Don’t Tell Mummy (4 page)

They seldom gave us time to answer their questions before they relayed to us all the family gossip. Even then I
could sense my mother was uninterested. I’d come to recognize the polite smile she wore when with company that bored her. In contrast, a cheerful smile rarely left my father’s face as he, the centre of attention, laughed at every new item of gossip.

Tired out from the day’s excitement, feeling happy that I was part of such a big family, I contentedly slept in a put-you-up bed placed at the foot of my parents’ bed.

Daylight filtering through the thin curtains that covered the small window wakened me the following morning. Going in search of my mother I was told my parents had gone out for the day and that I was to stay with my grandmother.

My mother had never left me without telling me first and again I experienced a slight twinge of apprehension and loss. Looking into my new grandmother’s kind face, however, I was able to push my doubts aside.

While she made me an ‘Ulster fry up’, as she called it, of fried pancake, black pudding and egg, I washed myself at the kitchen sink. Going to the outside lavatory I was dismayed to find neatly cut up pieces of newspaper in the place of toilet rolls. When I pointed this out to my grandmother she looked embarrassed and told me they’d just run out and would get some after breakfast. It was not until several months later I realized that poverty gave newspaper several uses and that toilet paper was considered an unnecessary luxury.

Once the breakfast dishes were washed up she boiled more saucepans of water and told me I could help her with the washing. Into the minuscule back yard we went, where a large metal bowl was filled with steaming soapy water. She placed a ridged board into it and proceeded to wash towels and shirts by rubbing them briskly up and down its grooves
with hands that were red and chapped, quite unlike my mother’s white ones with their carefully applied scarlet nail varnish.

I helped her wring the sodden items through the mangle by holding one end while she fed the other one through, a procedure we repeated several times. When every last drop of water had been wrung out we pegged the washing with fingers already growing numb with cold onto a line suspended between the back door and the lavatory. Finally we hoisted it as high as it could go with the wooden pole that held it in place, letting it float above our heads in the chill air.

Every evening except Sunday the still damp washing would be placed on a wooden clotheshorse in front of the fire, filling the room with the smell of steaming clothes and blocking the heat.

Midday brought my grandfather back, not from work as I thought but from the bookies or, if he’d been lucky on the horses, the pub. I was given the task of laying the table, which was covered with clean newspaper, before the meal of soup and soda bread was laid out.

That weekend most of my time was spent with my grandparents while my parents disappeared, not returning until I was already in bed asleep. On Sunday morning my mother saw my woebegone face when I realized she and my father were going out again and promised we would spend the following day together.

‘First I’m taking you to be enrolled at your new school,’ she said. ‘Then, if you’re good and stay to help your grandmother today, I’ll take you out for lunch as a special treat.’

Placated, I beamed back at her, happy again, and she gave me a quick hug, leaving the smell of her perfume lingering in the air.

Monday brought a weak winter sun that brightened but failed to warm the cold morning. However, anticipation of a whole day with my mother took the chill off it.

‘It’s only a half hour’s walk,’ she reassured me.

After breakfast we walked hand in hand out of the narrow streets around Park Street, across the town square and into tree-lined avenues, where tall red-brick houses stood back from the roads. On reaching one that was only distinguished from the nearby houses as a school by its several grey prefab buildings and fenced-in tennis courts, we entered its large wooden-floored hall and introduced ourselves to the school secretary.

Within a few minutes we were shown to the headmistress’s rooms. She was an imposing woman; her white hair tinged slightly blue, dressed in a tailored grey suit, which was almost covered by a black gown.

‘Hello, I’m Dr Johnston,’ she said, touching my shoulder briefly. ‘You must be Antoinette.’

After talking to my mother for a few minutes she set me a simple reading test, which I read straight through without stumbling once, despite my nerves. When I’d finished she smiled at me warmly.

‘Antoinette, you read very well, even though you’ve only been at school a few months. Did your mother teach you?’

‘No, Nanny taught me,’ I replied. ‘We used to read Flook cartoons together in the
Daily Mail
.’ She laughed and asked what else my grandmother had taught me. She seemed amused when I said that I’d learnt to count by playing cards.

‘Well, she’s certainly up to standard,’ she reassured my mother. ‘I think she will fit in well here.’

My mother looked pleased and I was content with her pleasure. After various formalities Dr Johnston gave us a
tour around the school. Looking at the groups of children dressed in their green uniforms, playing in their break, I thought I was going to be happy there.

Armed with lists of what was required, my mother and I walked the short distance into town. First we bought my uniform, green gym tunic, three white shirts and a black and green tie. The last purchase, which my mother told me was a present from my English grandmother, was a smart green blazer with its distinctive white badge on the breast pocket. The next stop was the bookshop.

Weighed down by all our parcels, we made our way to a nearby tearoom for the promised treat of lunch.

‘I think you’re going to like your new school,’ my mother said as soon as our food had arrived. With my mouth full of toasted, buttery crumpet I nodded happily in reply.

The morning I was due to start I jumped eagerly out of bed and rushed downstairs to wash and eat the breakfast my grandmother had already cooked for me. My father had left for work and my mother had laid out all my new clothes on their bed. I could smell the newness of them. I dressed myself from my green school knickers to my gym tunic, asking my mother for help with my tie. My hair was brushed, a slide clipped in to hold it into place, then, with my satchel containing all my new books slung across my shoulder, I gave myself a glance in the mirror. A happy child with just a residue of puppy fat smiled confidently back at me. I preened for a moment and then descended the stairs to be hugged by my grandmother before my mother and I left for the walk to school.

My teacher introduced me to my classmates and sat me beside a friendly blonde-haired girl, whom I was told was named Jenny. The morning passed quickly and I gave
thanks for my English grandmother’s extra tuition. I found the reading and arithmetic easy and was rewarded by a smile and words of praise from my teacher.

At the sound of the bell our class rushed from the schoolroom to the play area where Jenny took me under her wing. Finding my name difficult to pronounce, the children, with peals of laughter, called me ‘Annie-net’. Knowing their laughter was friendly I was happy to feel part of this group and laughed with them. By the end of the day Jenny and I had become best friends. She seemed to like the kudos of looking after a little girl with a strange accent and proudly introduced me to my fellow classmates. Basking in her attention I felt the warmth that sudden friendship brings. The need for a best friend that starts when babyhood ends and childhood begins was fulfilled.

Two more weeks passed at my grandparents’ house until the day of our moving came. This time I had mixed feelings; I loved being part of such a big family, especially being the youngest member and the centre of attention. I was constantly fussed and petted by them all. Even my taciturn grandfather would chat to me, send me on errands to the tiny local shop to buy cigarettes for him and sweets for me. When nobody was looking he would even make a fuss of Judy. I knew I was going to miss them, but my adventurous side looked forward to living in the countryside and helping my mother with her poultry farm.

A compromise had been reached to appease both my grandparents and me. It was common then in the rural areas for the buses to run only twice a day, once in the morning to take the workers into town and then in the evening to return them. It was arranged that every school day I would go to my grandparents’ house for tea, then they
would take me to my bus and my mother would meet me at the other end. Knowing she was not going to see me until after the Easter holidays, my grandmother prepared a food parcel full of my favourite Irish soda breads and pancakes, which we packed into the car along with saucepans, packets of groceries and fuel.

Saying tearful goodbyes to my grandmother, we loaded up the car with our suitcases. Then, with Judy and I tightly squeezed into the back, we started our journey to our new house. Behind us followed a van containing our meagre furniture from England, none of which my mother could bear to part with.

Main roads became country ones, then we drove down a lane where the hedgerows were wilder and gravel replaced the tarmac, until we came to a dirt track leading to double wooden gates.

My father jumped triumphantly from the car, threw open the gates with a flourish and we saw the thatched house for the first time. It was not what I had expected.

Back in the hospice cold touched my skin as the memories churned in my head, and I felt incapable of movement. The hardness of the chair prodded me awake; Antoinette was gone and Toni, my adult self, was back in charge.

I poured myself a vodka from my flask, lit a cigarette and rested my head against the back of the chair to reflect on the happiness of those early years. Why, I wondered, did I feel overcome with feelings of impending doom? There was nothing in this place to scare me.

‘Yes there is, Toni,’ came the whisper. ‘You’re scared of me.’

‘I’m not,’ I retorted. ‘You’re my past and the past is dealt with.’

But the denial was hollow. As I looked into the corners of the empty room through my cloud of smoke I felt the power of Antoinette drawing me back through the gates to the thatched house.

I
n an expanse of gravel liberally studded with dandelions stood a small square house. Peeling white paint exposed grey patches from earlier days and brackish stains ran in streaks from the guttering. There were two water butts held together with rusty iron brackets, a padlocked stable door and four grimy uncurtained windows.

To the side of the house stood two tumbledown sheds with corrugated iron roofs. A tangle of brambles and nettles barred the double doors of the larger one and missing slats left black gaps in the walls. The door of the smaller shed hung open, revealing yellowing squares of newspaper hanging on string and the worn wooden seat of a chemical lavatory. Planks formed a path almost obliterated by brambles and weeds and damp had rotted away the wooden square in front.

My mother, I knew, saw the pretty cottages of Kent. Saw her handsome husband and felt the love for a static memory that was locked into her mind. It was that of a dance hall, where she, older than most of the women there, had been danced off her feet by an auburn-haired charmer to the envy of her friends.

With that picture in her head and her optimism still intact, she started explaining her plans. The large outhouse would be turned into a deep litter barn for chickens, a vegetable garden would be grown at the rear of the house and flowers would be planted underneath the windows. Taking my hand she led me inside.

The draught from the open door sucked the dust balls from their corners. The last struggles of hundreds of trapped flies had ended in the giant dusty cobwebs that looped from unpainted rafters and windows, and a trail of old mouse droppings led to the only built-in cupboard. The walls had been painted white but from the floor to the height of my waist they were speckled with the dark green of damp.

A black peat-fuelled range stood at one end of the room and under a window was the only other fitting, a wooden shelf with a metal bowl on top and a tin bath underneath.

Two doors at opposite ends led into the bedrooms. By the front door a staircase, not much more than a ladder, provided an entrance to the attic. When we climbed up to explore we found a large dark space where only the thatch protected us from the elements, and a damp musty smell made me wrinkle my nose.

My mother set to work on her dream immediately, vigorously sweeping the floors as the men unpacked the van. Peat was brought in; a fire was lit in the stove and water drawn from the well at the bottom of the garden. My first task was to remove all the frogs that came up in the bucket, carrying them carefully back to the grass near the well.

‘Then they can choose whether they want to rejoin their families or stay above ground in the sun,’ my mother explained.

As warmth seeped from the stove, familiar furniture was arranged around the now cobweb-free room and the battery-driven radio played music my mother could hum along to, a cheerful atmosphere pervaded the previously desolate room.

Tea and sandwiches were prepared and I took mine outside to sit with Judy on the grass. I shared my corned beef sandwich with her while she sniffed the new smells with a twitching nose and her head cocked on one side, giving me a hopeful look.

Kent seemed a world away and I, like her, felt like exploring. Seeing the grown-ups were all busy I put Judy’s red lead on and slipped out through the gates. As we strolled up the nearby lane the early spring sun beat down, taking away the lingering chill of the cottage. The unclipped hedgerows were bursting with wild flowers. There were clumps of primroses and early wild honeysuckle. Purple violets peeked out from underneath the white hawthorn. Bending down I picked some to make into a posy for my mother. Time passed unheeded as the new sounds and sights caught my attention and more flowers tempted me to wander further down the lane.

Stopping to watch fat pigs in a nearby field with their plump pink young running alongside, I heard my father shouting, ‘Antoinette, where are you?’

I turned around and trotted trustingly towards him, clutching my posy of wild flowers. But the man I saw coming towards me was not the handsome smiling father who’d met us from the boat. In his place strode a scowling, red-faced man I hardly recognized, a man who suddenly appeared huge, with bloodshot eyes and a mouth that trembled with rage. My instinct told me to run but fear kept me rooted to the spot.

He grabbed hold of me by the neck, put his arm tightly around my head and pulled it against his body. He lifted my cotton dress to my waist and wrenched my pants down to meet my cotton socks. One calloused hand held my semi-naked body against his thighs while the other stroked my bare bottom, squeezing one cheek hard. Seconds later I heard a crack and felt a stinging pain. I wriggled and screamed to no avail. One hand tightened its grip around my neck while the other rose and fell time after time. Judy cowered behind me and the posy, now forgotten, lay crushed on the ground.

Nobody had ever hurt me deliberately before. If ever my plump knees had knocked together, making me fall, my mother always picked me up and wiped away my tears. I screamed and cried in pain, disbelief and humiliation. Tears and snot streamed from my eyes and nose as he shook me. My whole body shuddered with terror.

‘Don’t you ever go wandering off like that, my girl,’ he shouted. ‘Now get back to your mother.’

As I pulled my knickers up over my stinging bottom, the choking tears making me hiccup, his hand gripped my shoulder and he dragged me home. I knew my mother had heard my screams, but she said nothing.

That day I learnt to fear him, but it was another year before the nightmare started.

The second Easter had arrived at the thatched house and the bitter cold of our first winter was almost forgotten. The barn had been repaired, incubators installed in what had been my bedroom and I, against my wishes, had been moved to the attic.

Our original chickens, which my mother saw more as pets than income, scratched happily in the grass outside. The cockerel strutted in front of his harem, proudly displaying his brilliantly coloured plumage, and the incubators were filled with eggs. Unfortunately, numberless rabbits had helped themselves many times to the flowers hopefully planted beneath the windows, and potatoes and carrots were the only survivors of the vegetable patch.

Holidays, now that I was twelve months older, brought more household jobs such as using a strainer to remove frogs from water buckets, collecting kindling for the stove and searching for eggs. Unwilling to use the coops provided, the free-range chickens hid their nests in far corners, some in our yard, others tucked away under bushes in the adjoining fields. The deep litter barn housed the majority of them, and every day baskets would be filled ready for the grocer’s twice-weekly visits, when he bought our eggs and provided us with groceries.

Each morning I was sent to the local farmer to collect milk that came in metal cans; those were the days before people worried about pasteurization. Each day the farmer’s wife would invite me into her warm kitchen and give me milky tea and warm soda bread before I headed home.

During the days I was too busy to worry about the changing atmosphere in our home. The apprehension I’d felt a year ago had become a reality. My mother’s happiness was controlled by her husband’s moods. Without public transport, with no control over money and not even a public phone within walking distance, the happy woman who once sat laughing in Kent teashops seemed a distant memory. Only Judy and a very tattered Jumbo remained as reminders of those days.

Once dusk fell I would sit reading my books in the orange light of the Tilly lamps, while my mother waited for my father to come home. I would sit quietly, hoping that quietness made me invisible.

Some evenings before I went to bed his car could be heard as it drove into our gravel yard. Then she would leap up, placing the kettle on the stove, putting his previously prepared dinner on a plate and a smile of welcome on her face. Butterflies would knot my stomach as I wondered which father would appear at the door. Would it be the cheerful jovial one flourishing a box of chocolates for my mother and chucking me under the chin? Or the scowling man I’d first seen in the lane and who had appeared more and more frequently after that?

The former could change into the latter at any imaginary slight. My mere presence, I knew, annoyed him. I could feel his gaze on me as I kept my eyes glued to my book, feeling the silent tension build up.

‘Can you not help your mother more?’ was a question he would put to me repeatedly.

‘What are you reading now?’ was another.

My mother, still in love with the handsome man who had met us at the docks, was oblivious to my plight. If I put any questions to her in the daytime, as to why my father was often so angry with me, she just told me to try and please him more.

On the nights when the car had not returned before I went to bed my mother’s brightness would fade and I would be awoken in the middle of the night by raised voices. The arguing would continue until his drunken shouts finally subdued her. The mornings following these nights would be strained as my mother silently went about the house and I
made any excuse to leave it. Those nights were frequently followed by the return of the jovial father the next day, bringing sweets home for me and asking how his ‘wee girl’ was. He would hand flowers or chocolates to my mother, kissing her on the cheek, bringing her momentary happiness.

I came to dread weekends. Every Friday my mother would wait for her husband, who seldom appeared, and I would be awakened by their rows, indistinguishable words of anger invading my room, fear binding me to my bed as I burrowed under the blankets, trying to escape the ugly sounds.

Every Saturday morning, lying in bed with a self-inflicted headache, he would command my mother to send me into his room with cups of tea. Tight lipped, she would obey, restricting me to staying near the house. Visits to the farmhouse to collect the milk were now monitored; no more cups of milky tea and warm buttered bread with the friendly farmer’s wife.

I seemed to be a magnet for his anger. After one of my visits to the farm I returned with a bantam hen.

‘You can take that back, my girl,’ were his first words on seeing her.

For once my mother took my side.

‘Oh, let her keep her, Paddy,’ she cajoled, using her pet name for him. ‘She can go outside with the other hens, and Antoinette can have her eggs.’

He snorted but said no more and ‘June’ the little bantam became my pet. She seemed to know she was special for nearly every morning she came inside to lay my breakfast egg.

Easter gave my father time off from work, and my mother, I know, was hoping for a day out in the car. We sat
on Easter Friday waiting for him, me with nervous flutters in my stomach and my mother with a look of hope on her face. When she heard the scrunch of gravel her face lit up. The jovial father entered, and kissed her on the cheek. A box containing an Easter egg was given to me, a box of assorted chocolates for her.

‘I’ve made a special meal,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just lock up the chickens and then I’ll serve it up.’

Humming happily under her breath she left the room, leaving us together.

Knowing his mood swings I glanced warily in his direction, but for once he was smiling.

‘Come here Antoinette,’ he commanded, patting the cushion beside him.

His arm encircled my waist, drawing me onto the settee. Then I felt his arm around my shoulder as he pulled me closer. Craving his affection I snuggled up to him. Could it be, I wondered hopefully, that he has stopped being angry with me?

Sensations of being protected and safe swept over me as I cuddled closer, feeling so happy that his affection towards me had at last reappeared. He stroked my hair.

‘You’re my pretty little girl, Antoinette,’ he murmured as his other hand started caressing my back. Like a small animal I snuggled even closer. ‘Do you love your daddy?’

All memories of his temper left me as, for the first time in months, I felt loved by him. I nodded happily. The hand on my back slid lower, then moved gently to the top of my legs. It ran down to the hem of my skirt and I felt the same calloused palm that only a year ago had spanked me viciously, sliding over my knee. My body stiffened. One hand tightened on top of my head so I couldn’t move, while
the other slid across my face and gripped my chin. His mouth came down on mine. His tongue forced its way through my lips. I felt slobber run down my chin and the smell of stale whiskey and cigarette breath filled my nostrils. My feelings of safety left me for ever, replaced by revulsion and fear. He released me abruptly, held me by the shoulders and glared into my face.

‘Don’t tell Mummy,’ he said, giving me a slight shake. ‘This is our secret, Antoinette, do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Daddy,’ I whispered. ‘I won’t tell.’

But I did. I felt secure in my mother’s love. I loved her and she, I knew, loved me. She would tell him to stop.

She didn’t.