Saturday night and Sunday morning. Harry Leslie Smith on witnessing habitual violence against his mother by an intimate partner.

Hello everyone:

It’s hard to believe we have come this far as to reach Chapter 18 of my dad’s unpublished The Green And Pleasant Land. Harry Leslie Smith was born on the 25th of this month in 1923. What a span of history he lived through during his 95 years of life. I am glad he died when he did. Six years ago, we had a chance to pull back from the brink and choose not to go into the darkness of fascism. What we are living now will only get worse and it will take more than a generation to change. This Green and Pleasant Land Project that will be completed and ready for a publisher in May is a fantastic testament- not only to him- but every working class person from the Great Depression, who made it loud and clear after WW2- that they weren’t prepared to live short lived lives of misery to ensure the entailed maintained their wealth.

Your support keeping my dad’s legacy going and me alive is greatly appreciated. So if you can please subscribe and if you can’t it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury.

The photo below is of Bill Moxon and Harry Leslie Smith’s mother in later years when all their passion had been dissipated by age and the creation of the Welfare State which made their burdens less.

Chapter 18.

I hated most during those Sowerby Bridge years the hours after school and work were done, but sleep wasn't ready to steal me away from the company of my mother and Bill. Our existence in Sowerby Bridge had made Mum and Bill no better than two enraged scorpions stuck in a sealed bottle, who fought an endless battle to the death.

Weekends were the worst because my mother and Bill drank to forget how little control they had over their lives. They had no money and little prospect for a better future because both were almost forty, which in working-class years was almost washed up.

During 1932, Bill became more resentful about his relationship with my mother, who in turn became more resentful that she was dependent on a man who didn't want to be with her.

Naturally, things between my mother and Bill always became- worse on weekends because they attempted to forget the loathsomeness of reality by visiting the pub.

My sister called Weekends in Sowerby Bridge "The Bill and Lillian Show," because there was high drama, lots of shouting and broken crockery before and after they visited the village pub.

From Friday tea time- to Sunday bedtime, they verbally vomited forth their distrust and paranoia about each other. Bill’s general lament was to accuse my mother of entrapping him with bastard children.

“You caught me, Lil, with lies, a mountain of lies, nothing but rubbish from yer gob. You and your useless children are nowt but trouble for me.”

 Plates were smashed, glasses tossed, and drawers emptied of their contents. Many Saturday and Sunday mornings, Alberta and I surveyed a kitchen of broken glass, up-turned chairs, and shattered dreams and hopes. Our cement kitchen floor resembled a beach after a tempest tossed a ship and broke its spine, spilling its contents into the tide to wash up on shore.

 Within time, Bill and my mother destroyed or damaged every cup, saucer, and glass in their mutual war of attrition. We were left to drink from empty jam jars as we had no money to replace the broken crockery.

Their verbal and emotional violence against each other frightened both me and my sister. We knew our little lives were hostage to their regrets, their drunkenness, and their violence to themselves. For us children, it was like being forever in a trench, suffering heavy bombardment from enemy guns. Silence moved to shrill voices, tears to accusations, love to vitriol, and contempt.

While Bill and my mother fought each other, my sister and I tended to our little brother, whose first years were nurtured by us- who were also just children.

Bill and Mum stormed and fumed at each other from weekend to weekend and from season to season.

Then, one weekend, their yelling and threats against each other crossed over an unmarked border that separated verbal abuse from physical assault. After an evening of pouring the little money they had- away in a narrow, smoky pub in Sowerby Bridge- they came home with a stomach full of beer and resentment that exploded into a vicious confrontation.

My sister and I were jarred from sleep when Bill hollered profanities at our mother. Then we heard our mother scream in pain because Bill had started to beat her with his fists. Alberta and I fell over ourselves- to get downstairs and protect our mother from Bill.

Downstairs, we found Mum on the ground being kicked by Bill. My sister and I pounced onto Bill Moxon’s back. Our young fists beat his back. We pulled his hair and bit his shoulder. Bill yelled for us to get off him or else he would start clobbering us. We didn't stop even when he began to hit us while we rode on his back.

We held onto his back and shoulders until Mum escaped his boot kicking her in the face. Moments later, Mum was up and on her feet. Her eyes were blackened, and blood dripped from her lips.

“That’s enough, Bill. Alberta, Harry, get off him. Stop this now.”

We did. Then both my sister and I began to cry. Emotionally, I may as well have been the bits of crockery shattered and unrecognizable on the floor.  I was busted up inside from violence, the lack of stability in my life and the ugliness of people who were forced to live hopeless lives.

I wept because I still remembered a better time, before the famine, before the economy collapsed, and our father was sacrificed.

The morning following the attack on Mum, Bill greeted us unshaven and hung-over, even contrite. But his shame over physically harming Mum never lasted longer than the time it took to get from Sunday to Friday night. Hitting Mum became as routine to Bill  as his bathing in a tin tub every Saturday morning. 

Thanks for reading and supporting my substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John

The photo above is where the farmer who rented Harry’s mother the outbuilding to live in during 1932 resided. The outbuilding is no more.