are regular and painful. He will never hold back from hitting me and it leaves me scared to be alone in the house with him. Despite all my previous issues with Mum, she never beat me and Reg never does it when she is there. So I often sit in my bedroom after school, watching for her coming up the road in the car and running downstairs to meet her. This reassures me that a beating isn’t going to happen for this day at least.
But even since he has started beating me, Reg can still be nice when he wants to be and if the mood takes him, he is great to be around. The problem is I can never second guess what mood he’s going to be in when I get in from school. I pray it is the nice man who will be making my tea when I walk through the door. My mother’s split personality has already made life very difficult for me – and now Reg is doing exactly the same. It’s not knowing what mood he’s going to be in that causes me such anxiety and fear. The constant listening and trying to gauge what Reg is thinking is almost impossible for me at my age.
I will never forget the thumping of my heart as I walk through the door every night, wondering what might be coming my way.
Mum has settled down in her relationship with Reg and is being a pretty good mother. She can be loving and affectionate, and for me as a child who needs that, it is great when we’re close, especially as she isn’t asking me to do things to her any more. On the other hand, I’m always on the lookout for her drinking, because I know what that means – a massive, immediate change in her behaviour.
In spite of everything that’s happened between us, she tries to be a responsible parent, making sure I have everything I need. She encourages me to join the Cubs in the next village and I go there every Friday night. I love it so much I join the Scouts at the age of eleven. I go away on weekend trips, campfires, orienteering and staying