It is late evening and dark. John, Sophie and I are in the loungeroom watching the television bought with the proceeds of my mother’s hocked jewellery. I can hear Mum in the bedroom. She’s just had a shower and is settling down for the night. She will put curlers in her wet hair, wrap her head in a red nylon scarf and go to sleep beside my sister in the same double bed. She’s humming to herself. Crickets are whirring outside. Things are pretty close to normal. The front door is open.
My stepfather walks in like he owns the place, like he pays the rent, like he belongs here. He walks in like he feeds and clothes us. He walks in like a man who knows he won’t be challenged. He walks in with anger in his eye. We sit up straighter, but we don’t ask him what he thinks he’s doing. We know better by now.
He nods a perfunctory hello at us and passes directly into Mum’s room. He wants a drink. We have been here before. There can only be one result. Mum raises a small protest: ‘I can’t go out with curlers in my hair.’ But he won’t take no for an answer, so she tucks the loose hair under the edges of her scarf and puts on a dress. Philip waits. We all do.
‘We won’t be long kids,’ she tells us as she emerges from the bedroom. As they walk out, we say goodbye. We watch them go and turn our attention back to the TV. We do not close the front door.
They are gone for maybe two hours. When they return we hear the car pull up in the driveway and the car doors slamming closed, one after the other, then Mum’s high heels clacking and scraping down the concrete towards the front door. This must be unremarkable in most families—the car doors closing and the footsteps. In most families the children know what to expect: Mum and Dad strolling in, maybe a kiss goodnight, light-hearted teasing and tickles. But we are all on edge.
I am sitting with a book on my lap when she comes in. I glance up. My god! Her eye is already swollen. It’s pink and tender and puffing into a slit. She looks wild. A distressed animal. A cornered cat. A whipped dog. There’s something in her eye that’s frightening. Hysteria. Fear. Her hair is falling out from under the scarf, her curlers have been shaken loose, her eyes roll in her head. This image I carry with me: she rests one hand on the doorknob, gestures with the other. Wordless. Unable to speak. She swallows and says to us at last: ‘Look what he’s done to me!’
There’s something in her eye that’s frightening. Hysteria. Fear.
Then Philip walks in, brushing past her, the big man, huge smile on his face. Giggling.
Things happened very quickly. John was on his feet. I stood up. A little knot of tension, atoms repelling and attracting. It had been building to this for years. Five people in a tiny loungeroom, a fraction of a second, time congealing, raised voices.
I heard my mother plead: ‘Leave him alone.’
I heard Philip snarl: ‘He thinks he’s a man. Let him stand up for himself.’
As he advanced on my brother, Mum stepped aside. John stood his ground, a schoolboy not quite seventeen years old. He had snatched up a piece of timber dowelling that we used to slide into the window tracks as a substitute for a broken lock. Philip didn’t see it and he prowled forward with his fists up, determined to put John in his place. But the world turns. Kids grow up. They learn and become wise. They watch and become brave and hateful.
John brought down the piece of dowelling on Philip’s head with all his strength and it splintered into two pieces, stunning Philip and leaving John holding a sharpened piece of timber dowelling in his hand, the length of a knife. He swung at Philip’s body two, three, four times, using it like a long blade, stabbing down from above his shoulder and up from his waist. The bully was screaming for help as the point scraped across his chest, and he bent forward, protecting the top of his head with his hands. At one point he tried to stand and John, tossing aside the timber, landed a punch on the side of Philip’s head near the temple. Then another.
It was mayhem, there was shouting and sobs, and then suddenly there was stillness. Everyone stepped back, breathing deeply, and Philip was left cowering in the middle of the room, a full-grown man, surrounded by a woman and her three children, swaying a little, stupid from the blows and the booze, as we entered the most dangerous five seconds of my life. In that moment, if he had wanted to, Philip could have ended it all. A wild, violent, hate-filled psychopath, he had the strength and means to damage us, even to kill us, but his head was throbbing, the booze was making him wobbly, his addled mind just wasn’t up to murder. We regarded each other, panting like animals.
Philip swayed, feeling his head for blood, then walked to the door, boiling with frustration, mad with confusion, sobbing. He paused at the threshold he had abused so many times and crossed it. Mum ran forward and slammed the door closed behind him and I rushed after her and locked it.
And then, I heard the last words that my stepfather ever uttered directly to me, ringing out of the night-time darkness, angry and whimpering through the door closed on his back: ‘You can all go and get fucked!’
*
The months that followed felt like the eye of a storm. We learned that Philip was telling people that John had attacked him with a knife and that he was going to take it to the police. Mercifully, Mum made no effort to find Philip, and incredibly, after the beating, Mum went to the police and reported him for assault. They took down her details, filed the doctor’s report and the X-rays of her fractured cheek, took photos of her bruised and swollen face. And they assured her that if Philip ever crossed paths with the police again, even for something as trivial as a parking ticket, it would all appear on their system and he would be charged. He was in court a few times after that that we know of, for other matters. No charges were ever pressed by them for something as paltry as domestic violence.
The months that followed felt like the eye of a storm.
We heard nothing from Philip himself, a bully nursing his wounds. But then three months later, just short of my fifteenth birthday and as another Christmas approached, the tension increased. In the heat of summer, we kept the front door closed and locked. On Christmas eve, after we had watched Carols by Candlelight on the telly and turned out the lights, I was dozing off on the lounge/my bed when there came a soft knock at the door. My head was about three metres from it, under an open window. I could hear his breathing, then Philip’s voice, soft but clear, as he called out my mother’s name. I didn’t answer, but I heard Mum get up and I watched as she walked to the door and opened it. The eagles linking talons and spiralling to earth together?
There was a short, muffled conversation, Philip’s wheedling voice, then he handed Mum $200 and he left. Mum closed the door gently, locked it and returned to her bed. I lay on my side with my eyes closed and drifted off to sleep. This time—no really, this time —felt over.
Perhaps Mum was thinking about this: a couple of days earlier, a different man had appeared at our door carrying a box full of packages wrapped in plain brown paper. He told us that he was from Lifeline or the Smith Family or the Salvation Army (I can’t remember). He checked that he had the right address and then with a smile he placed the box at the door. He wished us ‘Merry Christmas’ and departed with a cheery wave.
We opened the box and pored over the packages, incredulous. Each one had a little label on it wishing us a Merry Christmas, together with an impersonal handwritten note: For a boy aged twelve to fourteen, or Girl’s present aged eight to twelve. They were Christmas presents, donated by kindly people, for children in need. We never worked out who told them about us but there were plenty of people who had seen the shit we were in. We were officially some of the poorest kids in the city. Literally charity cases. But I was not too proud to take my new, handmade kite outside and fly it high above our unit on Christmas Day. It is still the loveliest Christmas present that I have ever received, from somebody I had never met and who I have never been able to thank.
This is an edited extract from Prehistoric Joy by Andrew Sneddon (UQP), available now at your local independent bookseller.
