My Dad

I used to be very proud of my Dad. Even though he abused me in the worst way possible, that had been blocked out by my mind to prevent more trauma.

At the age of 13, he said to me “You are older enough to come and work for me now”. I was so proud of myself.

I worked most holidays, other than revising for exams and worked very hard. People were suspicious of me at first because I was the boss’s son but they soon realised that I was a very hard worker. I had to prove to myself and others that I was not just being installed because I was the boss’s son; jobs for the boys and all of that.

Over the years, I went through every department that I was able to; I even acted as a driver to deliver and collect the tapes that they used in those days, which was a long time ago. Even so, I remember it like yesterday and with affection.

When I started and I was so young, at lunchtime, I would go up to the secretaries office where my Dad’s secretary, Win Boden, worked. Ironically, the secretary, Helen Pearson, of my future boss, Leon Stoffberg, worked in that office too. Win took me out and I chose my sandwiches. We then returned to their office where I ate my sandwiches.

Lunchtime was sometimes amusing as my father had just had a speaker phone installed and he bellowed into this new machine; we could hear every word and it made us all chuckle, although nothing was ever said to my Dad of course, as he would not have been amused.

Sometimes, Win took me home in the company pool car and sometimes my Dad would. On one occasion when my Dad was, he was not in his office and I sat in his big chair, behind his big desk; I was so chuffed. But then he returned with a colleague, saw me in the chair and bellowed at me. I was very upset as I was only 14. Remember that this was decades ago and children were really children in those days. Once that person had gone, he came over to me and gave me a complete dressing down; I cried.

In hindsight, that showed me that he really treated me as a glorified slave. I earned peanuts then and even in later life, he treated me like a slave, providing a list of “things to do” when I visited him. When the visit was being organised, he would always say “bring your tools”, as I was the only “handy” person in the family. Even though he was a multi millionaire, he would defer things being fixed until I turned up.

I saved up all of my meagre wages and managed to put a deposit down on my first house, “Foxes Retreat”, 30 Lincoln Road, Guildford. Even my brother, who spent all of his money on partying, came to me to ask to borrow some money. All of his ventures have failed, even though his brewery hobby was propped up by my father’s cash but went into liquidation because he does not understand money at all. It was bought out by another brewery but, because he did not have the support of my Dad’s clever financial brain, that too went insolvent.

I have thought that what my father has done to me in relatively recent years was down to Alzheimer’s. I do not believe that this is the case because, for whatever reason, he sexually abused me as a young boy, treated me like a slave when I was young, treated my as a slave in later years, until I finally said “no”. It was then that the proverbial shit the fan. It was then that he started his onslaught against me; his Alzheimer’s has got nothing to do with it.

It is clear that from a very early age, he hated me but I had my late Mum for protection; he would never go against his wife, even though he crushed her mind before either my brother or I were even born; he could not even consider being alone without anyone waiting on him all of the time. But, when she passed, he had a free reign and he could do whatever he wanted and he has done plenty, using his masonic influence and his control of the trust that he set up for the benefit of both of his sons. If Mum had been dead when he set it up, I would have been totally excluded and now, I would be destitute. Remember that he even tried to cut me out of the trust a few years ago and destitution would have been what I would endure. What I am suffering from now is little different.

I think that maybe the change came when I started to have epileptic fits. He did say to my cousin that I was “imperfect”. Yes, I am indeed imperfect but not only has my imperfection been caused by the after effects of the brain tumour operation but also because of my very poor mental health, caused solely by him and his cronies.