When Daddy Comes Home (24 page)

Her parents would visit, their faces wreathed in smiles as they hugged her, making her feel special. It was always the nice father who arrived with her mother, the man she remembered him being when she was five years old; of the nasty one there was no sign. In that room her mother was happy without the lines of discontent that ran down her face. Judy still remained a mischievous puppy who played on the floor, while in the corner stood her memory boxes. The one with bad memories was tightly sealed, the contents forbidden to escape, while the smaller box containing the good ones stood open.

But then, as Antoinette grew older, the room became a dark place, empty of friends where only her mother came. But this was not the mother of her childhood dreams, the mother who loved and cuddled her. This mother looked at her with coldness while her dark green eyes both accused and reproached her. In the corners of the room the boxes had been reversed. It was the lid of the larger one containing the bad memories that had sprung open, spewing out its contents with no thought of order, creating a malevolent sprit that invaded her dreams and whispered to her she was to blame, not the people who rejected her. That spirit tormented her nightly until her mind was in complete chaos.

Then, when she had fallen ill and her mother had sent her away, the cataclysmic nature of Ruth’s betrayal became clear. It was then that she finally lost her fight to be a normal teenager. Inside our heads there is a space which is completely blank. It holds no memories and has no thoughts. Antoinette wanted to find that place for once there, the world no longer has the power to hurt. She wanted to curl up in the cocoon of her bedding until that time came and never have to face reality again.

It was then that her mind had buckled under the onslaught and she had ended up in hospital.

Antoinette thought sadly again of the facts that she had pieced together. First, that as a voluntary patient she could never have been transferred without her mother’s permission. Second, that Ruth had never made any effort to visit her daughter and see for herself if any progress had been made. And third, that Ruth had always known what her husband was.

She got up from her seat and pressed the buzzer on the wall. She was ready now.

A few minutes later the ward sister entered and sat opposite her patient. ‘Well, have you decided what you’re going to do tomorrow?’ she asked.

Instead of answering her question Antoinette looked at her squarely in the face and said, ‘Do you know how the dictionary defines incest? I looked it up once.’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘The sexual union between persons who are so closely related that their marriages are illegal or contrary to custom. Or their copulation is illegal. The people who commit it are considered impure. But that’s not what it is.’

‘Tell me what it is.’

‘It is rape, it is a thousand rapes.’ It was the first time Antoinette had voiced those thoughts to anyone. She looked at the bars on the windows, and realized that a year after her father’s release, she was still in her prison of memories. She continued in a voice more resigned than sad. ‘My mother took back a man who had raped me one thousand times. That’s how many three times a week for seven years is. His prison sentence was less than one day for each time he did that. One thousand times – and then it was me she told to leave.’

The ward sister sat silently, as though she knew how much it must have cost the seventeen-year-old to come to terms with the facts of her life.

For a moment Antoinette wavered, and then in her mind’s eye she saw the rows of cots with the white-haired old ladies. She heard the cries and moans from the women waking from their electric-shock sessions and saw their glazed unfocused eyes as they looked around helplessly, the remnants of their memory slipping further away with each treatment.

Then she thought of her mother and how she had wasted her life on broken promises and unfulfilled dreams and nearly destroyed her daughter as she did so.

Antoinette knew that if she stayed inside the walls of the hospital, then, like her mother, she could escape from the truths of her life that hurt her. But by doing so, she would throw away her future.

She remembered suddenly the day she fell from her cousin Hazel’s horse. Hazel had said, ‘You have to get back on the horse. If you don’t, you never will, you’ll always be afraid.’ She had summoned up her courage and obeyed her cousin. Antoinette knew that this was the time to do it again.

‘I’m going to sign myself out,’ she said simply.

The following morning she wrote her name on the release forms with a flourish: Toni Maguire.

It was Toni who left the hospital. Antoinette the frightened teenager was no longer there.

T
he night before I left hospital, I made my mind up that the games my mother had played had come to the end. I was never again going to be party to her psychological manipulation.

Instead I telephoned her. ‘I’m better,’ I said briefly. ‘I’ve made a full recovery. The hospital has told me I’m well enough to leave. And I’m coming to see you for a visit.’

I knew my mother; she would not fight the opinion of the doctors and the medical establishment. And I was right. She was so taken aback by my lack of submission that she put up no resistance.

As I turned into their road that day, I saw that my mother’s dream of owning her own large house had finally come true during the time I had been in hospital. A few months before my release they had moved and the doctor had furnished me with their new address. The house was a white double-storied building standing back from the road, in a smart suburb of Belfast.

They sold the gate lodge for a good profit, I thought. I stood for a few seconds looking at the exterior of what should have been a happy family home. But I knew the truth. My parents would grow old together with only their terrible secret to keep them company.

My mother flung open the door as soon as I had knocked. As soon as I looked at her, I knew everything had changed. Where was the mother I remembered, the one who could intimidate me with a glance one moment and then release boundless affection the next? This woman looked smaller, diminished somehow and I realized for the first time that I was the taller by several inches. An air of defeat had settled heavily about her, her shoulders drooped and her eyes slid away from mine as though to hide her emotions.

Did she remember the times she had betrayed my trust, I wondered. Or has she even rewritten that part of our family history?

She stood aside to allow me to enter, then she made us both tea. Once it was poured, she asked me what my plans were.

‘I want to go to England,’ I replied and felt sadness at the look of relief that appeared on her face even though I’d expected it.

‘When did you have in mind, darling?’

‘As soon as possible. There’s an agency here that can find me hotel work. I want to be a receptionist. That will provide me with accommodation as well as a good wage.’

I did not ask my mother if I could stay with her but simply took my case to a bedroom and she did not protest. I stayed there for three days before leaving for England.

I managed to avoid seeing my father almost entirely. He was keen to keep out of the way and barely came home while I was there. He did not say goodbye when I left.

I hugged my mother when I said goodbye, promised to write to her and then jumped in the taxi that took me to the docks.

I never told my parents that I knew they had been going to commit me. Confrontation would have gained nothing and
I had already made my plans. I had erected a barrier against the old love I had felt for my mother as soon as the teenager I had been disappeared.

As I stood on the deck and watch the gangway being hauled up and Belfast disappear from view, I knew that I would never return – not to live, anyway. And as for the promises of letters…well, that was a promise I had every intention of breaking.

When the last light of the city had vanished, I went to the bar, ordered a glass of wine and toasted myself.

To a new life.

I
pulled my mind back from the past and tried to push away the memories of Antoinette, and the child she had been over thirty years ago. I poured myself a stiff drink, lit a cigarette and reflected instead on the person I had become.

Antoinette had entered that hospital but it was Toni who had finally faced her parents before leaving Ireland. Without words, she had shown them that her past was put to rest where theirs never would be.

Two years later my mother traced and then contacted me. It only took one tearful phone call for us to resume the game of happy families. Later, I discovered that during my time in hospital, the hospital had repeatedly asked Ruth to visit me. They had said that without her, there was little chance of her daughter recovering – this was more than a bout of depression or a nervous breakdown and they were not confident that I would be able to cope in the outside world again. The doctors had made clear to Ruth what the problem was:

‘Your daughter simply cannot come to terms with the fact that you knew what was happening to her for all those years,’ they said.

Ruth had not reacted well to this. It struck at the heart of everything she had pretended to herself. But she still refused
to accept for a moment that she might be in some way to blame. ‘Doctor, how dare you accuse me? I did not know. I’ve suffered enough. I’ve never received any sympathy, only Antoinette has. It should be me in there, not her. If she needs to see a parent so badly I’ll send her father. She should be his responsibility.’

That was the last time the hospital contacted my mother. But still, knowing even this, I could not find it within myself to reject her completely.

Over the next thirty years, I did many things. I owned my own businesses, crossed Kenya by bus and successfully sued a greedy business partner in the high court. I became a woman comfortable in her own skin, one who had learnt to rely on the friendship of others and to like herself, and who had learnt how to be happy. But I never had the courage to break contact with my parents.

Oh, in later years my mother grew to love me. I was Toni, the successful daughter, who would arrive in Ireland on holiday with an armful of presents, take her out and never mention my past. I allowed my mother to fit me back into the dream she had created: a good-looking husband, her own house and one daughter.

As the adult, I knew that it was many years too late to challenge my mother’s fantasy life. To take it away would have destroyed her.

But she did not manage to leave this life without facing the truth again. During her last days in the hospice, where I came to sit with her and hold her hand until the end, my mother became frightened. She was not frightened of dying but of meeting the God she believed in. Did she think her sins were beyond forgiveness? Perhaps. Whatever the reason, she fought death while wishing for it.

From her doctor, nurse and minister, I knew enough of my mother’s time in the hospice before I arrived to be able to picture her torment as clearly as if I had been there. I could imagine it vividly:

An old woman stirred in her sleep as she lay in her bed on the ward. Pain penetrated her consciousness, forcing her awake. She tried to keep her eyes shut, for terror held her firmly in its grip. An image floated behind her closed eyelids: a small bedroom lit only by the yellow glow thrown by a single unshaded bulb and the ambulance’s flashing blue light. A frightened teenager lay on the bed, the bottom half of her thin cotton pyjamas soaked with blood and her eyes pleading for help.

She forced that picture away only for it only to be replaced by another; one that she wanted to make disappear but try as she might, she could not make it go. This time it was of a psychiatrist, accusing her of trying to send a child to her death.

That simply was not true, she protested. She had sent her daughter to the better hospital, everyone knew it was the place Antoinette ought to go…

Full of panic, she pressed the emergency button that lay on her bed and lay back panting to wait for the nurse.

‘Ruth,’ she heard the gentle voice say, ‘what’s wrong?’

With her genteel English accent my mother replied, ‘I need to see the minister, I need to talk to him tonight.’

‘Can it not wait until morning? He’s only just gone and sure, the poor man‘s been here over twelve hours and he did come to you last night, don’t you remember?

The old lady was impervious to the plea. ‘No, dear, I might be dead by the morning.’ Here the voice sweetened and her fingers, still surprisingly strong, clasped the nurse’s hand. The dark green eyes closed briefly hiding the steely determination that lived in their depths. ‘I need him now.’

‘All right, Ruth, if it’s that important to you, I’ll ring him.’ With that, the nurse drifted quietly away on her crepe-soled shoes.

The old woman lay back on her pillows with a sigh of contentment and a half smile on her lips. Even in here, she intended getting her own way.

Minutes passed, then she heard the heavier tread of the minister. He drew up a chair and felt his hand touch hers.

‘Ruth,’ she heard him say. ‘Tell me what I can do for you.’

She groaned as another wave of pain gripped her and looked at him with an expression that suddenly made him feel uneasy. ‘My daughter. I want her to come.’

‘Why, Ruth, I didn’t know you had a daughter!’ he exclaimed with surprise.

‘Oh yes, but we don’t see her very often, she lives in London. But she phones every week to see how I am and I always make her speak to her father. She’s doing all right for herself. She’ll come if her father tells her to. I’ll speak to him tomorrow.’

The minister wondered briefly why again he had been called out in the middle of the night but decided to let her talk, hoping this time she would open up to him.

Her fingers gripped his tighter. ‘I have terrible dreams,’ she finally admitted.

Looking into her eyes, he saw the fear there and knew there was more than her illness causing it. ‘Ruth, is something troubling you? Is there something you want to tell me? Is there something you think I should know?’

The old woman hesitated, but eventually whispered, ‘No, I’ll be all right when my daughter comes.’

And with that she turned away and fell into a restless sleep. The minister left, feeling that he was leaving a troubled soul whom he had failed to help for the second time in twenty-four hours.

After my mother’s request, my father phoned me.

It was that telephone call that took me to her side. The fact that she needed me was all the motivation I had needed to make that journey.

I spent long days and nights at her side as she slowly slipped closer to death. While I was there, I felt the presence of the ghost of my childhood. The Antoinette I had once been came back to me and made me look at how things had really been. She unpicked strand by strand the fabric of the lies I had told myself.

‘My mother loved me,’ I had protested.

‘She loved him more,’ she had retorted. ‘She committed the ultimate betrayal. Let your love for her go.’

But I could not obey her. I was still unwilling to face up to my mother’s treachery. I felt again the wave of love mixed with pity that had been the mixture of emotions that my mother had roused in me for so many years. She had remained loyal to the man who had abused their daughter and there was no justification for the part she played but I had always made excuses for her in the past.

Now I had to accept, finally, the reality of my own definition of my parents. There was one who was the perpetrator but there was also one who was guilty of passively watching but doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop years of abuse.

There, as I sat at her side in my vigil, I accepted the enormity of what she had done and was overwhelmed with a terrible sadness. I grieved for the woman I had always believed she could have been; I grieved for the happy, loving relationship we could have had and, during her final days, I mourned the fact that it was far too late for us now. And I accepted that, try as I had over the years, I had never stopped loving her. Even when I had come to accept that a woman who does nothing to protect her child from a terrible crime is as guilty as the
perpetrator, I could not change my feelings. Love, as I have found, is a hard habit to break.

My mother was dead and now I was burying my father. I thought again of Antoinette, the child she had been, how she loved her animals and her books, how much she was capable of. She had survived her time in the institution. She had made friends and emerged stronger and more independent than before. It so easily could have been different. But it wasn’t.

I thought of what she had achieved and, for the first time, I felt something other than the sadness her name had always evoked.

I felt pride. Pride in what she had accomplished.

‘Don’t let her down,’ I said to myself firmly. ‘Don’t let her struggle and her survival be in vain. Unless you allow the two halves of yourself that you keep separate to meet and join, you will never be a whole person. Your parents are dead now. Let them go.’

I looked into the mirror, almost expecting to see the teenage Antoinette looking back at me but the reflection showed very little of the child I had once been. Instead I saw a middle-aged woman whose blonde-streaked hair framed a face that was carefully made up; a woman whose appearance was important to her.

Then the face softened and smiled back and, as it did so, I saw a woman who had finally let her demons go.

There was only one thing left for me to do in Larne and once done, I would have finished with the past. Tomorrow I had to face the relatives that I had not seen for thirty years and mingle with the local townspeople who had liked and admired my father. Then I would be free at last.