Don't You Love Your Daddy? (20 page)

More insults were hurled, and then I overheard her saying that she didn’t see why he had to take me. But on that decision my father was adamant. ‘She’s coming with me. Her grandmother will expect to see her there. So you sort out something suitable for her to wear, do you hear me?’

So, it was just my father and I who set off a few days later for my grandmother’s house. We were both silent on the long journey. He was lost in his thoughts but I, alone with him for the first time since his marriage, felt uneasy. I knew I should say something if only to tell him I was sorry my grandfather was dead, but his forbidding expression halted any thought of trying to engage him in conversation.

When we arrived, the house was already full of my aunts and uncles. My grandmother, a small shrunken figure dressed head to toe in black, suddenly looked old and frail. Her eyes, magnified behind her glasses, had once lit her face, but were now sad and unfocused. I wanted to run to her and throw my arms around her, but her grief formed a hidden barrier and stopped me. Instead, I hung back behind my aunt, who was trying hard not to cry – being brave for her mother’s sake.

When the hearse and the large black cars that were to take us to the church arrived, my vulnerable grandmother stood and took my father’s arm, clung to it for support as if the grief had sucked away all her strength. With her arm through his and his large gloved hand covering hers, they walked out of the house together. We all followed to where the funeral cars were waiting.

It was only when she led the way into the cold unheated church that I saw her brush aside his arm. She took a deep breath, pulled herself upright, then moved forward with her head erect and a small smile of greeting for the people who were turning to acknowledge her.

The only sound I could hear as we went to our seats at the front was the shuffling of feet and the rustling of the order of service sheets that were being handed out at the door. I looked around and saw family, friends, neighbours and many old men wearing medals, who had served in the war with my grandfather. Some came in pairs, others walked in alone, and one by one they went first to pay their respects to my grandmother. Grey heads bent to hers, soft words of sympathy were spoken and all the time she stood by the pew, thanking them for coming despite the bitterly cold weather and the treacherous icy roads.

My eyes were transfixed by the flower-covered coffin near the pulpit, and I pictured my grandfather lying asleep inside it. Every pew was full by the time our vicar indicated that the service was about to begin, and after his opening words, the choir led the congregation as the organ played and we all stood up. The church rang with the clear notes of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’. I saw my grandmother’s head rise and watched the tears that trickled down her cheeks. Then her lips started to move as she joined in, the words of my grandfather’s favourite psalm comforting her.

‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord …’ The words floated over my head, as did the short sermon.

My aunt held a wet hanky to her face for nearly the whole of the service, but once the first hymn had been sung, my grandmother was stoically dry-eyed. My father was called upon by the minister to read a short passage from the Bible and speak about his father, as was my grandfather’s closest friend of many years.

It was my father and his brothers who rolled the casket on casters down the aisle, then carried it on their shoulders back to the hearse.

We drove in convoy to the cemetery on the outskirts of town; the one where my mother was buried. I stood near my grandmother and bowed my head as the minister intoned the committal prayer: ‘It has pleased Almighty God to take from this world the soul of David East here departed,’ and as he uttered the final words, ‘We now commit his body to the ground,’ the coffin was lowered into the deep rectangular space that had been dug for it.

‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ rang in my ears, as my grandmother and her sons threw small handfuls of earth on to the coffin. Then it was over and my grandmother took my father’s arm again and walked painfully away from the new grave, in which her husband of many years now lay.

The women in the village had arranged to use the church hall to provide refreshments. Many of my grandfather’s friends from his war days had travelled for miles to attend the funeral and my grandparents’ house was just not big enough for all of them to gather there. We went to the hall from the cemetery to find that tea, cakes and sandwiches had been laid out. Everyone stood around in groups, remembering my grandfather and reminiscing about his life and how they had all met. I went to Nana’s side and she took my hand.

Even though I had never been as close to the taciturn old man as I was to my grandmother, I felt tears come to my eyes: this was another death, which meant I would never see the person again.

She pulled me closer to her. ‘He didn’t suffer, Sally,’ she said. ‘It was very quick.’

I thought then that he might be in the magic place with my mother. ‘But he can see us, can’t he?’ I asked, and she smiled; a smile that momentarily chased the sadness from her eyes.

‘Yes, Sally,’ she said, ‘he can,’ and I knew she remembered the story my mother had told me.

Pete came over to us – he had grown into a man in just the few months since we had last met. Once he and Nana had said a few words, he asked me how I liked the new house, but all I could think of was how much I missed my father’s family. ‘It’s nice, Pete – well, it’s all right, I suppose,’ was all I could bring myself to say.

Something made me keep quiet about Sue and my father’s row. In her face that morning I had recognized a look I had seen on my stepmother’s face, one in which the confidence had slipped. It was that of a woman in love with her husband but no longer certain of him. I felt a surprising wave of pity for her. It was destined to be short-lived.

My father and I stayed until every guest had left, then returned with my grandmother to her house. I heard him promise he would be back in a week to see her.

It was early evening when we left and, tired by the emotion of the day, and made sleepy by the sudden warmth from the car’s heater, which was on full blast, I fell into a doze on the seat beside him. I felt the car start to bump along and heard the note of the engine change. I opened my eyes to see that we had driven off the main road and turned down a rutted narrow lane. It led us through an area thick with trees and bushes. Tractors had cleared the snow from the road but I could see, by the light of the headlamps, that the verges were still thick with snow that was undisturbed, except for the tiny prints of birds’ and other small creatures’ feet. My father drove deeper into the wooded area, which the thick foliage had sheltered from the worst of the snowfall.

Briars and brambles choked the narrow path he took, and on either side of us the slender trunks of tall spruce trees had grown so close that it became darker and darker as the night closed in. We reached a small clearing and my father turned off the engine and the headlights, leaving us sitting in an eerie gloom.

He put on the interior light and its thin yellow glow threw shadows on his face. It was a silent dark world and the windows misted over quickly with our breath.

‘I used to come here when I was a boy,’ my father said. ‘It’s been a long day and I’m going to rest for a bit, but I’ve got to take a pee first, though.’ He opened the car door and climbed out.

I watched as he walked a few yards away and heard a stream of urine hitting the bushes. Afterwards his back remained turned to me but I could see the red tip of a cigarette glowing in the dark. His hand went to his mouth and faintly, against the gloom, I saw the white plume of smoke curling up and swirling around his head. During the time it took for him to smoke it, his face remained hidden. When he took the last drag he threw it on the ground and slowly flattened it beneath his shoe before walking back towards me.

His face in the shadows was just a pale blur that gradually came closer until he climbed back into the car. I looked at him enquiringly and saw his eyes were dark holes, devoid of expression that, I thought then, were not looking at but through me. A knot of apprehension formed in my stomach. I knew instinctively that the months during which he had not touched me had ended, and whatever he had made me do before, this time, in this dark and desolate place, it was going to be worse.

‘Get in the back, Sally,’ he ordered me.

I shook my head, but even as I did so I knew it was a pointless gesture. At only eight, I was no match for him.

He made no response to the pleas and tears that came later. Instead he got out of the car again, reached across the driver’s seat, grabbed my arm and, with one quick movement, pulled me out of the car and threw me face down on the long back seat. He did not utter a word as he pulled my legs until they dangled over the seat with my feet nearly touching the ground. Nor did he speak when he yanked down my knickers and woolly tights before forcing my legs apart.

I shivered as the chill of approaching night touched my bare skin. I could hear his breath rasping and my own feeble pleas – ‘No! Please, Daddy, no’ – but still he was silent.

I felt his hands going under my buttocks, felt the hard thing pressing against me, and heard him spit on his finger before he pushed it into me.

‘You’re ready for it now,’ he said, the first words he had spoken since he had come back to the car.

It was then that my father raped me. In that cold forest where the light from the rising bone-white moon danced between the leaves and threw spots of light down on us.

I could smell him and the leather of the seat as my cheek pressed into it. I felt the cold air on my legs, but most of all I could feel him as he thrust into me. The rough fabric of his trousers rubbed against my legs and I heard his grunts and the creak of the car as it moved with him.

And with each thrust, each groan, each sigh and each creak, I felt the soul of my childhood shrivel and die. With it went the seeds that good nurturing sows and parental love makes grow; the seeds of conscience, kindness and the ability to love selflessly. Those seeds left me, along with my belief that adults are there to protect children. In their place there was just a space filled with need: the need for praise, the need for acceptance and the need to be loved, but the capability of returning love was gone.

That night it was not just my childhood that my father killed: he also destroyed the woman I could have become.

I can’t remember what he said to me that time but I can vividly recall his words on the many other nights when he raped me. I have no reason to doubt that his words then would have been the same. Each time that he forced himself on me, they seldom varied: ‘That was nice, wasn’t it, Sally?’ Hearing him, I would always shake my head, for in the early days, his actions rendered me incapable of speech. But my show of denial only earned me his laughter; laughter that contained no mirth.

‘I know you wanted me to do that, Sally,’ he would say. ‘I‘ve seen you watching me with those big cat’s eyes of yours.’

How could I tell him that what I kept looking for was the old daddy? The one who I still wanted to see. It was his love I yearned for when, thinking I was unobserved, I searched his face for a smile; the one that was just for me.

I can remember all those times so clearly: the lingering memories never let me forget them. At night they visit me in my dreams until I force myself awake. Then, angrily, I wipe away the tears of a small child that dampen the face of the middle-aged woman I now am. The dreams of more than thirty years later still won’t let me forget those evening halts in wooded areas and later, when Sue recommenced her girls’ nights out, his visits to my pink-and-white bedroom.

I can still feel the contempt and anger he showed me, but what I cannot remember is the pain. It must have been such a searing pain that tore through my body and entered every part of me that I would have been shaking with it long after the deed was finished. But while I can see my childhood self sobbing, as slime and blood trickled down my cold legs, I can’t remember it.

Oh, I can still feel the sense of violation as he entered me, almost feel his shudders as those acts ended in his groaning climaxes, and behind closed lids see, once my periods had started, the pale used condoms left on bushes or in long grass. But there’s a space where that other memory should be. Perhaps, finding it unbearable, I pushed it into another part of my mind. There, my dark memory slid it into a tiny box and, in my fear that one day it might escape, I slammed the lid shut, then buried it deep under other thoughts.

Every time it was over he would put his arm around my shoulders and pull me against him. That one act of tenderness turned him, my violator, into my comforter. Then the voice of the man, who as a small child I had loved, would fill my ears. As sobs shook my body, tears were wiped away and his hand stroked my back as he soothed me.

‘Shush, Sally, shush,’ he would murmur, until my cries subsided. ‘This is what daddies do to little girls they love. It’s teaching them to become women. Stop crying. You’re a big girl now.’ But once I had stopped, his voice would change and its flat, scornful tones showed his contempt for me. Then he would push me away.

‘Anyhow, I know you wanted it,’ was one of his often repeated accusations.

‘I didn’t,’ I would gasp.

‘Well, you’ll soon learn to like it,’ he told me firmly.

I knew I wouldn’t. But each time it happened I still leant against him when his hand stroked me and his voice whispered those soothing words.