Fathers and Sons by Richard Madeley

Author:Richard Madeley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2008-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

I suppose I must have been smacked a few times by both my parents up to this point, but I can’t really remember it. I do have an image of my grandmother rapping me over the knuckles with a walking stick for saying I was ‘sick of this damn weather’–swearing of any kind was not tolerated at Kiln Farm–but it didn’t really hurt, and neither was it meant to; very much a token tap.

So the shock of being beaten with a cane–a long bamboo stick, part of a big bundle kept in the garden shed for supporting runner beans in summer–was total.

I wish I could remember exactly what I did wrong that prompted the first thrashing, but that particular mental home video stubbornly refuses to roll. The tape only starts after my infraction, with my father pointing a finger at me. His hand is trembling with rage and his face is dark.

‘Wait here.’

So I stand calmly in the living room, obediently waiting while he goes out into the garden. I am not particularly frightened. I am familiar with my father’s occasional outbursts of temper and hearing his baritone crack as he bellows at full volume, but the worst that has ever happened is to be sent to my room for a couple of hours, or early to bed. This last punishment, involving as it does missed children’s television, is certainly enough to produce tears of protest and grovelling appeals for mercy.

Today, I hear the shed door grating open. There is a stiff point where the wood tries to jam against the garden path and it always makes the same groaning rasp as it is forced open. The unmistakable sound will soon come to have a Pavlovian effect on me, producing a weakness in the knees, a spasm in the belly and a suddenly dry mouth. This first day, it’s just our shed door being opened.

My father is back, holding one of the garden canes I help him plant in his vegetable patch every spring. I like to pretend the triangles and cross-lashings are wigwams, and when they are complete I lurk beneath them, waiting to ambush the Lone Ranger as he rides past. I can’t imagine why he has brought one into the house.

‘Turn around.’

I obey, wondering what’s going on. There is a painting on the wall in front of me, of an autumnal Canadian lake with blue-grey rocks rising from the still, clear water. Perhaps I am going to have to count them, or–

The back of my legs have caught fire. I hear the dry cracking of burning wood. There it is again, and now my buttocks are burning too. Another sharp crack and my back is alight. Too shocked and consumed by agony to move at first, I find I cannot breathe either. My lungs have stopped working.

I manage to stumble into a half-turn in time to see my father bringing his stick whistling through the air in a sideways arc meant to connect with my shoulder blades, but instead it meets with the muscle of my upper arm.

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