Disclaimer- Anything you recognise doesn't belong to me. All credit goes to the wonderful Michael Morpurgo
This takes place before WW1
Albert
He's home again. Shouting. I wouldn't want to be in the house with him right now. Mind you, I never want to be in the house with him. That's why I spend so much time out here with Joey and Zoë.
I can hear him shouting still. In one of his violent moods, I guess. But his voice is slurring. Drunk, again. What a surprise.
He doesn't care. Just doesn't care what his drinking does to him, me, mother, the farm, the animals, any of it. He just doesn't care. Mother says it is because he was in the war and he is worried about the mortgage and the fact that we are losing money and 'blady blady bla'. But it is stupid. If you're stuck in a desert with one bucket of water, you're not going to pour it away because you're worried you might die of dehydration. Any sane person knows that that is counter-productive and frankly stupid. But that's just what he's doing. It's an endless cycle. No money so he worries so he drinks so we have no money so he drinks and so on. I just wish that for once in his life he would actually think before going out and getting drunk.
He doesn't care about the animals either, he works them hard to get money out of stupid bets he makes when he's intoxicated. He nearly hit Joey once. And I know that he has hit Zoë on more than one occasion. He gets so violent. Mother tries to calm him down but 90% of the time, he doesn't listen and just shouts more. I can hear his voice rising now. I can almost see him, gripping the table with his podgy hands to stop himself from falling over. Then getting angry at the world because he's drunk. He can just get so aggressive sometimes.
He apparently cares for my mother and the farm. But I know that he doesn't care about me. He has the cheek to try to stop me from doing what I enjoy, to try to stop me from ringing the bells on Sunday and spending my spare time with Joey. It's so unfair though. The other boys in my class do not work half as hard on their farms as I do. They do not do most of the work on their farms. No, their fathers do it. However, mine has far too bad a hangover to do any of the work so he expects me to do it. He treats me like dirt. I do not know why I just do not climb on Joey and leave this place.
Well, I do. Mother. Mother would never leave him. No matter what he does, she still sticks up for him, spewing all that 'he does care he's just worried. He's had a hard time' nonsense. I stay because of her. But I also stay to see if she is right. To see if my father does actually care.
But I am staying for a hopeless case.
(A/N) Next chapter- Ted