Steve Walker - Steve. Unwanted

I was born in 1950 at Brook Street Hospital and grew up in Lambeth, south London. My mother abandoned me on my grandparents doorstep when I was just eleven months old, so I have no memories of her whatsoever. I dont even have a photograph, so I have no idea what she looked like, or whether I resemble her in any way. Ive never met her since I dont even know if she is still alive so I dont know for sure why caring for a child was too much for her nor why she took the drastic step that she did.

Ive been told that her name was Doreen Parker. I dont know what age Doreen was when she married my father, or what age she was when I was born. She just disappeared into the ether and, so far as my family told me, was never seen again.

My father and grandparents often told me that Doreen had been a lady of the night, a prostitute, and I dont know whether this was true or not. They were hardly likely to be kind and impartial under the circumstances ; having raised eleven children of their own, Nan and Grandad were starting all over again with me at a stage in their lives when they might reasonably have expected to be able to start taking things a little more easily.

I like to think that in choosing my grandparents to look after her baby boy, Doreen was doing the best she could in what must have been very difficult circumstances for her. No doubt she had her reasons for not keeping me or leaving me with my father, and I hope that they were good ones.

As a child, I did my best to ignore or block out any comments I heard about my mother, because they hurt more than I ever admitted. For years, I thought that I hadnt paid much attention to them, but looking back now, I believe that being told such awful things about my biological mother every time her name came up caused serious emotional problems for me later on.

Many children who grow up without a parent develop fantasies about how, one day, they will come back and find them. But I never did. I was never allowed to talk about my mother; it was a taboo subject. I just tried to get on with each day as it came and I hardly ever wondered about Doreen Parker. I have never found out what happened to her. For all I know, she is still living, and I presume that I may have uncles and aunts and siblings somewhere out there. At this stage, I just have to accept that I will never know.

I grew up as an only child with Nan and Grandad. My father was not around very much, even though he lived quite close by. We lived in Hutton Road in a small two-up, two-down house like so many others in the city. I slept in the same room as my grandparents because my uncle Albie, a single man, used the other bedroom. Uncle Albie was, at about fifteen years older than me, the youngest of Nan and Grandads many children.

I didnt have a bed. I had to sleep on a rather lumpy, old-fashioned settee, from which I could see through a hatch out onto the stairway. This view regularly frightened the life out of me because of all the noises and sounds I could hear in the house and because of the shadows that I would often see dancing against the wall. I frequently had vivid nightmares and would sleepwalk. On one occasion, Uncle Albie stopped me from climbing out of the bedroom window, which was much closer to the floor than would be the case in a modern house. I dont remember what any of my nightmares were about.

My grandparents were good people and they did their best for me. But it wasnt easy for them to play the role of mum and dad at their age, even with Uncle Albies help especially because my real father, Reg, was a difficult man who wasnt willing or able to help out on anything like a regular basis. Dad was a very heavy drinker; an alcoholic, in fact. He had a good job as a steel erector, but went through the money he earned very quickly. He loved to gamble and regularly lost all of his money down at the bookies where, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he was always sure he would make his fortune one day.

Dad had serious problems with his temper, too. He used to call round Nans occasionally for Sunday lunch, or to sort me out when I had played up, especially as I grew older and more difficult to deal with. He would come round, threaten me by saying that I should behave or else, or give me a good hiding and tell me that Nan and Grandad didnt want me and were going to put me in a childrens home, so they could be rid of me and all my annoying ways.

I was afraid of my father, and I think that my grandparents were often afraid of him, too. He didnt seem to have a great deal of control over his emotions and was liable to lash out like a man possessed when things werent to his liking. And things often werent to his liking. I remember one Sunday when he came round straight from the pub, and complained that the dinner Nan had prepared was cold. When this wasnt dealt with quickly enough for him, Dad started screaming and shouting his complaints, telling Nan that she was bloody useless and that the least he should expect after the hard week that he had had was a good, hot dinner. The tantrum climaxed when he smashed his plate over Nans head.

Call that a Sunday dinner? he screamed. I wouldnt fucking give that to a dog. Its like something youd find beside a lamp-post. Thats not food; I dont want it. He stamped off in a rage, slamming the door so hard behind him that the glass in the front window shook.

I remember Nan just standing there with gravy and blood pouring down her face. There was so much blood it half-filled the old enamel pail that she always used to wash the floor. Her head had been split wide open, and she had to go to hospital for treatment. I remember Grandad trying to stop the flow of blood as best he could while we waited for the ambulance to come.

I was hysterical and frightened, wondering whether Nan was going to die and what would happen to me if she did. I cried and cried but wanted to stay with her while she was being looked after. Eventually, Auntie Pat from across the road, Dads older sister, came to collect me, to look after me, as the ambulance arrived to take my grandmother away.

Nan was only in her fifties at that time, but she looked a lot older in her hospital bed when I was taken to visit her. I dont know if my father ever apologised for what he had done, but he was back again not long after that and everything was back to what passed for normal for him, so I suppose Nan must have decided to forgive and forget or that it was easier to carry on as though nothing had happened. I accepted that this was just the way it was. There was nothing anybody could do about my fathers behaviour , so we just worked around it as best we could.

On other occasions, Dad would be told about some misdemeanour or other that I had committed, and he would teach me a lesson the only way he knew how: he would give me a good thump and issue some more recriminations and threats. Having seen what he had done to Nan, I was sure that he meant them.

Reg was very much the black sheep of the family; the rest of his brothers and sisters had done quite well in life and most of them had settled down, had children of their own, and just got on with things. Dad was the third oldest of the eleven children in his family. Everyone told me that he had been a tearaway from the start, that Nan and Grandad had always had their work cut out with him, and that the teachers had found him impossible, too.

When he was a boy, our street was still lit by gas lamps, and one of my dads favourite tricks was to climb up them to get a light for his fag and to put out the gas light while he was there. He often told me this story, and thought it was hilarious. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, his parents had regularly had to deal with the police knocking on their door about some trouble or other that he had been up to. I think he must have had a hard time growing up, and presume that Grandad had been tough on him, the way he was tough on me. But because my father and I never talked very much, I can only guess at the details of what went on between them. My feeling is that he was a very unhappy man all the time I knew him, because his behaviour was not that of a person at peace with himself and the world.