Free Daddy's Little Earner by Maria Landon Page B

from, didn’t open till nine o’clockin the mornings and he couldn’t bring himself to queuelike everyone else, so I would have to go to do his queuingfor him, which meant that on those days I was too latefor registration at school so I could then spend the rest ofthe day with him, or at least I could spend it sitting outsidewhichever pub he had decided to take his money to,waiting for him to come out.
    Sometimes I’d be there for hours on end. The pubshad embossed windows that you couldn’t see through butwhenever anyone went in or came out through the doors,I’d peer in trying to get a glimpse inside to look for Dadand check what he was doing.
    Dad’s friends kept telling Terry and me how wonderfulour dad was and how grateful we should be to have such agreat father and that we should make sure we behaved forhim and didn’t make his life any more difficult than it was.I was sick of hearing it all, especially as I always felt guilty for being the bad, inferior person that Dad was constantlytelling me I was. I remember two old ladies coming out ofthe pub one time after listening to Dad’s sob story, both ofthem in tears and bearing gifts of crisps and Coke, tellingme what a wicked woman our mother was.
    ‘You be a good girl for your poor daddy,’ they said asthey handed over their gifts.
    At moments like that I felt that my dad really was ahero for all he was doing for us, and Mum really was thevillain of our story. Poor Dad. He needed to drink to dimthe pain of his broken heart.
    When he couldn’t bear to have Mum’s clothes andwigs in the house for a moment longer he built a bonfireout the back and burned the lot, like a mock funeral pyre.He used to have some photos of her as well, which he kepton the top shelf of the pantry, but they disappeared too,went missing one time when he was in prison and thecouncil repossessed the house, forcing us to move. But itdidn’t matter what happened to the physical remindersof her; he was never going to forget her, or let anyone elseforget that the love of his life had walked out on him.
    There was one publican who used to feel sorry for meand ask if I would like to go up and sit in his living quartersabove the pub rather than always waiting out in thecold. Sometimes Dad would agree but mostly he wouldsay no. ‘She’ll be all right outside,’ he’d say dismissively,not wanting to be beholden to anyone.
    It was confusing. If he was as wonderful a father aseveryone told us, how come there was never any food inthe house? How come he never went shopping for us?How come he never went to work to support us all? Howcome he didn’t make our bedrooms habitable or buy usbirthday cards or cuddle us when we cried? How comehe beat us so often when we hadn’t done anything reallybad? It’s only looking back that I question all this,though. At the time I never thought it was unusual thathe spent all his money in the pub and behaved the wayhe did; that’s just the way things were, it’s what I wasused to.
    Dad hated the idea of buying anything in the normalway from the shops. He would never have belittled himselfto walk around a supermarket with a basket and buythings over the counter like everyone else; he wouldrather we just went without. There was never any breakfastin the house when Terry and I got up. Some morningson the way to school I would strip the leaves offbushes and pull up stalks of grass just to give myselfsomething to chew on to stave off the pangs of hunger.Some of these things used to taste surprisingly nice andjuicy but they never did much for the hunger pains. Afterschool Terry and I used to wait outside the chippy at thebottom of our road, tortured by the delicious smells offrying and going in every so often to ask for ‘the crispies’,which were the scrapings from the frying vats.
    We were always moaning at Dad for not going shoppingso one day, after he’d had a win on the horses, hegave us five pounds each to shop with. ‘That means youcan’t eat any of my