Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal. Toni Maguire

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СКАЧАТЬ I did not want to accept the memories that were being set free in my head. I had realized a long time ago that my mother’s recollection had stayed for ever locked onto the picture of the handsome, charming man of her youth. She, five years older than him and cursed with a beautiful mother, remained in her own mind the plain woman, lucky to have such a man.

      ‘And nothing or nobody would take him away,’ Antoinette retorted. ‘Think of the last months at the thatched house, and think about what she finally did.’

      Could she, I wondered that night, have loved him so much that she committed the ultimate betrayal to keep him?

      Another cigarette was lit as I wondered if any of my questions would ever be answered, any explanation given, or had she lived in the state of denial for so long that her truth had also been firmly buried?

      Feeling tiredness almost swamp me, I closed my eyes briefly and, half asleep, I returned to the thatched house.

      A steady stream of almost imperceptible changes over the passage of two years had gradually unwoven the fabric of my life. For comfort I would try and conjure up the face of my English grandmother and the memories of feeling secure and loved when I was around her. I would remember when just my mother and I had lived together, days when she had played with me, days when she had read my favourite stories at bedtime and days of just feeling happy.

      In bed at night, feeling knots of despair growing in my stomach, I tried to cling onto those elusive memories, to hold onto the feeling of warmth that they gave, but each day they slipped further and further out of reach.

      A distance had sprung up between my mother and me, a cold space that I could not breach. Gone were the days when for a surprise she would arrange for a neighbour to drive her into town so that she could meet me from school. Gone were the days when she would listen to my chatter with a smile on her face, and gone were the days when she spent hours making me pretty clothes. In the place of my loving, laughing mother a stranger had appeared, gradually invading her body until the mother I’d known was no longer there, a stranger who had little time for me. Not understanding what I’d done wrong, I felt increasingly bewildered, unhappy and alone.

      At the start of the summer holidays I realized that my visits to my grandparents were to come to an end when my mother informed me I was not going back to my junior school in the town. She had enrolled me in the local village school, which was four miles away.

      I couldn’t stop the tears coming to my eyes, but I furiously blinked them away, having already learnt not to show any weakness. Instead of crying in front of her, I took Judy for a walk and once out of sight let the tears fall. Not to see my best friend again, not to be part of the school I thought I would stay at for years, and never to see my grandparents alone and have the teasing conversations with my relatives that I had been enjoying so much. The prospect was too bleak to be bearable.

      I learnt the meaning of isolation that summer and a feeling I was too young to put a name to entered my head: it was the feeling of betrayal.

      September came and another first day at a new school began, a few days before my seventh birthday. This time there was no excitement in me as I dressed in my old school uniform and prepared myself for the first of many long walks. Not only was there very little public transport in those days, there was no school bus either. I could remember other first days and my mother taking me when it was only a short distance. Now I was to do the daily four-mile walk to school and the walk back alone.

      The first time the road seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance, with only a few scattered cottages breaking up the scenery, which that day gave me no pleasure. As I trudged along for over an hour, I was quite surprised I was able to find the school at all. Other pupils were arriving on bicycles and on foot and for the first time I realized that the school was mixed. Up till then I’d been used to a girls-only school. Squaring my shoulders for the challenges that lay ahead, I walked in and went in search of a teacher.

      The school building was completely unlike the mellow red-bricked one I was used to. It was a low, grey, utilitarian building, divided into two classrooms, one for the under eights and the other for children between eight and eleven. Here, when we had our breaks there was no grass to play on; instead a concrete playground was deemed sufficient for the needs of the hundred or so children who attended.

      At this school, when the breaks came, there was no Jenny to introduce me around, no companionable laughter that drew me in to feel part of their group; instead clusters of children dressed in a different uniform stared at me with open suspicion.

      The pupils, mainly local farm-labourers’ children, sniggered at my English accent and my old private school uniform which, since it was not worn out, my parents had insisted I wore, while the teachers ignored me.

      Lunchtime came and groups or pairs of noisy children ran to the small canteen, everyone busy saving places for their friends. Confused, I looked around for a seat. Spotting one at the end of the table I placed my satchel on the chair before joining the queue for food. Mashed potatoes with corned beef and stewed cabbage was served and as I forced it down in silence I knew I had entered a different world, one where I was no longer ‘Annie-net’ but an alien to those around me. Pride kept me quiet as the children mocked me with an undercurrent of aggression, which over the years I would become familiar with but which was then still an unknown quantity

      That year, as the seasons changed from summer to autumn and the evenings drew in, bringing with them an eerie twilight dusk, my four-mile walk home seemed to take longer every day. The hedgerows and trees cast sinister shadows, turning what had been a pretty walk into a frightening journey.

      Gradually my fear of the dark grew and twilight with its shadows became an enemy. I would try and walk faster but my school satchel, crammed with sharpened pencils, reading and arithmetic books, seemed to get heavier with each step I took. The middle of October, when the clocks turned afternoons into evenings, brought winds that took the leaves from the trees. In November I encountered another enemy, the rain. With my head down I would struggle through every downpour, knowing that in the morning my coat would still be damp. The water would soak through to my gym tunic and over the weeks the creases gradually disappeared until the smart confident girl I had been only a few months before had disappeared. When I looked in the mirror I saw in her place an unkempt child, whose puppy fat had melted from her bones. A child dressed in crumpled clothes with lank shoulder-length hair, a child who looked uncared for, a child whose face showed a stoic acceptance of the changes in her life.

      Half-way between the school and the thatched house was a shop, which like many of the buildings scattered nearby was designed to withstand the bleak Irish weather, not to enhance the countryside. It was a squat stone building with a concrete floor and a simple wooden counter, behind which were numerous shelves. It stocked an extensive array of goods that the local farmers and their labourers needed; everything from oil for the lamps to delicious-smelling home-baked soda breads and locally cured hams.

      Here women would come not just for the necessities of life, but for a brief respite from their men folk, and to enjoy a few minutes of female company. With no public transport, limited electricity and in many cases such as ours not even running water, the days were long and hard for the women. They seldom seemed to leave their homes except on Sundays, where the community of staunch Protestants rarely missed a church service.

      The owner of the shop, a kindly woman, would always welcome me with a warm smile. The moment I saw the shop I would quicken my pace, because there I could escape from the cold and find some friendly company. They would sit me down, give me diluted orange squash and sometimes even present me with a scone fresh from the stove, dripping with melting butter. The friendliness of the owner after the bleakness of the school day would warm me and the second half of my journey home would pass more comfortably.

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