Back To Basics And Other Stories

Chapter 3

By the time I got there, my father’s funeral had already begun.

Not wanting to disturb the proceedings, I just stood at the back of the crematorium chapel. My mother was at the front, dabbing her eyes with a pink tissue. My brother Decko sat beside her, his wife Pauline next to him and a couple of fidgeting kids next to her. There weren’t many other mourners; none that I could recognise, anyway.

The priest was delivering the eulogy and I found it hard to connect his honeyed words of solace with the man I had known as my father. ‘Edward Barclay will be much missed by his family; his widow Anthea, his sons, David–’ (that’s me) ‘and Dennis–’ (that’s Decko) ‘and grandchildren Wayne and Britney.’ (The fidgeting rug-rats.)

‘Ted, as he was more familiarly known,’ the priest continued, ‘was a kind and generous man, ever eager to lend a helping hand.’ Aye, kind and generous to his mates when he was leaning over the bar at The Feather, I thought, and generous with his fists and belt to his wife and children when he got home,

‘Aside from his family, Ted’s other great passion was the Everleigh Cricket Club, and he spent many a happy hour at the club, watching the games and encouraging the youngsters coming through the club junior sides with his love for the sound of leather on willow.’

More like the sound of leather on flesh, I thought bitterly, and as far as his love for Everleigh Cricket Club went, it was just another excuse to lean over the bar ‘til closing time. The priest, no doubt meaning well, droned on, but it was obvious he had never met Dad and his banal words of comfort were depressing rather than uplifting.

He came to the end and then announced that the next hymn would be Abide with Me. The congregation mumbled away at the words as the coffin slid slowly forward towards and then the red curtains swished across, hiding the coffin from view as it continued on its final journey to the incinerator.

Abide with Me.I thought back to the last time I had seen him.

I was eighteen at the time and still living at home. I worked at the local bookshop, but I had plans to study, maybe go on to college, become a teacher.

It was late, almost midnight, and Decko and I were in bed. We shared the back bedroom where we each had a single bed. There was a wardrobe and a five-drawer chest of drawers and a ladder-backed chair. Dad had been down the pub as usual and came back in a foul temper – as usual. I heard shouts, a stifled scream from Mum and then the sounds of him stamping up the stairs. Decko, who was thirteen at the time, gave me a haunted look and then hid under the bedclothes.

Dad flung open the bedroom door and lurched across to my bed, leaning over me to shout, his breath foul with drink and tobacco, his teeth as yellow as rancid butter. He was shouting that I had moved some papers and letters; he was paranoid about anybody touching his possessions and would frequently accuse us of moving them about – we never did – wouldn’t dare – but once he had got it into his sodden brain that me or Mum had moved something, we knew a beating was coming. For him, any excuse would do.

I saw his belt in his hand. He would leather me first and then Mum would get some. Decko usually escaped with a slap or two.

‘Get up, you little bastard,’ he hissed, as he slashed at me through the bedclothes, ‘I’ll teach you!’

He slashed again and a sudden, vivid red anger blazed through me like lava and I leapt out of bed with the absolute realisation that I was now bigger than he and did not have to take this any longer. He must have seen the look on my face, and he backed away, but all the years of hate and humiliation at his hands came flooding through me in a heated torrent. I snatched the belt from his hands and began to lay about him, across his back, his arms, legs, face, anywhere; all those years, all those beatings.

For how long I flailed at him, I don’t know. He was a crumpled heap on the floor, his hands about his head as I stood over him, panting from my exertions. I flung the belt aside and I knew that I had to get out. I quickly dressed and then ran to the other bedroom and grabbed a suitcase from the top of his wardrobe and began to stuff my other clothes in. In my haste, I pulled one of the drawers completely out, spilling the contents all across the floor.

Dad lay there unmoving while my mother stood at the bedroom door, sobbing quietly, holding her side where he had punched her. She looked at me in mute desperation, tears of pain and heartache trickling down her face as she watched me pack. She knew – as did I – that my leaving would change nothing. Tomorrow would be the same and he would take it out on her even more.

‘Where will you go?’ she asked.

‘I’ll phone, tell you where I am,’ I said.

‘What about work, David?’

‘Tell them I’ve left. Get them to send my money and P45 on.’

‘Can’t you stay, sort this out?’

‘I can’t, Mum. I just can’t stay under the same roof as him anymore.’

‘Aye, but the rest of us have to.’

‘You don’t have to, Mum. Leave him, he doesn’t deserve you.’

She gave a sad smile. ‘”For better or worse,” I vowed,’ she said. “‘Til death do us part”. It still means something, you know, David.’

‘If he hurts you again…’

She smiled that sad smile again – we both knew that they were hollow words.

‘Stay till the morning at least,’ she said.

‘I can’t. If I stay here a minute longer, I’ll end up killing him.’

I picked up my suitcase, gave her quick peck on the cheek, said goodbye to Decko and ran down the stairs and out into the night.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

The service had come to an end. I walked down to see my mother. I gave her a hug. ‘Thank you for coming, David,’ she whispered through her sobs. I could feel her chill tears through my shirt. ‘I didn’t know whether you would be able to.’

‘I had to come, didn’t I?’

‘He asked for you at the end, you know, David. At the end, when he knew. He never stopped – never stopped loving you, despite everything.’

I didn’t know what to say, words would have been so trite, so I just gave her another tight squeeze, but we are not much given to public shows of affection in our family and we quickly broke apart.

‘Hello, Decko,’ I said, turning to my brother. He scowled at the use of his childhood nickname.

‘Decko?’ queried his wife Pauline and he gave her such a brutal look that I knew – knew without doubt – that it was like father, like son; Decko was a bully and wife-beater.

I still had my hand held out and reluctantly he took it and we shook hands. I could see the resentment in his face and could not at first understand and then the realisation hit me. I had deserted him, left him to face the wrath of Dad on his own and he hated me for it. I gave the children, my nephew and niece, a nod; they looked at me as though I had come from another planet and then began whispering behind their hands.

We started to file out of the chapel, Decko importantly taking up station alongside Mum and taking her arm, Pauline to the other side, the kids in tow and I was left to follow on like a road-sweeper after the dust cart. Music was softly playing in the background; I couldn’t work out the tune at first and then realised it was the theme from The Magnificent Seven, just about the only piece of music Dad had liked. Mum must have requested it.

The Magnificent SevenBy the door, the priest, who didn’t look old enough to shave, shook hands with the departing mourners – not that I really qualified as a mourner – and the little gaggle of relatives and friends worked their way along the chapel colonnade to look at the floral tributes. There weren’t very many of them.

The undertaker then collected all the cards from the flowers and gravely presented them to Mum. She looked at them once more before putting them into her handbag. The pink tissue she had used to wipe her eyes fluttered out of her sleeve, where she had tucked it during the service. Nobody seemed inclined to pick it up.

I felt a tug on my left wrist. Mr Hansen looked at his watch. ‘Time to go, David,’ he said. I gave Mum a last hug, nodded to Decko and the kids and walked along with Hansen back to the waiting car; my left wrist handcuffed to his right.

I’m serving a life sentence in Wakefield Gaol for a double murder committed during a robbery. What is it they say? “Violence begets violence” and “the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.”

I didn’t bother to look back as we drove away.