My Father, like many of his generation, was drafted into The British Army to wage war against the Axis Powers. He saw action in Italy and North Africa. In The Tank Corps. Shaving, he sang Neopolitan songs, and reminisced about his experiences in the battlefield. On one occasion he looked at his brass safety razor and told me how one morning one of his mates opened the tank hatch and set out his mirror to shave. The next thing, there was a shot, and his mate's body fell back into the tank, razor in hand, minus his head. My father's parents died when he was very young, and he and his brothers were left at the mercy of his female siblings, who by all accounts were so bossy that one day he threw a trayful of dishes into the air and walked out. He met my mother at a dance. She was pretty and he was handsome, and my gran, a widow bringing up six children did not approve of the match because my dad came from a poor quarter of Grangetown and did not exactly appear to be capable of supporting a wife and children. He went off to work in London for a while, and returned and married my mother and together they had three children, of which I was the second oldest.
My father had always had a terrible temper, and used the strap on my brother and I when we did anything wrong. And, as he often reminded us, he did not use the "buckle end" which his father had used on him. My Father was at his most efficient with the strap when he was drunk, which he was often, and if we had not done anything wrong, he would wrack his brains to find something we had done wrong, in order to take out his frustrations on us with the strap or the back of his hand.
But when my brother died, there was only me to strap. I admit, I did do wrong, and deserved punishment when I did do wrong. But, I got the strap regardless. My Mother has always been sensitive and delicate, and the ferocious, aggressive violence made her cry and beg him to stop.
One evening he hit the hell out of me and dragged me outside and drove to the orphanage and left me outside as I screamed and begged not to be left there.
As time wore on, My Mother did strange things. She wore my brother's flannel pgyama top which was so small only one button would hold while she burnt his books and planes and chess pieces and his clothes on a great funeral pyre in the back garden, with the neighbours taking in their wet washing from the smoke fumes and muttering. Then she would walk for miles and not come back and my father would go to the phone box and ring the police, and eventually my mother would be found, often walking the length of the city to my gran's and knocking on the window in the early hours of the morning. And the crying got worse and worse. And the strange things got more strange until eventually our mother was taken away from us to a hospital. A Mental Hospital. An Insane Asylum. Depending upon which of our neighbours was telling the story and explaining to us.
Now, with our father out getting drunk most nights, and our gran worrying but not able to care for us, the shunting to various relatives began. One aunt on my father's side of the family took me in. One Aunt, married to an uncle on my mother's side of the family took my sister in.
My father's sister sent me back fast, because I pooped in my pants, but my sister settled in with a loving aunt who treated her as her own. At this point, my mother's twin sister and her husband took me in and living with them was wonderful, because my aunt was funny and my uncle kind and refined and English from a middle-class family in Cleethorpes ( who never got over his marrying a Welsh girl !) My uncle kept a garden full of roses and border flowers arranged red,white and blue, and geraniums which he dug up and hung upside down in the coalhouse every winter. And the back garden was full of lettuces and carrots and beans, so we always ate healthily, and they were always generous, and even though they were loving and caring, from time to time I would feel jealous of their son, my cousin, because they loved him more than they did me, and I did not understand why.
When my sister and I went with my mother's twin sister to the hospital to visit my mother, a big female nurse in the corridor got hold of my aunt's arm and demanded to know what she was doing out of the ward. My Aunt protested, becoming hysterical. We kept screaming at the nurse that this was our aunt - not our Mother ! .... but it was a hard sell, until finally the nurse relented, still suspicious. My mother's twin never went back to the hospital. None of her other sisters ever wnet there. And, as the years wore on and various releases from the hospital terminated in re-entering the hospital, my mother became more and more institutionalized.
And after they administered shock treatment to her, sending electric volts randomly through her brain, overnight she became an old woman.
After the first few years of nervousness at visiting the hospital, it became routine. There were extensive grounds with huge conker trees around the hospital. The wards were sunny, and I even remember a grand piano. There were times when my mother was full of anguish, times when she talked to people who were not there, and times when she repeated phrases such as "White Cotton Burnt"..... "The Palace of Varieties"...... She was not alone in her dilemma. One delightful old lady waltzed around and came to a stop and told me that she was a princess and that Swansea had been moved to Cardiff. "So where's Cardiff gone ?" I asked cheekily. That, she told me was a big secret,and she winked.