I Escaped, But Only Just - Part 16: Family Strife

'Get to bed,’ my father yelled after another row at home.
 
‘I won’t,’ I said.  ‘It’s not even half ten yet. You can’t tell me what to do.  I’m not a kid.’
 
He jumped to his feet, his face white with rage, and I took a step back. Already, the images were playing in my mind…him leaping towards me and grabbing my hair, clenching his fist to strike.  I bolted from the room before he could do any of those things and ran up the stairs to my bedroom, his voice booming through the house.
 
‘Bloody lunatic.  One of these days, I’m going to sell that piano of yours and then you won’t be able to play anymore.’
 
My oldest brother Brian was sitting on the other bed in our room, smoking a cigarette.  He was twenty-three and living at home still, sharing with me.  He laughed when he saw me.  ‘Who’s in big trouble now?’ he said.
 
‘Don’t start,’ I muttered.
 
‘You loser,’ he said.  ‘Misfit.’
 
‘Don’t say that.’
 
‘But it’s true,’ he said, smirking.  ‘Loser. Misfit.’  
 
I ignored him. Creeping under the duvet, I got undressed and changed into my pyjamas.  I lay there with my eyes fixed on the ceiling, seething and grinding my teeth, wishing I had the guts to charge down to the dining room and confront my father.  In the kitchen, my parents were opening and shutting cupboard doors, talking in low angry voices.  
 
Brian tutted.  ‘You’re such a pain in the neck.’
 
So are you, I thought.    
 
In the morning, Brian left early for work. I lay in a semi daze, huddled under the warmth of the duvet, shafts of morning sunlight peeping in through the curtains. The bedroom door opened and Leo, a bearded terrier, burst in as he did each morning, bounding towards my bed, his grey-flecked beard and mad eyes looming.
 
‘Out,’ I yelled.  ‘Go on.  Out, Leo.’
      
‘Come on, get up,’ my mother said.  ‘There’s enough to do this morning without you lying in bed.’
 
From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the dog grabbing a piece of sheet music on the floor.
 
‘He’s going to tear Mr Whittaker’s music up,’ I said, sitting up in bed. ‘Get it out of his mouth.’
 
‘It’s your own fault for leaving it on the floor.  Now, I won’t tell you again.  I want you to get up.’
 
I tried to reach for the dog, but he was already chewing the music.
 
‘Mr Whittaker’s going to go crazy when he sees what’s happened to his music,’ I said.  ‘What am I going to do now?’        
 
‘Well, that will teach you take better care of other people’s belongings in future.  Come on, get out of bed.’
 
The dog had ripped the music in two.  I ate breakfast in sullen silence, glaring back each time it glanced at me.        
 
At college that morning, I glued the torn sheet together and photocopied it, presenting it to Mr Whittaker at my next piano lesson.  He seemed to peer at it for a few seconds before turning his attention back to me.  
      
‘How did you find the study?’ he said.
 
‘Not too difficult.’
 
‘Good,’ he said, beaming.  ‘There’s another Czerny study I’d like you to have a look at.’
 
***
 
My older brother Brian began to get increasingly nasty. He’d wait till my parents went out, then come and find me, jumping on me and yanking my head back by my hair while hitting me.  Each time he raised the subject of moving out, a fresh row would break out. My mother was obsessed with him and wouldn't let go. Personally, I think he was desperate to leave home and believed that if he kept attacking me like this, my mother would ask him to leave.  She didn’t, of course. In her eyes, he was her property while I was the naughty boy that deserved everything they got.  
 
Everywhere, it seemed, the potential for menace existed. My maternal grandmother lived about twenty minutes away, on the first floor of an old draughty house that had been converted into two flats. During a weekend afternoon visit there with my mother, I made the mistake of eating sweets.  
 
‘Stop crunching,’ my mother said. ‘All the time, crunch, crunch, crunch. You’ll have no teeth left the rate you’re going.’
 
‘Yes,’ my grandmother said. She appeared by my side and held out her hand for the bag of sweets. ‘Give me the sweets.’
 
‘They’re mine.’
 
‘You’ve been crunching all afternoon.  Now give them to me.’
 
‘I bought them with my own money.’
 
My grandmother and my mother exchanged glances. My grandmother hurried to the kitchen drawer and rummaged around. Returning with a cane, she lifted it to strike me on my arm, despite the fact I was seventeen.  
 
I grabbed the stick from her.  ‘You’re not caning me,’ I said, angrily. ‘No way.’
 
‘They’re like a drug, those sweets.’
 
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘You’re not caning me.’
  
‘It’s ridiculous,’ she muttered, sitting down again.    
 
‘You heard Grandma,’ my mother said.  ‘Put the sweets away now,’  
 
‘No,’ I said, glaring at her.  
 
‘See what we have to put up with?’ she said to my grandmother.  
 
***
Even the dog Leo didn’t escape the hostility. One afternoon, my mother went to collect her mother in the car.  
 
‘Hellow!’ Grandma bellowed in that loud voice of hers when she arrived with my mother, dressed in a winter coat and hat, chuckling as she made her along the hallway of our house.  
 
‘Grandma’s here,’ Robin and I whispered to the dog.  
 
Leo began to bark.  We had a mischievous game in place. Leo had always hated the fan in the window, barking at in whenever it rattled in the wind, so we used to point at it and say, ‘Look, there’s Grandma’s.’ Next, we would point up at the dining room light and sing, ‘Grandma’s in the light.’  Eventually, all we had to do was whisper the word “Grandma”, and Leo would keep on barking. Classical Conditioning at its finest.  
 
‘Stop it,’ Grandma scolded when Leo wouldn't stop barking. ‘That’s bad.’
 
‘He’s a bit overexcited,’ my father said, winking at us.  ‘Aren’t you, Leo?’
 
‘Leo, be quite,’ I said. The barking was getting pretty annoying now.  
 
‘Yes, be quite,’ Robin said, struggling not to laugh. ‘Be nice for Grandma, or she’ll get cross.’
 
Chuckling, Grandma sat down.
 
The barking went on.  
 
‘Sh,’ my grandmother scolded, stamping her feet.
 
More barking. Grabbing the metal poker by the fireplace, Grandma shook it at the dog while Robin and I watched in astonishment.
 
Another day in the madhouse.
 
***  
 
Brian moved out finally. He found a room on the other side of town. Most Saturdays he came for lunch, but the meal were usually fraught with tension.  
 
And the rows at home continued, regardless of his absence, the dog barking away in the background, the minutes to life threatening danger ticking away and gaining speed.