When Daddy Comes Home (14 page)

T
ry as I might, I could not make those memories leave me. As I sat with the light fading I could sense my father’s intimidating presence in the room with me, the man who all his life had relied on coercion, never logic or reasoning.

Only that morning, the day after he had died, I had arrived here at his house, a small whitewashed terrace in the centre of Larne. He had moved there shortly after my mother’s death. To my dismay, he had sold the home that they had shared together and that she had cherished so much within only a few weeks of her dying.

Unlocking the door, I had stepped into a small windowless entrance hall. The stairs with their faded dark carpeting faced me but I did not want to tackle those upstairs rooms. Instead, I opened the door that led into the sitting room.

A small two-seater settee covered in dull burgundy with worn arms and springs that were trying to make their escape through the scuffed base had been placed opposite a large television. What, I wondered, had he done with the settee my mother had so painstakingly covered with pretty chintz material? Even the many cushions, covered with pastel fabric, which she had artfully scattered over each seating place, had disappeared. The mantelpiece held a cheap clock and instead
of the delicate blue and white Dresden figurines which my mother had loved, the only ornament was a shiny china tabby cat which had the country of its origin stamped on its base in an unrecognizable alphabet.

The coal fire had been replaced by a modern ugly gas stove and in the recess by the chimney breast wooden shelves housed not the books my mother would have favoured but Joe’s collection of dance trophies. Propped incongruously against their shiny, dust-free gilt was a small photograph. It was the picture of Antoinette aged three wearing a gingham dress which her mother had made all those years ago. He had removed it from its silver frame, letting the edges curl. I took it and placed it in my wallet.

I was relieved that this small charmless house held so few memories for me. Although I had visited once before, I had not noticed then how very little of my father’s life with my mother remained. There was not even one photograph of her on display. It was as though with her death, her memory had been erased from his mind.

Wanting to rid the house of the stale smell that hung in the air, I opened the windows regardless of the chill that entered. I lit a cigarette and inhaled as deeply as I could, wanting that familiar tobacco smell to eclipse that oppressive odour of the house.

His presence was everywhere: worn carpet slippers sat by the side of an armchair that had become shiny with wear and the back showed a round greasy spot where his head had rested. An ashtray placed on the coffee table in honour of my only visit a few months before still remained there. He had managed to conquer his addiction to cigarettes when he had turned sixty. Mine had started once I had left my parents’ home.

I wondered what the ashtray meant. Had my father hoped that I had been so forgiving that my visit would repeated? Did he really think that he had done so little wrong that it was only my selfishness that kept me in England? Was he able to fool himself to that extent? These were questions that I had no answer to and I would never be able to ask him myself now, so I mentally shrugged my shoulders. It was many years since I had tried to fathom the workings of my father’s mind.

In the kitchen, a single cup and saucer sat on the draining board and a freshly ironed cream shirt carefully placed on a wire hanger was suspended on a hook by the kitchen door, as though my father would be coming back to put it on at any moment.

My parents’ animals – a big, good-natured golden Labrador and two cats – had died several years before my mother’s death and somehow their absence added to the house’s desolate air. I remembered the love both my mother and father had lavished on them and again pushed aside the question: if they were capable of feeling love and even compassion for four-legged creatures, why had they felt so little for me?

Outside the back door, I glanced at the unkempt garden then turned away, almost tripping over my father’s golf clubs. I felt the black cloud of depression settling on my shoulders again and firmly pushed it away.

‘For God’s sake, Toni,’ I told myself impatiently. ‘He’s gone now. Just get on with sorting his papers and you can go back to England.’

I made myself put on the kettle to make a large mug of tea, but not before I scalded the mug with boiling water. I did not want to place my lips where his had been. Then I gathered my strength and turned to the job I had come here to do.

It was the first task that I found the most difficult. I found a notebook where my mother had kept her household accounts in a desk drawer. Meticulously filled in with her small neat handwriting, it showed a daily record of a frugal existence. Beside them were the bank statements. My father had been a thrifty man and had spent very little of what he had. The accounts showed a bigger sum in them than I had expected. Another statement showed that as well as his monthly pension, several substantial amounts had been paid in. One was from the sale of the larger house my parents had owned and the others from the sale of all the antiques my mother had painstakingly collected during her marriage. Found at junk shops and markets at bargain prices, her collection of china and ornaments had been cherished and displayed with pride. On the occasions I had visited, she always had a freshly acquired small item of beauty that she proudly showed me.

My mother had loved two things in her life – her garden and her antiques. They were all that gave her some happiness. Both had been done away with and forgotten in this old man’s bare house.

It had not taken him long to erase her from his existence. The day after she died, when I had sat with her in the hospice until she finally passed away, I drove to the house where my parents lived. For the sake of her memory, I was prepared to suppress the rage I felt towards my father: the night she died he had refused to come to the hospice for that final goodbye and while I had sat holding her hand over that long lonely night, the man she had loved for so many years had preferred to drink at the British Legion club.

But, great as my fury was towards him and as much as I resented his absence that night, I still wanted the company of another person who had known and loved her. I wanted to
walk in the garden she had created, look one last time at her collection of ornaments and feel her presence. I wanted to remember her as the mother she had been until I had turned six: the one who had played with me, read bedtime stories and let me crawl onto her lap for cuddles. That was the mother I had always loved. The other mother – the one who had sacrificed her child to live out her fantasy of a happy marriage and who never admitted her guilt – I would forget for now.

Arriving at the farmhouse my parents had converted some years previously, I was prepared to put aside my anger and drink a cup of tea with my father. I needed so much to delay the acceptance of her death and to share some memories with him, like any daughter should be able to do. I walked to the blue-painted front door and tried to push it open as I called for him. It was locked. I realized then that if I had hoped for any normality I was going to be disappointed.

Seizing the brass door knocker, I knocked as loudly as I could, then stepped back and waited for him to open the door.

I heard the shuffle of his footsteps then the turning of the key. As the door opened my father stood in the entrance barring my way, refusing to let me in. Instead, he glared at me with bloodshot eyes sunken into a face made puffy not with grief but, I knew by the smell of his breath, the excess of alcohol.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded. A flash of childhood fear made me recoil from him and I tried to hide it, but it was too late. He had recognized it and a gleam of triumph flashed into his eyes. ‘Well, Antoinette? I asked you a question.’

Even from my father, a man who was supposed to be grieving, that degree of aggression took me by surprise but I managed to stand my ground. ‘I’ve come to see if you are all right and if you need any help sorting out my mother’s things. I thought while I was here we’d have a cup of tea.’

‘Wait here.’ With that, he slammed the door in my face, leaving me staring at it aghast.

Surely he would want to discuss the funeral arrangements, I thought. I’m their only child.

He didn’t.

After a few minutes had passed, the door opened and he thrust several bulging black rubbish sacks at me.

‘Here are your mother’s things,’ he announced. ‘You can take them to a charity shop. Oh, and don’t be taking them to one nearby as I wouldn’t want anyone to recognize anything.’

And with those words he slammed the door shut again, I heard the key turn and I was left standing on the doorstep with my mother’s clothes bursting out of plastic sacks that lay in a heap by my feet.

He hasn’t even wasted one of her suitcases, I thought disbelievingly, as I packed them into my car.

It was not until after my mother’s funeral that I discovered that he had stealthily been selling her possessions before she died, something he would not have wanted me to be aware of and probably why he didn’t allow me into the house where I would have seen for myself how much was already gone. While he did not care for my opinion, he would not have wanted that deed to be talked about.

Now, as I looked at the bank statements, I saw that he had not sold them out of necessity but out of sheer greed. All he wanted was to see that money in his accounts. Judging by the many creases in the statements, he had satisfied his avarice often.

Surely, I thought, he must have known that my mother would have wanted me to have some of her collection as a memento, even if it was only one of the pieces I had bought
her. I simply did not believe that when she knew she was dying, she had left no instructions to that effect.

The walls of the house felt as though they were closing in on me as I felt again the effects of my father’s spite.

I remembered then the conversation between us when I had learnt that their house had been put on the market before her death and that within three days of her dying, the dealers were brought in to give quotes on the remainder of her possessions.

‘You’ve sold a lifetime of memories,’ I had cried in horror over the phone lines.

‘Well, they’re mine to do with as I like,’ had been the swift rejoinder. ‘Sure your mother did not even leave a will, so you wasted your time hanging around for her to die.’

That was the last conversation I had with him until social services contacted me to say that he was showing signs of senility and would I visit? It was a phone call he had asked them to make, expecting that my well-ingrained habit of obedience would still be in place.

I did go to his house then, against my better judgement, only to find that his charm had worked on a new generation of women. Holding court to a trio of females – his young pretty social worker, his daily carer and one elderly friend – he smiled at me complacently as I walked into the sitting room.

‘Well, if it’s not my wee daughter come to visit her old dad,’ he exclaimed with a note of triumph in his voice that only I could hear. There was no trace of gratitude in his mocking tones.

Sitting now in his house, I felt his presence begin to leave as the air blown in through the windows cleansed the rooms. I realized that there was nothing here for me – nothing to remind me of the past, nothing to comfort me and nothing to
make me afraid. Not one of my mother’s possessions was left except for her desk, in which were the notebook, those letters and the three photographs.

I searched the sitting room in vain for more pictures of my mother and of me, something that linked me to my past but there were none. Instead on the coffee table I came across photographs from a more recent time. They showed my father with a group of friends in the sitting room of his new house, obviously celebrating. There were bottles of beer on the table, smiles on the faces of the revellers and glasses held in their hands. On the dining table in the photograph, I could see an assortment of cards on display. Was it his birthday, I wondered. Then, picking up my father’s magnifying glass, I peered at the tiny print. No, they were ‘Welcome to your New Home’ cards. A housewarming party had been held six weeks after my mother’s death.

I looked at the photographs and the letter again. Slowly I tore the letter up, hoping its destruction would erase its words from my head. Even as I did so I knew it was a useless act; the words it contained were already imprinted on my memory and the contents would continue to haunt me long after I had left my father’s house.

I could not bring myself to destroy the photographs and found myself staring at the one taken when I was a baby again. I was too young when it had been taken to remember the day my mother and I had posed for it. It was a professional photograph, taken when Antoinette was around a year old. She was sitting on her mother’s knee while Ruth, aged thirty years, dressed in a square-necked dress with her shoulder-length hair falling in loose waves, held her with both hands. Ruth’s head was slightly bent but the slight smile on her face could be clearly seen as she looked down at her baby with an obvious
pride. There was an unmistakable glow of happiness surrounding the baby and the woman that radiated, nearly half a century later, from the faded print.

The chubby little girl dressed in a pretty silk dress, a tuft of fine hair on her head and a wide toothless grin stretched across her face, sat contently with one pudgy hand grasping a rattle. She looked like the child she was then, a much loved small person, and she beamed radiantly in the direction of the camera.

I thought briefly how neither my mother nor the baby she held could have foreseen how their lives would change and with a sigh, turned the picture face down and placed it on the table.

I thought of the shadow cast over that baby’s life and the childhood she had endured. I thought of her decline when, as a teenager, she was no longer able to cope with the rejection she received over and over again from her mother and how she had gradually slid into a black place.