Please, Daddy, No: A Boy Betrayed. Stuart Howarth

a woman. They asked a few questions.

      ‘So, Stuart,’ the lady said, ‘do you like your new daddy?’

      ‘I like my daddy,’ I replied politely, ‘but I don’t like it when he hits me and hurts me.’

      I glanced over and saw the look of anger flickering across his face. I smiled quickly, as I always did when I was afraid, and everyone started laughing, seeing the little exchange as proof that my dad and me could laugh and joke together. The adoption was approved.

      Our days fell into a regular routine. After I came back from school Mum would be at work and I would be sent out to play, even though he would insist that Christina and Shirley went to bed with him for an hour for a rest. Now and then I would be allowed to join them for the rest and on one occasion Shirley started playing with my private parts.

      ‘Gerroff Shirley,’ I said, indignantly.

      ‘Stop fucking about, you two!’ he barked. ‘Go to sleep.’

      ‘She keeps playing with my widget!’ I protested.

      Shirley was always there in the afternoons after being brought back from her special school, a constant scowling presence in the corner of the sitting room in her wheelchair, her arms folded and her face unhappy.

      On the afternoons when I was sent out I knew that if I came back before I was allowed, which was seven o’clock, I would be in for a battering, so I never did. Even if I needed to go to the toilet I would find somewhere outside rather than disobey him and go into the house. I was not allowed to use the front door, always coming in through the back garden, which was the one part of our home that was kept neat and tidy, bracing myself for the expected battering.

      I seemed to be an outcast from every group of children in the area, so it was hard to find things to do to fill the hours until I was allowed back into the house. I didn’t look like the others at my new school because I was so dirty, I didn’t sound like them and I didn’t dress like them. But I no longer fitted in with the kids from Smallshaw either, because they thought I believed myself better than them.

      There was a disused railway line running not far from Cranbrook Street and some of the older kids would make dens in the arches along the side, where they would meet to smoke and drink and sniff glue. If I couldn’t find anyone else to play with I would wander up there on my own, finding some comfort in the wind that always seemed to whip along between the embankments. I was only five years old and the bigger boys would watch me from their dens, taking the mickey but not in a threatening way. They all had plastic bags and I would watch as they put them over their faces from time to time and breathed deeply of whatever was inside. They seemed quite friendly and I hung around on the edge, partly curious, partly desperate for company.

      As I grew braver I would go into the dens with them when they invited me, pick up the bags and breathe deeply, as I had seen them doing. The fumes from the glue bottles inside the bags would make my ears buzz in a pleasant way, and my unhappiness and pain seemed to become fuzzy around the edges. I got a feeling of love and peace and nothing seemed to matter quite as much. By the time I got home I was walking in a semi-dream. When I got inside and Dad hit me it didn’t hurt so much because I was already partly numb, and the glue would help me to fall asleep after my beating.

      Once I had discovered it I liked the feeling and I would go back to the railway lines almost every day for the next five or six years. The bigger boys became used to having me around and were happy to share their escape route with me because they thought I was funny, like a live toy, a sort of mascot I guess. They all knew who I was and what my family was like. We were easily recognizable because of Shirley being in her wheelchair whenever we were out. Sometimes I would bring the glue home with me and take it up to my bedroom, so I could keep the feeling going later, when I needed it.

      I always knew when Dad was angry with me because his upper lip would curl up at the sides, and the night that things got worse he was waiting for me inside the back door with that familiar look on his face.

      ‘What fucking time do you call this?’ he snarled.

      I couldn’t properly tell the time by then, but I had taught myself to recognize seven o’clock and I could see the hands were in the right place on the kitchen clock behind him. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t naughty, that I had got it right, but he didn’t seem able to listen to any reason and started to lay into me with a ferocity I had never experienced before, kicking and punching me so hard I was thrown around the room as if I weighed nothing and as if he didn’t care how damaged I might become. Whenever I was terrified, which by then was most of the time, I used to experience a sort of buzzing noise all around me, like a static charge. It would get inside my head as well, as if all the sounds around me were slightly distorted. The fear constricted my throat, making it hard to talk or swallow. My chest would always hurt from sobbing.

      ‘Get upstairs and get cleaned up, you little bastard,’ he shouted, kicking and pushing me towards the stairs. ‘And get to bed.’

      I struggled to obey, my body feeling broken and painful. I was so cross with myself for being naughty again and making my father so angry. Why couldn’t I just be a good boy? Why did I have to make him have to punish me? I had an overwhelming feeling of being so sorry as I sobbed into my pillow, wishing Mum would come home and give me a cuddle and tell me everything was all right. I tried to hug the wall, which was covered in footballing wallpaper, left over from when my aunt and uncle lived there. All I wanted was for my mum and my dad to love me, but I understood they couldn’t for as long as I went on being such a bad little boy. I knew my mum wouldn’t be able to cuddle me, because I’d heard Dad telling her not to. He said I needed to toughen up. Looking back now, I realize he was jealous of my relationship with her even then.

      I don’t know how long I lay there that night before he came upstairs to my room, pushing the door shut after him. I stayed as quiet as I could, determined not to do anything else to anger him. He lay down on the bed beside me and the familiar odour of his stale sweat enveloped me. He had never hugged me in his life, but he put his arm around me. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming again.

      ‘You know you’re a naughty boy, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You know I don’t want to shout at you, but you have to learn.’

      He started stroking me, which was comforting and strange. Then he took my hand and held it against himself, moving it rhythmically back and forth. The bed started shaking and after a few moments I could feel that he had peed on to my hand. He wasn’t cross with me any more and I felt very happy to have been forgiven. It felt great to know that he thought I was a good boy.

      ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

      I was always hungry.

      ‘Wait up here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll make you some potato hash. Come down in a bit.’

      I lay there feeling happy with myself for the first time in a long while, wondering how long ‘a bit’ was, not wanting to spoil things by going down too soon or too late. I must have drifted off to sleep because he had to send Christina up to tell me the food was ready. I rushed down, expecting to be in trouble again, but he was still in a good mood when I got to the kitchen.

      To have him pleased with me and to be given something to eat was wonderful. Even to this day I can’t eat potato hash without remembering that first time. We used to eat it a lot, with meat that the butcher sold for pets, and vegetables, anything that was cheap. Nothing was ever thrown away or allowed to go to waste; everything was fried up again and again until every last scrap had been eaten. Sometimes I tasted the stuff he prepared for the pigs and it was nicer than the stuff we all ate.

       Chapter Five A VERY NAUGHTY BOY

      That first time was the gentlest time, and although it was a little while before he became really violent, from then on the abuse in my bedroom became a regular feature of our daily family routine. The glow of approval after the first time didn’t last long and his verbal abuse towards me escalated as quickly