The Idiot, the Farmer and Me Ch. 01

"You drinking the whiskey from the lock-up?"

"Yeah, best Scotch in the world," said Dad smacking his lips then burping loudly and contemptuously.

"No it isn't you fat stupid bastard," Mike giggled, "look at the colour, it's half scotch, half my piss that you and your stupid mates have been drinking for the last two and a half years and crooning about. Did you not wonder why you didn't get so drunk on it?"

Mike had started his revenge years before and had been waiting for the perfect moment to spring his surprise; Dad liked Scotch whiskey and had several crates of a very old one in his lock up. While Dad slept during the day, Mike had spent his last school holidays and the relaxed days after his exams steaming off labels, pulling corks from the bottles that were as old as Dad and he emptied nearly half of each bottle down the drain and pouring his collected and stored urine, sometimes straight from the tap, into the bottles then resealing them and took great delight in watching Dad and his scummy friends sipping from it and waxing about the quality you could taste in good whiskey.

"I'll fuckin' shoot you!" Dad roared, so loudly that a neighbour reported him to the local police hotline, "fuckin' war 'ero or not, I'll..."

"No you won't, you fat stupid twat," shouted my lovely brother Mike with a laugh in his voice as Dad fought for breath, "You're a BLOODY JOKE! You can't walk more than 10 yards without a rest; you're out of breath just arguing with me! And don't forget that if you're so much as seen with more than nail scissors The Old Bill will have you back inside for the rest of your sentence, if you don't fuckin' die first."

"The fuckin' police can..." argued Dad, out of breath just talking.

"The police showed you up for the useless fat fucking prick you really are... you were an embarrassment as a father, and you made Mum's, Sam's, Den's and my life a fucking misery. Fuck you Dad," he said, "And if I never see you again it'll be two weeks too fucking early, I hope you die quickly and in pain you stupid, useless cunt..."

Mike never would see him again, Dad would die six months later.

Despite dire warnings from Dad we all agreed that we would go to the parade and watch Mike and his brave mates march or drive past in their desert uniforms, even as Dad grumbled from the chair he virtually lived in these days and daring us to go, aware that he could only make breathless threats in the vain hope that they'd have the effect they always used to, but these days Mum just growled back at him staying out of his reach, something she could never have done before without risk of injury.

We went and watched Mike stood in the turret of the special Royal Engineers tank he was in charge of, saluting smartly as he passed the Royals, Generals and politicians. We met Mike afterwards for a beer and I'd never seen Mum happier. It was like the few short summer holidays we'd had when Dad had been inside, relaxed with no fear of any sort of reprisal if we dared to seem happy.

As Dad's condition worsened the more Mum came out of herself.

Her revenge was non-violent, sweet and a long time coming; quite simply she ignored him, giving him exactly what the nurses suggested, breakfast cereal first thing in the morning (no more fry-ups), then two meals a day, and a cup of tea with no sugar in the morning, one at lunch, another with dinner and one before bed.

Previously she would have jumped to his hot beverage demands instantly, sometimes fifteen or twenty times a day when they were younger. The weight fell from him and as he got worse and his chair was swapped for a bed with nurses coming in to do for him four times a day, with Mum sitting next to him, drinking cup after cup of tea and once the nurses had left, even lighting up the very occasional cigarette well away from his oxygen mask, even though she'd never really smoked -- but Dad always had and that was the point.

My pregnancy was discovered, and a wedding planned, with the hope that Dad could give me away from his wheelchair, but despite our efforts he gasped his last the weekend before.

Mike was away on a big NATO exercise when I rang his barracks in Osnabruck and I got the orderly officer who took the message. The orderly officer didn't know exactly what Lance Corporal Haymer's relationship with his late father had been like and a message was rushed by Military Police patrol car to the banks of the Rhine where Mike was building a huge floating bridge, with orders to bring him back.

The MP's spoke to his Commanding Officer and Mike was taken into a small tent on the back of an armoured car where the CO gave him the bad news.

Before Mike had a chance to say, "So what? I hated him..." the Lieutenant Colonel cut straight in and said that everything was in place to get him 'back to UK ASAP' and the two MP's were to take him and his kit at speed back to Roberts Barracks where one of his colleagues would assist him packing his bag to get him back home to be with his grieving family.

In less than 6 hours Mike was in his British Forces Germany tax free car and bombing along the excellent European motorway system until he reached Calais and took that short sail home.

His CO had told him that this fortnight's leave had been deemed 'compassionate', and sat in our living room with a mug of tea after his marathon trip Mike laughed, happy that he didn't have to use his limited holiday allowance for my wedding that he had been planning to come to anyway but not for this long.

The funeral was paid for by a social security grant, and Mike got to stand by his fathers coffin, immaculate in his khaki uniform with his medals wearing his brand new paratroopers' red beret he'd eventually earned as a Royal Engineer and awaiting his posting to an airborne unit back in England, his new wings bright on his shoulder above his stripe and content in the knowledge that his Father would have been turning in his grave had we not been cremating him.

His fortnight's compassionate leave meant he was also there to give me away. It was to have been my paternal Grandpa who had been let out of prison on day release specially to come to my wedding seeing as my Dad had died and he was going to walk me down the aisle. Grandpa had been away for the supply of counterfeit money, something he had done for years, even while he was on bail for the supply of counterfeit money.

To my Mum's disgust he headed straight from the underground station to the lounge bar of his local 'just for a minute' and was discussing further ill-advised schemes. I was sat in the car outside of the registry office waiting for him when Mike came out to see what the delay was as the registrar still had two more weddings to do and was complaining loudly. Frowning in disgust but looking a million dollars in his uniform Mike was there for me, as he always has been.

I was so proud of him that I asked him there and then if he'd give me away, and I detected some faint disappointment in his face as he had seen who I was marrying, knowing the Idiot Ex from his school days; he kept quiet though and said that I looked gorgeous and it would be an honour to walk me down the aisle.

My Grandpa was a bit miffed at this but not that much; after all my Nan had dragged him from the pub by his ear with his fourth pint going flat on the bar and they got to the registry office five minutes before the end of the service. He loudly complained that the Registrar was 'just another bloody clerk who should know his place, whose job it was to serve hard working people like him'. Mum laughed, Grandpa had never worked a real job in his life.

While my Grandpa wasn't up there with my Dad and was 'a bit dodgy', criminality was just everywhere in my growing up and how I met the Idiot Ex. My Dad and the Idiot Ex's Dad were mates and very much 'cut from the same cloth', often on the same jobs and often met at the same christenings, weddings, funerals and associated parties, not to mention prisons.

The Idiot Ex was my first and only boyfriend, charming in a roguish kind of way and, to be honest, so were most of the blokes I met. He asked me out at a party once and I said I'd think about it. My Dad said that the boy was from 'good stock' and 'would go a long way' and that I should seriously consider him. I was by then a quite attractive, dark wavy lustrous brunette and although a late bloomer I was blessed with the curves and the looks all Higgins women have that have often been blamed for the shits we ended up married to.

So I agreed to go out with him, and to start with he was quite funny and charming then we became a couple and I became pregnant with Izzy's older brother Ray and like so many other women in my neighbourhood and in my extended family, I walked down the aisle quite young and quite pregnant.

We had lots of sex, that is to say the Idiot Ex had lots of sex and I lay there while he did it. We had two positions, the missionary and doggie, and that was ones he'd seen in a porn movie.

I still blame the pregnancy on the Idiot Ex's insistence that we had sex after every date and the fact that my Dad had been taken ill and the emphysema progressed faster than the doctors could treat it, and even with dated packets of contraceptive pills I was somewhat distracted, the booze we drank on our dates probably didn't help. The sex we had was OK I suppose, it felt OK most of the time, but I'd never had an orgasm -- how do I know? Because I've had lots since.

Just before Ray was born, me and the Idiot Ex got our first council flat then moved up to a house after Izzy was born. All was well I suppose; I had soon realised (like a lot of women I guess) that what I took for charm was quite superficial and I had already plumbed the shallows of his personality and that was pretty much it, and once we were married he stopped trying - this included the sex. He had made a bit of an effort but after a few years it kind of stopped almost completely and I was to find out why.

But I'd married him for better and for worse, I had only to look around at my occasionally black-eyed female relatives to see that.

My huge paratrooper big brother let the Idiot Ex know that there was to be none of the 'traditional' domestic violence in our marriage at a family party in the club not long after the big day. The Idiot Ex lost his rag when it had looked like I was dancing with another man and he grabbed me and swung me around, with a raise hand.

Mike was there in a flash.

"Les?" he said.

"Wot?" said the Idiot Ex still filled with righteous indignation and looking at me with a vengeful zeal all 60's and 70's East End.

"You so much as mess up Samantha's hair, I WILL get to hear about it and I'll pay it back to you ten fold." Mike took the Idiot Ex's arm and lowered it, "You give her a slap, I give you a punch, you black her eye, I break you nose and your jaw; anything worse and we're talking limbs Leslie, I mean that..."

The club went very quiet at the scene unfolding. Most of us had grown up watching our Mum's get a bit a dig and lots of threats from our fathers, but Mike had watched and hated it. It wasn't going to happen to either of his sisters that was for sure.

"Yeah but..," said the Idiot Ex.

"Yeah but nothing," said Mike, "I watched my Mum and my Nan and a couple of Aunts living with bastards and I swore that my sisters never would. Now do you remember what I said?"

"Ye... yes Michael, I was'int gonna do nuffink woz I, swear on my Muvver's life mate..." said my big talking but ultimately spineless husband. Mike was the still infamous Tommy Haymer's son and that was enough of a reputation to be going on with.

"Make sure you keep it that way."

Mike was based in Aldershot with the Airborne Brigade and only ever a phone call and a short car drive away. I knew I was safe.

The Idiot Ex was a wrong'un no question, but never a thug. He was involved in some borderline villainy but nothing violent like our fathers, more sticky fingers and dodging the police, the customs and the tax man than shotguns at four in the morning, and his criminal record was all non-custodial, but that was just because he'd just never been caught and convicted.

Our marriage went reasonably well I suppose, until a while after Izzy started junior school and I found out the reason he'd pretty much stopped screwing me. He'd always been 'a bit of a lad' and our marriage and children had only temporarily stopped him from that element of his life. He'd started to charm the women just like he had me, and the inevitable happened and had been happening for eighteen months before I found out. This was enough for me to dump him but the fact he was fucking his cousin and then, the icing on the cake, her daughter completely put the kibosh on marriage guidance counselling. His second cousin had a baby but it was never worked out whether he was responsible; she had split up from her second husband and was shagging anything with a penis at that stage and I suppose there are some things that a family doesn't want confirmed or denied.

I found out in, of all places, the club.

'The Club', a rather crusty and crumbling 'members only' social hall with two bars built after the war to service our entire community and our regular Friday and Saturday night destination where, like 'Cheers', you knew that people would know your name.

It was almost guaranteed that family or friends would be there most evenings and it's where my Dad's wake had been, then my wedding reception, then Ray and Izzy's christening parties and countless other family parties and piss-ups. I had even worked the bar and been a cleaner there, so I just knew from the strange atmosphere that something was amiss, and that the world was staring at me and talking behind their hands and laughing behind my back for weeks.

Eventually on that final Friday one of the fishwives got so drunkenly brave as to want to come over, get all reality TV on me and discuss it asking what I was doing to still be with that two, three, four or five, ten, fifteen-timing piece of shit I was sat next to.

I asked what was up and she told me in great detail, even pointing around the venue at several women that suddenly stopped looking nervously at the unfolding drama at our table to investigate the contents of their handbags or have a desire to take themselves or their now howling children to the toilets, or out the door.

"Fuck off Brenda," said the semi-pissed Idiot soon-to-be Ex, "don't tell stories wot don't concern yah."

"No, go on Brenda," I said, "when was this?"

"Well, he was shaggin' Liz over there..." she pointed to where the first of the escapee's had been sat, seeing that space now vacant; children, coats and bags collected and drinks drunk all in the amount of time it had taken Brenda to start to explain, "Well he was fuckin' her in the committee room last week, that Wednesday when we was all at the school play."

The Idiot was very keen not to go and see Izzy singing in the choir and I could remember that -

"I know that's true 'cos Jaynie..." (his cousin,) "walked in on them in the committee room and was really pissed off 'cos he was s'posed to be givin' her one that night 'pparently..."

I thanked Brenda for her forthrightness and slowly stood facing him before I threw all the drinks I could find at the Idiot Ex then left with an angry Ray and confused Izzy's hands in mine.

As we walked home I had the benefit of another club member who just had to get something off of her chest and proceeded to tell me and my two young children some other instances of when my husband, their father, was shagging other women naming and numbering them and adding where and when. She even ran in her short skirt and cheap heels, clacketing along to keep up with me such was her eagerness. I think it was just such a delight for her that she was able to lord it over someone whose life was worse than hers -- even if only temporarily.

I thanked her for her time and very graphic, numeric and geographical description and asked hadn't she better get back to the club seeing as it was a quarter to eleven and her four-year-old girl, three year old boy and baby girl were still there and she was now three quarters of a mile away from them.

"Oh yeah," she said, stopped and walked back much slower, her steel heel tips clickety-clacking away into the night.

The Idiot Ex came home two hours later after trying desperately to create cover stories with some of the other women I was to find out. Apparently it took him so long because there was something like thirty of them in the previous two years, at least those were the ones he could remember.

He stood at the front door with a stupid market trader's salesman grin on his face with extended 'trust me' arms and gave it a load of shit starting with, 'OK, there was that ONE but it was just sex Babe, it din't mean nuffin I swear on our kids lives', working up to 'we can't jus' frow everyfin' aside Babe, we're so good tog'ever,' ending with 'what about the kids, they don't want no broken 'ome shit in their lives.'

I let him stand there long enough to reach out and slap his stupid face and screamed slamming the door on his hand, as my brain finally started to add two and two together and come up with four, lots and lots of fours in fact.

Every single suspicion I'd ever had plus a few I hadn't now all made sense so with his damaged hand now removed I re-slammed, locked and bolted the door.

I found out later that he'd telephoned almost every female relative we had (bar two of them of course) asking for advice on how to 'sort it out wiv' Sammy', but was met with lots of shaken heads and disappointed looks.

My sister Denise told him straight,

"Not fuckin' everything that moves, especially your first and second cousin, would have been a bloody good start you fat twat," adding, "and not getting one of them pregnant and making your entire family a laughing stock in most of South London would have gone a long way too."

"Yeah but Den..."

"Don't you fucking 'Den' me you bastard!" she howled at him, "just think yourself lucky that my Dad's dead and my nasty paratrooper brother is building roads and runways in Iraq." She took a breath and snarled, "it's only because I'm running a nursery business and can't be dealing with the police that I don't drive north and fucking castrate you myself you dumb Fuck..."

It soon became evident that he HAD been shagging everything that moved and his getting away with it had made him bold. Being the Idiot he was he had then started quietly boasting and bragging about his man-whoring to his close friends, swearing them to secrecy.

They promised not to tell anyone and didn't... except for their wives of course which didn't count. They had no qualms about discussing it among themselves either and after their initial and still secret glee, lots of them started to get guiltily cross as he carried on doing it and worse, still boasting about it - they all liked me and knew that I never 'played away from home' like him.

On advice from Mum I got myself tested and found out that he'd given me chlamydia; the day I found out that little gem I changed the locks and applied for a housing transfer with the council, south to near where my sister lived. He tried to argue that I could have caught that from anyone, suggesting that I'd been sleeping around.

He then decided to try to spread that story but I was really pleased to find that almost the entire community was on my side and he was universally ridiculed and derided for even making the suggestion. His witch of a mother sided with him of course. It must have been my fault that 'he wasn't gettin' enough at 'ome and had to go looking for it'.

Evil bitch.

I moved as far as possible as quickly as possible and started working for Denise at the nursery that she ran to take my mind off him and the divorce - and found that I was good at it. With Ray in senior school and Izzy not to far from it I applied for and got free training and qualifications in childcare from the local college.