it.
Strangely, it seemed that as soon as he had a name, Sam had his own identity. It was a thought that, for some reason, sent a bolt of pain through my heart. And then I realised that what I was feeling wasn’t pain but fear: I was afraid of the enormity of being responsible for a life that was already far more precious to me than anyone else’s, including my own.
At visiting time the next day, the double doors at the end of the maternity ward crashed open and I looked up to see my father striding towards me. He was almost completely hidden behind a huge bouquet of flowers and his girlfriend, Gillian, was scurrying along behind him, looking tentative and hesitant.
I glanced anxiously at my mother, silently cursing my father for flaunting Gillian in front of her in a clearly deliberate act of spite that was completely out of place at what should have been a family time. My mother took a step away from my bed and started fussing with her handbag, as though to indicate that she had no intention of trying to fight for her rightful place in the pecking order.
‘So, what are you calling it?’ my father bellowed, leaning down towards me and offering his cheek for me to kiss. The whole ward had fallen silent. Even the sucking sounds made by the newborn babies when they were feeding and their gentle murmuring when they weren’t seemed momentarily to have stopped. Everyone’s eyes were on my father. Some people were regarding him with open admiration, and some were watching him with expressions of hostile disapproval at the loudness of his self-assurance. But it was clear that all of them were impressed, despite themselves.
‘We’ve decided to call him Sam,’ I told my father, reaching out to place a subconsciously protective hand on the cot beside the bed.
‘Sam!’ My father almost spat out the word in disgust. ‘What sort of a name is Sam for Christ’s sake? It’s a fucking dog’s name. I thought you’d call him Harold, after me and after my father. You’re fucking useless.’
Then, without even glancing towards his first-born grandchild, he threw the ridiculously ostentatious bouquet of flowers on to the bed, turned on his heels, barked ‘Gillian!’ and marched back down the ward, letting the doors swing shut behind him.
My father didn’t see Sam again until he was nine months old. But, by that time, everything had changed, nothing would ever be the same again, and I could hardly bear to watch him put his hands on my beloved son.
Chapter Three
Although I’d had little contact with my father for several years by the time I discovered I was pregnant with Sam, and he didn’t play much of a role in my life, it had been a few weeks before I’d plucked up the courage to tell him. I knew he thought Tom wasn’t ‘good enough’ for me – which was particularly ironic considering the fact that his own background had been even more humble than Tom’s. But, whereas Tom was perfectly comfortable in his own skin, my father had spent years climbing the social ladder, and he was proud that he’d ‘risen above’ his early life on a council estate and become a wealthy, successful and powerful businessman. Status, money and appearances were all that mattered to him, which was why, when I did finally tell him I was pregnant, I was surprised that he declared himself to be pleased and said he was looking forward to becoming a grandfather for the first time. Clearly, though, any grandfatherly feelings he might have had had evaporated that day he came to the hospital, when he decided that the name of my child mattered more than the child himself.
Tom and I had taken out a mortgage and bought a house together when I was four months’ pregnant. Although I’d been happy living with Tom’s parents, having a place of my own was really important to me. I’d bought my first flat when I was just 21 and was working as the manageress of a shop. It was a financial stretch on the salary I was earning, but it was worth it. I’d furnished it with bits of furniture my dad had been going to throw out, and I’d painted the walls, put curtains up at the windows and kept it spotlessly clean. I was really proud of that flat, partly, I think, because it seemed like a visible representation of the fact that I’d overcome the problems I’d had as a teenager and had proved my teachers – and my father – wrong by actually achieving something. It was the first place I’d ever lived where I felt safe, because I knew that I could close my own front door and choose who I invited into my home, and into my life. I’d had a horrible childhood and, until I bought that flat, nothing I’d ever done had felt as though it was my choice.
As a child, every aspect of my life had been entirely controlled by my father, and even as an adult I still felt the effect of his influence in many ways. My father’s parents had had very little money when he was growing up, but he’d worked hard to become a well-off, successful businessman and he was so determined to be someone that he didn’t care what it took for him to achieve that goal.
He had two sides to his character. To his friends he was eccentric, fun-loving and flamboyant, an amusing raconteur who had a way with the ladies and was the generous host of countless extravagant parties. To his family, however, he was a frightening, self-centred, violent alcoholic, a strict disciplinarian who despised women, hated foreigners, Catholics, poor people, homeless people, people who showed weakness or inadequacy in any way, people who smoked … The list was almost endless.
He regularly abused my mother, both mentally and physically, bullied and beat my brother and me, and cast a shadow over my childhood from which I never truly emerged. By the time he and my mother divorced, when I was seven, the damage he had done to me seemed irreversible: I was a nervous, bewildered, insecure little girl without one scrap of self-confidence, who became a deeply depressed and confused teenager.
My mother was a shy, pretty young woman who’d had a sheltered upbringing in an affluent family, and who’d grown up to be both naïve and unsure of herself. When she met my extrovert, confident, flamboyant father, she was swept off her feet, overwhelmed by him, and she fell madly in love. She was devastated when she found him in bed with another woman on the night before their wedding. But he could talk his way out of any situation, however incriminating it might seem, and she really did love him. So she forgave him and married him anyway. And it was only after they were married that she began to realise that the man who had seemed so loving and caring was, in reality, a self-centred, violent bully with an almost inexhaustible and perverted sexual appetite.
My father had always been a heavy drinker who progressed through various stages of drunkenness. During the first stage, he’d be charming and affectionate and he’d tell exaggerated stories that made everyone laugh and say to each other what a great bloke he was. But the final stage – which usually didn’t start until he was alone at home with my mother – was at completely the other end of the spectrum, and he’d be vicious, aggressive and frightening.
It was the early 1960s when my parents got married and, even had my mother been able to pluck up the courage to leave my father when she began to discover what he was really like, her parents – as well as everyone else who knew her – would have been totally horrified by the idea of a divorce. And, unfortunately, unlike my father – who was ruthlessly determined to do and to have whatever he wanted, and apparently completely indifferent to what other people might think – my mother was timidly anxious to do the right thing, and she would never have considered bringing such shame on herself or on her family.
After my parents were married, my mother worked to support my father through university. She didn’t earn very much, but just four years after my father graduated, they were able to move with their newborn son into a five-storey house in one of the most prestigious addresses in town. And that’s where they were living when I was born, a couple of years later.
The house was huge. It had a large, old-fashioned kitchen in the semi-basement, with a range cooker, an enormous pantry and an adjoining laundry room. Above it, on the ground floor, were the family living rooms, although it was the dining and drawing rooms on the first floor that were most
