Daddy's Little Earner (8 page)

If I kept quiet, I reasoned, maybe he would get bored
with the whole argument and forget about it. But he didn’t.
He was short of one bag of sugar and he intended to
find out what had happened to it. Was it his daughter trying
to pull the wool over his eyes or his mother? He rang
Nanny back and they were arguing about whether or not
she had put sugar in the bag. She was insisting she put it
in while he was insisting she hadn’t and was calling her a
liar. I felt terrible, the pressure was building inside my head until I couldn’t bear it any longer and I blurted out
the truth.

‘I had an accident! I fell over and the sugar broke.’

I immediately felt a weight lifting off my conscience. I
knew I would be punished, and I was terrified of what
form that punishment might be going to take, but at least
I had told the truth. To my surprise he didn’t go quite as
mad as I had expected him to. He almost seemed to be
pleased to discover the truth. My breathing began to come
a little more easily. I had learned a valuable lesson, I told
myself, and I now knew that if I lied I would inevitably
be found out. But in learning the lesson I had earned
myself the title of ‘liar’. As well as giving my father the
evidence he needed when he wanted to prove to me that I
was a bad girl and that no one other than him would ever
love me, I had also alienated Nanny after we had spent
such a nice time together and she had been so kind to me.
With that one lie I had given both her and my father a
weapon they could use against me for years. I had proved
how unworthy of their love I was.

As a child, I had always got the sense that Nanny didn’t
like me, because she was always giving me clips on the
ear and telling me off. I think maybe I annoyed her when
I was little, always looking for approval, and she certainly
didn’t take any lip from me. That’s why it was a surprise
when she was kind that day when Dad sent me up
there with the laundry. I suppose she could see that he had overstepped the mark, sending a young girl out in the
snow with scarcely any clothes on. It could have been a
chance to make her change her mind about me and
instead I had blown it all by telling that stupid lie.

Even though I had let myself down in her eyes, I was
still included with the family when we went up to her
house for lunch on Sundays. I liked going because her
meals were always great, with puddings and everything,
and Terry and I would stuff ourselves as much as possible.
I used to watch everything Nanny did, trying to learn
so I could look after Dad at home in the same way. She
made the best cheese on toast in the world, standing a loaf
of bread cut side up on the table, putting the cheese on
first and then cutting a perfect slice horizontally. It meant
the bread didn’t fall apart and seemed incredibly clever
to me. Little things like that sometimes stick in the memories
of children more firmly than the big things.

I had four cousins on Dad’s side and Nanny often used
to look after them during the week while their parents
were at work, but she never offered to look after us even
though we obviously needed her help. Maybe Dad didn’t
want her to, but I suspect it’s more likely she never
offered. Why would she allow Chris and Glen to stay in
care rather than have them with her? Why couldn’t she
see that Dad wasn’t looking after us properly and do
something about it? The questions went round and
round in my head but there was no one I could turn to for any answers, especially not her, so I just stored all the hurt
up inside.

I think some of Dad’s family did try to help us out in
the beginning. Dad’s sister Jill, who would sometimes be
at Nanny’s at the weekends, bought us Christmas presents
one year, knowing Dad wouldn’t get round to it. I
remember she gave me a little plastic cash register that I
loved playing shops with, and Terry got a set of plastic
cowboy and Indian figures. Jill’s husband, who had his
own decorating business, used to offer to give Dad a job,
but Dad never bothered to take him up on the offer so
eventually they both seemed to give up on us totally. I
think that’s what happened with all our relatives; our
problems were so huge that they couldn’t see a solution
and they just kind of gave up on us.

My cousins were always quite kind to me but I was too
shy to know how to respond to their attempts to include
me in their games. We would play together in the empty
house next door to Nanny’s but it was awkward for me.
They had such posh accents I never felt good enough and
I always felt different to them all.

Nanny might have been keen for Dad to marry
Mum at the beginning, but once Mum had gone Nanny
did nothing but slag her off for being a terrible mother
and for dumping her four children. She never got over
the shame of having one of her grandchildren found eating
the contents of his nappy, which wasn’t surprising. However much I disliked hearing her being horrible
about my mum, I couldn’t really argue since I agreed
with most of what she said. I was furious with her for
leaving us as well. But it still wasn’t nice for Terry and me
to have to listen to the constant harangue.

None of us had heard a single word from Mum since
she’d gone, not a birthday card or a Christmas card or
anything, so we didn’t need our Nan to be continually
reminding us how hurt we felt and how badly we had
been let down. She didn’t blame Dad for any of it,
although it was mainly due to him that Christian and
Glen were locked in their bedroom and ignored, sometimes
for days on end, and it was him who had forced
Mum out onto the streets and made her life so unbearable
she felt she had no choice but to leave. Dad was never in
the wrong for anything as far as Nanny was concerned.
Whatever he did that she disapproved of, like drinking
too much or not working, she put down to the fact that
his cruel wife had deserted him and broken his heart.
She’d tell him off herself sometimes, but she wouldn’t
hear anyone else criticizing him without sticking up
for him.

I sometimes wonder if she was also jealous of my close
relationship with her beloved son. Could that explain
why she seemed to take against me from an early age?
Whatever the reason, she never missed a chance to give
me a slap in passing. It wasn’t systematic beatings like Dad handed out, but however hard Dad hit me I always
knew he loved me, because he told me so and because he
was still there for me. Nanny would never have told me
that she loved me and I was completely convinced she
didn’t. Sometimes she was just behaving like a lot of
women of that generation did when it came to disciplining
children. I used to bite my nails, for instance, and
whenever she caught me she would give me a whack
round the back of the head. If it had always been for specific
things like that I might have understood it, even if I
didn’t like it, but wherever I was in the bungalow I
always seemed to be in her way, particularly in her tiny
kitchen, and would always get a slap for it. I didn’t question
it at the time because I thought she must be right,
that I must deserve every slap she gave me. I was very shy
and convinced that I was in everyone’s way anyway. I
knew I couldn’t be any good otherwise why would my
mother have left me and why would my dad have to beat
me so often?

Now, as an adult, I think that maybe part of the reason
why Nanny hated me was because I reminded her of
Mum, the woman who had reputedly ruined her son’s
life. In the end I fulfilled all her worst thoughts and feelings
about me by betraying my father as completely as
Mum had done – at least that would be how Nanny came
to see it.

D
ad never truly recovered from the shock of Mum
walking out on him. Partly that may have been
because he had lost his main source of income, but there
is no doubt he also believed he had lost the love of his life
and would never be able to replace her. Every night he
would go out drinking to drown his sorrows – although
he probably would have done the drinking anyway
because he was already doing it before Mum left; his
broken heart merely gave him another excuse.

He never thought to hire babysitters when he was out,
so if he didn’t take us with him Terry and I would sit waiting
for him to come home at night. Even if we grew tired
and decided to go up to bed we wouldn’t be able to sleep,
worrying that Dad might have been involved in an accident
or a fight, or was so drunk he couldn’t find his way
back to us. I felt responsible for him. We knew that if something happened to Dad we would be orphans with no
family left to look after us since none of our other relatives
were showing much interest. We wished he would take
better care of himself as well as of us, so we could feel safer.

When we did eventually hear him falling in through
the front door after closing time we would hurry back
downstairs to greet him because we knew he liked that.
If we had by any chance fallen asleep he would stumble
upstairs to wake us so that he could weep to us uncontrollably
about his lost love, falling on his knees, sobbing to
the gods. He always needed to have an audience for the
drama of his grief.

‘Jane, Jane,’ he would wail, ‘please, please come back.’
He would go on like that for hours some nights and there
was nothing either of us could do or say that would offer
him any relief from his misery.

If we tried to sneak away back to bed during one of
these performances he would go mad at us, determined
that we should witness his torment in full and appreciate
what a wicked selfish bitch our mother was. It was confusing:
I hated her for what she had done to all of us, but I
still wanted her to come back for his sake, and for Terry’s.
I kept thinking, why doesn’t this woman just come back?
Not for me because I didn’t care, but for him, my poor
demented father, as I watched him pleading, begging the
gods, banging his head on the floor, beside himself with
grief. As I watched him punching the air and crying I would hate her even more but at the same time I remember
wishing he would shut up about it and get on with his
life with us.

He was the same wherever he went. Down the pub
they all thought he was amazing for soldiering on alone
after Mum had deserted him and the social services had
taken away half his children. He spent hours telling anyone
who would listen all about his woes. He would tell
them of his struggle to get us out of care and regale them
with the story of how he had beaten up the social worker
who refused to let him see his children. He used to play
the same record on the jukebox, that one by Charlie Rich,
‘Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the
world, and if you did, was she crying?’ It was all about
how a man had let the love of his life go and now realized
his mistake, but too late to do anything about it. The lyrics
fitted the picture that he held in his head of what had happened
and he played the same track over and over again,
standing by the jukebox, tears streaming down his face,
singing along like his heart was breaking all over again. I
learned to hate the sound of that record. Just hearing the
first few chords striking up would make my heart sink.
Why did he always have to think about her? Why was he
always pining for her, when he had me and I was willing
to do anything to make him happy?

When we were all at home together during the day Dad
had a little routine going. To help him elicit sympathy from everyone in the pub he liked to take one of us with him
wherever he went, like a little trophy to show what a
good father he was, part of his act like Pussy the corgi.
Usually it was me who went because Terry wasn’t quite
as co-operative and for some reason he was more willing
to let Terry off these duties than me. His money always
arrived on the same days. He would be paid his income
support for keeping us on a Monday and on a Tuesday he
would get his child benefit payment. The Post Office,
where the money came from, didn’t open till nine o’clock
in the mornings and he couldn’t bring himself to queue
like everyone else, so I would have to go to do his queuing
for him, which meant that on those days I was too late
for registration at school so I could then spend the rest of
the day with him, or at least I could spend it sitting outside
whichever pub he had decided to take his money to,
waiting for him to come out.

Sometimes I’d be there for hours on end. The pubs
had embossed windows that you couldn’t see through but
whenever anyone went in or came out through the doors,
I’d peer in trying to get a glimpse inside to look for Dad
and check what he was doing.

Dad’s friends kept telling Terry and me how wonderful
our dad was and how grateful we should be to have such a
great father and that we should make sure we behaved for
him and didn’t make his life any more difficult than it was.
I was sick of hearing it all, especially as I always felt guilty for being the bad, inferior person that Dad was constantly
telling me I was. I remember two old ladies coming out of
the pub one time after listening to Dad’s sob story, both of
them in tears and bearing gifts of crisps and Coke, telling
me what a wicked woman our mother was.

‘You be a good girl for your poor daddy,’ they said as
they handed over their gifts.

At moments like that I felt that my dad really was a
hero for all he was doing for us, and Mum really was the
villain of our story. Poor Dad. He needed to drink to dim
the pain of his broken heart.

When he couldn’t bear to have Mum’s clothes and
wigs in the house for a moment longer he built a bonfire
out the back and burned the lot, like a mock funeral pyre.
He used to have some photos of her as well, which he kept
on the top shelf of the pantry, but they disappeared too,
went missing one time when he was in prison and the
council repossessed the house, forcing us to move. But it
didn’t matter what happened to the physical reminders
of her; he was never going to forget her, or let anyone else
forget that the love of his life had walked out on him.