Southend U3A

June 2023

In Hindsight - Pete Norman

They do say that experiences in childhood can impinge on our actions and experiences in later life, either subliminally or directly. My own childhood was a complete mess and my life ever since then has been a roller coaster of misery and I want to get off . . . I want to get off . . . but the ride will not stop.

I have not had a good night’s sleep for a very long time. My body is desperate for relief, for oblivion, to dump my memories into a skip and then run like fury . . . but my brain will not allow it, it refuses to stop dredging up all of that . . . stuff, which it regurgitates, recycles and repeats and repeats and repeats.

I want this to end. I want this to end before it makes an end of me . . . and that day surely is not that far away now. I no longer have the strength. The voices in my head will not go away. The chilling sounds in my head swirl around and around without relief until I am certain that, when I finally do surrender, it will be either the asylum or the crypt for me.

I left home at 14 . . . on the day that my mother died. I was too young to handle the fallout and I was too frightened to stay with the status quo.

On that awful day I walked home from the hospital with my brain in a complete mush. I fumbled the key in the lock and checked my watch – he would be home from work within the hour, so there was no time to waste. I packed my life into a couple of bags and walked out of the door. I turned my back on my home and my past life forever. I had nowhere to go >to but I knew exactly where I wanted to go from.

I walked aimlessly for hours, more concerned with distance than direction. Somehow, I found myself on the 127. The cars were racing by in their droves, belching out their acrid fumes, the roar of their engines painful to my ears . . . but the road was dead straight and, at this moment in my life, I needed nothing more than that.

Sometime later, in the distance, I saw the sign for a junction. I was exhausted. I knew that I had to turn off and find somewhere to rest before I collapsed. Just off the slip road I dumped the bags, sank onto a wall and dropped my head into my hands.

I did not hear the car stopping or the sound of the footsteps approaching but a voice cut through my misery. It was a sympathetic voice . . . but it seemed far, far away.

‘Are you alright?’ the voice asked.

I looked up and saw a youth, a little older than me and a little taller. His hair was bright ginger and dishevelled, his grey hoody looked as if it had survived hard times . . . though not quite such hard times as his boots. When I failed to answer he crouched down to eye level. ‘Mister, it looks like you need a friend.’

I was staring into his deep brown, mud-pool eyes, filled with compassion but I had not got the strength to answer. Instead, I surrendered to the moment and sobbed my heart out.

Martin’s battered Fiesta took us off, through endless housing estates until it finally came to rest outside a tired row of terraced two up/two downs.

He took me inside and produced a couple of cold beers, then he relaxed back in his chair and said, ‘It is entirely up to you, mate. If you want to talk, then go for it but if you don’t . . . then, whatever . . . it’s up to you.’

I did not have the ability to make sense of what my mother had told me. My life was a sham, my future was impossible to imagine and there was no way that I could even begin to tell such a story to a complete stranger, no matter how accommodating he might seem to be.

I simply shook my head.

‘No worries,’ he said. He gave me a warm smile and picked up his mobile phone.

Time passed slowly and in total silence until the door opened and Tina came in – like a tsunami. She started talking as the door opened and she continued talking right the way through into the lounge where she stopped suddenly and stared at the stranger sitting on her sofa.

‘Well . . . you’re new . . .’

Martin held up a quieting hand and then explained my presence here and my reluctance to talk. She appeared to take this all completely in her stride, as if this was somehow a regular occurrence. She took off her coat and asked, ‘Have you eaten?’ My stomach reacted favourably to the suggestion and soon we were all feasting on the remains of a Biriani and some cold pizza.

They were the oddest couple I have ever met in my life but no one in my life – apart from my mother – had ever been so caring towards me. I have no idea what Tina did for a living – I never asked and she never told me. Martin, however, was, what he called, an ‘entrepreneur’ – he bought stuff and he sold stuff and the difference in value between the two was what kept them going.

We settled into a routine where I trailed along after Martin and I soon got to realise that he knew just about everyone in town – everyone who mattered, that is.

I was with him when he made a lot of his transactions but they all used some strange ‘entrepreneur-speak’ language which meant absolutely nothing to me and, again, I never asked. He seemed to me that he had the contacts and the ability to obtain absolutely anything he needed. Perhaps I did suspect that this wheeler dealer life might be just a little shady but then, who am I to criticise my saviour.

Tina and Martin liked to enjoy an occasional smoke, a pleasure which I always politely declined, because my mother was so set against any form of drugs and she had warned me that if she ever caught me doing it then her penalty for its use would be severe. For that reason – and also because I hated the dry, pungent smell of cannabis – I usually went out for a walk whenever they smoked it.

It was one day in early May when everything changed. It would have been my mother’s birthday and I was at absolute rock bottom and Tina badgered me mercilessly until I finally gave in and took a drag from her spliff – ‘It will make you feel better,’ she said. Actually, it didn’t taste that bad and I soon found that the smell was not really that unpleasant once you got going. She rolled me one of my own and the three of us sat back, filling the air with acrid smoke and reminiscing.

It was sometime later that I opened my eyes and the two of them were sitting together on the sofa, simply staring at me. For a few moments I wondered what I might have done wrong, how I might have offended them . . . but then my brain threw in a heavy curved ball.

I asked, carefully, ‘Did I say anything?’

Martin said, ‘No, you didn’t say ‘anything’ – you said ‘everything!’

The concern in their eyes was unbearable and, as I opened my mouth to speak, the flood gates opened. Tina hugged me until I finally calmed and then they pressed me for the whole story, only this time un-muddied by the narcotic effects of the cannabis.

It took a long time to reveal to them the dreadful things my mother had told me on her death bed – piece by painful piece; to answer their questions; to share their rage. We talked late into the night but nothing was resolved, the only thing on which we did all agree was that I had to go back to my family home; to confront him; to demand answers; to get justice.

I still had a key to the house and I knew his working/boozing/sleeping pattern from old, so I was able to select a suitable time.

I would not allow them to accompany me – despite their concern for my safety – but this was something that I had to do alone; besides I knew that their presence would render any form of conversation impossible and I had to have answers.

They stopped the car just around the corner and Tina hugged me hard. She whispered, ‘I’ll be watching the door, so if you run out of options, then just call out and we’ll be there for you in a heartbeat.’

I finally broke away and slid out of the car. My legs were fighting the demands I was making of them but I did manage to make it around to the door . . . the doorway into hell . . .

I turned the key and turned right into the lounge.

He was there, in his chair – the chair my mother always said that his arse was permanently glued to – and he did not even look up from the racing pages.

‘You don’t live here anymore.’

I blurted out, ‘I know . . .’ I was trying to keep the tremor from my voice, ‘but I need some answers from you.’

‘Answers? You’ve got the nerve to come back for answers after all this time? Well, I ain’t got nothing for you, so you might as well save your energy.’

I said, ‘I know, in hindsight, I should have done this a long time ago but I was too young then . . . I was too young to ask why you weren’t there when my mother died.’

He sneered, ‘Is that all? Well, that’s easy enough, isn’t it – Someone had to work. Someone had to pay the bills.’

‘But you put her in there.’

He laughed and then said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish, you know she fell down the stairs.’

I could feel the adrenaline surging through me. ‘No . . . no she didn’t – not that time and not the other times either.’

‘Well, she always was a clumsy bitch.’

‘And was she being clumsy all those nights when I had to huddle under the blankets, with my fingers in my ears, trying to shut out the sounds . . .’

He smiled but there was no warmth in it; if that smile could talk it would have said, ‘Just you prove it!’

I drew in a dep breath. ‘And what about all the times when you came into my bedroom at night . . . and . . .’

He sneered. ‘So, ain’t a father allowed to cuddle his son anymore?’

I said, ‘But they weren’t cuddles, were they? No-one in their right mind would ever call what you did cuddles . . .’

‘Are you saying I’ve been abusing you by cuddling you?’

‘You can call it what you want. I know what it was . . . and so did my mother.’ There was no concern on his face whatsoever . . . his supercilious smirk was proof that I was getting absolutely nowhere . . . but all that was set to change . . .

‘Not only was that not cuddling but you are not my father . . .’

He did not reply but the dominant expression faded from his face. His uncertainty gave me strength.

‘They do say that you always know who your mother is, don’t they? – but not your father . . . and my father was John Hammond. You know him, don’t you? He was your best mate . . . mum said it was one night when you were down the pub . . . so you are not my father – in fact, you are nothing whatsoever to me.’

He stood up and screamed, ‘Get out!’

I smiled. He was threatening a boy – but he was holding back, because this boy was now older and stronger.

‘Alright, I will go,’ I said, ‘but first I have to tell you the last words my mother ever spoke.’

‘I don’t give a damn what she said. Just get out before I throw you out.’

I drew on the last reserves of my energy to say, ‘I will go, once you hear her last words . . . and then, I promise, you will never see me again . . .’

He hesitated for just long enough for me to add, ‘It’s so ironic that my mother’s last words will be the last words you will ever hear.’

My fingers closed around the comfort of cold steel.

I pulled Martin’s gun from my pocket.

I will remember the expression on his face for as long as I live.

‘My mum’s last words were, ‘Kill the bastard!’’