My grown-up self has learnt understanding and compassion. I now would have seen a lonely middle-aged woman with few social graces, who was unused to children. To my prejudiced child’s eyes, her tall bony frame looked witch-like. My opinion was formed.
My mother and I were seated in her austere sitting room, on her functional upright chairs with their pristine arm caps. A few minutes later the obligatory tea tray arrived, without which no adult conversation seemed able to take place.
As I balanced a small plate, on which sat a dry scone, on my knees, and awkwardly held my china cup, she and I appraised each other. Whereas I saw a witch, she, I am sure, saw a sullen unsmiling child, tall for her age and too thin. The antipathy I felt, I saw reflected in her eyes.
I listened to the two women talking about me, as though I was an inanimate object. For the first time I felt real resentment towards my mother as I sat in depressed silence.
How could she, I thought, leave me here?
I heard their conversation cease, could feel an awkward pause, broken by my godmother’s voice saying, ‘I’ll leave you two alone then, to say your goodbyes,’ as she abruptly rose to remove the tea tray.
My mother and I looked at each other warily as I waited for her to make the first move. Finally she opened her handbag, removed an envelope and handed it to me.
‘Antoinette,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ve got to go now. I’ve put some pocket money in here for you. It’s to last until I fetch you.’
I stood there, numb, as she gave me a quick hug before hurriedly leaving. When I heard the front door close I went to the window. Pulling the net curtain aside I watched her forlornly until she was out of sight. She never looked back
Anger and resentment consumed me. I missed Judy unbearably. At night tears oozed down my cheeks as I thought of the fate of the animals. I was being punished but I didn’t know what for. I hid my deep unhappiness behind a sullen face in the house and my godmother, with her lack of any experience of children, did not understand that the child before her was disturbed. She just saw a rebel.
Within my parents’ house my growing instability had not shown, for they acted as the lid, keeping the pressure in. There I was controlled, emotions were suppressed and behaviour programmed. Now, without those perimeters, my security had gone. An animal that has been trained through fear will revert to bad behaviour when the fear is removed. I was not a child who had been moulded with praise and affection, where confidence was encouraged to grow. I was a child whose night-times were wracked by nightmares and whose daytimes were confusing. A child who not only missed everything that was familiar, but was scared she had been left for ever. Never having been given the independence of being in control of my own emotions, I now felt even more insecure and any rules my godmother tried to enforce were resented.
My parents were my masters; my father controlled me with threats and my mother with her pained manipulation of my feelings. Now anger became the predominant emotion that coursed through my body. Anger was my defence against unhappiness and my godmother became the target for it. She would look on helplessly as I, determined not to give her an inch, rebelled against every one of her commands.
‘Don’t run, Antoinette,’ she would say as we left church, so I ran. ‘Come home straight from school.’ I dawdled. ‘Eat your greens,’ and I would push my food around my plate until she excused me from the table and I was free to go to my room and read. She wrote to my mother saying I was unhappy and she thought it would be best if I went back to her. My mother, who I think had hoped my godmother would grow fond of me and want me to stay, arranged to collect me.
Later I found out that my godmother had felt such a failure in her childcare duties that she had blamed herself, not me, for my behaviour. The result of that was that she refrained from reporting my bad behaviour to my mother, thus saving me from punishment.
I was happy to leave the house, which I had felt was so cheerless. I couldn’t wait to wave goodbye to the old woman who I knew had never wanted or liked me. Maybe if I had been able to see into the future and had known what the next few years would bring I would have had second thoughts, but at eleven I knew nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
On the journey from Tenterden to Old Woking, which we made by bus and train, my mother told me about the house that she and my father had bought, and how she had decorated it.
In the 1950s, before patios became fashionable, houses had back yards where there was an outside lavatory, a washing line and, most probably, the husband’s bicycle leaning against the unpainted brick walls. However, my mother, who had loved the flowers at Cooldaragh, had seen a picture of a cottage in France and had tried to copy the exterior as much as possible.
She had painted the walls white, the doors and window frames blue. Not only were there window boxes at the front of the house, but also boxes had been firmly tied to the top of the walls surrounding the back yard, which she had filled with nasturtiums. She told me how their tumbling orange flowers contrasted vividly with the newly painted white walls.
The inside of the house, she told me, still needed to be decorated. Her idea was to remove all the wallpaper, paint the kitchen yellow and the rest of the house cream, whilst parquet lino would transform the downstairs floors.
As my mother explained every detail, I could see that she took an enormous delight in planning our new home, the first one they had managed to buy after nearly twelve years of marriage.
At the end of our journey, we walked a short distance to a street, where small, drab semi-detached and terraced houses came straight up to the pavement and not a hedge or bush broke the monotony. Our house stood out bravely with its freshly painted walls, the colourful window boxes and blue door, its brass knocker shining.
That evening when my father came home from work, we all ate supper together. Both of them seemed so happy to have me back that I took courage and told them my news.
‘I’m called Toni now.’
My godmother had told me that Toni was the correct abbreviation for Antoinette. Toni, I felt, was my name, the name of a girl who might be popular. Antoinette was someone else.
My mother smiled at me. ‘Well, it will be easier to put on your name tags when you start your new school.’
This was her way of voicing her acceptance.
My father made no comment and stubbornly refused to call me Toni until the day he died.
Over the weekend my father was working, so I helped my mother by stripping wallpaper. First I would soak it using a wet cloth. Then I would take the scraper and peel off long strips. I managed to completely strip the walls that Saturday. I felt close to my mother again. She kept telling me how useful I was being. We had afternoon tea together outside in our flower-filled yard where she answered my unspoken questions.
‘Your father is going to visit your grandparents in two weeks, then he will bring Judy back,’ she reassured me. ‘I’m taking you to your new school on Monday, where you’ll meet your headmaster.’
I realized that this was not going to be a girls’ only school, which I had become used to again, but a mixed one.
‘What will I wear?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ she answered, ‘the headmaster has given permission for you to wear your old school uniform until you outgrow it.’
My happiness at the news that Judy was coming disappeared. My heart sank, for yet again I was going to be dressed differently from the other children.
Sunday came and went too quickly for me. On Monday my mother took me to my new school. That morning, I carefully dressed in my green gym tunic, white shirt and green and black tie, knee-length grey socks, old lace-up shoes, and finally pulled on my green blazer.
When I arrived I shrivelled inside. In the playground were girls in grey skirts, white blouses and ankle socks, their feet enclosed in slip-on shoes. I could see clusters of children of my age playing, groups of teenagers talking together and my confidence plummeted. Armed only with my new name, I followed my mother into the bui
lding to meet my new headmaster.
Looking at my school reports, he asked me about my last two schools and what I had enjoyed most there. He questioned me on my hobbies, but how could I explain to him, a town dweller in England, what country life in Northern Ireland had been like? He took me to my classroom and introduced me to the teacher in charge. I saw not the black-gowned figure I was used to, but a large blonde woman with a pretty face. She told me she was taking the English class that day. I was handed a book to read, which I had already studied in Northern Ireland. I realized even my favourite subject was going to be boring.
As class followed class that day I became increasingly despondent because the curriculum was so unfamiliar to me. Breaks came and went. The confident pre-teens in their casual uniforms seemed to be ignoring me. I must have seemed very strange to them in my gym tunic, with my long socks held up by garters, my hair parted neatly and held in place with a slide, whilst theirs was caught up in ponytails. I stood in the playground clutching my books, trying to will just one girl to speak to me.
Not one did.
That afternoon I walked home, watching the other children chattering in groups. To them I no doubt seemed aloof. I, with so few social graces, was an outsider.
At home my mother happily announced that she had found a job and, two weeks after I started school, my father went to Northern Ireland to visit his family and to bring Judy back. Over the next few weeks I learnt that I had to take an exam called the 11+, something I had been unaware of. The teachers gave me extra homework to bring me up to date with the English curriculum, but with only a few weeks to go I was having sleepless nights.
Although my father was indifferent to my education, my mother certainly seemed to want me to pass. The teachers were confident in me, but I was not so sure. I had mixed feelings over the next couple of weeks, wavering between excited anticipation of Judy’s return and dread of the approaching exam.
They both arrived. First, Judy, who shook with joy when she saw me. Although she now had no woods and fields to search around in her quest for rabbits, she soon settled down to her life in the town and her walks on a lead, which I gave her three times a day.
I missed my old school and a lot of my life at Cooldaragh. It seemed that Judy was adapting better than I was.
Then the dreaded exam came; the papers were handed out in silence to the young pupils who all knew how important this day was. I knew I had done well in two of my papers, but the arithmetic seemed very different to me. I looked up despondently at my teacher, who was looking over my shoulder at my answers but said nothing.
After the bell went and all the papers were handed in, I felt despair, for I knew if I failed I would not get into grammar school and would have to stay in the senior section of this school for ever.
During the following few weeks, as I was waiting for the results of the exams, I saw little of my father, who seemed to be working all hours; or so my mother told me. I would come straight home, help with housework, then settle down to do my homework.
Then my father changed his shifts from daytime to nighttime. At the same time my mother started work. As the office where she worked was a bus journey away and my school only a few minutes walk away, she left the house before me. On the first morning of our new routine I had my breakfast quickly while a saucepan of water heated on the stove for me to take upstairs to my bedroom for my morning wash.
As only a minuscule landing separated my parents’ bedroom from mine, I tried to climb the stairs as quietly as I could so as not to wake my father, who on his return from his night shift had gone straight to bed.
I poured the water into an old china bowl, removed my nightdress, took my flannel and started soaping myself, noticing for the first time as I looked into the mirror that my body was beginning to change. Small breasts were forming on my previously flat chest. Still looking in the mirror I ran my hands over them, not sure if I really liked the changes. Then I saw another reflection.
My father, dressed only in his sweat-stained vest and underpants, had come out of his bedroom and squatted down on the floor outside my door, which he must have opened very quietly. With a smile on his face, he was just watching me. I could feel tremors of fear in my body as I tried to grab the towel to cover myself.
‘No, Antoinette,’ he instructed, ‘I want to watch you. Turn around.’
I did as I was told.
‘Now wash,’ he commanded.
As I obeyed him I felt a hot flush of shame spread across my face. Then he rose up, came over to me and turned me around to face the mirror.
‘Look in the mirror, Antoinette,’ he whispered.
While his hand stroked my small budding breasts, his breath rasped in my ear and his other hand slid downwards. Then he let me go.
‘You come straight home from school now. Bring me a nice cup of tea when you get in. Antoinette, do you hear me?’ He asked as I stood mutely looking at the floor.
‘Yes, Daddy,’ I whispered.
Then he left my room abruptly, giving me a wink as he went. Still trembling, I quickly dressed, brushed my hair and went downstairs to give Judy her morning walk before I left for school.
That day I was even quieter than usual at school, no longer being the first to put my hand up to answer the teacher’s questions, for I knew what was going to happen to me when I went home and made my father’s tea. When the bell rang at four o’clock, I slowly packed my satchel and walked home alone, ignoring my peers who were doing the same journey in small groups. But they, I knew, were going to be greeted by caring mothers, because ‘latch-key kids’ were not common until several years later.
Using my key, I let myself in and was greeted by an excited Judy, waiting for me, as she did every day, to take her for her walk. That day I could feel his presence upstairs even before he spoke.
‘Antoinette, is that you?’ he called down the stairs.
I answered that it was.
‘Well, make me a cup of tea and get yourself up here. Put that dog of yours in the back yard.’
I went through the routine of putting the kettle on the stove, warming the pot for a few minutes, putting the leaves in, letting it brew slowly, adding milk and sugar to the cup, all the time feeling his impatience and my mounting dread. Finally I could delay no longer. I put the teacup on a tray with two digestive biscuits and carried it up to him. As I entered the dark bedroom, where the curtains were drawn, he was lying in the bed that he shared with my mother. Once again I could smell his body odour and sense his excitement. I put the tray beside his bed.
‘Go take your gym slip off, and come back in here,’ he said as he picked up his cup of tea.
I came back in my vest, knickers, shoes and socks.
‘Take them off now,’ he instructed, pointing at my vest and school-uniform knickers. Then he lit a cigarette and gave me that smile that I knew so well. Beside the bed was the jar of vaseline that was normally on the dressing table next to his hairbrush. He dipped the fingers of one hand into it while still puffing on his cigarette. I could feel the fear inside me, for I knew my mother would not be home for two hours, and I could sense that what had happened to me in Northern Ireland was going to be worse now. I knew that my changing body was exciting him more than my younger one had.
He pulled me onto the bed so I was sitting across his knees. Taking his fingers out of the jar, he roughly forced them into me. Then he got out of the bed and positioned me as he always had in the car all those years ago, legs dangling helplessly over the edge of the bed. He entered me more roughly than ever before. I could close my eyes, but not my ears.
‘You like this, Antoinette, don’t you?’ he whispered.
When I didn’t answer he pushed harder and my whole body went rigid with pain.
‘Now tell your Daddy you like it,’ he said as he took a final puff on his cigarette. ‘Say “Yes, Daddy, I like it”.’
I obeyed in a whisper. Then I felt that sticky substance dripping onto my thighs as, still holding the end o
f his cigarette, he spurted over me.
‘Now go and clean yourself up and tidy up downstairs before your mother comes home from work,’ he told me as he pushed me roughly off the bed.
I dressed in an old skirt and jumper, went down to the lavatory in the back yard and rubbed and rubbed myself with damp toilet paper, trying to remove the stickiness and the smell of him. Then I went inside to clean out the ashes left in the fire from the night before, laying a new one using rolled-up newspaper and small pieces of wood to get it going. I brought coal from outside, washed up and, a few minutes before my mother was due, put the kettle on the stove so that she could have fresh tea waiting for her.
Chapter Fourteen
Dimly I heard my mother’s voice calling up the stairs, penetrating the waves of pain that lurked behind my eyes, pain that gripped the top of my head while invisible claws squeezed into the back of my neck.
It was time, I knew, to go downstairs and collect water for my morning wash. I opened my mouth to call out to my mother but only a rasping croak left my lips. My eyes felt glued together as if to protect them from the glare of the morning light as it burned painfully through my lids. Raising a hand that overnight had become heavy, with fingers that were swollen and stiff, I tried to rub them, only to feel the burning heat from my forehead.
Forcing my body to sit up, dizziness made the room spin, black dots danced in front of me and sweat trickled down from my forehead. Icy cold, with shuddering body and chattering teeth, panic made my heart beat faster, until I could hear the blood pounding as it coursed through my body.
I lifted my legs out of bed and staggered to the mirror. A stranger’s face stared back at me, a stranger with yellow-tinged skin stretched tightly over a puffy face. Dark shadows had appeared overnight to circle my eyes, while lank, damp hair lay plastered to my head. Again I raised my hand to my head to sweep the hair away and noticed that the fingers were as yellow as my face and swollen to twice their normal size. Trembling, I climbed down the stairs on legs that felt too weak to support me and fell onto a chair. Tears fell unchecked down my cheeks as I saw my mother’s cold stare.
Don't Tell Mummy Page 11
