A Moon risesA Story by Ken Simm.
A moon rises. I am in my bedroom, my old bedroom back at the old house, dark. I suppose it is getting late. The times my Mother would shout – sleep – knowing I was still awake, reading. Always reading, anything I could get my hands on. I read Poe late at night with a frisson of fear. A dirty yellow paperback, Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the colour of old urine. A bet with my cousin who I had stolen the book from. Waking later and shouting. Back to sleep, in that bed. I always hated the dark then. Always the same sheets, pink and blue candystripe, always the same candlewick bedspread. A mattress that sagged towards the middle. Was this Grandads bed? Was this where he died? Did he cut his wrists with me in the room? Honestly? My sister hated me for that, never again come to play in my bed on Sunday mornings. Sitting in a depression of the bed with my fist in the air, a wigwam as her playing abode.
All my smallnesses are gone. In the way I remember it. My precious books on three shelves. My notebooks and the drawings on the wall. All these I burned gloriously on the highest slagheap I could find. In heathen temper after a severe beating from my Father. “He will stand for hours at that window, he loves his birds”. I would be looking across the canal to the lake. The sanctuary they called it. As it had signs that proclaimed ‘Any person caught with dog or gun on this land will be prosecuted’ The farmhouse on the far side of the lake was built in 1610 and had a moat.
“That stupid looking, he doesn’t get from your side, that’s me straight through.” Said my Father to my Mother, wrongly. “So I’m a little Dictator, am I? I’m worse than Hitler am I? So I’m petty?” These words I had stupidly written in my diary. I had several, I started many, finished none. Of course he would read them in his slow stumbling way. It was a bloody idiotic thing to do. Perhaps a touch safer than saying it to his face.
“Come here, you little bugger, I’ll wring your bloody neck for you. I’ll swing for you yet”. “Come here you little sod! I’ll teach you to grin at me!” I was grinning in fear. I could never help it. The psychology of this he could never understand. It always made it worse. “Christ, when I catch up we thee” Broad Lancashire punctuated with hated spittle. Mother, when present, which was never often. She more usually was off with one or more of eight Sisters. “Now, look you’ve made his nose bleed. It’s all over his school shirt. I’ll never get that out” How embarrassing for her. “Come here, lets have a look at it” Wiping my face clean with hated spittle. “Keep still while I wash it. KEEP STILL or your Dad will give you another”. My sister would slide down the wall in a corner to get away from him. I would stand in front of her. She would curl into a tight ball, a good survival technique. Whereas I would grin at him. Clever, eh? “You two, you always got a good hiding when you were kids and it never did you any harm, did it? No Dad. “Did you hate me? He said. No Dad. “Do you love me, I know I’m an ugly bugger?” All this he would say in later conscience. He would ‘donkey rub’ unshaven chin against my child’s softness. Or he would rub both my ears until they burned. Until I was thirteen. Afterwards he would squeeze my cheeks as his sign of affection or kiss me until my lips were sore. “There is nowt, yer Father can’t do” with an emphasis in true Lancashire style on the ‘a’ in Father. Flattening all vowels. “Oh he’s a good lad, never says owt to anybody. Allus got ‘is head buried in some bloody book. Or ees walking cross those bloody fields. Ee knows round here like back of his bloody hand. Ee goes ower to yon mon at farm oe’er theer, o’er Leeshi. I’ll go with thi some day lad; tha can show me what tha finds to look at. Beats me what ee finds so interesting. When I was on t’council, they asked me if they could go oe’er theer wi’t nets and suchlike, ringin’ them birds. So ah said aye if yon mon could go wi them. Nair ee’s never away. Its wonderful what this owd Dad can do for thee, in’t it?” All this with pint in hand to his cronies at the Working Men’s club
I went with toy binoculars kept in a plastic bag together with my sandwiches and a signed letter from the council clerk. We caught and ringed several Goldfinch. I drew them. I was ten and it changed my life.
© 2008 Ken Simm.Featured Review
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Ken Simm.Scotland, United KingdomAbout'I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience' Thoreau. For all those who .. more..Writing
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