You Never Met My Father by Graeme Sparkes

Author:Graeme Sparkes [Sparkes, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir, Mental Health, Gambling, Relationships, Family, Fathers
ISBN: 9780992590048
Publisher: JoJo Publishing
Published: 2014-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE BIG WIN

The day came when Denny did have a big win. I don’t remember how big. Perhaps it was a double or a quadrella. He was at home. I remember being at the kitchen table reading the paper when the hissing started. That was his way of offering encouragement to the horse he’d backed. The closer it got to the lead the more strident his hissing, which was interspersed with shouts of Go! then You…little…bloody…beauty! as it crossed the finish line, each word enunciated separately, as if he were speaking to someone without much comprehension of English.

He came prancing into the kitchen. “It come from bloody nowhere!”

He hugged Pat from behind as she stood before the sink. “No cookin’ tonight,” he said.

Of course my mother was delighted but a little unnerved. I remained hunched over the newspaper, reluctant to participate in gaiety that wouldn’t last long.

“You see, your old man can occasionally pick a winner,” he said to me, as if he sensed how I felt about him.

That night we had to watch the sporting section of the TV news and listen once more to his hissing through the replay while we ate Sweet-and-Sour.

The following Monday, after much thought, he bought Pat a gift, an ironing board, as a gesture of atonement.

But she spurned it. “What do I want that thing for?” she complained. “I can’t iron on that. Look how wobbly it is. I’m happy just doing it the way I’ve always done it.”

My mother was someone who ironed everything except socks: sheets, pillow slips, towels, tea towels, hankies, underwear. She pressed everything on an old blanket covered by a sheet spread across the kitchen table. I had the feeling she was addicted to housework, or any sort of activity, which kept her from thinking too much about her circumstances.

“And I’ll keep on doing it that way, thanks very much. You might as well take this useless thing back and buy me something I do need, like some new underwear. I could do with that. All I’ve got is rags. Lucky no one can see them…”

She kept going on, ungrateful and tactless, which earned her a few choice expletives, and when these failed to change her mind he delivered a whack to her head.

“First it’s the washing machine and now the bloody ironing board,” he yelled. “Jesus wept!”

She cried out in pain and used some derogatory terms of her own, questioning whether a proper husband would do what he was doing, while I hid behind my newspaper.

I was afraid for her. She appeared to have finally had enough of his abuse. She had reached some kind of tipping point and it had emboldened her.

“Why don’t you give it to that mate of yours around the corner? You’ve given him just about everything else.”

I heard him open the cutlery drawer and the clatter of knives.

Suddenly Jean was in the room, flailing her arms and shouting at him. Her indignation was majestic. It shamed me. She placed herself between them, facing him defiantly, and was decked for her trouble.

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