ADVENTURES IN A DIFFICULT WORLD (Chapter 5)

I don't know why or how John Benson and my mother got together. It's a great mystery to me. I suppose I was too young to get it. I think it was after my first half-sister Jenny was born that my stepfather began victimising Peter and I.
Peter was nine and I was eight. Suddenly my new baby sister was there, and one day he and mom got dressed up and went down to the register office, and my mother came back with another name. I remember my mother asking me and Peter if we would like to change our names to Benson. We both said no. Maybe this pissed him off. We would always now be between the children from his first marriage and this new family with my mother. His favouritism was never disguised, and became, whenever he’d tipped a few jars, ever viler and upsetting.
After staggering home from the pub it was only a matter of time before he would start to pick on one or both of us. My mother would try to defend us, and he would accuse her of spoiling us – making us soft -- and calling us mammy’s boys. If my mother as much as took one of us on her lap he would physically pull us from her, calling us babies, and then a row would break out between them, which could go on for days.
Peter and I were forever in trouble – unable to do any thing right. Most of the arguments between them were rather over money, or his right to chastise us, which was no more than bullying! Whenever we tried to protest against his treatment we were accused of insolence – cheekiness -- talking back.
Besides the jibes, clips, smacks, and digs his discipline came in the form of his belt, which was used in proportion to his black-dog moods and tempers – always coming over him after the drink began to wear off. His drinking at home got heavier over the years. He drank every night at home, after one of us, Peter, my mother, or I were sent out to get it.
Then he would sit in his favourite chair, the nearest to the fire for the winters, and complain about everything. And we were at the top of his list. Rather we should get out in the street or get to bed.
He went out to get a belly-full every Sunday afternoon. Then he would come rolling home five sheets to the wind. If he wasn't’t too drunk to stand, he would take the centre of the room, staggering there like a broken robot to keep his feet, so he could begin to lay down the law. And if he had won money gambling, he might produce chocolate for my mother and Jenny, or for everyone, and make a big thing of doling it out with a false generosity, as if he were a god bringing ambrosia and nectar to us inferior mortal beings.
If Peter and I were given chocolate it had to be stated several times before we got it, that we did not deserve it, and we had to recognise that he was ten times better than that no-good-father of ours, who had never given us anything. This teasing with the chocolate was his way of humiliating us. ‘Aren't’t I better than that shit-house of a father of yours?’ ‘I’m your father now and you’ll do what I say!’ ‘It’s me who puts the roof over your head, and the clothes on your backs!’ ‘You are both just like your father – you’ll come to nowt like that shit-house who left you with nowt!’
Or he might want to play, as he called it. He liked to box and wrestle with us, which always ended with us in tears, after the slaps in the face or the twisting of our arms, the nipping of our skin, or the scrubbing of our heads with his knuckles, and such. And if my mother’s protests, that he was too rough with us, didn't’t bring on a screaming match right then, it would definitely come later after he had fallen asleep in his armchair and awoke with blood in his eyes.
So Peter and I would try to keep a low profile – hiding in the street when he was due home – staying out as late as possible hoping he would still be snoring in the armchair when we got home. I more than Peter became more and more engaged with the street and all its evils, simply because I was spending more time trying to stay out of the house when he was around. I couldn't bare to see my mother so upset.
In winter the freezing weather in the end, would drive us indoors, with even more foreboding, for he did not like to be avoided. His hate filled, hawk like eyes would fix on us and burn us up.
He was a humourless and ignorant man -- the kind of person who would stand in your way just because he could – he was against ‘wasting time on reading bloody books,’ and he thought kids should get out of school as soon as possible and work. So he didn't go much on my orange ideas, which made me his pet hate.
He was selfish and hoarded his money. He gave my mother a fixed amount as house keeping money every week, which was never enough. So when she asked for more she would get it, begrudgingly, and then be in debt to him until the next payday, when he would make sure she paid it back from her allowance, and so the problem would go on.
But he always had money for his drink and betting on the horses, dominoes, and cards. We kids never got such a thing as a holiday. Holidays were only for those families whose parents didn't’t sluice away the money in the form of beer at both ends. The most we could expect was a day at the seaside with my mother. He wouldn't’t go anywhere unless there was a drink on the way or when he got there. The only time he was happy was when his mind was well on route to idiocy.
Sometimes when my mother didn't’t have the money for the seaside, and we were suffocating in the hot stinking street during those Summer school holidays, she would take us, and maybe a couple of pals from the street, picking brambles along the foreshore of the River Humber. First, there was the long walk beyond the chaos of the docks and factories, and a lengthy stretch of the river, before finally reaching the foreshore. And there the world would suddenly double in size. The town was behind you, the sky was so big and looming it could have eaten us. Not only could you see for miles over the river and over the flat Lincolnshire fields and on and on, but there was also an open view of countryside on our side. Where ‘sky and water and Lincolnshire meet’ as Philip Larkin elegantly said of the Humber.
At this point a madness would come over us – bliss! There was enough silence to hear the news from nowhere. Scream if you want – the sound would be sucked away from your mouth leaving only the ghost of its echo in your mind. Who was it said, ‘Poetry is also in the naturalness of living?’
As we slowly followed a narrow trail along the mud flats of the river bank, we would come to a disused railway track, along which were a profusion of bushes full of black pearly brambles, which were just asking to be picked, baked, and eaten in pies beyond belief. We would spend a couple of hours hypnotised by the insect sizzle, while filling first our mouths and then the dried milk powder tins with those black jewel like berries, which stained our fingers and mouths bruise-purple.
The brambles picked, the rest of the day would be spent smiling, and laughing in ripples. For here were all the elements a child with an ocean of imagination could arrange and put to work: exploring water reeds as high as an elephant’s eye, where crocodiles and tigers could lurk, with enough water to sail around the Spanish Main in search of treasure, and an abundance of green bushes to hide from the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men. And surely this was the territory of the Snark!
And as the day drew on the large sky seemed to lose its distance, creeping ever closer, on the finest, and lightest of steps. Its very presence eased itself into me – it rubbed and polished me like a new penny. Like a blue glass the sky seemed to enter me – crystallise me. The gulls hung like mobiles in the air calling tributes to the sun, the king. The lapping of the muddy water slipping to and fro was like a slow pulse that I sipped at the rim of my consciousness, letting it spill into me like a sink. And the sun calmly and unhurriedly edged over his arc of sky, and the day dripped ever so gradually away like charged light, until finally into that twisted time of twilight we half-heartedly, step by step, tired from the hike, returned to the dreaded street with all its contrasting threatening ugliness. All of a sudden we were back within the limiting family thump, with its piss-pot full of bad feelings, which dragged us back down into that banal stream of just another shit shaped day.
I can’t fully describe the pleasure these trips brought me. Those long days are my richest childhood memories, which come back with pleasure, but which always have an unhappy ending.
*****
Although, I said earlier that I was sure nothing would ever come out of that dammed street. Well, that was true, but like Marquez's Macondo some things did find their way into our cracked little corner from the big outside world. Some things seeped in slowly over years, while others just smashed their way in overnight! And it was one such smashing entrance, so to speak, which gave the boy, I was then a weird but wonderful shock. It was also a priceless gift, and this gift would stay with me the rest of my life, and that day the gift came to me remains within me like a bone. It was a kind of sign to the boy that there was more life around him than he had thought.
I remember it was grey day, but I don't remember exactly how old I was -- maybe eight or nine. But I surmise it must have been a Saturday morning. Why? -- because my mother wasn't there, so, she must have been shopping. And my stepfather was there, so, not at work or in the pub.
I was sitting outside on the doorstep of our dreary little slum -- probably forming one of my mad schemes or fantasies, which were becoming a major pastime for me, when my teenage stepbrother, Tommy, came swaggering to the door with two friends. One I knew well -- Ba-Ba (Dave Lamb), the other, who my eyes now sprang on, I'd never seen before.
Where as Tommy and Ba-Ba were dressed like all the other kids in the area – ragamuffin -- in our worn and patched, baggy, hand-me-down clothes from older brothers and fathers -- this stranger, a tall slim stick, looking a year or two older than the others, was dressed as flash as magic!
He wore skin-tight ice-blue jeans, a sharp black salt and pepper speckled jacket, and a crisp blinding-white shirt with a black lace-necktie, which had a large silver longhorn-steer emblem as a grip, which sat at his throat beneath his upturned shirt-collar. His black shiny shoes were as pointy as fingers! He was good looking, fresh faced, with blue eyes that sparked. His hair was crazy -- rather than the standard short back and sides of the time -- he wore it long. It was butter coloured, and greased back with a large bouffant pulled forward defying gravity like a frozen tsunami.
I couldn't make head nor tale of him, I'd never seen such razzle-dazzle clothes as these. I had nothing to compare him to, and I was fascinated.
But what then caught my attention, was a black, foot-square, heavy looking box he was carrying by a leather handle. What could be in that mysterious looking box distracted me from his bizarre clothes. I immediately began my interrogation.
Tommy, completely ignoring my stream of questions went inside the house, while I stayed on the doorstep and continued, without success, to try to wheedle some information out of his leering mocking friends. A few minutes later Tommy returned smiling, saying that his dad had said, it was OK for them to go in the front room. So they all roughly pushed past me as they went in. I made to follow, but was blocked at the front room door by Tommy, who told me to piss-off, before slamming it in my face!
I was now even more intrigued to know what it was all about, so I went in the backroom to ask my stepfather, if I could join them, although, already knowing the answer would be as always: no.
Dejected, I parked myself in a chair to ask him about that boy and the black box, and what they were going to do in there. He said, wearing six and half metres of his usual scowl, that he didn't know what I was talking about, that I was getting on his nerves, and should shut up or get out!
He was sat reading a greasy newspaper -- probably the horse-racing-form, as he always put a bet on of a Saturday. Being a normal Saturday the radio was tuned, as always, to the BBC Light Service, and some nondescript musical-fog was wafting around the dingy room, also as dammed usual!
All of a sudden the air seemed to shift, followed by something like a sonic-boom. I remember grabbing at the arms of the chair. A floor inside me seemed to give way -- turbines churned -- or was hell being released? I will never forget the sudden look on my stepfather's face -- hundred and fifty watt eyeballs straining at their sockets, his mouth all wavy, crushed, and frozen, still as a photograph, as if all at once his synapses had been disconnected! The sound began to hammer on the walls! Then came the voice -- roaring, braying, screaming like a demented railway announcer.
'YOU AIN'T’T NOTHING BUT A HOUND-DOG' chon-chon chon-chon-tisssss cha, 'CRYING ALL THE TIME.’
Wow! My mind was instantly blown away, like one of those dandelion clocks – puff! And suddenly one becomes thousands.
My stepfather shot up from his chair as if on a spring, and headed through the hall with me at his heels. We burst into the front room like the Gestapo, the sound hitting us like a plank! And what a scene met our eyes -- three mad people jumping around in that limited space on their tiptoes, their bodies squirming, contorting like three eels on hooks. Fingers stabbing the air, their mouths twisting like stroke victims, screaming along with the haunting, scornful, attacking voice as if their very lives depended on it.
'YOU AIN'T’T NEVER CAUGHT A RABBIT AND YOU AIN'T’T NO FRIEND OF MINE.'
When they looked up and saw my stepfather they froze, as if someone had just said, coitus interruptus! My stepfather then boomed out the question I was also dying to ask.
'WHAT THE BLOODY 'ELL IS THIS?'
'IT'S ROCK 'N' ROLL DAD.... IT'S ELVIS!'
The name echoed sub-audible in my head Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!
'IT'S A BLOODY RACKET! I'll GIVE YOU ELVIS IF YOU DON'T TURN IT DOWN!' he shouted, his usual grey metal face now deep red.
Then I tumbled it! The black box was, in fact, a record player. and there was the record sleeve with the word 'Elvis' in big red letters with a photo of a guy who looked like a Red Indian, and just as bloody dangerous. He was in the same get up Billy's friend was wearing. His face and body also looked contorted, and he too was on his tiptoes, pointing his finger accusingly at the viewer -- at me!
I immediately fell in love with him and this wild crazy music, which made my little heart quicken and my spirit soar! Ye gods! little did I know then it was the phenomenon, which is Rock'n'Roll that had just manifest in our front room and blown my ears off.
On his way out my stepfather slapped my head and asked me what I had to grin at.
From then on, whenever that black box arrived, I could be found camping outside the front room door. Through that inch and half thick piece of wood I heard all the heroes of Rock 'n' Roll.
Rock'n'Roll music was but the camel's nose entering the tent. Over the next weeks I saw Tommy's life totally change -- from a jack to a king. He got himself a part-time job working after school at a scrapyard, persuaded his dad to let him have a ten pound club-check, to be paid back at two bob a week on the never-never. He blew it all on clothes just like those of his new found friend, who he couldn't stop talking about. Whose name turned out to be Clarky (Johnny Clark). Who lived in St.George’s Road across the Hessle road. Who worked at a sawmill. Who had a girlfriend called Sandra, who was a real looker. Who spent all his money, as he always proudly exclaimed: on clothes, his girl, and Rock 'n' Roll records.
I along with Tommy thought he was the bees knees. But what was now on my mind was how to get into that room where the action was.
Well, in the end everything fell straight -- as I was the only one in the house who cared a dam about Tommy's new found obsession -- my brother and sisters cared as much about Rock'n'Roll as they would about a newly discovered leaf mould. Tommy was now suddenly happy to talk to me and answer all my questions. I showed so much interest in the music that on two or three occasions he actually allowed me in the room when his friends were there.
They all laughed themselves silly at my childish impersonations of Elvis. And although they could get a little rough with me in play, I think they all liked me. They took turns showing me how to box and wrestle, how to punch, or head-butt, or how to knee somebody in the balls when he not expecting it. Oh, and how to empty some body's pockets by holding them upside down by their legs. All pretty useful stuff, but very painful. And what with all that, and the Elvis impersonations I'd be rather the worse for wear by the time I came out of those Rockwell Sessions.
Sometimes, when he came round for Tommy, Clarky would flash me a smile, scruff my hair, and call me 'little Rock 'n' Roller', and I'd shine like the sun!
For me, this alien but invigorating new music stole me away from the emptiness of that mundane life. It seemed to have broken the spell of all that had been before, and it was the first authentic thing in my life. It had wings! and the energy of a locomotive! And I wished I was ten years older.
It wasn't long before Rock'n'Roll became the buzz-word, and rockers and teddy-boys were everywhere to be seen. There were gangs of them hanging about street corners – dandies – rebels without a clue – splashes of toxic colour against a timetable grey world. Now it was all talk of drainpipe trousers, brothel creepers, duck's arses, and the bop. But their kind of distinction was at odds with everything around them. Their very clothes challenged the right angled world. And all the boring cramps started using words like juvenile delinquent, Blackboard Jungle, and the devil's music. But to the youth from the slums a juvenile delinquent was at least something to be. Sometimes screaming into the boredom can actually help.
I didn't know then just how much my life over the next years would be deciphered through this music -- both code and message coming from its spirit healing sublime depth. But it would take me a few more years to come into its closer orbits, and to feel its full gravity.
So, the upshot was, Clarky actually sold that record player to Tommy after he had bought himself a new and better one. Then Tommy would often let me in the front room to listen to his ever growing collection of music by such people as Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, and of course Elvis.
Several years later when Billy got married and left home, I inherited that same wonderful black magic-box, and then the next generation of Rock 'n' Roll came under its needle!