protection

my mum lived in the ywca when i was in my early teens (i lived with my dad) and i went to stay with her for access visits. one night someone broke into the room i was in and ransacked it while i was asleep. my mum thought the noise was me playing around so left it for about half an hour. then he went into the next door room where she was. she lept out of bed with a roar, ran naked at him and chased him out of the window down the fire escape. i didn't wake up until this happened but i have never forgotten the ferocity with which she went at a huge tall man.

this was the same mother who on other access visits took me to stay at a hostel for ex-prisoners in edinburgh (where i particularly remember getting horrific food-poisoning from corn beef hash). some of the guys had been in barlinie prison but she trusted them with me. i still have a copy of the little prince that one of them gave me.

mum

this is my favourite picture of my mum. it shows her beauty and intelligence but also her sadness. when i have posted this on the net people who never met her commented that she had sadness in her eyes.

this picture was taken by her second husband. he was a journalist and had a pretty good camera. he was also a really, really unpleasant man.

mum met him when she was living in bristol. she worked with a woman whose husband was in broadmoor prison which is a secure hospital. for some reason (which i fail to understand to this day) mum started visiting him. he was in prison for serious violent offences. mum said he had been put in prison because he had blown up water mains when he was in the free wales army but i heard from other people he had taken a bottle to his wife's lover. the other day i heard this man's voice on radio 4 and it sent a chill through me even after all this time. he was being interviewed about the free wales army and sounded just as cold and unpleasant as did when i was a child. i had assumed he was dead.

mum not only visited this man but decided to have a relationship with him. she somehow got him out by putting pressure on the home secretary (mum said she got him out "on a section". i may have mis-remembered this - i was about 13 at the time). by now i was living with my dad and my step-mum and i remember receiving a postcard from mum saying she had met a lovely man and got married. this seemed a very odd thing to me and my dad and stepmum were utterly dumfounded at how she had told me.

mum and her second husband lived together in a flat at the top of a regency house in bristol. i went there for access visits. he gave me the creeps from the start. one time when mum was at work he took me to the pub and bought me pints of scrumpy (i was about 14) and then we went back to the flat. he started talking about how mum had other men. this didn't ring true for me. she seemed pretty wrapped up in him. he wound himself up into quite a state and then picked up a knife. he was rubbing it along his thumb and scared me to death. he went out later and i got my stuff and went to get a train back home. i had to leave mum a note.

later it turned out he was being violent to mum. he smashed up her record collection which was her pride and joy. she had records from when she was young and loved her music.

at some point he bought a run-down house in merthyr tydfil and she went to live with him there. the violence continued and eventually mum left. she was re-housed in swansea by the council. typically of her she didn't get a grant for any furniture and when i went up to see her she was sleeping on the bare floor on her coat. i was by now at college and got a job so i could send her money. more constructively i wrote to the dhss and got her the proper benefits she should have been getting.

she continued to try to see the good side of this man and spoke about him as a poor damaged human being. she had a streak which always sought out people like this.