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Pigeons Can Fly. Cats Can't
It was the day after another beating and I was hurting as never before. This wasn't the hurt of physical pain. It was more a pain in the very centre of my soul. It was the pain of shame and humiliation. It was the pain of violation. It was a day when I found it difficult to get into my inner world. It was like going to the park and finding the gates locked. I knew how beautiful the park was but I couldn't get in. It was a Saturday. Saturdays were always difficult because they followed Friday nights. Saturday was the day my mother would scrub the doorstep and the house. Saturday followed pay-night, shout-night, drunk-night, pain-night. I hated Friday nights and I hated God for letting them come every week without fail.
That Friday night had been much as usual. The clubmen had come and gone. Some of them with their hire purchase payments, some without. The only two to be paid with regularity were the coalman and the insurance man. The others were rotated. One week paid, the next missed. James or I were the ones who had to answer the door of a Friday night while my mother sat shamed in the dimly lit kitchen out of the way. We told the lies we had to. Never once did these clubmen hear the truth. That is, that there was simply no money to pay them. Never once would my parents own up to being poor. They were ashamed, deeply ashamed of their poverty. Poverty creates the best of liars. My father would say, 'Never let the right hand know what the left is doing.' By this he meant, whatever it is keep it a secret. Never let the neighbours know anything. He trusted no one. He'd created an inner world in which his family were forced to live. My inner world was a much more beautiful place. It had colour, enchantment and magic. His was dark and sad. He put great emphasis on his children 'holding their tongues'. So it was that whenever we received a visitor to our home James and I were the perfectly behaved children. We were seen and not heard. Visitors congratulated my parents for having raised such fine children. James and I simply knew the rules and we observed them purely out of fear.
The movements of my mother's body and the tone of her voice were always a good guide to the kind of night we had in store. Tonight she was stiff and sharp. It was going to be be a hell of night for us all. She had the clubmen's payment cards laid out on the table in front of her along with the contents of her purse. Her pained expression told me clearly that as usual things didn't balance out. Her eyes darted from the clock to the payment books, to the front door and back again. I came to hate the chimes of that clock more than any other sound in my short life. Her eyes fell on James and me before landing on the coal fire, where they stayed. It was impossible to know how to help her or how to please her and all such efforts ended in her telling me to shut up. My father could have helped her far more. He was a rock, solid and self-contained. He kept most of his money for the pub and cards. His self-containment was something he cultivated with relish. I had not the slightest idea what he thought or felt about anything. Not knowing who he was caused the greatest pain to me. Was it going to be one of those nights he'd arrive home happy, bringing small gifts of peanuts or barley-sugar? It was doubtful. They were rare nights indeed. Was it going to be a night of death? I feared this quite seriously for I believed that one night he'd kill us all. Waiting to find out caused us all to be stiff and tight. We waited and waited and more than once I thought about smashing up the clock in the hope of stopping time.
Have you ever noticed the way pigeons seem to wait until the very last second before taking off when a cat is about? They seem to know that once in the air they enter into a world a cat can never know. I was the pigeon and my father the cat. I would open the wings of my mind and lift off into beauty and enchanted magic. He couldn't follow. He had no wings. However, Friday nights seemed to have the power to rip my wings off and the cat somehow knew this and could wait until it was ready to pounce. Sometimes, it would just walk around me and torment me with its power. Other times it would raise one of its giant paws and gash my already weakened body. There were those times too when having raised the giant paw it would hold it there threateningly, then with sadistic pleasure not do anything. So far, I'd been lucky. It hadn't killed me. What else would it have to play with then? If I could stay alive long enough I could grow into a bigger man than him and stop him hurting us and himself. If not I would kill him. Such thoughts tormented me for they brought gloom into my inner world. Thoughts like this had no place in magic for they destroyed it; evil had no place in my inner world. So powerful was the need to protect my inner world that I was forced to tolerate my father in the outer, unreal world of my existence. My inner world was absolute reality and he was nothing more than a bad dream.
The waiting was over. His key turned in the lock and in a second there he was, huge and menacing. He was a creation of every element known to man -though mostly ice. I caught the smell of beer and my heart sank. I moved closer to James. The smell of beer always meant trouble. His enormous clumsy movements spoke of anger. I wondered what caused this. I mean, did the beer liberate the real man or was the real man lessened by the beer? You tell me. Was he evil? Was beer evil? I mean, if evil exists what does it live on? I became confused by my silent questions. An eightyear-old shouldn't have to puzzle them out. But I knew lots of questions in my head even though I didn't know the right words to ask them of anyone else. Few adults understood this. I hated being a child. The problem with grown-ups is that they don't know how to make friends. Whenever I had a fight with James or one of our gang we could make friends again very quickly afterwards. When my parents had a fight their hostility seemed to grow towards each other and the world. How stupid they were. If I had a fight with a kid who'd been a friend and it was obvious to us that we'd become enemies we just stayed away from each other. Why didn't my father just stay away?
No sooner had my father taken his coat off than the fight began. My mother made constant reference to the kids not having enough. I began to feel like a tennis ball. My father told my mother that she should manage things better and if the kids didn't have things then it was her fault. I felt terribly responsible for their fight. Simply existing seemed to cause them pain and perhaps if I didn't exist they'd be alright. Death seemed like a good way out. As the fight intensified they seemed to lose sight of just how forcefully they were attacking each other. It would fall to James and me to rescue them from the mess they were creating before something even more terrible happened. Their attention must be taken away from each other and redirected, but how? As though we'd found the answer, but more out of sheer pain, both James and I began to cry. We had the support of doing it together. My father's anger would be split and perhaps, therefore, halved. It was clear that our crying was irritating both of them and my mother ordered us to bed. This seemed to me like one hell of a good idea. We headed for the stairs and I was trying my best to become invisible when the cat spotted me.
'Come here, now!'
'For God's sake Charlie let them go to bed.'
We stood perfectly still in the hope that this time she'd win.
'Do as you're bloody well told, now!'
As always, she lost. We stepped towards him and stopped just out of range of his huge hands. We kept very close together. My efforts to redirect their attention had worked all too well. Our crying now was out of fear of what was to come. At first he ridiculed our crying and sniped that we were behaving like babies and not his sons.
'Stop crying,' he commanded.
'For the love of God Charlie...'
But we knew this game. He would force us to stop crying by beating us. My mother continued to plead.
'How in the name of God do you expect them to stop crying when you're scaring the hell out of them?'
Reason and logic played no part in this game though, and he countered with the inevitable.
'Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry for.'
The calmness of his order scared me even more for I recognised the danger signs. If we didn't stop now he was likely to kill us both. We tried and tried and his head movements and ice-cold eye contact told us that it better be quick. James was trying the 'stop breathing' technique and had almost completely succeeded, but I could see what it was doing to him. It would mean a massive asthma attack during the night. When they came he couldn't get his breath and we'd spend hours at an open window. At such times it seemed to me that he had to fight to stay alive. I would hold him and tell him about how we'd go to Formby and get some frogs, or how great a fighter he was, or how he could beat anyone in the gang. I would tell him anything to help him. It wasn't that long since he'd had an attack and I knew he couldn't take another. I opened my lungs and cried even louder. My father's anger would now be directed towards me and James would be safe, for tonight. Besides, I could get into my inner world and I wasn't sure if James had one. I wasn't being a hero or anything like that. Not a bit of it. By protecting James I was also protecting myself in a strange kind of way. I needed James more than anything else in the world and he needed me just as much. There had been times when he'd thrown himself between my father's belt and my body in order to protect me when he could see that I couldn't take much more. It was mutual survival. He protected us both and now it was my turn to do the same thing. My increased crying had already allowed him to breathe and he was controlling himself much better. I prepared for the smack I knew would come.
My mother's hands cupped around her strained face showed that she too knew what was about to happen. The blow came and knocked the wind out of me. Had I been able to fight back effectively at that time I swear to God I would have killed him stone dead. I was lifted high in the air as he grabbed me and threw me across his knees. I began to fight back for all I was worth but he held me easily with one hand. My mother was screaming and so too was James. Between blows he ripped away my only armour, my clothes. I continued to fight back in the fear that this time if I didn't then I would surely be killed. Within minutes I was all but naked and my flesh was stinging. I felt completely humiliated by his ultimate sadistic skill at exposing my body like this in front of my own dear brother. The blows were as nothing in comparison. A deep sense of shame flooded through me and I stopped fighting back. If he was going to kill me then there was nothing I could do about it now. In fact I wished him on. I wanted to die. But he needed me alive. He jerked his knees upwards and away from him and sent me flying across the room. My mother was screaming something about my clothes and James's eyes met mine. He looked horrified, which only increased my own sense of horror.
'Now get to bed both of you and don't let me hear a word out of either of you.'
James did his comforting job well but I felt deeply ashamed and couldn't answer him. I felt cheap and dirty. James tried to get one of our games going but I fell asleep to the sound of his voice telling me about cowboys. I woke some time later to move to a dry part of the bed. We were sleeping so close together that it wasn't possible to know which of us had pissed the bed. Probably both.
Yes, like I was telling you, it was a Saturday morning and the street was packed with kids. We'd got through the Friday night and now it was Saturday. Last night was in the past. It was dead. But the feeling of humiliation was alive within me still. Surely, I thought, this man can't be my real father. My real father would come one day and take me to my proper home. He'd explain to me about how there'd been a terrible mix-up and take me to a fine big house like the ones in my inner world. But I knew I was just day-dreaming. He was my father and they must all be the same. I had the strongest urge to go somewhere, to leave forever. But I was glued to the doorstep and soon my mother would come out and tell me to move so she could scrub it. I sat and watched the other kids playing. I knew my place and this was it. Where could I go anyway? I hated it but I was stuck with it. I could at least avoid the other kids for a bit.
I headed for the back entry and the back door of Mrs Jones. She took in washing and boys could earn a few coppers helping her turn the dolly peg. The dolly peg was a three-legged stool on the end of a pole which had two hand-grips coming out of the top end of the pole. Turning it was hard work and I hoped that today I could turn the mangle for her instead. I was good at that and knew when to turn so that she could feed the wet clothes through safely and swiftly. I would look at her while she worked. Her kids were all grown up and her husband was dead. She had white hair swept back and held in place by a headscarf. She was as strong as any man. She would talk away while working, telling stories about the past which I relished. She never asked questions and her stories would pass the time in a way which told me that she had her place in the world. She was content to do other people's washing and take things to the pawn shop for them for a tiny fee. She struck me as being the wisest woman I'd ever met. I earned a few coppers from her and headed for the shops. As I passed the door of our house my mother came out and without looking at me asked me where James was. I didn't have to break my silence for as she spoke James appeared with his best friend Billy. Billy fascinated me. His face was so proud and beautiful. She called James over and and then sent him on a message. As she spoke James was looking at me and I was looking at Billy. James's eyes then caught mine and smiling he said to my mother, 'I'll do all the messages today.'
I smiled my thanks back and my mother told him, looking at me, that he was a good boy. So he was too. They were back in no time at all and had with them a bag of bruised apples, which the shopkeepers sold for next to nothing. He handed them to me and I took one. It was delicious. After taking the messages indoors James was suggesting how we should spend the day. He whispered that we could go to the derelict house on the next street. I couldn't bring myself to break my silence, which James understood and took off with his pal. As they joined up with the other kids from the gang they reminded me of pigeons taking off into that space cats can never know. I was happy for them. But today I was beyond kids' games. Today I felt ashamed and dirty. I wasn't a baby and it wasn't fair to expose my body like that. All pride had left me. It was my fault. I'd set it all up to get James off the hook. It was my own damned fault. I'd made him do it to me. I was to blame. The filth I felt was me. Must be me.
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