Lying in my bed, I stretched my toes, wanting to stay for just a few more moments. This was the Cooldaragh I wanted to share with my classmates. I wanted them to feel the magic that I did.
My mother’s voice, calling up the stairs, broke into my reveries. Pulling on my old clothes, which were folded on my bedside chair, I went downstairs to find her. Delicious smells of baking drifted up the corridor, informing me that she was already at work.
I knew that my cake, iced in pink with ten white candles mingled with the words ‘Happy Birthday’, had been baked the day before. When I entered the kitchen I saw more rows of small cakes cooling on racks. Next to them stood the coveted bowl, which I knew after breakfast I could lick out once the cooled icing, liberally dotted with the bright colours of hundreds and thousands, had been spread on the cakes.
There was the table laid for two; a teapot covered in its knitted cosy standing in the middle, brown eggs in white egg cups and, beside the plates, a small pile of parcels.
‘Happy birthday darling,’ my mother said as she greeted me with a kiss. This, I felt, was going to be a perfect day.
Unwrapping the presents I found a pair of new shoes from my parents, shiny black with a little strap that went across the instep; a Fair Isle jumper from my Irish grandparents; and three books by Louisa M. Alcott, Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys, books I had dropped many hints that I wanted, from my English grandmother.
Tucking into my breakfast with gusto, surreptitiously passing the dogs scraps, I felt pleased it was a sunny day, happy that I had my mother to myself and delighted with my presents.
All week I had looked forward to my party. I imagined showing the girls from school around my home. Imagined them being impressed that I was lucky to live in such a place. The anticipation of being able to invite my classmates had lent more satisfaction to returning to school after the long summer holidays. Even though the holidays were enjoyable, they were also lonely. Once young Mrs Giveen had left I felt an isolation that the dogs’ company could never quite dispel. Dressed in shorts, T-shirt and plimsolls I would spend my days exploring the estate with them. Taking a small bottle of squash and some sandwiches, I would sometimes disappear for most of the day, returning with dead branches and twigs, which we would use for lighting the range in the cavernous kitchen. I enjoyed my daily tasks, which now that I was a little older included sawing the dead branches from the woods into logs. But I hardly saw anyone, or left the grounds of Cooldaragh, and I missed the contact of other children. With no nearby farm, the nearest shops being in Coleraine and only the twice-daily bus service, we seldom ventured out. Instead we relied on our daily milk delivery and the twice-weekly grocery van.
However, that summer holiday had brought my mother and me closer, having to rely on one another for company. On the days it rained we would sit companionably in the kitchen, open the range door and feast on the homemade cakes she enjoyed baking. I with a book where I lost myself in the pages, and she with her knitting; the constant clicks from her needles making a soothing background noise as, with head bent, she would concentrate on the creation of each garment.
She had made me a dark green jumper, its V-neck edged in black and white, for my return to school. Other times she would place one of my woollen socks over a wooden mushroom to darn the holes that regularly appeared, or would sigh over a skirt that needed letting down until there was no hem left. Extra schoolwork always had to be done, because my school believed in setting projects for the holidays.
After breakfast was finished and I had helped my mother with the icing of the cakes, I went outside with the dogs. My mother’s warning not to venture too far, since I had to get ready for my party in good time, stopped me going to the woods. Instead I went to say good morning to the ponies. After giving them a hug and some titbits from my pocket, I headed back.
The sun was giving the red bricks of the house a warm mellow glow as I entered the courtyard, through the back door and into the kitchen. Pans of water already stood on the range, ready for me to take upstairs for my bath. It took three journeys up the steep back stairs before the water was deep enough.
I dressed in the presents from young Mrs Giveen. First the full-skirted plaid dress, with its row of buttons down the back, was pulled over my head and my mother fastened it. Then the new black shoes were slipped on over white socks, and finally my mother fastened the gold locket around my neck. My newly washed hair was brushed then tied back on the side and fastened in place with a slide. Gazing into the mirror I posed for a few seconds, liking what I saw.
Half an hour before the girls were expected I stood on the steps, my eyes firmly fixed on the drive, waiting for the first car to arrive. The dogs lay nearby, intent on keeping me company, sensing something was in the air. Like me, their gaze scanned the drive.
Within minutes of the time stated on the invitations, a convoy of black cars drove down the dusty drive. Gravel flew as they crunched to a halt in front of the steps where I waited, feeling as proprietary as my mother. Doors opened, spilling out the neatly dressed pre-teens, all clasping prettily wrapped packages. After assurances to my mother that they would all be collected at six-thirty their parents left.
My mother brought out jugs of squash as we sat on the lawn with my pile of presents. Eager faces watched me as one after another their gifts were unwrapped. Wrapping paper was removed to reveal boxes of sweets, which were laughingly passed around, until my mother, not wanting us to ruin our appetites, took them inside. Other parcels revealed hair slides and ribbons. A new pen in a case drew a breath of pleasure from me as did the one that contained a pink-covered diary, a diary that was never going to be written in because after that day I felt there was nothing to write about. But at the beginning of that afternoon, surrounded by my classmates, with the sun casting its warmth over us, I was not to know what was to come.
My mother helped me to gather up all the presents, then told me to show my friends around the house, which I needed no persuasion to do. I led them into the hall where, when pointing out all the American memorabilia, I caught a change in the atmosphere. There was a whisper, the odd mutter and a surprised laugh and suddenly I saw my beloved Cooldaragh through their eyes.
Instead of the grandeur I had so often described to them, I saw the blocked-up fireplaces, with newspaper stuffed into them to keep out the draughts, the cobwebs hanging in corners, the dusty carpeting on the stairs that led to the unfurnished bedrooms above. In the dining room I felt their eyes resting on the now grimy silver, unpolished since Mrs Giveen’s death. I saw the threadbare curtains that had hung for so many years and noticed the oil lamps that stood on the sideboard, informing them that this huge relic of another era had no electricity.
‘Where,’ I heard one whisper, ‘would any hot water come from?’
My classmates were products of detached houses with landscaped gardens, modern furniture and shining silver. They came from homes where their ‘dailies’ firmly exorcized any traces of dust and daily baths were taken for granted. They could not see the magic that I could. They could only see a derelict building. With that unerring instinct that children have, they added to the information already gleaned from their parents. They knew my mother was the caretaker. They knew I was not the product of a professional family and I was set apart from them.
I felt again that distance between us and knew I was an outsider. Curiosity not friendship was the emotion that had brought them there that day. The friendship that I had wanted to believe in was going to elude me. I felt I had stepped behind a sheet of glass. Watching through a window as my peers laughed and talked, I could only mimic them with chatter and copy their giggles. I was on the outside, looking in on someone else’s party and watching myself.
That afternoon we played games, with so many rooms hide and seek was the favourite, but when it was my turn to hide somehow I knew that their search was not as diligent as when looking for one of their friends. I could feel their togetherness as they waited for the cars that wo
uld release them and return them to their sterile homes.
My mother’s spread of sandwiches, fruit jellies and small iced cakes was eagerly received and washed down by more squash. The birthday cake was carried in and before it was cut I was told to blow out all the candles; if that was achieved in one go I could make a wish. Breathing as much air into my lungs as I could hold, with tightly squeezed eyes, I blew. I heard the applause and opened them. All of the candles were out and shutting my eyes firmly again I made my wish.
‘Make them like me, make them my friends,’ I asked, and when my eyes opened for a while I thought my wish had been granted. Now, I thought, would be a good time to pass around the sweets that had been given to me. Going to where my presents were piled up I found, to my dismay, they were all gone. They must have been eaten during our games of hide and seek when, crouched in one of the dusty unused rooms, I had waited so long to be found. Not knowing what to say I looked at my mother.
She laughed. ‘Darling, you have to learn to share.’
I saw her exchange conspiratorial smiles with the girls and knew both she and they were laughing at me. I looked at the smiling faces surrounding me and my feelings of apartness returned.
As the party drew to a close I stood on the steps of Cooldaragh watching my ‘friends’ leaving in a convoy of cars, after politely thanking me for the day and giving vague promises of invites to their homes. Wanting to believe them, I did and waved happily at the departing cars until the last one had disappeared from sight.
Seven o’clock brought with it my father. A father whose flushed face told me he had been drinking. His stare was fixed on me. I wanted to leave, to escape it, but as always his eyes kept me firmly rooted to my seat.
My mother, in a voice pitched higher than usual, a sign which betrayed her nervousness, instructed me to show him my presents.
‘Look, Paddy, what she was given.’
One by one I showed them to him.
‘What no sweets?’ Seeing the answer in my face he snorted. ‘Did you not think to save your old man any then?’
I searched his face, was this the jovial father who could be cajoled, or the other one? I wondered, a knot of dread growing in my stomach.
The last present I showed him was my pen, black with a silver clip. As I held it out for his inspection I felt a tremor in my hand and knew by his smile he had seen it too.
‘Where’s your other pen, the one your mother and I bought you?’ he asked and with a sinking heart I saw that he was not the jovial father that night.
‘In my satchel,’ was all I could stutter.
He emitted an unpleasant laugh. ‘Well, get it then – sure you won’t be needing two.’
‘I do,’ I protested. ‘I need a spare, that’s why Marie gave me this one.’
In front of my eyes, like the toads I had seen in the woods, he seemed to swell. His chest seemed to puff up, his eyes went bloodshot. I saw that tell-tale quiver of his mouth and too late I knew I should not have disagreed with him.
‘Don’t you be arguing with me, my girl,’ he roared as his hand grabbed the neck of my dress and pulled me off the chair. The ground came up to meet me, the breath left my body, his hands were round my throat and dimly I heard my mother scream.
‘Paddy, stop, you’ll kill her!’
My hands were scrabbling with his, trying to release the fingers that gripped me as my breath wheezed and my legs flailed helplessly on the floor.
I heard him bellow, ‘You do as I tell you, my girl.’ Then, through the sound of my mother’s pleas, I felt his grip lessen on me.
I pulled myself up, dazed and disorientated.
‘Get her out of my sight,’ he yelled at my mother. ‘Get her to her room.’
She, without a word, took my arm and propelled me into the corridor and up the stairs, then abruptly released me. Glaring, she ordered me to stay there.
‘Why do you always have to annoy him? You know he has a temper.’ She sounded weary. ‘Can you not try and keep the peace for my sake?’ I heard a note of pleading in her voice and knew she was as afraid as I was.
Later she returned to my bedroom where, still dazed, I was trying to calm myself by escaping into Little Women.
Our eyes met and I knew that the protection I had felt when the Giveens were present had gone. She, I knew, had chosen to humour my father and I was relegated to being a child who was a nuisance.
‘Try not to make your father angry again, Antoinette,’ were her only words as she removed the oil lamp from my room and departed. I closed my eyes. As I was now unable to read, my mind invented a story. A story where I was once again loved, surrounded by friends and invited to many parties.
Back in the hospice I made myself some coffee and lit a cigarette as I tried to stop the flood of memories, but Antoinette, the ghost of my childhood, was still there. I heard her again.
‘Toni, remember on your own, remember the truth.’
I had believed my past had been dealt with, but Antoinette’s face kept coming back to haunt me. I had destroyed nearly all the photographs many years before, photographs that showed the life of the child who once was me, but now one by one they flashed before me.
I saw her as the chubby curly-haired toddler with shining eyes, smiling confidently into the camera, sitting crossed legged with her plump little hands holding one knee. In that photograph she was dressed in her favourite dress, smocked by her mother.
A few years later, she was wearing a checked dress, too short for her skinny frame, no socks and second-hand sandals. Her empty eyes had dark shadows under them as she looked at me. She stood on the lawns at Cooldaragh holding Judy, with her other friends, the dogs, at her feet.
In another photograph she was by the rhododendrons of Cooldaragh with the mother she loved so much. There were no photographs of her with other children or playmates.
I forced the mental pictures away and went back to my mother’s bedside. As I closed my eyes I found myself looking back through the years and I remembered the unhappy, isolated child who had lived at Cooldaragh. A child whose birthday was marred, not only by the brutality of her father, and her mother’s indifference to her plight, but also by her inability to interact and relate to her peers. How she watched them as though through a window, playing, laughing and chattering. She was only imitating them when she tried to join in.
It was too late for her to feel at one with them, her childhood had already gone. By her tenth birthday she knew that any happiness she felt was only a momentary illusion.
Sitting by my mother’s bedside, I remembered one act of sly rebellion and it brought a wry smile to my face. It happened just after my birthday and showed that the little girl could still feel anger and that she was not a complete puppet.
At Cooldaragh all the unused fireplaces were blocked by newspaper, not only to keep some of the cold out, but also to stop birds and bats getting in. When I fetched water at dusk, I had often seen the bats swooping around the outside of the house, exploring their unseen world as darkness fell.
Watching them, I remembered that day at the church when the ringing of the church bell had disturbed one of them. I had seen the fear that its blind flight had instilled into the female section of the congregation.
I chose my night carefully, knowing that when my father took his car into Coleraine on a Friday morning, he always returned home late and drunk. I knew my mother’s routine on those occasions. When she finally gave up waiting for him, she would walk down the long dark corridor that led from our sitting room to the kitchen, holding a candle to light her way. Here she would make a pot of tea, before she climbed the servants’ staircase to her bedroom.
That night, knowing my mother would have thought I was asleep, I rose from my bed stealthily, determined that the bats would have maximum access to the house. I poked holes into the newspaper stuffing above the fireplaces. After that was done, I opened the back door, to where only the small courtyard separated the house from the disused stables where the bats were.
Patiently I crouched at the top of the servants’ stairs, awaiting my nocturnal visitors, the instruments of my minor revenge. I was rewarded. One brave flying mouse, swooping low, entered by the back door. Once I was sure it was far enough into the house, I crept down the stairs on my bare feet and closed the door quietly.
Shivering with cold, I returned to my post on the stairs to await the results. I did not have to wait long.
I saw an orange glow as the door of my parents’ sitting room opened. Then came the flicker of the candle’s flame as it lit the way for my mother. I heard her scream as the bat, with its radar senses, swooped around her head.
I knew she was frozen with fear in that semi-darkness. Quickly I came down the stairs, put my arms around her, took the candle from her shaking fingers and led her back to their sitting room where I helped her into a chair. I told her I had been in the bathroom when I heard her scream.
As she sat with tears streaming down her face, I took her candle, went down to the kitchen, where the sleeping dogs hardly stirred, and made her tea. Placing a cup, milk jug and sugar on a tray where I had carefully balanced the candle, I led her up the main staircase to her bedroom, thus avoiding the bat. I placed the tray by her bedside and hugged her, because I still loved my mother.
Through my adult eyes, I tried to understand what my mother’s life must have been like during those years. I could understand why she wanted to escape into her fantasy world of ‘happy families’, where there was nothing wrong with our lives. After all, what else did she have? After Mrs Giveen’s death she had virtually no contact with other people. She had no friends or family in Northern Ireland and certainly no financial independence. Without transport, her isolation must have grown because I could sense the depression that was falling over her.
A woman of today would have choices that my mother was denied, but if she had been given them, would she have accepted a different route? What happened in later years made me doubt this.
I continued to sit by her bedside, the night-light casting a faint glow over her. I looked at her small, helpless form and saw that sleep had smoothed out some of the lines caused by pain. I felt the same conflicting emotions that the little girl had felt as she held her mother that night: bewilderment, anger and a strong desire to comfort and protect her.
Don't Tell Mummy Page 9
