Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal. Toni Maguire
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Название: Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal
Автор: Toni Maguire
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Секс и семейная психология
isbn: 9780007279838
isbn:
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.
My eyes blinked as I forced my brain back into the present and into the hospice. I unscrewed the flask once more, poured myself the last of the vodka and lit another cigarette.
‘Now do you remember?’ Antoinette whispered. ‘Do you really believe your mother loved you?’
‘She did,’ I protested weakly.
‘But she loved him more,’ came the reply.
Trying to dam the floodgates as the memories struggled to get through, I took a deep swallow of vodka and inhaled my nicotine sedative.
Through the haze Antoinette held up an unwanted picture; the focus was too sharp for me to be able to force it away with pure willpower.
As though it were yesterday, I saw the room inside the thatched house with two people in it. A woman was sitting on a chintz-covered settee with a small child standing, facing her. With clenched fists and imploring eyes the child drew on all her reserves for the confrontation and searched for the words to describe an adult act.
It was the week after that kiss. Antoinette had waited until her father had returned to work and she and her mother were alone. I saw her still trusting in that mother’s love but fumbling for the right words to explain an act that was foreign to her. Her nerviness showed in the way she stood and the mother’s anger grew more visible with each word that passed her lips. Faithful little Judy, sensing something wrong, was standing by the child’s side with her face looking upwards, her eyes full of canine concern.
Again I felt that blaze of anger flashing from the mother’s dark green eyes. This time, through my own adult’s eyes, I could sense another emotion lurking behind it. Looking back in time I searched the picture for a clue as to what it might be, and then I saw it. It was fear. She was frightened of what she was about to hear.
Antoinette, at six and a half, only saw the anger. Her slight shoulders sagged, expressions of bewilderment and hurt flitted across her face as her last hope of safety left her. Her mother did not intend to protect her from this.
I heard again the mother’s voice commanding her to, ‘Never, never speak of it again, will you?’
I heard her reply, ‘No, Mummy.’
Her training had started; her silence was assured and the road forward for what was to follow had been successfully cleared.
‘You see, you did tell her, you did,’ my tormenter whispered.
For years I’d blocked out the picture of my mother being told. I’d forced it to fade from my mind. I had forced Antoinette, the frightened child, to disappear and with her she took my memories. I realized, with a sad acceptance, that my mother had always known what my father felt towards me. How else could the child have described that kiss, if she hadn’t actually experienced it? She couldn’t possibly have invented it. Out in the country in those days there was no exposure to television, she had no books or magazines that could have allowed her to learn about such things. My mother had heard only the truth from her child.
‘Remember our last year, Toni,’ Antoinette asked, ‘the year before you left me? Look at this picture.’
She slid another memory into the receptacle of my mind. It showed my father coming home from prison eleven years later. How my mother had sat looking out of the window waiting for him. Seeing him in the distance, only then had her face come to life as she rushed to meet him.
‘You were forgotten then. She never forgave you, but she forgave him.’
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