THE MR LOATHSOME

#03 Mr. Loathsome

Good evening and a very warm welcome. Thank you for dropping by.

It is strange how the memory works. Sometimes it is impossible to remember what you watched on TV the night before, let alone what you were doing the week previously.  Yet, without any effort at all it can skip back several decades and remember things as though they had happened only yesterday. These sorts of memories inevitably follow you to the grave.

He was a loathsome man and as the years rolled by my feelings never changed towards him.  I named him Mr. Loathsome for he had those cold, glassy, piercing eyes you sometimes see in people which instinctively send a shudder down your spine.  For the sake of this story I shall call my friend Catherine.

From the very start, when we first attended infancy school together, until the time I left Glasgow, Catherine remained my closest friend.
It was her misfortune in life to have been fathered by Mr. Loathsome. He had been in the Army but was now a white collar worker in the city.
I never knew what rank he had held in the Army but from his appearance and bearing he seemed rather, to be the one who had given out orders rather than the one who had to obey them.  His domineering and arrogant traits continued to serve him well within the boundaries of his now little domain – a tenement flat.  Family life in that household was forever a parade square in the centre of a small kitchen, where Mr. Loathsome would roar out his orders for the day.  Even if one was told to jump, no doubt his family had been drilled into asking, “How high?”

Catherine’s mother was near non-descript. Anywhere she went in the flat, she seemed to blend in with the faded, dreary wallpaper.
Older as I am now, I realise she was a woman with a crushed and broken spirit.

Catherine had an elder brother who had learnt quickly in life never to oppose his father but rather, to play up to him and endeavour to get on his good side at all times.  Hence, over time, the battle front was formed and the aggressors did not have to look far, to seek out their prey; father and son pitted themselves against a meek and mild woman and her young daughter, Catherine.

My friend seldom spoke of the beatings she received from both father and son but the evidence was there for all to see.  Black and blue bruises were forever present on her body and red swollen welts from Mr. Loathsome’s belt branded her legs.  Remember, this was during a time when school teachers too had the authority to punish their pupils with a leather strap.  Some of them took a sadistic delight in rendering out such punishment.  “Both hands out if you please” Miss Gray would snarl as she turned her victim to face a classroom of wide eyed, terrified pupils such as myself.  “Higher, higher” came the command, until the outstretched palms were of a height to ensure the tail of the strap cut deep into the wrist.

I was labelled a slow learner in my younger years much to the disgust of Miss Gray.  We 3 often shared centre stage in the classroom: Miss Gray, the strap and me! An image has remained with me 50 years on from its actual event.  So vivid in every horrifying detail that it could have happened yesterday and it still makes my heart weep.

Coming home from school one day, I went with Catherine to her flat to drop off our satchels and then go see some friends.
Entering the flat I noticed that the kitchen door was ajar and through the opening I could see a bare, outstretched arm, clutching 2 kittens from a litter than had been born the day before.  I couldn’t take it in at first what this arm was doing with the kittens until I noticed there were clouds of steam coming from an electric water boiler.  I froze in absolute horror and with a sickness rising in my stomach that threatened to choke the life out of me.  As if in a trance, I watched this arm drop the poor kittens into the boiling water and then ‘snap’ the lid was slammed down on them.
Mr. Loathsome appeared moments later, rolling down his shirt sleeves.  No matter how hard I try, I can never erase the innocent faces of those kittens from my mind.  It was all too horrible.

At the age of 16, both Catherine and I were now out working.  It was at this time a great revelation happened in Mr. Loathsome’s household – his wife had mysteriously disappeared!!! She had been, as per usual, preparing breakfast one morning for her spouse, come commandant.  However, come that evening there was no sign of her or her belongings.  Rumour eventually got round that she had run away to England but no one really knew for sure.  After her disappearance, life in Mr. Loathsome’s household became more intense.

Catherine was out working……just how was she going to do all the housewifely chores her mother carried out.
“Feed me, wash my clothes, clean the house, empty the trash.”

Both father and son made their demands heard and without question, expected them to be obeyed. It didn’t last long though. Catherine was spreading her wings and finding a new freedom for herself. With earnings of her own now, she packed up and left home too. She rented a bedroom in a neighbour’s flat and for the first time in her life she looked relaxed and happy.

She never visited the flat of her father again until……… Two years later, coming home from work, Catherine was handed a note that had been dropped off at her bedsit. It was from her father.

The note read, “Your mother has come home. She has not been well and wants to see you”.
Catherine came round to my place and asked me to go with her to the flat.  We got there quite late in the evening and you could see there were no lights on inside.  Knocking on the door brought no response so we naturally assumed that her mother, being ill, might have been taken to hospital or was asleep inside.  Catherine reached up and from the top of the door ledge produced a key.  “He, (meaning her father) always keeps a spare one up there”, she said, as she unlocked the front door and stepped over the threshold.  She made off in the direction of Mr. Loathsome’s bedroom whilst I fumbled around feeling for the light switch in the hall.  Not finding it, I headed for the ‘best room’ as they so called it in those days.

It was in actual fact the lounge.  It crossed my mind that Mr. Loathsome would not permit his deserting wife to share his bed again so the only place left for her to be, was in the lounge.  There was bound to be evidence of her return in there.  I entered the lounge. The room was black as pitch. Turning to face the wall I groped around and eventually found the light switch and turned it on. Believe me, it is quite devastatingly, shocking, to come face to face with a dead body; the first dead body one has ever seen and in such frightening circumstances. No! Mr. Loathsome’s wife was not ill; she was dead, quite, quite, dead! She was laid out in an open coffin which sat in the middle of the room on trestles.

Mr. Loathsome had engineered his cunning plan with military precision for he was intent on punishing Catherine for deserting him too.
He had so worded his note in order to entice her back to the flat. He knew Catherine would want to see her mother again but he had no intention of revealing to her that she was now dead. He wanted that body blow of discovering her mother’s corpse laid out, to shake her to the roots.
Presumably Catherine’s mother had come home to die and die she did in what must have been a very short period of time. He had kept her return a well guarded secret from those who would have wanted to know.

“Vengeance is mine”! I can almost visualise him saying those words to himself.

The say that every dog has its day so just for the record, let it show that Mr. Loathsome was one mean and nasty dog!
Where was The Mr. Loathsome, whilst all this was going on, you might ask? Well, reportedly from those who witnessed it, he was at his local pub that evening proclaiming his wife’s death and buying everyone a drink. He had never wanted her back and was glad that Fate had finally rid him of her.

Many years ago I returned to Glasgow intent on finding my friend Catherine again. We had corresponded frequently after I got married and left Scotland but her letters trailed off until they ceased altogether.  From acquaintenances I once knew, they told me that she had had an illegitimate baby and both had been abandoned by the father. Beyond that, they knew nothing.

I often think of Catherine even now, and wonder if she did find some kind of happiness in her life.  The girl I knew had always been short changed in that respect.

There but for the grace of god, is something we should all remember from time to time, especially when we complain about our circumstances without any just cause.

Think about it….

Would you have ever wanted a father or even a husband such as Mr. Loathsome?   In some way I pray, that The Mr. Loathsome got his just desserts in the end.