Don't Tell Mummy

by Maguire, Toni

  Chapter Eleven

  Now that the Giveens had all left, my father started coming to my bedroom again. On the days that he knew he was going to come home late, he would take his car into the town. When he returned, my mother and I would be asleep at opposite ends of the house. My room was dark, the only light coming from the moon that seemed, on fine nights, to be floating outside my window. I would often drift off to sleep, trying to see the friendly and reassuring face of the man in the moon. I had, a long time ago, lost my torch, so now that my mother had taken my lamp, I only had the candle that lit the way to my bedroom. Lying there in the dark with my fists clenched, I would squeeze my eyes tightly shut, hoping if I didn’t open them, he wouldn’t be there. But he always was. I would try and huddle deeper under the bedclothes. Then I would feel the cold on my body, as he pulled them down and my flannelette nightdress up.

  He’d whisper into my ear, ‘You like this, Antoinette, don’t you?’

  I’d say nothing.

  He’d say, ‘You’d like some pocket money, wouldn’t you?’

  He’d take half a crown out and push it into my fist. Then he’d take his trousers off. I’ll remember always the smell of him. That whiskey breath, the stale smell of cigarettes and his body odour – no deodorant for him. He’d get on top of me. Now that I was a little bit older, although he was still careful, he could afford to be a little rougher. And he would push himself into me. I could feel those eyes of his boring through my closed eyelids. He’d tell me to open my eyes. I never wanted to. At that age, he hurt me. I heard him give a gasp before he rolled off me; he’d get off the bed, quickly pull on his clothes and go to my mother’s bed.

  I would be left holding half a crown.

  As the visits to my room increased, so did the physical violence. One night I was playing in what had been Mrs Giveen’s lounge. I’d gone in there to be alone, to be away from my parents. He came in with a newspaper and sat down. I had one of those little trinkets that looked like frogs, and came out of crackers. I was sitting aimlessly playing with it listening to the click-click sound it made. Then I felt his gaze on me.

  ‘Antoinette,’ he said, ‘stop that, stop it now.’

  I jumped with fear. The trinket flew out of my hand, making its final click. That was the only excuse he needed. He picked me up and threw me backwards onto the floor.

  ‘You stop when I tell you to stop, my girl!’ he shouted.

  Often in the nights I would be woken by my usual nightmare. I would be dreaming of falling and falling into darkness. Then my father’s presence blended into that nightmare as he woke me up. After he’d left, sleep did not return easily. In the morning I would be tired as I walked down to the kitchen to bring up my hot water to wash. I made sure that I always washed well between my legs on those mornings. It’s very hard for me to remember what I felt, but I seem to remember I felt very little. Now, with him coming to my room so often, I was getting regular ‘pocket money’ and I could buy friend-winning sweets again. Children, like animals, can sense when someone is weak, different or vulnerable. Even though these were nicely brought up children, where cruelty wasn’t part of their make-up, they had an instinctive aversion to me. So in the early evenings, when I ate with the boarders, I avoided the ones who were my own age as much as possible. I tried to sit either with the younger girls, with whom I could play, or the older ones who were kind to me. Apart from the mealtimes I spent my time in the library with my homework. I knew I was not popular, and I could tell the teachers also knew it. The staff at that school were kind to me on the surface, but I could sense a detachment. At the age of ten, I had stopped expecting people to like me.

  The bus journey home took about thirty minutes and I would try and finish my school homework, reading paragraphs of books that I knew I would be questioned about the following day. One night, my father got on at the next bus stop. He didn’t sit next to me. He sat nearly opposite so he could look at me. He put on the smile of the nice father. But I no longer believed there was one. That evening I couldn’t find my ticket. I could feel my father gazing at me and I felt sick with fear as I searched my satchel and pockets. I tried to whisper to the bus conductor.

  ‘I can’t find my ticket. Please don’t tell my father.’

  But the bus conductor just laughed. He knew I had a weekly ticket because he worked on the bus every day.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Sure your father won’t be cross with you. Look at him. He’s smiling at you. Don’t be a silly girl.’

  Sure enough there sat my father, with those bloodshot eyes of his twinkling. Then he winked at me. I recognized that wink. The journey seemed to me to take for ever, even though it was only a few miles. It was dark that night and when I got off the bus it was cold. Once the bus disappeared into the distance he seized me, as I knew he would. He beat me. Across the bottom, across the shoulders with his other hand at the back of my neck, holding me roughly. He flung me about, shaking me. I didn’t cry. Not then. I didn’t scream. I’d stopped screaming out loud a long time ago. But as he walked me up to the house, I felt the tears trickling down my face. My mother must have seen the tracks they’d made. But she said nothing. I picked at my supper, too upset to want it, too scared to refuse it. I finished off the small amount of homework I had to do, then went to bed. I knew then I was not a child who tried to make her parents angry, but that I had a parent who looked for every excuse to find fault and hit me.

  That night he came to my room when I was still awake. He wrenched the bedclothes off me. I could feel there was more violence in him than usual. I felt very afraid of him and started to cry in fright.

  ‘I don’t want any pocket money,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to do it to me.’ Feeling hysteria rising in me, I continued to plead. ‘Please, please don’t do it. You hurt me.’

  It was the first and the last time I cried when he came into my bedroom. My mother was in the hall and heard me.

  She called out, ‘What’s going on?’

  My father called back to her: ‘Nothing. She was having a nightmare. I just came in to see what it was. She’s alright now.’

  As he left he hissed in my ear, ‘Don’t you be telling your mother, my girl.’

  She came into my room a few minutes later where I was huddled under the bedclothes.

  ‘Antoinette, what happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘I was having a nightmare.’

  On that she left the room. She never asked me again.

  On other nights I could hear the crunch of the gravel as his car drew up. Quaking with fear, I would lie in my bed, hearing the creak of the floorboards as his stealthy step approached my room. I would feign sleep on those nights, always hoping he would not want to wake me. But he did.

  Not every time he came would he leave me half a crown, but at least twice a week he did. After the first night of wrenching my fingers open and jamming it into my fist, he started mockingly to put it into the china jar on my dressing table that held my gold locket. He’d say to me, ‘There’s your pocket money, my girl.’

  On the evenings when he came home early, I would curl up on the settee with the dogs at my feet and open a book. Often, when I read of children with loving and caring parents, the tears would spill from my eyes and slide down my face, giving my father the opportunity he was waiting for. He’d look up.

  ‘What are you crying for, my girl?’ he’d ask.

  I would try and avoid looking into his eyes, as I muttered, ‘Nothing.’

  At that, he would get off his seat, catch hold of me by the scruff of the neck, shake me and then hit me, usually around the shoulders.

  ‘Well, then,’ he would say quietly, ‘now you have something to cry about, don’t you?’

  My mother said nothing.

  After that I stopped reading children’s books about happy families. I started reading my mother’s books. I did not tell her the reason. She never asked. The first adult books I read were called the White Oak Series. They
were not unhappy books. But there were no children in them.

  One day a man was waiting for me as I finished school. He introduced himself as a friend of my father’s. He had obtained permission from the teacher who supervised the boarders to take me out to tea. I went to a teashop with him where he treated me to scones and cake, followed by ice cream. Favourite foods of little girls! He chatted to me about school. Gradually he drew me out to talk to him about my dogs. Then he asked me what I liked reading. I told him I was in the middle of a book called Jalna that came from the White Oak Series.

  ‘You are very grown up for a little girl if you are reading books like that,’ he said.

  I glowed with happiness at his kindness and obvious interest, and the compliments he paid me. After we had finished eating and chatting, he walked me back to my school and told me how much he had enjoyed my company. He asked me if I would like him to take me out again. I replied that I would.

  He visited me several times after that. I told the teachers that he was a friend of my father’s and they always gave permission for him to take me. I looked forward to his visits. I felt he was interested in listening to me, which made me feel grown up and important. I could always order what I wanted. He seemed fascinated by my childish chatter. To me, who had so little interest shown, I felt I had a grown-up friend, until the final day that I saw him.

  That day, on the way back from school, he took me to a grassy area. He told me again how much he liked my company. He told me he liked little girls, especially little girls as grown up as me. Then he stared at me, with what suddenly seemed like my father’s eyes. He picked some blades of grass and ran his fingers up and down, up and down them suggestively.

  ‘Antoinette,’ he said, ‘do you know what I would like you to do now?’

  I knew.

  ‘I know you would like that, wouldn’t you, Antoinette?’

  Like a rabbit caught in the sudden glare of headlamps, I froze.

  ‘I know that you do it with your father,’ he said. ‘Tell the teacher; next time I come, I will take you home. Then we can spend the afternoon together before you catch your bus. You would like that, wouldn’t you?’

  I could only nod, as I’d been trained to do.

  That night I told my father about his friend. With his face red with rage, he shook me.

  ‘Don’t you be doing this with anyone but me, my girl,’ he hissed raising his fists.

  But this time he lowered them without hitting me and left my room. I never saw my father’s friend again and I never found out how he came to know about my father and me. It can only have been my father who told him. Even monsters, it seems, feel the pressure of living a lie; even they must have someone who knows and accepts the real person.

  My life at Cooldaragh continued for a couple more months. Then my mother broke the news that the house had been sold and, yet again, we would have to move, this time back across the Irish Sea to Kent. She as well as my father needed to work, she explained, for now that we could no longer live rent free my father’s income alone would not support us. Employment for her, she believed, would be easier to find in England.

  My mother then told me that in the two years we had spent at Cooldaragh she had managed to save enough money for a deposit on a house. The harsh lines that had appeared around her mouth over the last few years seemed to soften as she talked, for finally she could see that her dream – that of owning her own home – was drawing closer.

  I saw the enthusiasm on her face but I could not share it with her, as I had grown to love Cooldaragh.

  Chapter Twelve

  Added to my anxiety at leaving Cooldaragh was the fact that my mother had told me I was not going to live with them when we moved. Instead, I was going to be sent to stay with my godmother in Tenterden. Arrangements had already been made for me to attend the local school there. Even though she assured me that this was only a temporary arrangement, until she and my father found a house for all of us, I felt I was going to be abandoned. Family life might have been terrible, but being handed over to the care of strangers was even more frightening.

  Far from being upset at the prospect of being parted from me, my mother only seemed to be tearful at having to find a home for Bruno, her favourite dog. He was to go to the South of Ireland, where Mrs Giveen’s daughter lived.

  To add to my grief, my parents decided that Sally, even though she was happy with us, was to be put to sleep. Patiently, my mother explained to me that the little dog had never recovered from her early life. She had started to have fits, and it would be unfair to re-home her.

  Tearfully I asked about Judy and the cats. The cats were to stay at Cooldaragh, while Judy was to board with a nearby farmer until we were all settled.

  I felt devastated to be leaving Cooldaragh and the only school I had been happy at. I felt my whole life had gone as I said my tearful goodbyes to the animals. The first was to Bruno, who cheerfully went off in his new mistress’s car. I stood at the end of the drive watching the car disappear, hoping he would be as loved by them as he had been by me.

  The second and harder goodbye was to Sally. What felt like unbearable grief nearly overwhelmed me when, thinking she was going for an outing, she trustingly jumped into my father’s car. I reached through the window to stroke her for the last time, trying not to let her see the tears that threatened to choke me. I knew she was being sent on her last journey to the vet’s because my father had informed me of the fact that day.

  I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day. I had to face that the truth had also come from my mother. What would one white lie to protect me have mattered then, when our whole family life was built on lies? Although my mother tried to comfort me, she couldn’t make me feel any better. I felt I had sent one of my friends to her death.

  Over the next few weeks I helped my mother pack the tea chests again and packed my case for my stay with my godmother, of whom I had no memory at all. Because I was only allowed one small case, some of my treasured possessions had to go, Jumbo being the first casualty.

  A few days before we were due to depart all our belongings were collected to go into storage. The following day my father took Judy to the farmer. I wanted to go with her, but my fear of being alone with him outweighed my wish to accompany her. I patted and hugged her as she sat in the car, and she, sensing my unhappiness, simply licked my hand.

  As I stood and watched the car disappear I felt totally alone, all my friends had left. I knew that my mother also felt sad, but this time I felt little love for her, just dull resentment.

  The day came when our few personal possessions were loaded into the car and, with me squashed into the back, we drove to the Belfast ferry. This would take us to Liverpool from where, after the twelve-hour crossing, we would continue our long journey to Kent. This time after the crossing, as we arrived at Liverpool, I felt no sense of excitement, just a dead sense of depression.

  The next stage, on the long drive to Kent, I tried to read, but vivid pictures kept coming into my head. Sally looking at me, with her trusting brown eyes, as she went on her last journey. I could still feel the silky hair on her head when I had stroked it. I saw the ponies as they waited for me at the fence when I had said a last goodbye to them as I fed them their titbits. The feel and smell of them as I threw my arms around their necks for the last time still lingered. I saw faithful Bruno looking out of the window as he disappeared from view, and I missed Judy unbearably.

  I looked at the back of my parents’ heads as we drove; my mother’s often turned towards him as she talked quietly. Occasionally she would turn to me, but I kept my book up to mask the feelings that I knew would have shown, feelings of resentment at my oncoming abandonment and anger at parting with my friends.

  Every few hours we would stop by the roadside for sandwiches washed down by tea. I knew better than to refuse them, but I could feel the chewed lumps lodging in my throat. Only the liquid from the thermos s
eemed to give enough moisture for me to swallow.

  At nightfall we finally pulled up outside a large grey house. The grass of its small front garden was unadorned by flowers. Instead there was a large sign advertising the fact that it had vacancies for bed and breakfast. This, my parents explained to me, was where we were to stay for the night before my mother took me to my godmother’s. After I had my supper, which the landlady served us in a small, bleak dining room, I went listlessly to bed. This was a put-you-up in my parents’ room, which I crawled into and fell instantly to sleep.

  The following morning, after I’d washed and dressed, I had my breakfast in the same cheerless dining room, and then, with my mother holding my case, we left for the bus, with me trailing despondently behind her.

  On the hour-long bus journey my mother kept up a one-sided conversation. Knowing her as I did, I recognized that her bright tones hid a nervousness. She told me that my godmother was looking forward to my visit. She asked me to be good. She reassured me that our separation would not be for long, and that I would be happy there.

  Unbelieving, I sat and listened, giving little response, until gradually her bright chatter became stilled, finally stopping altogether. I felt my fate was the same as the dogs’. I was being re-homed. I could and would not understand why, when my parents were going to live such a short distance away, I could not be with them. As I sat on that bus I anticipated a dislike for my godmother and when we reached her house, I knew I was not going to be disappointed.

  After the warm red bricks of Cooldaragh, the grey semi-detached house seemed completely cheerless. I looked with distaste at the tiny front garden with its dark pink hydrangea bush planted in the small patch of dark soil. As my mother raised the iron knocker to announce our arrival, I glanced at the net-curtained windows that hid any view of the interior. I saw the one on the upstairs window twitch, but I couldn’t see the occupant. I heard footsteps descending the stairs, and then she opened the door and, with a thin smile, beckoned us in.