David Thomas - Tell Me Why, Mummy - A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive.

* * *

I am growing more aware of Mum’s drinking. When she drinks I can sense a huge rage in her and I’m starting to see how bad it is for Dad to live with her because I know what it’s like to be in a room with her when she turns into someone else – someone I’m afraid of.

As the days and weeks go on, Dad goes away on his business trips more and more, and I stop asking Mum when he’s coming home.

Finally, one day, I know he won’t be coming back ever again when Mum tells me that she and Dad can’t live together any more and from now on it’s just her and me.

‘Why doesn’t Dad want to live with us, Mummy?’ I ask.

‘He just doesn’t, David,’ she replies dully. I think maybe she’s hoping I won’t ask her again. She’s making jam in the kitchen which is something she enjoys doing, but I sense that this morning she’s doing it to keep busy and to stop herself from falling apart.

‘But why? Tell me why, Mummy.’

‘Because we’re unhappy together, because . . . just don’t keep asking ,’ she snaps.

I know better than to ask again when she uses that tone. Instead I go off to the scrapyard and hide in the nooks and crannies of the metal caves, and think about my daddy who talks to me about his bikes and cars and sometimes cracks jokes which I don’t always understand and who won’t be coming home again.

I am starting to cry when I hear footsteps nearby.

‘You there, Dave?’ comes the voice of the scrapyard owner’s son.

‘Be right there, Jeff.’

I climb out of my hidey hole and go and play. My dad won’t be back and there’s no point in asking again.

But it turns out I’m wrong about Dad not coming back. Not only does he return to the house but he also remains in the house. It’s Mum and me who move out – in fact we move exactly three houses away to the other end of the block of four terraced houses. Both houses feel very similar. They have the same sort of furniture, which is another way of saying that they are both pretty bare.

So there’s Dad at one end of the block, and me and Mum at the other end. In the months to come I go from one house to the other, spending huge amounts of time with Mum but very little with Dad. He’s often busy, usually away travelling, and he never seems to talk to me about anything personal to do with me and Mum or our wider family or our lives together. But he still chats easily about cars and bikes and things like that.

Every time I see him I long for a stronger bond between us, but it never happens. I wish he would cuddle me or sit me on his knee, but it hardly ever happens and it makes me feel sad.

* * *

My parents separate around 1973 when I am five but it isn’t until many years later that Dad tells me that even though they both knew their marriage was over, it took some time for them to be able to sit down and talk it through because it could only be done when she wasn’t drinking.

Even by the age of five there is a definite hole in my life developing. I am happy when Mum helps me to fill it by the way she pays me attention. She doesn’t come to me and make me touch her every day – sometimes weeks go by without her coming to me in this way. But when she does, it somehow fulfils a need in us both.

She needs it for reasons that I am too young to understand. The reason for my need is much more simple: I need the attention. Even at this early age, it helps to build a bond between us. As she is now the only active parent I have, I instinctively understand the importance of this.

At the end of those times we spend together, when she wants me to touch her, she never thanks me but she doesn’t tell me off either. That’s to become the norm and that’s how I want it to be.

I have always worked harder to avoid criticism than to chase praise.

I am too young to know that, in reality, my mother is taking advantage of my submissive nature, committing the worst abuse of the power she has over her child that any parent can. I will soon come to realize this, and that’s when the problems really begin.

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