Don't You Love Your Daddy? (4 page)

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Laura. She slipped and fell. That’s all, isn’t it, Sally?’

To which, trying to stop the tears, I answered, ‘Yes.’ And with that one false word, my compliance had begun.

My mother stood for a moment, her eyes locked on her husband’s before, seemingly satisfied with his explanation, she turned and silently left the room.

If I had been old enough to recognize the expression on her face, what would I have seen? Suspicion? Growing awareness? Or both, followed by defeat? From her actions two years later, I think it was the third.

The accident with the chip pan happened on a day that had started as one of my mother’s good ones. That morning she had dressed me, brushed my hair into two bunches, then brought my colouring books into the kitchen and opened them on the table.

She put Billy in his playpen and gave him an assortment of soft toys. He gurgled away happily as he examined his pink bunny in his half-sitting position. He was just starting to become mobile so when he was in the playpen I knew my mother would be able to devote her time to me.

Wax crayons came out of a biscuit tin: she drew pictures of animals for me and I tried to copy them. ‘Look, Sally,’ she said, each time she drew another brightly coloured picture, and I recognized the feverish, excited tone in her voice that often came before a black day. She started to pour herself a drink from a large brown bottle, then exclaimed impatiently when she realized it was empty.

Later, with Billy in his pram, the three of us went to the shops. My mother’s voice was shrill as she chatted incessantly to me and anyone else she met. As she talked her voice rose higher and higher. We stopped at the butcher to buy steak, the grocery shop where, still chattering, she bought potatoes and milk, then finally at another shop where brown bottles were passed across the counter. Even at four I felt uneasy when I saw the look of impatient pity and something bordering on contempt that crossed the shopkeepers’ faces as she filled her bags and placed them at the bottom of the pram.

Once we arrived home, my mother gave Billy a bottle, then poured orange juice for me, and gulped down glass after glass of the golden liquid that came out of the brown bottles she had bought. By the time my brother came back from school her speech was slurred. He gave her a look of reproach and disappointment, then took his school books out of his satchel, spread them on the end of the table and started to do his homework.

I saw him glance anxiously at my mother’s glass as she filled it again. With a sigh, he lowered his head back to his books. I sat quietly, feeling the tension that the sight of my mother drinking always brought, and watched her prepare the food for the evening meal.

‘What are we having for tea?’ Pete asked, when he saw her peeling potatoes.

‘Steak and chips,’ my mother said brightly, as she put the chip pan on the stove. Bored, I wandered over to stand next to her as smoke rose from the bubbling fat and she started to throw in the slices of potato.

‘Dad will be home in a minute,’ Pete warned her, when she picked up her empty glass and moved to where the brown bottle stood on the counter. She turned to reach for the bottle and her wide sleeve caught the pan’s handle. My elder brother, seeing what was about to happen, leapt from his chair and pushed me as hard as he could. He was fast enough to prevent the whole pan of boiling fat falling on me but not fast enough to stop large drops splattering on to my head and arms.

I screamed in fear and pain. Pete poured cold water over me as Billy howled and my mother shrieked. It was at this moment that my father walked through the door. He took one look at the scene, assessed what had happened and scooped me up in his arms. Through my pain I heard, ‘Accident – didn’t see her – sleeve caught,’ tumble out of my mother’s mouth.

‘You’ve been drinking again,’ my father said flatly, then turned to my elder brother. ‘I’m taking Sally to Casualty. Stay and look after Billy – your mother’s too drunk to be trusted.’ With that, he carried me to the car and drove at great speed to the hospital.

‘She’s had a very nasty shock, but she’s going to be all right,’ the nurse said, after a cursory examination.

Patches of my hair had to be cut off before my burns could be dressed. I wailed at the sight of the long blonde strands on the hospital floor almost as much as I did at the pain I was in.

‘How did you manage to spill that pan, Sally?’ the nurse asked, when my sobs had finally stopped. ‘I’m sure your mother told you not to touch it.’

I looked at her blankly because I knew it was not me who had spilt the fat, but I didn’t want to say who had.

For several weeks after the accident my mother appeared very subdued. There was no sign of the brown bottles or of her feverish activity. During that time, she seemed to have neither good days nor the ones she called her ‘black days’; instead there were days I remember as grey. She was dry-eyed and apathetic. There was no flurry of activity in the kitchen, with new recipes being tried out, and the meals she gave us were bland and repetitive.

The housework was done before my father arrived home from work but she was listless, as though whatever she did tired her, and the rows between my parents seemed to have escalated.

There were times when I thought I was to blame for my parents’ arguments – my mother had shouted my name at my father when I was in bed.

‘Why is Daddy so cross?’ I asked her once, when he slammed the door after him as he left for work.

‘Oh, Sally, it’s not your fault, it’s mine,’ she replied sadly, then gave me a reassuring hug. But she didn’t answer my question.

There was one row that I knew I’d caused. My mother had roused herself from the settee where she had spent the afternoon and was busying herself sorting out the evening meal. My stomach rumbled as I watched her. She had given me just toast and Marmite for lunch and I was very hungry.

‘Wait till your father gets in,’ she said impatiently, when I asked for a snack.

I watched as a dish of shepherd’s pie went into the oven and vegetables simmered on top of the stove. Pete had his head down and was finishing his homework, ignoring me and my mother. My father was late that night, and by the time he came in the dinner had been ready for over an hour but my mother refused to give any to either my brother or me. ‘For once we’re going to eat together as a family,’ she said crossly, when we complained, although it was her lethargy that had forced us to eat so little during the day.

I heard his footsteps on the path before she did and was hovering near my mother when the back door swung open and my father swept in, bringing with him a gust of cold air. ‘Here, Sally,’ he said, spreading his arms wide for me to run into. ‘Look what I’ve got for you.’ He pushed a bar of chocolate into my hand. ‘Doubt your mother’s cooked anything decent so have this,’ he said, as he bent down, swung me up in his arms and planted kisses on my cheeks. I smiled at the sight of the blue and gold wrapped bar and forgot briefly that I didn’t like him holding me. ‘It’ll help your burns get better,’ he added, giving my mother a sour glance.

Greedily I peeled back the wrapping on my chocolate.

‘David, dinner’s been ready for an hour,’ my mother snapped. ‘It’s most probably ruined by now.’ Then, seeing I was about to bite into the chocolate, she said, ‘Sally, leave that! Not until you’ve eaten. I don’t want you to spoil your appetite.’ To my dismay her hand stretched out and she took the chocolate from my fingers.

I felt my four-year-old face turn scarlet as it was whisked away, tears gathered in my eyes, which were suddenly bright with outrage, and I opened my mouth to let out a bellow of rage.

My father scowled as he sprang towards my mother. He caught her arm in a vice-like grip and forced her fingers open. ‘Are you telling my daughter she can’t have what I gave her?’ he shouted into her face, which had gone white. ‘Weren’t so bothered a few days ago when you nearly killed her, were you?’ The family dinner was forgotten as the shouting began.

My brother slammed his books closed, picked them up and walked out of the room. ‘Not hungry any more,’ he muttered, as he left, but my parents hardly noticed his departure. They were too busy glaring at each other. I knew that in some way I was to blame for this but I didn’t know what I’d done.

As the two people I loved went on shouting at each other, I looked from face to face and my world crumbled. My howls turned to frightened hiccups as tears slid down my cheeks. My father picked up the chocolate from the floor where it had fallen and returned it to me, but I no longer wanted it.

He knelt by my side and, in a voice that was suddenly gentle, said, ‘Eat it, Sally – it’s your favourite. Don’t take any notice of your mother. She‘s always trying to spoil things.’

Confused, l looked from one adult to the other. I wanted to please my father but was scared of my mother’s disapproval if I did as he said.

Seeing my reluctance, my father glowered at me. ‘Don’t eat it, then, you spoilt little cow.’ His body shook with rage as he turned to my mother. ‘Now look what you’ve done. Always spoiling things – you’re a selfish, pathetic bitch, aren’t you?’

I gulped and more tears ran down my cheeks. All of a sudden I wanted to go to the lavatory – and I wanted my mother to take me. I looked up at the two faces above me, convinced that I had somehow caused all the anger that was swirling around the house. I wanted my mother to pick me up, take me somewhere quiet and tell me that everything was going to be all right. I pulled at her skirt for attention. ‘Mummy –’

‘Not now, Sally,’ she replied tersely.

Their anger was too much for me and my bladder opened. At the sight of the yellow puddle forming at my feet I wailed in shame and confusion.

My father looked at me with something approaching disgust and turned to my mother. ‘Will you get this little cry-baby changed, for God’s sake, Laura?’ Wordlessly my mother took my hand and led me out of the room.

‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I’m sorry,’ I kept saying tearfully, and my mother knelt down, put her arms around me and kissed me.

‘It’s not your fault, Sally,’ she said, but her flat tone did little to console or convince me that I wasn’t the cause of the row.

After she had changed me and wiped my tearstained face, my mother brought me back into the kitchen. Then it was my father’s turn to gather me up in his arms. He hugged me and said he was sorry he had frightened me. ‘Daddy loves you,’ he whispered, as he stroked my cheek.

But, even more confused, I turned away.

Several months after the birth of my brother the extremes of my mother’s depression gradually returned. Once again tears continuously streaked her cheeks, her eyes and nose were always red and the smell of stale apples clung to her from quite early in the morning.

I knew from remarks I overheard on Sundays that my father’s brothers and their wives held the opinion that my mother was self-indulgent or ‘soft in the head’, and that the unhappiness that hung over our home was considered to be of her making. All I knew was that I loved her and wanted her to smile again, and my father to stop being angry with her all the time. I didn’t tell them how I felt when, night after night, I lay in bed trying to block out the sounds of his rage and her despair, which drifted through the walls of my room.

These sounds had become so commonplace that eventually I would fall asleep with them ringing in my ears. But the night my mother was rushed to hospital was different. This time my father’s shouts were louder and her screams, which ricocheted off the walls and vibrated through the house, were piercing. On and on they went. I heard my mother shrieking my name, my father shouting back and her voice repeatedly screaming, ‘Liar!’

Suddenly my father’s shouting stopped, and the only sounds were the wails of distress from my baby brother who, woken by the noise, was crying in fright. I heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs and then, apart from the hiccuping sobs of the baby, there was silence.

I fell back into a restless sleep, only to be woken again by Pete yelling frantically for my father. There was the sound of rushing feet and a voice I scarcely recognized as my father’s called my mother’s name over and over. A short while later I heard the back door opening and my grandmother’s voice. Bewildered, I wondered why she had arrived. Somehow I knew something very bad had happened.

I slipped out of bed and, clutching my favourite doll for comfort, I opened my bedroom door and crept out. For a few seconds I hovered on the landing, then tiptoed down the stairs to the closed door of the sitting room.

My hand reached for the knob but I was too scared to turn it. Inside the room, I knew, there was something I didn’t want to see. Instead I pressed my ear to the keyhole and tried to make out what my nana and my father were saying. There was fear in my grandmother’s shrill tones, an emotion I had never heard from her before, and it terrified me. Still with no way of knowing what had happened unless I entered the room, I forced myself to push open the door and froze when I saw the tableau inside.

My grandmother, with a look of horror on her face, was staring at the same thing as my father and Pete were: my mother sprawled silently on the settee.

‘Mummy,’ I whispered, but she didn’t stir. Her blonde hair partly obscured her white face but I could still see the mascara smears that had mixed with her tears.