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inadequacy. Which, in Dad’s case, meant a raucous, shambling arrival long after we had eaten and an angry demand to produce something more than “the bloody useless pap you usually serve up.” Always demanding, never satisfied, he would insist on simple fare, the sort “I can get my teeth into.” Washed down with a never-ending flow of the local Tusker beer. And some time before he passed out would come the inevitable
pièce de résistance
; a comprehensive and destructive assault on me and my fledgling intellectual achievements, my sporting prowess (or lack of it) and even the looks inherited directly from my mother. Everything I counted success and everything the failure that was my father so bitterly resented. Majoring on every mistake I had ever made, real or imagined, selecting evidence in the way only someone with an intimate knowledge of the subject could ever achieve, my father would condemn me with ruthless efficiency. A barbed demolition as comprehensive as it was unwarranted, but the injustice of the attacks never occurred to him, drunk or sober. And Mum, whose courage ebbed and flowed with the moment, was always waiting for his fury and resentment towards me to finally spill over onto her.
    The danger signals had been there for days and the sound of the old van rattling up the drive and sliding to a halt just outside drained any resistance she might have contemplated. Mesmerised, she had watched through the open kitchen door, her sense of foreboding sharpened to a razor’s edge as Father slammed his way across the veranda shouting for me, before marching unsteadily towards my firmly shut and carefully locked bedroom door.
    â€œGet out here, you gutless wonder. What are you hiding from, you little yellow bastard? So help me, if I have to come in there, I’ll take my belt to you so you’ll never bloody well forget.”
    A stream of crude invective underscored the threat and with her hands over her ears, Mother had frantically tried to shut out the sound, totally unable to defend me in the face of such concentrated, alcohol-fuelled venom. But in his inebriated state, even my father couldn’t keep hammering incessantly and eventually, with a final, petulant kick, he had stepped back, momentarily nonplussed. And in that moment, with a click that only emphasised the sudden quiet, I had turned the key and stepped white-faced into the bedroom doorway. Why, I don’t know, but wracked with guilt and with a very real fear of my physically powerful father, I confronted him in much the same way as a rabbit prepares for the imminent arrival of a stoat.
    Supremely confident in his alcoholic judgement, he needed no one to tell him I was gutless. It was the one thing of which he was totally sure. The problem was, I now knew he was right and, deeply afraid, uncertain of what to do, fearful of how to act towards this man whom I despised, I remained half in and half out of my refuge. A well-developed instinct told me to keep quiet, to remain still. But it made no difference. With heartless and chilling precision, the old man had proceeded to tell me exactly what he and thus the world thought of me. Sparing no detail that would wound, no speculation that might tighten the destructive screw of self-loathing, he had ridiculed me, his only son, describing in graphic detail the sheer force of his contempt. So, once again, piece by piece, he had dismantled me until the job was complete. Colourfully. Comprehensively. Conclusively. Before turning away without a thought for the consequences. Simply pleased, as only a bully can be, to have scored so heavily. Shambling towards his chair and already bellowing for his wife, I doubt he even heard the quiet click of the closing door. And wouldn’t have cared less.
    Slowly and carefully, hands numbed into exaggerated precision by physical shock, I had picked up the pen lying discarded on top of my cluttered desk and begun to write a last note. I