The diary of Horace Haughty part 1

An ordinary boy growing up in an ordinary world A sneak peek at a life

         I was born during the nineteen sixties. I don’t really remember much about the swinging sixties, which by most accounts means that I was most assuredly there. My earliest recollection is probably when I was about four years old and my family had moved into a council house at the bottom end of a cul-de-sac. My mother had left the front door open, ensuring that the front gate was shut, thus allowing me to play by myself in the front yard in the glorious sunshine. I stepped into the front yard in my little navy shorts and T-shirt and brown leather sandals and began to explore my surroundings.

              As I stepped onto the small patch of lawn I could hear children playing on the other side of the privet. I tried to peer though the hedge to no avail and so decided to make my way to the front gate for a better look. I reached up with both hands to grip the top of the gate, stepping on the bottom beam, and lifted myself up to look over the gate. There they were. A group of four children happily running around, playing on the green in front of my house. “Hello”, I called. None of the children answered. They simply stopped what they were doing and started whispering amongst themselves, looking over at me and giggling. “Hello”, I said once more. Still no reply, just more whispering, looking over and giggling. The children then moved out of my line of sight just behind the privet. I strained to look pushing my head forward, but I could not see around the privet, but I could hear them whispering.

I was just about to resign myself to the fact that they did not want to talk to me when suddenly they were there standing in front of me. “What’s your name?” asked one of the children. “Horace”, I replied. The children laughed hysterically.

             The biggest of the boys, the one who had done most of the whispering, came up close to me. He had black hair, buckteeth and thick black framed glasses. “I’ve got a present for you Horace”, he said. For an instant I was delighted. Just then he took his hand from behind his back and hurled a house brick in my face. I fell backward from the gate hitting my head hard against the concrete pad. I screamed in agony choking on my own blood.

             Two of the boys would eventually become very good friends to me, but I had made a positive and resolute decision. One day, the short distance housebrick-hurling champion of our estate would be repaid for his warm welcome. I wouldn’t say that such experiences hardened me because I’ve always been a soft-hearted person by nature, but such experiences made me evaluate people and situations with a more methodical attitude. I would still offer a naïve sort of friendliness to everybody that I met, but when hostility came my way I would eventually learn to handle it and handle it I did.

 

             My father came home from work one day to find two empty biscuit tins in the hallway. He was livid. The tins had contained toy soldiers that he had been collecting. The battle of waterloo had always interested him and the soldiers had taken him years to collect. They were so precious to him that he stored them in biscuit tins and placed them on top of his wardrobe out of harms way. He was mortified when he saw those tins. Red faced, he shouted my name. Instantly I came running in from the back garden. The first thing he asked was how I had got hold of his soldiers. I explained to him that I had completely emptied his bookcase in order to make a platform on which I could stand a chair in order to reach the tins. This made him even angrier. “Where are they now?” he asked. I explained to him that I had been playing war in the back garden. The casualties on both sides were incomparable to any real life human conflict; there were simply no survivors. Then I explained that I did what I believed was the only right thing to do and buried the dead. This was the angriest I had ever seen my father. He went into the garden with his trowel to try to salvage his collection. He would never find them all. I knew this but did not have the heart to tell him that some of the French soldiers had been cremated in an old paint tin.

             After that unforgettable weekend in nineteen sixty eight, my father could breath a sigh of relief, happy in the knowledge that my mother was starting work part time and that I had joined a nursery in the Aylestone road area of Leicester. The nursery was an awful place. We would play with toys, have a mid morning nap in sleeping bags on the floor, have a bite to eat, then we would play in the back yard. It was in the back yard that I met one of the strangest of children. He was a boy with dark hair whose name I cannot remember, but he was crouched down on the grass with a group of young boys and girls and he was enticing them into eating coke. (A refined form of coal)

            I was horrified to see a young girl with blonde hair with coke all around her mouth and in between her teeth. Then the boy took a girl’s purse from his pocket. Where he got it from I will never know. The purse was made of a white fabric with a metal clip and it was covered in multicoloured plastic beads. I watched in astonishment as the boy plucked the beads from the purse and began to feed them to the other children telling them that they were sweets. This is where I stepped in. The boy stood up and warned me to keep my nose out. I knew that what he was doing was wrong, so I decided to snatch the purse from him. The boy hit me in the face. My face was still sore from the house brick incident and so decided that this was not acceptable. I hit the boy in the face with three fast repeat hits and split his lip wide open. Just then, one of the carers came out holding the hand of a little girl who had ate some beads. The little girl was crying and she told the carer that I had fed her the beads. Any argument I could offer was in vain. I had the purse in my hand and I had caused bloodshed. I was expelled.

             My mother had to make alternative arrangements and had found a lady in South Wigston to take care of me for a fee. The woman had a very nice, privately owned house and was very smartly dressed. Her house was spotlessly clean and beautifully furnished. She was young and pretty with long brown hair. She greeted me with a kindly smile and took my coat. She shared some pleasant conversation with my mother then bid her good day. My mother left for work and the woman closed the door behind her, smiling and waving goodbye. Then she turned around to me. She wasn’t smiling. In fact she was gritting her teeth. Had I done or said something that I shouldn’t have? “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, you little b*****d”, she said. I could not even begin to comprehend what I had done wrong. I just stood there aghast. She then swiped the side of my head with the palm of her hand with such venomous force that I fell onto a trolley in the hallway, knocking an ornament over. “You little b*****d”, she said. “If you damage anything I’ll knock you out, you little s**t” she swung open the living room door. “Sit there and be quiet”, she said, pointing to the sofa, “I don’t want any more bother from you”

            By the end of the week the woman had fulfilled her promise and had knocked me out. What happened was, she welcomed me into the house with the usual false smile and pleasantries, then she set her German Shepherd dog onto me. Probably for a laugh, I really am not sure. The dog growled and cornered me in the living room. Then he bit into my arm. Needless to say, I screamed. The woman became frantic, “stop screaming you little b*****d”, she yelled. She then proceeded to hit me about the head repeatedly with her handbag. The next thing I remember was waking up in hospital with a concussion. My parents never took legal proceedings against the woman and despite my early warnings to my parents, she had them fooled with her posh frocks and smiles. We later found out that the woman was an outpatient at a mental hospital and that she had emigrated with her husband to New Zealand. We later heard that her husband died of a heart attack whilst digging a ditch and although I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, I couldn’t help feeling gratified that she had suffered a loss.

          

            I had just turned five and during the summer holidays I properly aquatinted myself with the kids on my block, including Nicky, the brick tosser, which is as good a description as any. In actual fact, if I met Nicky today, I would still call him a shortened version of this description and it wouldn’t be brick. Nicky was still determined to try and bully me, but luckily some older boys were there to keep him in check. This did not stop Nicky altogether; he made himself content in name-calling. I was chatting to the boys, mainly the older boys, trying to get to know them, hoping they could get to know me. Nicky made this task difficult with his constant verbal abuse and sarcastic remarks. I raised my fists to him a number of times and he was ready to take up the challenge, but because the older boys were there he backed down and resorted to name calling once more. As I chatted to the older lads I watched Nicky from the corner of my eye as he clambered onto the wall at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. The older boy that I had been talking to joined the other older boys. I was left standing on my own momentarily giving Nicky the opportunity to really let rip with his silly taunting. I just stood there, looking down, kicking the edge of a broken paving slab. The slab was loose and I wondered if I could lift it. I crouched down and tried to get a grip on the slab. Once I had got my fingers under the slab, which was a task in itself. I managed to lift the slab over my head.

            The younger boys, my own age, stood alongside Nicky, who was still sat on the wall. When they saw me, they seemed amazed and made admiring comments about my strength in holding a broken slab aloft. Nicky was not impressed. “That’s easy”, he said, “anyone can do that”. I walked over to him with the slab. “Let’s see you do it,” I said. Before he could answer, I threw the slab at him, hitting him square in the chest, sending him toppling backwards over the wall. Within seconds, Nicky appeared from behind the wall with his face streaked with tears. He then ran toward his home around the corner. “I’ll get you for this” he said as he turned the corner. I would be ready for him. That much I had promised myself.

 

            Vengeance was not as sweet as I thought it would be. Yes, I was pleased that I stood up for myself, and it was no more than he did to me, but this act of revenge would surely not help my popularity with the other boys. I walked in home without a word to the other boys who just stood there looking stunned. I was angry with myself, not proud. Once inside, I walked into the living room and threw myself onto the black PVC sofa. My dad was on his knees sorting through an old wooden cabinet where he kept papers and a few 45’s. “Have you been in here Horace?” he asked as he turned to me. I had been in there a few weeks ago and considering how angry my dad looked I answered him. “No” I said. “Well, someone has” he shouted, “My Frankie Lane records are missing from their sleeves”. I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders in denial. I could vaguely remember playing with his records but could not for the life of me remember what I had done with them. A few weeks later my mum bought a new carpet. My dad tore up the old carpet exposing some linoleum, and then at the request of my mum he began to tear up the linoleum. It was at this point that he found his Frankie Lane records. I had shoved them under the linoleum and they were very badly scratched. Needless to say, my dad went berserk.

Author's Note

This is definately up for review
any critisism is welcome