The Life and Times of James Callaghan

Part III

2011-10-23T18:50:00.000+01:00

I don’t think this is really helping actually. How can this feeling be of any use to me? Drudging up all of these memories, ones that I had pushed to the far recesses of my mind. It’s only making it hurt more. I’ve not even started on what happened at school and already my life’s a shambles. Maybe I should carry for a little longer. After all, where there’s advice from my nan, there’s an order from my nan.

After the debacle in the supermarket, mum stopped taking us out. Obviously Alison still went to school, but I stopped going to playgroup and Alison could no longer go to her friends’ houses.

Mum still went out, but only after we were safely tucked in bed. She’d read us both a story and then lock the house up so it was “safe and sound, nice and tight, safe as houses.” That’s what she’d say and then we’d get a kiss on the forehead each and she’d be off before the scent of her perfume had left our nostrils.

We were fine, “safe as houses”, until the night that mummy brought someone back with her. We heard them get back home, we’d never heard her come in before. She’d always be there in the morning to wake us up with a hug and a toothpaste-smothered-toothbrush, but we’d never hear her get in.

There was talking, and laughing. And then I heard a scuttling sound outside my bedroom door. I ducked under the covers seconds before a crack of light appeared. I couldn’t see who it was and I didn’t want to leave the warmth and protection my quilt was giving me.

“James,” a voice hissed from beside my bed, “James, are you awake?” I felt a hand creep along the top of the bed, fumbling for the top of the quilt. I looked up and saw a hand breaching the confines of my safest hiding place. I think that’s when I started to cry.

Part II

2011-08-01T16:10:00.000+01:00

After that, it was just me, Alison and mum living together in our family home. I don’t really remember much of that next year or so. But I do remember the next time I saw my dad. We’d all gone out shopping and were pushing the trolley around the supermarket when Alison let out a scream and ran off down one of the aisles. Mum shouted at her to come back but she carried on running full pelt. I was stuck sitting in the trolley facing the other way so didn’t know what was happening. To my little four year old brain, the only sensible thing seemed to be to cry. So I did. Mum sighed and wheeled me round and went trundling along behind Alison with me strapped in, bawling.

As we turned the corner into the aisle that Alison had gone down, my mum stopped suddenly. I craned round to see what she was staring at: stood there in the aisle was my dad, whom I hadn’t seen for nearly a year, holding my big sister in his arms. I screamed with joy and struggled to get out, to get at them, to hug him, but mum held me back with one firm hand.

“Alison,” She called clearly down the aisle, through the throng of hapless shoppers, “It’s time to go.” Dad looked up and started, a look of overwhelming fear and sadness etched across his face. Receiving no reply from either my dad or sister, mum’s eyes began to boil. I remember her suddenly becoming engulfed in flames, the floor cracked beneath her and her eyes turned the deepest black. She screamed at this point, tilted her head upwards and pillars of fire leapt from her mouth and eyes. Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but I was four. Schemas and all that.

“Anthony, put her down. Alison, we are leaving.” When neither moved, mum leapt forward grabbed my sister from dad’s feebly clutching arms and strode back towards me.

Taking hold of the trolley, mum started off towards the exit, gripping tightly onto Alison’s wrist and dragging her along whilst I pulled at the sides of the trolley and stretched my arms out to my daddy.

“Cleo, they’re my kids too! I haven’t seen them for a year! Please can I hold them? Two minutes?” Everyone was staring at us now. Security guards and checkout staff alike came up to us, but mum deftly swatted them away as though they were little more than irritating flies. Dad, following behind us, grabbed hold of mum’s arm. “Can we just talk like sensible-?”

Flinging the trolley aside, it went ricocheting across the floor. Mum’s arm swung round, and, in one fluid movement, slapped my dad round the face, almost knocking him to the floor, picked both me and my sister up and strode out the door. She turned back to face him, and scathingly spat out “I’ll see you in court.”

Prologue

2011-07-28T22:43:00.002+01:00

When the walls crashing down around you is all you can hear, the screeching banging into every recess of your subconscious, what do you do? When life’s thrown at you everything within reach and you’ve fallen to your knees, battered and bloodied, how can you be expected to carry on? That’s what I was asking myself last night, which is kind of what brought me here. As hell descended upon my life once more, I took one long deep breath and let the horror of my past wash over me. Three things immediately came to mind: get into the foetal position, an oldie, but a goodie, scream until I run out of breath and/or faint, likely to get me sectioned though, and the third – The third one is this: start a kind of diary of my life, sort of like a mental-colonic. My nan suggested it. Unfortunately, most of my life has been pretty messed up, so I may be at this for a while.

I’m not really sure when all the problems started; I suppose I was quite a difficult child, everything from climbing out the windows in a vain attempt to escape evil babysitters to running through school corridors screaming, being chased by a horde of harassed looking teachers.

My parents separated just before my third birthday. Literally, just before; it was the day of my much-awaited party when my parents sat me and my sister down for a “quick chat.” To give them their due credit, it was quite quick. My dad looked as though he’d been crying. I remember the way the corners of his eye glistened with tears, tears that by the end of our little chat had brimmed over and drenched his smooth, tender face. My mum had an odd look on her face, odd to a three-year-old anyway, a sort of steely expression.

“Alison, James. Mummy and I need to tell you something.” That’s how dad started. It’s a little blurry after that. I don’t think I quite understood what he was trying to tell us, although perhaps my older sister, Alison, had as I can remember her grasping my hand and whimpering.

I think mum thought dad was being a little long-winded as she pushed him aside and said in her brusque, business like manner, “Daddy and I are separating. He won’t be living here anymore. He’ll be leaving after the party.” She stood to leave and said, perhaps as an afterthought, “Anthony? Don't you think now would be the best time to say your goodbyes? No need to drag it out.”

I cried throughout the party, even the magician mum had hired couldn’t conjure a smile onto my face. Within five minutes of the party ending, dad had left. Alison and I stood at the door as he and my mum had one last slanging match. He gave us one final, fleeting smile before he walked out of our home and out of our lives.