Sins of the father

It must have been a very bad time for my parents, trapped in a marriage neither of them wanted, trapped into parenthood before either of them were ready for it. This was the time before the pill, before the sexual revolution and at a time when the expectation was (for the working classes at least) that you left school, got a job and got married. Once married you had babies and stayed married until one of you died and released you from the life sentence.


My parents stayed married for around 12 years. Most of those years were spend in a bubble of shouting, screaming, breaking furniture and the occasional spilling of blood, on both sides. I never saw my dad actually hit my mum but on one occasion, in a terrible argument, he threw a tin of Johnson’s baby powder at her. It hit her in the face and caused a deep gash near her one of her eyes. Pandemonium broke out as, what seemed like a torrent of blood, squirted from the wound, covering the furniture and my sister’s push chair, which had to be replaced. My mum must have run out of the flat because my next memory is of my dad on his hands and knees sobbing. Shortly afterwards my mum and I walked the short walk to St Thomas’ hospital so she could have the injury medically taken care off. This must have been around Christmas (’67) and the nurses were taking the decorations down and they gave me lots of angels and stars to play with. My mum had to wear an eye patch for weeks and then have some plastic surgery. The scar is still visible today – if you look closely enough.

The scars my husband gave me are fading too. The physical ones anyway. I have a feeling the mental ones will never fade. On the bright side they remind me of some of the lessons I had to learn. On the dark side they reiterate what my mum told me as I was growing up and that we all get what we deserve.

It took me a long time to get the image of my dad on his knees sobbing out of my mind. Up until that point I thought he was the strongest person in the world and I was scared by his reaction. Scared and convinced of his remorse. I knew this demonstration of remorse was important somehow and related it back to my mum, begging her to forgive him. She did. And it went a long way in making me forgive my husband when he cried and begged forgiveness for the injuries he caused me. It’s just what grown ups do isn’t it? Hurt each other and forgive each other.

I was a nightmare child. Clingy. Demanding. Petulant. I know these thing not only because this is what I have been told ‘we had to tie you in your cot because you just wouldn’t stay there’ and ‘I even had to take you to the toilet with me, you never gave me a minutes peace’ but because I can remember being clingy. I would wake up in the night and scream because I saw ghosts on the bedrooms walls, demanding that my mum held my hand until I fell asleep. I remember being in Ireland and worried that I would be left there, in that cold house, with those people who made my life hell, that my mum would return to England without me. So I used to scream and cry when she left the room. This did not make me popular.

Being popular for a child is pretty important. I was immensely relieved to hear my grandson’s teacher describe him as being a ‘valued and popular member of the class’. I did not become popular until I was in the 4th year (what is now Year 6). That was the year that I had my first proper hair cut. I can remember sitting in the hairdressers chair watching as my long lank hair was transformed with each snip into shiny, bouncy layers that framed my face – a face which now looked pretty. When I arrived at school the next day I was suddenly the most popular girl in school. All the girls said they loved my hair and, strangely, now all the boys wanted to talk to me and tease me. Prior to that ‘Feather Cut’ I had been invisible. That year also saw ‘hot pants’ become the coolest fashion item around and when I wore them on school journey I had several boys vying for my attention. A few months ago one of those boys (now a 50 year old Born Again Christian) gave me a copy of the photograph taken on that school journey. Thirty of us kids sat on the beach, dressed up in our Sunday best and there I am, hair feathered, wearing my hotpants (how I wish it was a colour photograph, they were purple Lurex) and wearing a huge smile.

My friend Kitty, who I met at secondary school later that year, says that my haircut was the reason she approached me in those first weeks at the new school. Kitty claims that she came up to me and asked me where I had gotten my hair cut. ‘Oh...my hair?’ I allegedly replied ‘it just grows this way’. Thinking about it now this wasn’t the lie Kitty thinks it was. If I had it cut before the school journey of 1971 it must have been cut in the spring of that year. So when I started secondary school in September it would have been months since the visit to the hairdressers and my hair would have grown considerably. So I was right when I said ‘it just grows this way’. I will have to remind her of this