This continues my true reflections
I hated bed times at out house. When my mum went out with her friends it was always worse but David and I knew not to tell...
We were always put in our pyjamas immediately after tea. This was unless it was a nice evening when we would be allowed out in the garden to play. Most times it was either too cold or too wet or too dark!
When it was rime for David to go upstairs father sent him to do his teeth, use the bathroom and called after him that ''he had better be in bed by the time he got upstairs''
I was given a bbok to read while father went up to see to david. Usually a few minutse later I began to hear sobbing and then cries. David cried a lot when father went to ''tuck him into bed''.
I waited downstairs getting worried. I felt sorry for David, he was only little and only just six years old when Mr Jones became our new father. I aslo worried that father would be mad at me when he came down. After a while the crying from David's room became quiet, signalling the return of father.
Father sat in his chair and told me to come to him. I wlaked over, the routine was usually the same. I stood in front of father and he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around with my back to him. I felt his hands reach into the waistband of my pyjama trousers and he eased them down to the carpet.
''Step out of your pyjamas'' he would say.
He told me to get my reading book and seconds later I was sitting on his lap wearing only my pyjama tops reading him a passage from the book.
If I was lucky I would be allowed to finish reading and be sent to bed. I waited in bed for father to come up but often he did not bother. Sometimes I could still hear David sobbing in his bed in the room next to mine, as the doors were always kept open so that father could hear if we were misbehaving.
Shortly after he moved in our father got angry when David wet his bed. He announced that ''the boy must learn self-control'' to my mum and that meant hard smacks when David did wet himself. Father said that David must ask to use the bathroom from then onwards. He made David wait for a few minutes before being allowed into the bathroom. If he had an accident David received a hard smacking and had to stand in the corner of his room for a long time.
Father also gave him this test where he had to drink a lot of water and remain in the corner. After a while David needed to go but father said to him ''you will wait until I say you may go''.
Sometimes he could not help it and wet himself in the corner. After he was cleaned up he was put over the kneee and smacked hard until his bottom was red. I saw this happen and David also saw me spanked with the slipper and the cane over the years. I hated it when David was in the room and father ordered me to take my pants off. If I took them off too quickly he would tell me to pull them up again and ''remove them more slowly next time....six extra smacks for going too fast you naughty boy''.
David and I formed a sort of bond over this time but there was nothing I could do to help him from fathers cruel training.