The Axe
Friday was the night my mother went to work for Mrs Duncan. The work my mother did was sewing – she was a seamstress – and Mrs Duncan used to pay her to spend one evening a week sewing for her. Later, my mother told me she didn’t really work; Mrs Duncan was just a lonely old soul with a bit of money and she paid for my mother’s company rather than her sewing skills. It suited my mother very well. She was always hard up and the extra money came in handy.
But it didn’t suit me well at all. I would be left in the house with my younger brother Bobby and my father. Bobby would be off to bed quite early and from then on it was just a matter of time before my father would start harrassing me. (I was never able to call him ‘dad’, it was always ‘father’ or, if a pretence at lightheartedness was needed such as at Christmas, maybe ‘faither’, but never anything affectionate).
I liked to listen to the radio – especially to comedies and light entertainment shows like Take It From Here or Life With The Lyons. I would switch it on and it would gradually come to life with a lot of whooping and whistling noises. Turning the tuning knob I'd get Hilversum (a station in Holland, I knew) and Motala and Aarhuus, neither of which meant anything to me, and then, eventually, the BBC Light Programme. And I'd hear the familiar signature tune introducing one of my favourite programmes. I'd settle down, hunched as low in my seat as possible, to hear "Educating Archie", or "Life with the Lyons". But I always knew it would not be long before I would hear, “Do you need it so loud?” and he'd tell me to lower the volume. This happened even more often after we got a television set. He would be watching TV and I would be listening to the radio. His demands to lower the volume would get very insistent. I would have to get up and move across to where the radio stood on top of the cabinet where we kept the plates cups and cutlery. I would stand in front of the set with my nose against its front and my hands cupping the tiny sound into my ears.
But this wouldn’t be enough to keep him off me. Soon I’d hear “You look bloody stupid standing there like that! For God’s sake go and read a book or something”. If I responded, as I often did, with an indignant “But I like Wilfred Pickles” or “It’s The Goons – it’ll be finished in ten minutes”, he’d come right back with “Wilfred Pickles – is that the sort of thing a boy your age should listen to – away and read a book”, or “The Goons, The Goons, a load of rubbish – I had better things to do when I was your age”.
It was no good trying to appease him or find a compromise solution. The best I could do was to try to keep listening till the end of whatever show it was, then switch off. If I was lucky he’d leave me alone after that and I’d sit and read until bedtime. I had no real books of my own and I didn’t fancy any of the many he had – nor would I have been encouraged to read his books anyway. So I’d read a dictionary or an old copy of the People’s Friend or the Sunday Post. A favourite was my mother’s Girl Guide Handbook – full of aphorisms and ‘thoughts for the day’ and interesting entries of her own like that for Sunday 23 October 1944 – ‘Stumpy the cat died, 2pm’.
But often, if he was in a bad mood, the taunting would go on from there and escalate quickly. There would be “I hear you were rude to Mrs Anderson”. “No I wasn’t. Who told you? What did I do?” “Never mind who told me. You pushed her when you ran out of the stair and she nearly fell over.” “No, it wasn’t like that. I was passing her when her dog jumped up at me and I bumped into her by mistake.” “And you said something rude to her.” “No, I didn’t, I was just ……..” “Oh be quiet. If I hear about any other nonsense like that I’ll knock your head off.”
Nearly every ill-tempered conversation of this kind led eventually to the threat “I’ll knock your head off”. When he lost his temper badly, which was quite often, it would be “I’ll knock your bloody head off!” Very occasionally, and only when he was sure no one of any importance (like a neighbour, my mother, my aunts, his friends, the minister etc) was listening, it would be “I’ll knock your fucking head off”. I was never really worried that he would actually carry out the threat, but the ugly snarling voice he used was frightening. It was also frightening, in a horrible way, to see his loss of control. Later, when I had children and grandchildren of my own, I could imagine how they would feel if I were to shout at them in this way and the strange bullying nature of my father came home to me.
If the row went on further than this I would be told to go to bed and he would get up and start banging doors. Often he would retreat to the ‘big room’ or 'parlour'. This was the room of the house that was reserved for visitors. It had a sofa and armchairs, a leather-topped desk and a smart fireplace with ‘good’ ornaments on the mantelpiece. Children were not allowed to play in the ‘big room’. It was a place to impress – the front shown to strangers, by which our family maintained its pretence of being ‘well off’.
In the corner of the room farthest from the door was a cupboard with shelves. This was where my father kept his collection of books – books on philosophy, left-wing politics – particularly the curiously unappealing politics of pacifism espoused by the likes of Gandhi – and mountaineering. He would stand behind the open door of this cupboard so that he was out of sight of anyone in the room and hold a book in his hands and pretend to read it – ‘pretend’ because he would maintain a constant stream of muttered imprecations. “Fuck. Fucking shit! Bastard! ……..” On and on it would go, just loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to wake Bobby or go through the walls to the neighbours. And it might go on for hours.
I would be trying to get to sleep next door and I would pull the covers up over my head to try to muffle it. It is difficult to explain the terror that I sometimes felt listening to this foul diatribe – not because I was particularly upset by the words he was using. Rather, it was the overwhelming feeling that he was going mad and I was terrified at being in the hands of a madman.
One Friday evening the usual row escalated well beyond the “I’ll knock your bloody head off” stage and I was sent off to bed, not in my room but in a small boxroom off the ‘big room’ This was the room where he kept his mountaineering gear. It had a single bed which he used to sleep in if he was fighting with my mother. The room, and particularly the bed, smelled strongly of him – a strange combination of sweat, wood fires, old books and chemicals used to light camp fires. Even today I can still smell this nasty odour on books and maps he left when he died.
I used to dread being made to sleep in this room. It had no natural light and he would insist that the door be kept closed so it would be pitch dark. His smell was everywhere and, worst of all, I could distinctly hear the “Fucking bastard! I’ll knock his fucking head off. Bloody fuck……” all in that half-whispered clenched-teeth snarl.
As usual, I managed eventually to get to sleep. I must have been sleeping for an hour or so – my mother had not yet got back from Mrs Duncan’s so it was before midnight.
Suddenly the door to the room opened and I woke up with a start to see the vague outline of my father silhouetted in the doorway. And he was brandishing an axe! “If you ever do that again”, he said, very quietly, referring to whatever it was we had been rowing about, “I’ll take your bloody head off with this.” And he swung it menacingly at me. I sat up stiff with fear. He slammed the door shut and I was left in the dark again surrounded by his smell and with a picture of the axe imprinted indelibly on my mind.
Ten minutes later, the door opened again. He was back, but this time without the axe. He bent down at the side of the bed and gently laid his hand on my forehead. "It's ok my wee tossle" he said, ruffling my hair. You know I'd never hurt you. It's just that you make me a wee bit angry sometimes. Goodnight now." And he was gone. But my heart was thumping and I could hardly breathe.
I never told my mother about this incident – I think she would have left him had she known. But maybe I should have told her. If she had left him it would probably have been best for us all in the long run.
Friday was the night my mother went to work for Mrs Duncan. The work my mother did was sewing – she was a seamstress – and Mrs Duncan used to pay her to spend one evening a week sewing for her. Later, my mother told me she didn’t really work; Mrs Duncan was just a lonely old soul with a bit of money and she paid for my mother’s company rather than her sewing skills. It suited my mother very well. She was always hard up and the extra money came in handy.
But it didn’t suit me well at all. I would be left in the house with my younger brother Bobby and my father. Bobby would be off to bed quite early and from then on it was just a matter of time before my father would start harrassing me. (I was never able to call him ‘dad’, it was always ‘father’ or, if a pretence at lightheartedness was needed such as at Christmas, maybe ‘faither’, but never anything affectionate).
I liked to listen to the radio – especially to comedies and light entertainment shows like Take It From Here or Life With The Lyons. I would switch it on and it would gradually come to life with a lot of whooping and whistling noises. Turning the tuning knob I'd get Hilversum (a station in Holland, I knew) and Motala and Aarhuus, neither of which meant anything to me, and then, eventually, the BBC Light Programme. And I'd hear the familiar signature tune introducing one of my favourite programmes. I'd settle down, hunched as low in my seat as possible, to hear "Educating Archie", or "Life with the Lyons". But I always knew it would not be long before I would hear, “Do you need it so loud?” and he'd tell me to lower the volume. This happened even more often after we got a television set. He would be watching TV and I would be listening to the radio. His demands to lower the volume would get very insistent. I would have to get up and move across to where the radio stood on top of the cabinet where we kept the plates cups and cutlery. I would stand in front of the set with my nose against its front and my hands cupping the tiny sound into my ears.
But this wouldn’t be enough to keep him off me. Soon I’d hear “You look bloody stupid standing there like that! For God’s sake go and read a book or something”. If I responded, as I often did, with an indignant “But I like Wilfred Pickles” or “It’s The Goons – it’ll be finished in ten minutes”, he’d come right back with “Wilfred Pickles – is that the sort of thing a boy your age should listen to – away and read a book”, or “The Goons, The Goons, a load of rubbish – I had better things to do when I was your age”.
It was no good trying to appease him or find a compromise solution. The best I could do was to try to keep listening till the end of whatever show it was, then switch off. If I was lucky he’d leave me alone after that and I’d sit and read until bedtime. I had no real books of my own and I didn’t fancy any of the many he had – nor would I have been encouraged to read his books anyway. So I’d read a dictionary or an old copy of the People’s Friend or the Sunday Post. A favourite was my mother’s Girl Guide Handbook – full of aphorisms and ‘thoughts for the day’ and interesting entries of her own like that for Sunday 23 October 1944 – ‘Stumpy the cat died, 2pm’.
But often, if he was in a bad mood, the taunting would go on from there and escalate quickly. There would be “I hear you were rude to Mrs Anderson”. “No I wasn’t. Who told you? What did I do?” “Never mind who told me. You pushed her when you ran out of the stair and she nearly fell over.” “No, it wasn’t like that. I was passing her when her dog jumped up at me and I bumped into her by mistake.” “And you said something rude to her.” “No, I didn’t, I was just ……..” “Oh be quiet. If I hear about any other nonsense like that I’ll knock your head off.”
Nearly every ill-tempered conversation of this kind led eventually to the threat “I’ll knock your head off”. When he lost his temper badly, which was quite often, it would be “I’ll knock your bloody head off!” Very occasionally, and only when he was sure no one of any importance (like a neighbour, my mother, my aunts, his friends, the minister etc) was listening, it would be “I’ll knock your fucking head off”. I was never really worried that he would actually carry out the threat, but the ugly snarling voice he used was frightening. It was also frightening, in a horrible way, to see his loss of control. Later, when I had children and grandchildren of my own, I could imagine how they would feel if I were to shout at them in this way and the strange bullying nature of my father came home to me.
If the row went on further than this I would be told to go to bed and he would get up and start banging doors. Often he would retreat to the ‘big room’ or 'parlour'. This was the room of the house that was reserved for visitors. It had a sofa and armchairs, a leather-topped desk and a smart fireplace with ‘good’ ornaments on the mantelpiece. Children were not allowed to play in the ‘big room’. It was a place to impress – the front shown to strangers, by which our family maintained its pretence of being ‘well off’.
In the corner of the room farthest from the door was a cupboard with shelves. This was where my father kept his collection of books – books on philosophy, left-wing politics – particularly the curiously unappealing politics of pacifism espoused by the likes of Gandhi – and mountaineering. He would stand behind the open door of this cupboard so that he was out of sight of anyone in the room and hold a book in his hands and pretend to read it – ‘pretend’ because he would maintain a constant stream of muttered imprecations. “Fuck. Fucking shit! Bastard! ……..” On and on it would go, just loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to wake Bobby or go through the walls to the neighbours. And it might go on for hours.
I would be trying to get to sleep next door and I would pull the covers up over my head to try to muffle it. It is difficult to explain the terror that I sometimes felt listening to this foul diatribe – not because I was particularly upset by the words he was using. Rather, it was the overwhelming feeling that he was going mad and I was terrified at being in the hands of a madman.
One Friday evening the usual row escalated well beyond the “I’ll knock your bloody head off” stage and I was sent off to bed, not in my room but in a small boxroom off the ‘big room’ This was the room where he kept his mountaineering gear. It had a single bed which he used to sleep in if he was fighting with my mother. The room, and particularly the bed, smelled strongly of him – a strange combination of sweat, wood fires, old books and chemicals used to light camp fires. Even today I can still smell this nasty odour on books and maps he left when he died.
I used to dread being made to sleep in this room. It had no natural light and he would insist that the door be kept closed so it would be pitch dark. His smell was everywhere and, worst of all, I could distinctly hear the “Fucking bastard! I’ll knock his fucking head off. Bloody fuck……” all in that half-whispered clenched-teeth snarl.
As usual, I managed eventually to get to sleep. I must have been sleeping for an hour or so – my mother had not yet got back from Mrs Duncan’s so it was before midnight.
Suddenly the door to the room opened and I woke up with a start to see the vague outline of my father silhouetted in the doorway. And he was brandishing an axe! “If you ever do that again”, he said, very quietly, referring to whatever it was we had been rowing about, “I’ll take your bloody head off with this.” And he swung it menacingly at me. I sat up stiff with fear. He slammed the door shut and I was left in the dark again surrounded by his smell and with a picture of the axe imprinted indelibly on my mind.
Ten minutes later, the door opened again. He was back, but this time without the axe. He bent down at the side of the bed and gently laid his hand on my forehead. "It's ok my wee tossle" he said, ruffling my hair. You know I'd never hurt you. It's just that you make me a wee bit angry sometimes. Goodnight now." And he was gone. But my heart was thumping and I could hardly breathe.
I never told my mother about this incident – I think she would have left him had she known. But maybe I should have told her. If she had left him it would probably have been best for us all in the long run.
