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And calamity it was! Sonny arrived in the most appalling hullabaloo—even that much he couldn’t do without a fuss—and from the first moment I disliked him. He was a difficult child—so far as I was concerned he was always difficult—and demanded far too much attention. Mother was simply silly about him, and couldn’t see when he was only showing off. As company he was worse than useless. He slept all day, and I had to go round the house on tiptoe to avoid waking him. It wasn’t any longer a question of not waking Father. The slogan now was “Don’t-wake-Sonny! I couldn’t understand why the child wouldn’t sleep at the proper time, so whenever Mother’s back was turned I woke him. Sometimes to keep him awake I pinched him as well. Mother caught me at it one day and gave me a most unmerciful flaking.

One evening, when Father was coming in from work, I was playing trains in the front garden. I let on not to notice him; instead I pretended to be talking to myself, and said in a loud voice: “If another bloody baby comes into this house, I’m going out. “

Father stopped dead and looked at me over his shoulder.

“What’s that you said?” he asked sternly.

I was only talking to myself,” I replied, trying to conceal my panic. “It’s private. “

He turned and went in without a word. Mind you, I intended it as a solemn warning, but its effect was quite different. Father started being quite nice to me. I could understand that, of course. Mother was quite sickening about Sonny. Even at mealtimes she’d get up and gawk at him in the cradle with an idiotic smile, and tell Father to do the same. He was always polite about it, but he looked so puzzled you could see he didn’t know what she was talking about. He complained of the way Sonny cried at night, but she only got cross and said that Sonny never cried except when there was something up with him—which was a flaming lie, because Sonny never had anything up with him, and only cried for attention. It was really painful to see how simple-minded she was. Father wasn’t attractive, but he had a fine intelligence. He saw through Sonny, and now he knew that I saw through him as well.

One night I woke with a start. There was someone beside me in bed. For one wild moment I felt sure it must be Mother, having come to her senses and left Father for good, but then I heard Sonny in convulsions in the next room, and Mother saying: “There! There! There!” and I knew it wasn’t she. It was Father. He was lying beside me, wide awake, breathing hard and apparently as mad as hell.

After a while it came to me what he was mad about. It was his turn now. After turning me out of the big bed, he had been turned out himself. Mother had no consideration now for anyone but that poisonous pup, Sonny. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself, and even at that age I was magnanimous. I began to stroke him down and say: “There! There!” He wasn’t exactly responsive.

“Aren’t you asleep either?” he snarled.

“Ah, come on and put your arm around us, can’t you?” I said, and he did, in a sort of way. Gingerly, I suppose, is how you’d d
escribe it. He was very bony but better than nothing.

At Christmas he went out of his way to buy me a really nice model railway.