Don’t Tell Mummy (17 page)

I did as he commanded.

‘And don’t be leaving your bedroom untidy, do you hear
me Antoinette?’ His voice continued to mock me from the bottom of the stairs, and I sat on the edge of my bed till his breathing told me he’d gone to sleep.

G
ripped by inertia, feeling as if my inner strength had abandoned me since my beating, I tried to avoid my parents as much as possible. I had my Saturday job and my visits to my grandparents, which he could not deny me. But requests to see my friends in Portrush were now frequently refused, and the rides on my bicycle, which had always calmed me in the past, were now strictly monitored. A strange atmosphere pervaded the house and my father’s unpredictable temper, which had so often turned to rage, seemed to have transformed into something even darker. Often I could feel his gaze on me, partly an expression that I knew, but behind it another unfamiliar one lurked, filling me with fear.

One day, when I had been on the school summer holidays for a week, my mother was getting ready to leave for work. I knew my father had returned to the house earlier and was in bed. From my bedroom, just across the landing from theirs, I’d heard him first enter the bathroom, urinate without closing the door, and then pad noisily back into their bedroom. When I heard the click of the door closing, which announced my mother’s departure, I crept downstairs. As quietly as I could I lit the stove to boil water for my
morning wash and tea, then lit the grill to make myself a slice of toast. Then his voice roared down the stairs.

‘Antoinette, get yourself up here.’

I felt panic rise in me as I went up, standing mutely at his door.

‘Make me some tea and bring it up.’

I turned to go. ‘I’ve not finished with you yet my girl.’

A lump rose in my throat, threatening to choke me, making words impossible as I turned to look at him and met his mocking gaze. He smiled humourlessly at me.

‘You can bring me some toast as well.’

Robot-like, I made his tea and toast. Placing it on a tray I carried it up to him. Pushing aside the overflowing ashtray and packet of cigarettes, I placed the tray on the small bedside table and prayed that was all he wanted, knowing it wasn’t going to be.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw with a feeling of revulsion his pale freckled chest, the now greying hair poking out above his grubby vest, and smelt his sour body odour, which mingled with the stale smell of tobacco that lingered in the room. Then I felt his excitement.

‘Take your clothes off, Antoinette. I’ve a present for you. Take them all off, and do it slowly.’

I turned to look at him. He’d never asked for that before. His eyes mocked and defiled me.

‘Antoinette, I’m speaking to you, take them off here,’ he repeated between noisy slurps of tea.

Suddenly he was out of bed, clad only in his grubby vest with his erection standing out from under the fold of his paunchy stomach. Seeing I was reluctantly doing as he told me he smiled, came closer to me and gave me a stinging slap across my buttocks.

‘Hurry up now,’ he whispered.

Still holding my gaze, while I stood like a rabbit caught in the glare of sudden light, my clothes in a heap on the floor, feeling an overwhelming urge to run but having neither the willpower nor a place to run to, he picked up his jacket, taking a small packet out of his pocket, just like all the others I had seen before. He opened it, took out the small balloon-like object and eased it over his swollen member. For a few seconds he grasped my hand, holding it as he eased the condom on, then forcing my unyielding fingers to move up and down until it was firmly in place.

Suddenly he released me, took my shoulders in a firm grasp and threw me on the bed with so much violence that it caused the mattress to bounce and squeak on its old spiral springs. He seized my legs, pulled them apart and high and entered me with a force that ripped into my body and penetrated the whole of my inside with a searing pain. The muscles of my inner thighs stretched as again and again he plunged into me. His calloused hands grasped my breasts, which of late had become uncomfortably sore, twisting my nipples with an anger that fuelled his excitement as he slobbered over my face and neck. I felt the bristles of his unshaven chin scrape my skin. I bit my lip to stop myself from giving him the satisfaction I knew he wanted of hearing me cry out. My whole body shook with his heaving as I clenched my fists, which lay by my side, and squeezed my eyes tightly shut to keep my tears in. His body shuddered as he reached satisfaction, and with a grunt he rolled off me.

Hurriedly I sat up. As I bent over to pick up my clothes I saw his shrivelled penis; hanging from the end was the
small grey-white blob of rubber. The lump in my throat rose and as I rushed to the toilet it turned into hot bile, burning my throat as it gushed in a torrent into the toilet. When I felt there was nothing left in my body to come up, and not wanting to wait for the saucepan to boil, I filled the basin with cold water.

Looking in the mirror I saw a pale face, with tear-filled eyes and red blotches on her chin and neck, staring despairingly back at me. Again and again I washed myself, but still his smell lingered on me until I believed it had become a permanent stain on my body.

The sound of his contented snores resounded from my parents’ room as I went downstairs, thinking that at least he would sleep for several hours, allowing me to make an escape from the house.

Opening the front door to the fresh air, I let Judy out. Sitting on the grass I put my arms around her neck, laid my cheek against her head and let my tears flow. Judy, sensing my despair, gave my face warm licks to show her love. It felt so unlike my father’s slobbering.

‘When,’ I asked myself hopelessly, ‘will this end?’

Unable to bear being anywhere near him, I took my bike, which only a short time before had filled me with such a sense of achievement when I had purchased it with my own money, and listlessly peddled away.

I cycled aimlessly, until fields replaced the streets of houses. Twice I had to dismount, leaving my bike by the verge as the bile rose in my throat again, causing me to retch and retch until the tears streamed down my face, even after the thin stream of yellow bile had dried up.

I sat in a field part of that day, a blank in my head where my mind should have been, until finally I wearily cycled
home to attend to the household chores before my mother returned from work.

I
was certain I was ill. Nausea seemed to have me in its grip every waking hour. On rising I would rush to the toilet, and vomit until there was nothing left inside me. During the nights my hair grew lank, soaked in perspiration from my head and neck. Beads of moisture would form on my forehead and upper lip whilst my whole body felt cold. There was a fear inside me, a feeling of impending doom as daily my body felt heavier and weaker. My breasts felt sore to touch, my stomach was rejecting food but appearing to swell from the lack of it. The waistband of my new trousers now dug into me, causing red welts to appear on my fair skin.

My mother’s anger became a constant, palpable presence whenever I was around her, while my father’s eyes seemed to follow my every move. In the evenings, when he was at work, an uneasy silence would descend until my mother finally admitted she knew I was ill.

‘Antoinette,’ she said as I sat trying to read, ‘take yourself to the doctor tomorrow.’

I looked up at her, hoping to see some concern, but I only saw an expressionless face, while in her eyes lurked an emotion I couldn’t name.

In the late 1950s, a phone call to a doctor’s surgery gained an instant appointment. My early morning call resulted in me waiting nervously in his waiting room at eleven o’clock. The nurse who ushered me in gave me a friendly smile, which when I left less than half an hour later had been replaced by a look of cold disdain.

The doctor on duty that day was not the elderly man I had met on several previous occasions, but a handsome young man with floppy blond hair and startling blue eyes. Introducing himself as a locum who was filling in for the family practitioner, he waved me towards a chair placed opposite him. A dark wood desk separated us, bare except for my slim medical file, which he opened, then glanced quickly inside.

‘What has brought you here today, Antoinette?’ he asked, as he gave me a bland, professional smile. The smile slowly left his face as I told him my symptoms. He asked me about my periods, when the last one had been and I tried to remember when I had asked my mother for sanitary towels. I had felt too ill to realize that three months had passed, nor would I have seen the importance of it.

‘Do you think you could be pregnant?’ was his next question.

‘No,’ I replied, without a moment’s hesitation.

The years had taught me how to gauge adults’ reactions, and underneath his professional manner I sensed something adverse as I shifted from being a teenage patient to someone he saw as a potential problem.

He told me to go behind the screen, undress from the waist down and cover myself with the sheet provided. As I did what he had asked I heard him call for his nurse to come in.

I lay, staring at the ceiling with my knees both raised and apart while he prodded inside me with his latex-gloved hand. A few minutes later he told me to dress. He drew off his glove and I heard him throw it into the bin. I noticed the look exchanged between the nurse and him as he quietly dismissed her.

For the second time he motioned me to sit but now his face was wearing a stern expression.

‘Do you know the facts of life?’ he asked, his voice cold.

Dismally, knowing what he was going to say next but still not accepting it, I answered. ‘Yes.’

‘You are three months pregnant,’ was all I heard through the clouds of my despair.

‘I can’t be, I’ve never slept with a boy,’ I blurted out in denial of what I knew to be true.

‘You must have slept with one,’ he retorted, impatient with what he perceived to be an obvious lie.

I gazed at him, hoping to see some hint of help but finding only the judgement he had now come to about me reflected in his eyes.

‘Only with my father,’ I finally replied.

A frozen silence descended on the room as the words of my secret hung in the air, spoken aloud for the first time ever.

‘Did he rape you?’ he asked with a sudden note of sympathy in his voice.

Hearing even a hint of kindness brought tears to my eyes. I mumbled through them, ‘Yes.’

‘Does your mother know?’

Now the tears were flowing but I managed to shake my head and mutter, ‘No.’

‘You must ask her to ring me,’ he told me as he passed some tissues over the desk. ‘I will have to talk to her.’

I was shaking as I rose on trembling legs and left the surgery. Outside, terror paralysed me. Where could I go? I wondered, not home. How could I go home? He was there. Through my terror a face floated into my mind, that of Isabel, my teacher who had given me sanctuary after the beating. She had left the school at the beginning of the summer holidays to get married but I knew she was back from her honeymoon now. She had helped me once – surely she would help me again?

Hurriedly I rode my bicycle to the nearest telephone box, where I found her new husband’s name and address in the directory. Not stopping to ring her, just praying that she would be at home, I cycled to the address.

Entering one of the new housing estates, which had sprung up over the previous few years, I quickly found where she lived. It was an imposing mock-Georgian house. I dismounted and leant my bicycle against the wall.

‘She will help me,’ I told myself. ‘She will let me stay here. She won’t send me back.’ The words were going through my mind like a mantra as I walked up the newly laid path, flanked either side by black soil scattered with the green dots of freshly sown grass.

Isabel opened the door to me with a surprised but not unwelcoming look, and I felt the tears that any show of kindness brought trickle unchecked down my cheeks. Quickly she ushered me inside and sat me down on an orange settee in her freshly painted brown and cream living room.

‘Antoinette, what’s wrong?’ she asked gently as she passed me a clean white handkerchief.

I trusted in her, so I told her what the doctor had said. I explained why I was so scared, and how ill I felt. The same silence that had hung in the doctor’s room now hung in her
front room, and on her face I saw her look of concern had been replaced by fright.

‘Antoinette,’ she said, ‘stay here. My husband’s home for his lunch – he’s in the kitchen. Just give me a few minutes will you?’

With that she left the room and only the ticking of a clock, which sat on the mantelpiece of a stone fireplace, broke the silence as I sat waiting for her return.

But she didn’t return, instead her husband entered the room. I knew from his grim, unsmiling expression that there was going to be no refuge in their home for me.

‘Is it true, what you’ve just told my wife?’ were his opening words.

All confidence left me and I could only miserably nod my head and whisper, ‘Yes.’

Taking no notice of my discomfort he continued: ‘Well, she’s very upset. She’s pregnant and I can’t have her distressed. I don’t know what purpose you thought would be served by your coming here, but you have to go home and talk to your mother.’

He walked to the door, motioning me to follow. Wordlessly I did as he instructed, and then looked at him once more, hoping for some reprieve. There was none.

‘My wife does not want to see you here again,’ were his last words as he closed the door with a finality that over the next weeks I would come to expect from everyone, even though I couldn’t understand it.

I heard my father’s warning echoing in my ears. ‘Everyone will blame you. Your mother won’t love you if you talk.’

I picked up my bicycle and rode home. My father was in bed when I returned, but not asleep.

‘Antoinette,’ he called out as soon as I was through the door, ‘come up here.’

Feeling heavy with foreboding I climbed the stairs to face him.

‘What did the doctor say?’ he asked, and I knew when I looked into his eyes that he already knew the answer.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I replied boldly.

For once his face betrayed little of his feelings; he simply pulled the bedclothes up to invite me in.

‘I’ll get rid of it for you Antoinette. Come on over here now,’ but this time I just stood there and shook my head. My usual terror subsided and a new rage rose as I answered him.

‘You did not get rid of it did you, when you put that thing into me? I’m three months pregnant. How many times did you make me do it over that time?’

Satisfaction fleetingly passed by as I saw that the fear which had momentary left me had taken root in him.

‘Did you tell the doctor it was me?’ was his next question.

‘No,’ I lied, the fear returning.

‘Well, remember what I’ve told you my girl, you will be blamed if you talk. You’ll be taken away and locked up. Your mother won’t stop them. Everyone will blame you.’

I had already seen in three people’s faces that what he was predicting was true.

‘Now, I’m going to tell your mother that you’ve told me you went to Portrush, met some English boys and did it with them. Do you hear me, Antoinette? So what are you going to tell your mother?’

The strength left me and I answered as he wanted me to. ‘I’m going to tell her that I went with an English boy and he’s gone now.’

He told me to go to my room and wait there until he’d spoken to her. Meekly, I did as he instructed.

After what seemed like hours to me the sound of the front door opening announced her arrival. From my bedroom I could hear the murmur of their voices, although the words were indistinct, then I heard the sound of my father’s departure. Still I sat waiting, with my hand on the bulge of my stomach, wanting an adult to sort my problem out, but with no clear idea of how I expected them to do it.

I knew not to leave my room until summoned. Hunger gnawed at my insides. I felt faint and sick, but still I waited until my mother was ready to talk to me.

I heard the whistle of the kettle. Her voice called out for me to go to her. Fearfully, I obeyed. She had poured both of us out cups of tea. Gratefully I picked mine up, held it to my lips and sipped. The hot cup gave my shaking hands something to hold and the sweet liquid calmed me. I felt her stare burning into me, but I refused to return her gaze. Instead I stared into my cup and waited for her to speak, which finally she did.

‘Who is the father?’ she asked in a cold flat voice. I looked at her and knew my lies would be of no avail, but still I tried. She did not even allow me to finish them.

‘Antoinette,’ she commanded, ‘tell me what the truth is. Tell me and I won’t be angry.’

I met her eyes, which held an expression I still could not fathom.

‘Daddy,’ was all I could choke out.

To which she replied, ‘I know.’

Still she stared at me with those large green eyes of hers and I knew that her will power, far stronger than mine, would drag every grain of truth from me. She asked me
when it had started, and I told her at the thatched house. I told her about the ‘drives’ but I still saw little expression on her face.

‘All those years,’ was her only comment.

She didn’t ask me why I’d kept quiet, or why I’d colluded with my father to lie to her. Months later I would remember that and form my own opinion on why.

‘Does the doctor know?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied, and told her that he wanted to see her.

Little did I know that the lie I told when she asked her final question would nearly cost me my life. She asked me if I had told anyone else and I suppressed the painful memory of telling Isabel and replied, ‘No.’

I saw a look of relief cross her face as she rose from her chair to reach for the phone. After speaking into it briefly she turned to me.

‘I’ve made an appointment to see the doctor after his surgery. You stay here.’ With those parting words she donned her coat and left.

For what seemed an eternity I sat trancelike on a chair, only moving to throw more coal onto the fire or to scratch Judy’s head. She, sensing my absolute despair, did not leave my side that evening as I waited for my mother’s return and for some answer about what my fate was to be.

The click of the front door opening alerted me to my mother’s return, and I looked up to see not one person but two. The doctor had returned with her. Over the next hour they were my judge and jury, and my sentence was silence. My father would be admitted for a short time to hospital to recover from a ‘breakdown’, a legal abortion would be arranged for me, and then I would, on the doctor’s recommendation, be placed in a home for difficult teenagers.
There I would stay until school leaving age, when suitable work would be found for me. It would be impossible for my father and I to live under the same roof. Meanwhile, until the abortion was arranged, life would carry on as normal. This was all told to me by my mother, with the silent support of the doctor who, she informed me, had told her it was her only option. Exhausted and uncomprehending I listened to their plans to end the only life that I knew.

Then the doctor spoke to me directly.

‘I’m only helping you because of your mother – she’s the innocent victim in all of this. You lied to me this morning. You led me to believe it had only happened once.’ He paused and gave me a look of cold disdain. ‘You encouraged it by keeping quiet for all those years, so don’t tell me you’re innocent.’

Then he left, leaving my mother and I facing each other. I waited for some word of understanding from her but none came, and not being able to stand the cold silence any longer, still without having eaten, I went to bed.

The next few days passed in a blur. Interviews were arranged at two homes, through which I sat silently, now labelled as a difficult teenager, fourteen years old and pregnant by someone whose name I could not admit to knowing.

Following that came my mini-courtroom hearing where stern-faced men of the medical profession interviewed me in order to determine both the fate of my unborn child and myself. On the grounds of mental instability, it was arranged for the abortion to take place at a hospital in the next town to us, as a concession to try and keep it quiet. Northern Ireland in the late fifties was anti-abortion; nurses and doctors dedicated to saving lives strongly objected to
being instructed by a medical court to terminate one, as I was soon to find out.