Don't You Love Your Daddy? (14 page)

I knew that the other children were turning around in their seats and staring at me, but I was too frightened by what was happening to care. Through my fear I heard the impatient voice of the teacher: ‘Sally, what do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, but I could only stare imploringly at her. ‘Stop holding your breath, child!’ But I couldn’t.

My hands flew to my neck, my chest heaved and my forehead dampened with beads of moisture. There was a rush of footsteps as the teacher’s look of irritation changed to one of worry when she saw that I was frantically struggling for air. ‘Go and get the teacher in the next classroom,’ I heard her say to one of the children, and knew by her tone that she was frightened too.

More running footsteps and then the authoritative voice of the headmistress penetrated my panic. ‘She’s having an asthma attack! Can’t you see her lips are turning blue?’ Other words like ‘ambulance’ and ‘hospital’ floated around me.

An arm went around my shoulders and a paper bag was held over my mouth and nose. ‘Try breathing into this, Sally – it will help.’ Still I struggled. Black dots danced in front of my eyes and, terrified, I grasped her hand tightly.

I heard the muttering of my classmates’ voices as they were ushered out of the room. Then there was just the sound of my wheezing and the headmistress’s voice, trying to calm me. She kept talking slowly, explained that I was having an asthma attack and to keep trying to breathe into the bag; that an ambulance was on its way, that I was going to be all right and she was coming to the hospital with me. ‘Mr Peterson,’ she said – he was one of the teachers – , ‘has gone with his car to get your grandmother and he’s going to take her directly to the hospital so she will be there almost as soon as you are.’ At that I felt a little reassured.

The ambulance seemed to take a long time to come, but in actual fact it was probably only a few minutes before, siren shrieking, it drew up at the school. Then a man’s voice was telling me that they were going to put a mask over my nose and mouth, that I was not to be frightened of it as there was air inside, which would help me breathe. ‘It’s just your chest muscles tightening. I know it’s very frightening but the mask will help you get oxygen. I know you can’t speak, Sally, but just try and nod if you understand me.’ Comforted by his voice I did as he asked. The mask was placed over my face and almost immediately I felt the relief as pure air reached my constricted lungs.

I was picked up, gently placed on a stretcher and covered with a blanket. Then I heard the same man telling me that I was going for a short journey. The stretcher was lifted and the next thing I knew I was being placed in the ambulance. My headmistress climbed in and held my hand as we sped off.

The panic I had experienced took its toll and I was barely conscious when the stretcher was wheeled into the casualty department. There was a needle prick and a cool hand brushing my hair off my face when I was lifted from the stretcher on to a bed and the mask was returned to cover my face. The headmistress, no longer the stern woman I knew, was still holding my hand and talked soothingly to me, assuring me that my grandmother was on her way.

When a worried Nana bustled into the ward she was accompanied by the ward sister, who had explained the situation. I saw the concern on her face that, despite her attempt at a smile, she couldn’t hide. ‘Well, you certainly gave everyone a scare, Sally,’ she said, as she leant over me. ‘But you’re going to be all right now.’ I felt both nauseous and sleepy when the sister removed the mask from my face. I smiled weakly at Nana but really just wanted to shut my eyes, curl up and sleep and for everyone to leave me alone.

‘The sister says you’re going to stay here just for a night, Sally, to make sure you’re all right, and then I’ll come and fetch you and take you home,’ my grandmother told me, before my eyes fluttered shut and I drifted off.

Later, after I had been woken up by a nurse bringing me a tray of food, a doctor came to see me. He asked me how I was feeling and put his fingers on my wrist to take my pulse. Then he placed his stethoscope against my chest to listen to my lungs and heartbeat. ‘I know an asthma attack like that is frightening, Sally,’ he said, ‘but the nurse will show you what to do if it happens again. It’s nothing to worry about.’

I heard the nurse quietly tell him that my mother had died recently.

‘Poor little thing,’ the doctor said. ‘No wonder she’s developed asthma.’

My grandmother also mentioned the eczema that, although much better since my aunt had got me new medication, still plagued me on occasions. ‘Well, children who are prone to that often also develop asthma. Many grow out of them when they reach adulthood,’ he told her.

The next day it was the nurse I had seen when I came in who sat on the end of my bed and showed me how to use an inhaler. ‘It was an asthma attack that you had, Sally. Do you know what that is?’ I had heard the word so many times over the last twenty-four hours but I still didn’t really know what it meant.

Seeing from my face that I didn’t understand what had happened to me, she explained as simply as possible: ‘Sometimes it can happen if you’re worried about something or if the weather is damp. Your chest muscles tighten and you can’t suck enough air in to breathe properly. So, was anything especially troubling you yesterday?’

‘I was worried about the spelling test,’ I admitted.

She laughed. ‘Well, try not to in future – you don’t want to have an attack every time you get something wrong at school, do you?’ She showed me how to place the inhaler between my lips and breathe in as I pressed it. ‘Just a couple of good puffs, Sally,’ she told me. ‘You have to be careful with how much you use it,’ she explained, ‘so until you’re a little bit older your school will have one and so will your father and your grandmother. We want to make sure you know how to use it before you have your own.’

She was not to know that by handing over the power of when the inhaler could be used she had placed another weapon in my father’s arsenal; one more that, over the years, he would use mercilessly. Sports, gym and all team games at school ceased. At breaks and playtimes I had to stay in the classroom.

‘She’s delicate! Hope she’s not taking after her mother,’ I heard my unmarried aunt say.

My brother diligently walked me to school each morning and my nana started collecting me from school again and made me walk straight home. Playing with other children came to an end as the family tried to protect me from anything that would lead to another attack.

There were discussions on what had brought it on but my father seemed to give no thought to those weekend nights. Neither did anyone think to put out their cigarettes when they were near me. And, of course, no one knew of the fear that had become my constant companion.

At seven I remained extremely confused about my feelings for my father. In my head he became two entirely different men: one I still loved and one I feared. There was the old father with twinkling eyes and the smile I had thought was just for me; I seldom saw that man, and he was the one I missed. Then there was the nasty father who, especially since my mother’s death, I wished would disappear. He was the one who was angry with me most of the time and on Friday nights came to my room and did things to me that I hated.

When we were alone, whether it was during the daytime or in the evenings when Pete was out or in his room, he avoided my eyes, and if I spoke to him he answered briefly, if at all.

‘What do you want now?’ was his standard reply to my trying to get his attention. What I wanted was to feel loved. But that was something I found impossible to put into words. I would search his face for some sign of warmth, some small hint that he cared for me. I needed just a glimmer of hope that he still loved me.

‘What are you looking at, Sally?’ he would ask, when he felt my gaze on him. Those words were, I knew, a rebuke, not a question. Sometimes he would lower the paper he was reading and look at me over the top. ‘What’s going on in that head of yours? Having dirty thoughts, are you?’ and when I shook my head, embarrassed, he would give a short mirthless laugh. ‘I don’t believe you. I can see it in those cat eyes of yours. You look just like your mother.’ Then he would resume reading.

I wanted to talk about my mother, but apart from using her name to admonish me, he never mentioned her. On a few occasions, when I had forgotten that he didn’t want to hear her name and talked about her, he had lashed out at me.

‘Daddy says I look like Mummy,’ I said to my grandmother.

Thinking that my father had paid me a compliment, she looked pleased. ‘Well, you have her hair and eyes.’

‘He doesn’t like it. It makes him cross,’ I told her, hoping to gain some understanding of why he had changed towards me, but where her son was concerned my grandmother was blind to any faults.

My grandmother sighed. ‘No, Sally, it just makes him sad. He misses her.’

But I didn’t believe her. If he missed her, he would have kept her pictures. If he had loved her, he would still love me, I thought sadly.

Within just a few months of my mother’s death my grandmother started babysitting on Saturdays as well as Fridays. On the Saturday nights my father often stayed out and didn’t return until it was time to leave for church.

‘Where’s he off to, then?’ asked Pete, when he saw my father had left the house carrying a small holdall.

‘None of your business,’ said my grandmother, but not unkindly. ‘He has to have friends. He needs to have a life outside the house and you children, you know.’

Pete said nothing more to her but I could tell he was angry about my father’s regular weekend outings.

‘He’s seeing someone, Sally, I know it,’ he said one morning, when we were walking to school. ‘I bet he was seeing her even when Mum was alive.’

‘What makes you think so?’ I asked. I didn’t want to think of my father being with a woman who wasn’t my mother.

‘Well, that was what some of their rows were about. They weren’t just about her drinking, you know. I heard her saying he had come home stinking of another woman’s perfume. So where do you think he disappears to on a Saturday night when Nana sleeps over?’

I waited for him to tell me more and, irritated by my silence, he moodily kicked at a stone.

‘Anyhow, have you seen how he gets all dressed up like the dog’s dinner? He wouldn’t do that just to go to the pub with his mates, now, would he? He splashes on enough of that new aftershave too. Naw, I know he’s seeing someone, all right.’

I wondered then if the things he did with me he also did with the mystery woman. He had told me it was what men did to girls they loved. The thought of that made me feel uneasy, too.

‘Pete says Daddy has a girlfriend,’ I told my grandmother.

‘Well, Sally, whether he has or hasn’t, that’s grown-up business,’ was her reply. But I noticed she didn’t say it was untrue. I watched him more closely on those Saturday nights. I noticed he had bought a new suit and that a whiff of aftershave remained in the room even after he had left it. I knew from looking in the bathroom that his shaving kit and toothbrush had disappeared and guessed they were packed into his holdall. And I knew that my brother was right: he didn’t come back on those nights.

And I wondered what she was like.

Nearly a year after my mother had died my father sat Pete and me down and told us he was planning to remarry and that he was bringing his fiancée home to meet us.

Pete went pale as he stared at my father in complete disbelief. ‘No way!’ he yelled. ‘I’m not living in this house if you bring her back here. We haven’t even put the headstone up on Mum’s grave yet and you’re talking about bringing another woman here to replace her.’

‘Sally and Billy need a mother,’ my father retorted, paying no attention to the anger and pain on his elder son’s face.

Pete glared at him, and the room was thick with the open hostility that hovered between them. ‘And you couldn’t wait, could you?’ Pete spat. ‘So, who is she, anyhow?’

My father tried to tell him with a mixture of justifications and protests that he had met her where he worked. That she was the daughter of his boss – and ‘No,’ he replied, to Pete’s furious accusations, he had never taken her out when our mother was still alive.

‘So how old is she, then? Your boss is only a bit older than you!’ he said, with something approaching a sneer.

‘Not that it’s any of your business, she’s twenty-four,’ my father replied defiantly.

Pete snorted. ‘Twenty-four! Well, I don’t need a new mum who’s only seven years older than me! Anyhow, I’m leaving here – I’ve got a job lined up, so don’t include me in any of your pathetic arrangements.’ And, with that parting shot, he bolted from the room and I heard the back door slam as he left the house.

‘You’ll like her, Sally, she’s nice,’ he said to me, ‘and you’d like a new mummy, wouldn’t you?’

But I still missed the mother I had lost a year earlier and, unable to think of a suitable reply, I looked at him dolefully trying to understand the true meaning of his words and Pete’s response. What did he mean, ‘a new mummy’? ‘I don’t know,’ I replied.

‘Well, you’re going to get one, and that’s that,’ was all he said.

A week later he told us we were going to meet her because he was bringing her to the house for tea. ‘Her name is Sue,’ he added. ‘Auntie Sue to you, Sally. I want you to be nice to her.’ He flashed me one of his old smiles.