my father hitting me with his belt was when I was two years old. I soon learned that his word was law. If I didn’t do what he told me to do, it was as though something snapped inside him and, whatever his mood had been, it would change instantly to one of blind, raging fury. Nothing ever excuses hitting a child, and it’s beyond belief that anyone could bring themselves to thrash a two-year-old with a belt. But, as my father was only ever really physically violent towards me when I disobeyed him, I thought that his anger was my fault.
He didn’t need a reason to punch my mother, though, or to attack her viciously; he sometimes did it just to make it clear to her – and perhaps to my brother and me, too – that he was in charge. And there was certainly no doubt in any of our minds that he was in charge, totally and utterly. It seemed that he controlled every breath we took, and I learned always to think about whether something I was going to do might make him angry, which meant that I lived in a constant state of almost unbearable anxiety.
To my father, my brother and I were nuisances who had to be taught to respect and obey him, but could otherwise be ignored. I think his only reason for having children at all was because it fitted in, peripherally, to his idea of the life he aspired to as a successful businessman living in an expensive house in an affluent and prestigious neighbourhood, with an attractive wife from a good family, and children who could recite poems and fables in French to order before they were whisked away out of sight by their nanny.
Surprisingly, perhaps, of all the countless things that hurt and terrified me during my childhood, it was often my father’s violent bullying of my mother that was more frightening than anything else, and there were many occasions when I thought he was going to kill her.
One night, when I was five years old, I was woken up by the sound of someone sobbing. I lay on my back in my bed, listening, and after a few moments I realised that it was my mother. I released the breath I’d been holding – and, with it, a small, frightened whimper – and then I started to count. One, two, three … When I got to ten it would stop, and if it hadn’t … I paused in my counting and listened again.
Perhaps my parents were playing a game. I’d heard my mother shout out in the night before, and when I asked her about it the next morning, she told me that she and my father had just been ‘messing around’. So, maybe, if I listened for long enough, I’d hear her laugh and then I’d know that everything was all right.
But, in my fiercely thumping heart, I knew it wasn’t a game.
I heard my father shout something harsh and angry; then my mother cried out again, and this time there was no mistaking the terror in her voice. I pulled the bedcovers over my head, trying to block out the sound, and attempted to swallow the solid ball of fear that had lodged in my throat. I knew, though, that I couldn’t just abandon my mother when she might need help.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut for a moment and then, in one quick movement, sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Then I tiptoed out of my room and crept along the thickly carpeted landing, counting my footsteps silently in my head to try to focus on something other than my own fear.
Crouching at the top of the stairs, I pushed my head just far enough through the balusters to be able to see my parents, who were standing on the staircase between the ground and first floors. My father was wearing a suit, but the top button of his shirt was undone, his tie was loose and askew and there was something about the way he looked that made me realise he was well past all of the first stages of drunkenness.
My mother was standing a couple of steps above him, wearing only a nightdress, and the fingers of my father’s left hand seemed to be twisted in her hair. He was pulling her head backwards and punching her repeatedly on the side of her head, while she tried to cling on to the banister with one hand and protect herself against his blows with the other.
For a moment, I was transfixed by the sound of my father’s humourless laugh, the cruel, thin-lipped expression on his upturned face and the brutal force of his attack on my mother. Then I noticed a young woman standing at the foot of the stairs. She was dressed in a short black skirt and a low-cut, wine-red coloured sequined top and she was looking up towards my parents with a small, vague smile.
I felt a wave of relief. Clearly, it was some sort of game after all, because I knew that no adult would simply stand and watch without intervening while my father beat up my mother.
Suddenly, my father ripped his fingers out of my mother’s hair, placed his hands against her shoulders, and gave her one hard push. As she fell backwards, her scream drowned out the sound of my own as I stumbled down the staircase towards her.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, my mother was lying motionless on the marble-tiled floor of the hall. I was certain she was dead. I threw myself on to my knees beside her, calling ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ and gripping her shoulders with my hands as I tried to shake life into her.
The young woman had taken a step backwards, away from the foot of the stairs, as my mother fell, and she was teetering unsteadily on her stiletto heels towards the living room when my mother moaned and moved her head. The woman stopped, swaying slightly as she turned to face us again, and at that moment my father took one bound down the stairs, grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly to my feet.
‘Get up! Get on your feet,’ he shouted at my mother. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. And maybe next time you hear me come home with a guest, you’ll stay in bed and mind your own fucking business. I will decide who I entertain and who I bring into this house, and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off.’
He leaned down, grabbed my mother under her arms and lifted her into an almost-standing position. Then he half-carried, half-dragged her through the hall and propped her up against the wall beside the front door. She staggered and almost fell, and I ran to her side and tried to put my arm around her waist.
‘Go on, get out!’ my father shouted, flinging the door wide open. ‘Both of you!’
The snow that had started to fall before I went to bed that evening was still drifting silently and steadily from the sky. It had already covered the road and pavement outside the house with a layer of white that sparkled in the light from the open doorway. My mother looked at my father and I could tell that she was trying with all her might not to cry, because she knew her tears would only irritate him even more.
‘Please, Harry,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t throw us out in the snow in just our nightdresses.’
‘I can do what I bloody want,’ my father shouted at her. ‘Perhaps you should have thought about the snow before you tried to interfere.’
He grasped my mother’s wrist as he spoke, put his other, open, hand on my back and shoved us out into the dark, freezing night. And as my bare feet touched the icy snow, I heard the front door slam and the key turn in the lock.
I was shaking uncontrollably and I felt my mother wince as I tightened my grip around her waist. But, despite the pain she must have been suffering as a result of her fall down the stairs, she raised her arm, placed it around my shoulders and held me tightly against her own shivering body.
We spent that night at a neighbour’s house and, as I fell asleep, I remember wondering if the soles of my feet would ever stop burning.
I didn’t know who the young woman was, whose company my father had chosen that night over my mother’s. I doubt whether he even knew himself, or cared. He’d picked her up in a bar somewhere in town and she was gone in the morning, by the time my father let my mother and me return to the house.
My mother had had a comfortable upbringing, protected from the harsher realities
