Free Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay Page B

turned his madness to whomever else was there. Ronnie was his pal, mostly, so it was Yvonne’s turn to take the treatment, and Mum was still getting knocked about. She was working in myUncle Ronnie’s shop in Port Glasgow, and she’d come in with bruised lips and black eyes.
    My uncle would say, ‘Oh, Helen, you can’t serve the customers looking like that!’
    And she’d say, ‘Well, it was your brother that did this to me.’
    But no one intervened. Domestic violence was still seen as a private matter then.
    Next, the four of them ended up in Bridgwater, in Somerset. It was there that he committed the final crime and left our lives – almost for good. It’s a time I cannot think about without feeling the blood pulsing in my temples, though I wasn’t even there when it happened.
    Dad had had a couple of drinks, but this attack was planned – not some dumb, drunken rage. He came home from work, and Mum was in bed with a mug of hot milk. He poured it all over her, leaving bad scalding to her chest. Then he dragged her downstairs, and the beating started. By the time the ambulance arrived, her eyes were completely closed, her face swollen and pulped. First, she was taken to a hospital, then to a refuge. Dad, of course, disappeared at the first sound of a police siren.
    That was when the social services and all the other authorities got fully involved, and a restraining order was taken out on him. Hewasn’t allowed anywhere near the house, but when Mum went home, she found everything that she had built up smashed into tiny pieces. He hadn’t left even a light bulb intact. Worst of all, Dad had left a note on the mantelpiece. It read, ‘One night, when you are least expecting it, I’ll come back and finish you off.’
    Dad went off to Spain, and I didn’t see him for many years. Then, towards the end of 1997, when I was running a restaurant and already well-known, I got a call from Ronnie. Dad was in Margate. He’d had an argument with Anne, his second wife, and he’d upped and left. I called him on the number Ronnie had given me. I don’t know why. He sounded very low.
    ‘I’m here to see my doctor,’ he said. ‘Can I see you?’
    ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll come down.’
    It had been a difficult year. My wife, Tana, and I were expecting our first baby. And I was involved in all sorts of legal trouble over my restaurant. Still, I drove down there. There was something in me that couldn’t refuse his request. I got out of my car and I saw this old, frail, white-haired man with bruises on his face, and marks on his knuckles. I felt stunned. This was the man I’d been scared of for so long, brought so low, so pathetic and feeble.
    ‘What’s happened to you?’ I said.
    ‘Oh, Anne and I separated, and I had an argument with one of her sons.’
    ‘Look at the state of you. Where are you living?’
    He pointed at the car park, and there was his Ford Transit van. Inside there were all his possessions and an inflatable camp bed in the back, with awful net curtains in the windows.
    We had breakfast, and we went for a walk on the pier, and it was so sad. So I went to the bank and I got out £1,000, and I gave it to him for the deposit on a flat. I thought that at least I could do the right thing by him, and that’s what he did. He got a little one-bedroom basement flat.
    On Christmas Eve, he telephoned. Anne was coming over, and they were going to try and fix their problems. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.
    After hearing that he and Anne had made up, I booked him a table at my restaurant for the twenty-first of January 1998. Most of my staff didn’t even know I had a father. I’d reinvented myself, I suppose. I’m not ashamed of that. I’ve never tried to pretend anything else. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be like him. And any time I came even close to that, I would put the fear of God into myself.
    It was New Year’s Eve when we heard that my father had died. I hated him, but still, his