The Crispy Bacon Incident

         





  I was fifteen years old, outside of the house I was relatively happy, but indoors was another story. On this particular day, if I'd known he was going to come home I wouldn't have bothered. But just before I'd left for school that morning, I had caught the end of a conversation he was having with my mother. He was saying something about a client he was going to visit, but that he should be home in time for dinner that evening. Now to me all this meant was the possibility of an empty house and maybe bunking off. Anyway with this in mind, I set off for school.

  Whilst at school that morning, after the first ten minutes of maths I'd made up my mind, I'd stick it out till lunch, then go and tell Mr Potts my form teacher that I had a migraine and needed to go home. Then I could spend the afternoon with my feet up watching the telly before work at the dog track later that evening, great plan!

  So the morning dragged, but eventually 12 (O'clock) arrived. I made my way across the playground towards the English block, and an Oscar winning performance of. "Man with a sore head." In actual fact, this wasn't so difficult for me because I did get the occasional migraine, so I knew all of the right symptoms to describe. When I arrived, I had to wait outside for a moment because he was only just letting his last class go. I pushed past the exiting throng of hungry third years and made my way over to his desk.

"Nick," he said, in recognition of my arrival. "Make it quick because I've got a meeting to get to." Yer, a meeting with Miss Smith, the music teacher, and a pint of Best Bitter, up the pub. I thought.

  "I don't feel well sir,”I said in my ``please feel sorry for me because I'm really ill voice. "I've got a migraine and I feel sick, I'm going to go home, sir." I thought I'd better make it quite clear that I was going home, or he might have sent me to the sick bay.

"You don't look too good, will you be OK getting home on your own?" He replied. "Yes sir," I said as if I was about to burst into tears at any moment.

  "Go on then, get yourself off.”

  I didn't need telling twice, I turned and left.

  Strolling along the road towards home, I lit a celebratory cigarette, took a deep drag and had a little giggle to myself. My genius plan had worked.

  I arrived home and went round the back to the garage, got the key to the kitchen door from the workbench where the last one out of the house always left it. No one in our family could be trusted with their own key. I let myself in. Great! All's well, empty house. I went to my room, dropped my bag to the floor and flung my coat on the bed, I then had a quick scout around just to double check that I was alone.

  Right first things first. I'll go and see what's in the fridge cos I'm starving and make myself some lunch.

So two minutes later I had six rashers of best Danish greenback under the grill, four slices of white bread patiently waiting to be turned into toast and a kettle of water just coming to the boil. When all of a sudden this scene of domestic bliss was rudely interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the front door.

  Fucking hell he's home already! I thought to myself.

  I knew it was him without actually seeing him because he was the only one in our family who had a key to that door and so he was the only one who came and went that way, the rest of us plebs used the kitchen door to the side.

  OK, I thought. “Don't panic, stay calm, you've not done anything wrong yet. After all, it’s still lunch time. He's not a bloody mind reader, he doesn't know that I am planning an afternoon with my feet up in front of the telly.

  So I carried on making the tea. He passed by where I was standing in the kitchen, totally ignored me and went into his office, which in the evening doubled up as the dining room. We were never a dinner on your lap kind of family, it was always dinner at the table or no dinner at all. The fact that he had ignored me was nothing unusual. There was no rhyme nor reason for that man having one child, let alone four. Anyway, so this is the situation, I'm in the kitchen wishing I'd stayed at school, and he was skulking in the office just so he wouldn't have to speak to me.

  So, I thought, I'll get this down as quickly as possible and go out somewhere for the afternoon.

  By now my bacon was cooked, the bread was golden brown and standing to attention in the toaster. I pulled the bacon from under the grill and was tossing it from the grill pan onto the kitchen counter behind me. I suddenly became aware of him standing in the doorway, all six foot four and eighteen stone of him completely filling my escape route. I could always tell when he was annoyed about something because his face would go bright red, and his head would look like it was about to explode, and boy was his face red now.

  "Why are you putting that bacon on the worktop? You'll mark it, put it on the cutting board," he barked.

  Now what he said was probably quite right, but his reaction to my reply was slightly over the top,to say the least. The cutting board as he called it, was a piece of wood about twelve inches by eight inches, that was inlaid into the work surface. As I turned to face him,

  I said "Can't be much of a worktop if that's the only bit of it you can use."

  He didn't reply to my witty retort, he lunged at me, taking me completely by surprise. He punched me, once in the stomach and then again in the mouth. As I doubled up and went to the floor, he kicked me in the face.

  I was used to his regular beatings, and I'd suffered far more prolonged attacks than this one, but what made this one worse was that he had used his fist, and even worse he'd kicked me. He'd never done that before. In the past, it was always the flat of his hand that did the damage. As I bent over clutching my face, he grabbed me by the hair and ran me out of the kitchen and into the living room. Halfway across he let go, so with my momentum in the right direction I carried on out of the living room and ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I slammed the door behind me and dived on the bed, curled up in a ball and waited for the onslaught, but it never came. After a couple of minutes, I got off the bed and went into the bathroom to inspect the damage.

  I peered into the bathroom mirror, I could see the right side of my bottom lip had swollen up like a semi inflated water filled balloon. I prodded it with my finger, I could feel the blood sloshing around under the skin. The hair on top of my head was standing to attention where he’d pulled me up. I patted it back into place and returned to my room.

  Back in the bedroom, I sat on the bed for a minute, got myself together, then I got my coat on and picked up my bag. At this point I can't remember if I knew what I was going to do or not. So anyway, I left my room, made my way down the stairs and entered the living room. Now if he'd been in the office I may well have bottled it and gone straight out of the kitchen door, but he wasn't, he was sitting in an armchair reading the newspaper.

  He didn't move or acknowledge my existence for the second time that day. As I passed the newspaper his great bulbous head came into view, I leant in towards him, my swollen lip almost touching his ear, and I whispered.

"If you ever touch me again, you fucking piece of shit, I'm going to kill you. Got it?"

He didn't move, he didn't even blink an eyelid, he just kept staring blankly into his paper. I don't know what kind of reaction I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't that, I didn't want to push my luck, so I straightened up and left.

  As I passed through the kitchen the bacon and toast were still exactly where I had left them, I grabbed the toast from the toaster and stuffed the cold bacon between two of the slices and left. I didn’t actually want to eat this now I just wanted to make sure that he didn’t eat it.

  I don't know if it was my words of wisdom or whether he realized that he'd gone too far, but from that day on he didn't touch me again. He didn't speak to me either. We went about our business, ignoring each other until the day that I left.