Don’t Tell Mummy (19 page)

His words seemed to lift the barriers with which I had surrounded the truth. The words, once released, seemed to pour out of me in a torrent. I told him how she had constantly said that I must ‘get on with my father’, how she had ‘suffered enough’, how she was on ‘one dose of medication after another’ for her nerves. How I had always ‘given her worry’.

‘I dreaded phoning home but I did so nearly every week and I knew that her usual refrain would ring in my ears, “Just a moment darling, Daddy wants a word”, and over all those years I humoured her, frightened of her love being withdrawn if I made her face reality.’

And finally I told him what I’d never explained to anyone, what I felt about Antoinette, the child who had once been me.

‘She would have been so different if she had been allowed to grow up normally, gone to university, made friends. She never stood a chance, and every time something goes wrong in my life I blame that childhood for it. When I was much younger she took over and I relived all of her emotions again. That’s when I’d walk into mentally abusive relationships saying, “Hallo, I’m here, this feels like home.” Or my old childhood friend, the bottle, would reappear. I’ve fought those demons all my life and most of the time I’ve won, but I’m not winning now.’

The ashtray became full as I talked, my head clearing as I accepted the final reality.

‘She never loved me. She needs me now so that she can die in peace, with her dream intact; the dream of a good-looking husband who adores her, a happy marriage and one child. I’m just a player in her last act. That’s my role here.’

‘And are you going to shatter that dream?’

I thought of the tiny form of my mother, so dependent on me now. ‘No,’ I sighed. ‘How could I?’

I
’d been placed in a small, airless room in the police station, furnished only with a brown Formica-topped table and a few wooden chairs. Under my feet I could see brown cracked lino and the one small window was set too high in the nicotine-stained wall to afford any outside view. I knew my father was nearby. I knew my nightmare had to have come to an end, but instead of relief I felt apprehension. What would the future hold now, I wondered.

The door opened and I looked round to see the policewoman from earlier, only this time she was accompanied by another young woman dressed in civilian clothes. They asked me if I’d eaten. On the shake of my head the policewoman left to return a few minutes later with a tray holding tea, sandwiches and some chocolate biscuits, which she placed in front of me with a friendly smile. Notebooks were produced, telling me that however relaxed they were trying to make the atmosphere, this was official. The woman in civilian clothes was introduced to me as a social worker called Jean and I was asked if I knew why I was there. Then they asked if I was completely aware that what my father and I had done was a crime. To both of those questions I replied in a whisper, ‘Yes.’

Gently, the policewoman explained that my father was also being questioned in another room and all I had to do was tell the truth. It was also explained that as I was under age the crime was his and without doubt he would go to prison for it.

‘Antoinette, you have done nothing wrong, but we do have to ask you some questions. Are you up to answering them?’ the policewoman asked.

I stared at her. How could I find my voice to talk about a secret I had kept for so many years? A secret my father had told me repeatedly I would be blamed for. I had already found out that once discovered it would lead to the anger and blame he had predicted.

Then the social worker spoke for the first time.

‘Antoinette, I want to help you, but I can only do that when I have your side of the story. I know this is painful for you but we are on your side.’

She stretched her hand across the desk and gently took my hand. ‘Please answer these questions.’

The first one to be taken down for evidence was asked by the policewoman.

‘How old were you when your father first touched you?’

I felt the warm pressure of Jean’s hand on mine.

‘Six,’ I finally whispered, and then the tears came. A silent torrent gushed from my eyes and poured down my cheeks. The tissues were passed to me without a word. Neither woman spoke until I had composed myself.

‘Why have you kept quiet for all these years? Did you not tell your mother at least?’ were the first questions put to me by Jean.

No words came, my memory box stayed shut; the time I had tried to tell my mother stayed firmly locked away as I
shook my head. Would my life have been different if I had remembered then and told them? Certainly I would have been taken away from her and events which damaged me later would not have happened. Or would that love for her have always influenced me and affected my life? Even now it’s not a question I have found the answer to.

Gently they prised out of me how at weekends he had taken me for drives, how he told me I would be taken away if I talked, how people would blame me and how my mother would cease to love me. On hearing this I saw a look I understood exchanged between the two women. They knew his threats were the truth. They both knew better than me that everything he had threatened and worse was going to come true for me, as I was to learn, and that any remnants of childhood had finally left me.

Gradually my story was drawn from me with sympathetic questions, to which I replied truthfully. But I found it impossible to volunteer any additional information. It would be many years before I would be able to speak about my childhood freely, without shame and guilt. They asked me if I had not been scared of becoming pregnant. I replied that I thought it was impossible to become pregnant by my father.

The ticking of the clock marked the time as it sped away. Tiredness and hopelessness filled me equally as I wondered over and over what was going to happen to me now.

‘What are your plans for the future?’ the social worker asked. ‘Will you be able to stay on at school now?’

Looking at her blankly at first, I suddenly realized what she meant. I was a fee-paying pupil, my father was going to prison and although my mother worked his was the larger wage. Suddenly I was aware of the enormity of what I had done, what harm I had caused; my parents’ house
was bought on a bank loan, my mother could not drive and my fees could not be paid. All thought of the home my parents had wanted to hide me away in left my mind and a guilty panic replaced it. I had, I realized, ruined my mother’s life.

Seeing my blank look turn to one of comprehension as some of what was to face me penetrated my mind, she tried to reassure me.

‘Antoinette, this is not your fault. Surely your mother must have guessed over all those years?’

Believing such a thing would have been too much for me to bear. How could I handle the thought of such a betrayal from the one person I loved unconditionally? Desperately I denied it to them, just as I denied it to myself, and again I saw a look exchanged between them, a look that combined pity and disbelief.

‘Antoinette,’ the policewoman said, her eyes holding a mixture of compassion and a resolution to do her job, ‘you are going to have to be a witness at your father’s trial – do you understand what that means?’

Before I had time to digest what that would mean, she added to my fear by informing me that he would be released on bail and both he and I would be returned home together. Then she left the room, leaving me with the social worker. I sat silently while the facts sunk into my mind, then my fear rose unchecked.

‘I can’t go home,’ I stuttered, ‘please.’

I felt Jean’s pity as she answered. ‘Unless the police state that you are at risk there’s nothing I can do.’

Long minutes passed before the door opened to admit the policewoman accompanied by her sergeant. Unsmiling, they both sat down to face me.

‘Your father has admitted guilt,’ the sergeant baldly informed me. ‘That makes the trial easier for you. The case will be held
in camera
because you are a minor. Do you know what that means?’

I shook my head as I tried to whisper no.

‘That means that no press or members of the public unconnected with the case will be admitted. The trial date has not been decided yet, but it will only be a few weeks away. Now we are going to take both you and your father home.’

I burst into tears. Still feeling weak from my blood loss and emergency operation, all powers of resistance deserted me. I felt paralysed with fear.

‘Please don’t send me back,’ I managed to gasp between sobs, remembering the beating I’d received for not hanging up my gymslip. If he’d done that for such a small misdemeanour, what punishment would be meted out to me for this? In terror my fingers grasped the edge of the table, as though by clinging on I could postpone the moment I had to go home.

The policewoman was the first to speak. ‘We have nowhere to put someone of your age, Antoinette, but your parents won’t hurt you again. The sergeant as well as Jean and I are coming with you to speak to your mother.’

The sergeant tried to reassure me further. ‘Your father has already been spoken to; he knows the consequences if he touches you again.’

Their words were a cold comfort to me because I could remember my mother’s rage, the doctor’s disdain and my father’s many acts of cruelty. I knew that I was being returned to a home where I was not wanted, to a mother who no longer loved me and a man who would blame me for everything that was now going to happen to the family.

We were driven back in two unmarked cars, as my mother had requested. We drew up to the house where the lights were still on. My mother, unsmiling, let us all in, then mercifully allowed me to disappear upstairs to my room, where the murmur of voices could be heard but not understood. Hunger gnawed at me as I realized that apart from the sandwiches the policewoman had given me, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast time in the hospital. I wondered if my mother would think of that, but when I finally heard the door close on the police no footsteps approached my room. Eventually I drifted into a restless sleep in which dreams spread their fear. I woke up to a silent house.

T
he day I had been looking forward to with dread had come. The day my father was to be tried and sentenced for the crime he had committed against me, the crime of multiple rapes.

My mother, who still protested she was the victim in this triangle, had refused to accompany me to the court. Instead she had gone to work as normal. The sergeant, feeling that I needed female support, had told me he would bring his wife to look after me. Standing at the window at home, too apprehensive to sit, I waited for them to appear.

My father had already left to make his own way to the courtroom, leaving his car behind, which told me that whatever his solicitor had said, he knew he would not be returning home at the end of the day. At least I had been spared his presence that morning.

Unable to relax, I’d been ready since I’d awoken several hours earlier. I’d dressed in a grey skirt and blouse with my school blazer over it. I wondered whether I was still entitled to wear it, but having no other jacket I had no choice.

Judy had had her morning walk. My mainly uneaten breakfast had long ago been finished when the sound of a car’s engine announced the arrival of the sergeant. Dressed
in his everyday uniform of tweed jacket and grey trousers, he opened the car door for me and introduced his wife, a small plump woman who acknowledged my presence with a small, tight smile. Then we drove the short journey to the courts. Conversation was stilted in the car. All I could see in my mind was my mother’s cold stare whenever she had to look at me. Now my wish for a home where only my mother and I would live was finally to come true; the realization that no happiness could now come from it had long ago dawned on me.

Finally the austere grey buildings of the courts came into view. On legs that suddenly felt leaden I passed through the double doors into the intimidating interior. Barristers, solicitors and alleged criminals huddled in groups on seats that had been designed with neither aesthetics nor comfort in mind. I sat flanked on either side by the sergeant and his wife, wondering where my father was, but thankful I could not see him. I was waiting for the time I would be called to give evidence against him.

The mirror that morning had shown me a drawn, pale face, looking older than my fifteen years, framed by shoulder-length hair in a neat pageboy style. No make-up reduced my pallor or disguised the dark shadows beneath eyes that held no youthful optimism or the joyful expectancy of a teenager with her whole life before her. It was the face of a girl in whom all hope and trust had, if not died, been abandoned for that day.

Tea was brought to me as we waited, then the internal door of the court opened to release the black-suited clerk of the court, whom I knew by sight. He approached me hurriedly and informed me that my father had already given his evidence and pleaded guilty, so I would not have to be
cross-examined. He told me that the judge had a few questions to put to me though, and then he ushered me in.

A Bible was produced for me to swear, ‘to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. I was shown where to stand and turned to face the bewigged judge who, with a kindly smile, asked me if I wanted to sit, which gratefully I did. My mouth was dry and the judge instructed water to be passed to me. I took small sips, letting it slide down my suddenly dry throat.

‘Antoinette,’ he commenced, ‘I just want you to answer a few questions, then you will be free to go. Just answer them to the best of your ability. And remember that you are not on trial here. Can you do that?’

Overawed by his white wig and scarlet gown, I whispered, ‘Yes.’

‘Did you at any time tell your mother?’

I replied in the negative.

His next question took me by surprise and I felt an awareness in the room that had not been there before. ‘Do you know the facts of life? Do you know how women become pregnant?’ he asked.

Again I whispered, ‘Yes.’

‘Then surely you must have been scared of becoming pregnant?’

I looked into his face and knew, without understanding why, that the answer to this was important.

‘He always used something,’ I answered at last and heard the sigh of my father’s solicitor.

‘What did he use?’ was his last question.

‘It looked like a balloon,’ was my answer. With my lack of interest in boys, I had no need to know the word condom.

At the time I didn’t realize that my answer had just confirmed premeditation. Those few words had ensured my father received a prison sentence and was not sent to the mental hospital as his solicitor had been hoping. The judge excused me and I, avoiding my father’s gaze, left the courtroom to return to my seat in the waiting room, where I would have to sit until the judge had passed sentence and I had been told of the outcome.

Watching the doors of the courtroom for what seemed like hours, but can’t have been more than fifteen minutes, I saw them open and my father’s solicitor coming through them. He came to my side.

‘Your father received four years,’ he said. ‘With good behaviour he’ll be out in two and a half.’ There was no emotion in his voice at the fate of his client. ‘Your father wants to see you. He’s in the holding cells – it’s up to you if you want to. You don’t have to.’

Trained as I was to obey, I agreed to go. He took me to where my father sat. All fear left me as I looked at the man who had tormented me for so many years and I waited for him to speak.

‘You be looking after your mother now, Antoinette, do you hear?’

‘Yes, Daddy,’ I replied for the last time for many months. Then I turned and walked away, to go in search of the police sergeant and his wife.

‘The judge wants to see you for a few minutes,’ the sergeant informed me as the clerk of the court walked up to us and motioned me to follow him.

Moments later, for the second time that day, I faced the judge. This time it was in his rooms and he had already removed his wig and gown. He motioned me to take a seat.
Looking at me gravely he told me his reasons for wanting to speak to me in private.

‘Antoinette, you will find, as I know you already have, that life is not fair. People will blame you, as they already have. But I want you to listen to me very carefully. I’ve seen the police reports. I’ve seen your medical reports. I know exactly what has happened to you, and I’m telling you that none of this was your fault. You have done nothing to be ashamed of.’

Those words I stored safely away, ready to take them out when the need came.

A case that is held
in camera
might limit the number of people allowed inside a courtroom, but it can never silence the ones outside. Ambulance drivers, nurses, the police themselves, not to mention social workers and two teachers were all on my mother’s list of suspects when she became aware that the whole town was talking.

Not only were they talking, they had taken sides. Coleraine, my father’s staunch Protestant home town, blamed the child.

I was well developed, my shyness made me seem aloof and I spoke in a middle-class English accent, an accent that was far from popular in Ulster then. My father, on the other hand, was a local man, one who had fought in the war, come home with medals and was seen as a hero by his family. With no conscription in Northern Ireland every man who had fought in the Second World War was a brave volunteer. They felt his mistake was in his choice of wife, a woman not only five years older than him, but one who looked down on his friends and family. He was the good sport in the pubs, a
champion amateur golfer and a brilliant snooker player, a man liked and respected by men and women alike.

‘Paedophile’ was not a word bandied about then, nor was it the one they would have attached to my father anyway. I was a willing party, they said, and to save myself when I fell pregnant I’d screamed rape. I’d taken my own father to court, testified against him and washed a very large family’s dirty linen in public. With the case held
in camera
only some of the facts had come out but even if all of them had been printed in the papers I doubt if the town would have believed them. People, I learnt early, believe mainly what they want to, including the person telling the lies.

I first became aware of the town’s reaction when I called on one of my father’s cousins, Nora, a woman with a five-year-old daughter whom I was fond of. I’d baby-sat for the child and enjoyed playing with her on numerous occasions. Nora’s door swung open and she stood with her hands on her hips and a glare on her face, while her daughter hid behind her skirts, her face peeking round.

‘You’ve got a nerve coming round here. Do you think we’d let our daughter play with the likes of you? We know what you’ve done – we know all about your father and you.’ Anger, coupled with disgust, almost made her choke as she spat the final words at me. ‘Get yourself off my doorstep and don’t come back.’

I reeled back as though hit, and the last sight of the little girl I had played with were her bewildered blue eyes looking up at me before the door slammed in my face. Stunned, I went home to the coldness of my mother. She had given up her job, she said, and was never going to leave the house. She could not bear the disgrace – it was in the papers. And it was. My name was not mentioned and naively I still
thought that in some way that would protect me, but everyone knew and now it was officially confirmed.

My mother then told me she was putting the house on the market and we would move, not to England as I hoped, but to Belfast. We would move as soon as it was sold. In the meantime I could do all the shopping; she was not going to face the town and the gossip – I could deal with that. I could carry on at school until we left, as it would get me out of the house. She was wrong about that: the next day I was expelled.

There was a hush as I entered the school hall: girls avoided my eyes; girls who I thought were my friends turned away, except one. Lorna, my friend from Portstewart, a girl whose home I’d visited many times, met my eyes and smiled. Thinking she was still a friend I approached her. She gave me an embarrassed look, for she had been appointed as the spokesperson for the group. Although she looked far from happy with the task, I could see her determination to blurt out her prepared speech.

‘My mother says I’m to have nothing to do with you.’ Then she paused. ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve all been told the same.’

I stood in the school grounds, holding my satchel to me, too numb to feel emotion, and saw the Deputy Head approaching.

‘Antoinette, we did not expect you today. We’ve written to your mother. Did she not get our letter?’

I told her the post always came after I left for school and her only response was to purse her lips, while her small dark eyes slid from my face to a point over my shoulder. I stood silent, in the vain hope that I could delay what I knew was to come. Finally she spoke again. ‘You can’t attend this
school. Your mother will get her letter today.’ She must have seen the stricken look on my face as she looked at me with distaste, but her only answer to my silent appeal was another question.

‘What did you expect after all your carrying on? We know about you and your father. We’ve had phone calls from parents, the board was consulted last night and we had a meeting about you. It’s a unanimous decision: you’re expelled. Your desk and locker have been cleared. Now follow me to my office and you can collect your possessions.’

Disgrace weighing me down, I rebelled and turned to her. ‘It was not my fault,’ I protested. ‘He made me.’

‘What, every time? Don’t make things even worse.’

Then, with her unpleasant duty done, she escorted me to the gates.

‘Don’t try and contact any of the girls – their parents don’t want them to have anything to do with you,’ were her parting words, and I walked away from the building where for eight years I had spent the majority of my schooling. It was here that I had tentatively tried to make those early friendships, the sort of friendships that we hope once formed will last for life. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying as I thought of what I could do to delay going home.

My mother, I knew, would have had her letter by now. What would her reaction be? I wondered miserably, dreading returning to her and the cold barrier that she had erected between us. A wall that I had never accepted had been steadily built, brick by brick, over the eight years since I was six. Now it was impossible to scale. Since I’d told her of my pregnancy the final brick had been laid and the cold
ness showed that with it the last threads of any love she might once have felt had now died. I walked, clutching my satchel stuffed full now with the extra books from my desk. Surely, I thought miserably, my grandmother would welcome me as she loved me, and with that hope my steps took me to her house.

She let me in, and then went to the kitchen to make tea. No question was asked of why I was there on a school morning and that warned me what the next few minutes would bring. She gave me a cup of tea at the table and she sat down opposite me. She looked careworn, dragged down by her son’s guilt and the decision she felt had to be made. She broke the family’s conclusion as to the best way to handle the situation as gently as she could.

‘I knew you would come here today. I know what Nora is planning to say to you.’ She must have seen by the expression on my face that I had already paid a visit to my father’s cousin’s house. She sighed and her hand came over the table to cover mine.

‘Antoinette, listen to me. Your father is my eldest son, and what he did was wrong – I know that, but we cannot have you visit us again.’

I stared at her bleakly. She was speaking the words that deep down I had been dreading hearing. I put my cup down and asked her a question I already knew the answer to. ‘Do all of you feel the same?’

‘Yes, go back to your mother. It would be better if she took you to England. It’s where you both belong.’

And that was her goodbye to me, because I never saw her again.

I squared my shoulders and for the first time did not kiss her goodbye. Instead I walked out of her house and up
the street, where not one person greeted me. I thought of the warmth of my grandparents’ home, the love I’d received there. I remembered her smiles of welcome when we had returned from England and saw the sag of her shoulders as the realization of what her son had done sunk in. I already felt the loss of my family for I knew they were gone for ever. I realized that over the years he would be forgiven but I, once loved but not as much as him, would not. Having nowhere left to go, I forced that final loss to the back of my mind and went home to confront my mother.