When Daddy Comes Home (5 page)

‘May I come in?’ he asked. The words might have been couched as a question but his attitude turned them into a command. ‘I have to speak to you and your father.’

She nodded and stood aside to allow him to walk through the door into the sitting room. The social worker glanced at what he saw as a cosy scene with evident distaste. Antoinette recognized his reaction and was instantly aware of his aversion to her but her ingrained politeness made her offer him tea, which he disdainfully refused.

This man had not come to help her, she knew, but had already passed judgement and found her guilty, of what she did not know.

She sat on a hard-backed chair, clasping her hands together in her lap to control the slight shake that always betrayed her nervousness, as the visitor seated himself on the only other comfortable chair. He carefully hitched his trousers at the knee to protect their creases, allowing a glimpse of pale ankles to show above his socks, as he did so. Antoinette noticed that his fussy manoeuvre did not prevent his bony knees making little sharp points against the fabric. His feet, neatly placed together, were encased in black shoes so shiny she wondered if he could see his face in them when he bent to tie his laces.

His pasty face, with its nondescript features, turned to her father as he made pleasant small talk to Joe while ignoring her. He seemed on the surface a harmless little man but there was something about him – the coldness of his eyes, his fastidious appearance, the finicky way he opened his briefcase and placed a paper on his lap – that made her twitch with apprehension. She knew that his eyes might be turned to her father, but in the moments they had alighted on her, they had assessed her and found her lacking.

It only took a few minutes for Antoinette to understand the reason he had come to the house. He turned the conversation to the purpose of his visit: he wanted to know what plans Joe had made for the future. He was a recently released prisoner and, after all, prisons were meant to rehabilitate. A conscientious social worker’s responsibility was to ensure that sufficient help was given on the outside to follow that principle through.

‘So, Joe, have you any job interviews lined up?’ he asked.

Joe said that yes, his interviews with the local army offices were already arranged – they were hiring good mechanics from the civilian sector. With his old references and the fact he had volunteered for active service during the war, Joe was confident he would be offered work.

All the time Antoinette knew, by the covert glances that were thrown surreptitiously at her, that somehow she was another reason social services had called.

Seemingly satisfied with Joe’s answer, the social worker looked sternly at her, although he aimed his next remark at both of them.

‘You are to behave yourselves, do you hear me?’

Antoinette saw the flicker of her father’s temper in his eyes, and saw him quickly hide it.

‘Yes,’ he muttered. He realized that something more was expected of him and he flashed the social worker his charming smile and said in a rueful tone, ‘I’ve learnt my lesson and all I want to do now is make it up with my wife. She’s not had it easy while I’ve been away and I want to make amends.’

‘Well, Joe, stay off the drink, won’t you?’

To Antoinette’s amazement, her father rose from the chair, crossed the few feet that separated him from the visitor, stretched out his hand and clasped the man’s hand. ‘Oh, I will, don’t you worry,’ he said, and again his smile appeared.

Feeling his duty was done, the visitor rose from his chair, clutched his briefcase and prepared to leave. Then he turned to Antoinette, fixed her with a look of disdain and said, ‘And you, Antoinette, you’re to be good, do you hear me?’

Seeing he was waiting for her reply, she stuttered, ‘Yes.’

Satisfied with her mortification, he walked towards the door. She followed him into the hall to see him out and, as the front door closed behind him, she felt the last scraps of her hard-won new self-confidence disappear. The two years since her father had been sent to prison fell away and once again she was the teenager of fourteen who had been both blamed and shunned because of her father’s crime.

As she heard the social worker’s footsteps retreat, she lent against the hall wall and tried to regain her composure before she faced her father. She made herself recall the judge’s words that day in his chambers: ‘People will blame you…and I’m telling you that none of this was your fault.’ But she had always been besmirched by the dirt of other people’s opinions and today the judge’s words had lost their power to comfort her.

She felt that, yet again, she was at the mercy of the adult world and that it had betrayed her again, just as it had when her father’s crime had come to light.

She went back to the sitting room, wondering what mood the social worker’s visit might have put her father in. He showed no reaction to the unwanted caller but held his cup out for a refill. Then he said, ‘Don’t be talking about that man to your mother, Antoinette. She’s had enough worries.’

To press his point home, he gave her an intimidating glare, and then resumed slurping his tea. The visit was never mentioned again.

T
he past receded and I was back in the sitting room of my father’s house.

I blinked my eyes shut against those memories from a different era but still felt the depression left by Antoinette’s ghost.

She had felt so unloved and that fact alone made her feel worthless; vulnerable people, lacking in confidence, see themselves through other’s eyes.

One thought played on her mind: if my parents love me so little, some part of me must be to blame.

Whatever the mirror showed her, it was not what she saw; instead of an attractive teenager, she saw an ugly one. Instead of a victim, she saw a guilty party. Instead of a likeable girl, she saw someone who deserved rejection.

Why had she not protested, then? Why had she simply not packed her bags and gone? As an adult I knew the answer. Intense grief debilitates the mind so strongly that it is temporarily paralysed. Stripped of free thought, the mind is then incapable of making even the simplest decisions, far less planning an escape. Antoinette was simply frozen with despair.

If only she had been capable of walking away and never seeing them again, but she was not yet seventeen in an era
when teenagers did not leave home to live in shared flats. She had only felt safe over short periods of her life and tiptoed round her parents shackled with a lead weight of dread at the thought of displeasing them. But however unhappy she felt her home life was, the unknown frightened her more.

She believed she needed whatever remnants of normality that being part of a family gave. None of the girls she knew lived away from home and at that stage not only did she want to blend in with her peers, she still had plans for her future. She hoped that if her father was working and contributed to the household, then surely Ruth would not be so dependent on her income.

Antoinette thought if that responsibility was lifted from her shoulders, then she could take her secretarial course. The three months working away in Wales at Butlins for the summer season would add to what she had already accumulated in the post office. That would cover her for a year while she took the course and once qualified she would be free to leave home forever.

Remembering the past, I pictured her agonizing over her future.

My adult hands shook with the desire to knock on the window of that gate lodge. I wanted to travel back through the years to protect her and change the direction of where Antoinette’s confused thinking was taking her. My mind walked through the door and I was in the room standing next to her; the decades fell away as the adult and the teenager I had once been shared the past.

I looked into her eyes, haunted now, as she felt the home she had loved entrap her and her choices narrow. And through the chasm of years that separated us I tried to make her hear me.

‘Don’t stay!’ I pleaded silently. ‘Listen to me! Leave now! While your mother’s at work, pack your case and go! You don’t know what will happen if you stay, but I do.

Put your education off; pick it up when you are older. If you stay they will destroy you, Antoinette. Your mother will never protect you. Believe me, there is worse to come.’

Antoinette bent to fondle her dog’s ears. She had failed to hear the voice of her future. I heard the ticking of the mantle clock as it moved relentlessly forward. Clocks very seldom move backwards and, knowing that, I wept for her.

Again I saw the picture in my mind of Antoinette being sent to meet her father. I felt her struggle for survival as she clung on desperately to her individuality. She refused to be completely controlled by her parents and I heard, again, the uncouth tone of her father’s voice as he constantly belittled her attempts.

I felt a rueful smile cross my face as I pictured those dances that had the innocence of another time. I remembered with nostalgia the emerging youth culture that my generation was part of and then felt sadness at the thought of the teenager I had once been trying to establish a normal life.

And once again I felt her loneliness.

She had invented a new persona to hide behind: the party girl who had fooled her friends, but not herself. All the time she hid her fear that she would be asked questions about her family life and her past. If that happened, she was sure to be unmasked as a fraud. They were fears that no normal teenager should have had. She had turned to drink, embracing it as a friend that could allay her worries, then, when it had turned into her enemy, fought a battle to banish its power over her.

My attack of depression was replaced by a burst of anger at two people who had destroyed the childhood of a third.
I drew deeply on a cigarette, angrily flicked ash on the growing mound of butts that was now piled in the ashtray and then another thought entered my mind.

My father was dead. He was not going to return to his house. In the desk I had found that wallet with his emergency fund. A smile crossed my face as an idea entered my mind. What good use could I put it to? Now what did he hate spending money on? Meals out was certainly one. I remembered how much my mother had enjoyed going to a smart restaurant and how he had given a derisory snort at what he said was a total waste of his hard-earned cash.

‘Well, today he can pay for one!’ I exclaimed. I picked up the phone to dial my friend’s mobile. She had come with me to Ireland to help support me as I confronted my father’s death and dealt with the arrangements for his funeral, and was staying at a hotel nearby. As I called her, I searched my memory for other sacrileges which would have driven my father to fury. Any woman driving his gleaming red car which was parked outside would certainly have outraged him. So we’ll go in that, I thought with glee.

When my friend answered her mobile, I said, ‘How do you fancy going out to lunch? Somewhere nice and expensive. It’s on me. I’ll collect you in twenty minutes.’

Then I called my insurance broker in London to arrange cover on the car and the last call was to the restaurant to make a booking for two. Then, picking up the keys of my father’s car which had been conveniently left on top of the desk, I strode out of the house, inserted the keys triumphantly in the ignition, turned the radio on to full blast and drove off.

After I’d collected my friend, we cruised slowly along the windy coast road that leads to the Giants Causeway. Unlike so
much of England, the landscape of Ireland had not altered much since I had first arrived there as a small child. There weren’t acres of new houses or high-rise flats. Instead, it was as beautiful as ever. As we drove along the coastal road, a breathtaking scenery of green hills stretched away to our left, while miles of unspoilt beaches lay on our right. There I could see a few warmly wrapped figures walking in the bracing air from the Atlantic Ocean, while greedy seagulls, in their everlasting quest for food, swooped overhead.

I opened my window to smell the salty air and to hear the crash of the waves as they met the shore. This was the Ireland that I enjoyed, a country that without my past, I could have felt part of.

We drove through tiny hamlets with their small, squat, single-storey houses lining the streets. Instead of the raggedy-dressed children with their red, wind-chapped legs showing above Wellington boots that I remembered from my youth, I saw ones dressed in mini teenage outfits, riding gleaming bicycles or cruising along on skateboards.

Hanging baskets decorated the freshly painted pubs, proclaiming that they were no longer only a male domain.

We arrived at our destination, a small seaside town that boasted not only window boxes and hanging baskets, but blackboards placed on pavements advertising ‘pub grub’. Northern Ireland had moved into the twenty-first century.

We pulled up outside an old grey stone double-fronted Victorian house. Although its austere exterior had not been altered, it had been converted several decades earlier into a smart restaurant.

We entered and stepped back into another time. With its dark wood interior and heavy furniture, it had hardly changed since I had first visited nearly thirty years ago. Then I had
been escorted by a boyfriend who had hoped to impress me as he had ushered me in. Unused to such splendour, I had searched the menu looking for a familiar dish to order, then sat in an agony of indecision as I wondered which cutlery to pick up first. Then I’d ordered chicken Kiev and a bottle of Mateus rosé wine, which I’d thought then was the pinnacle of sophistication. Now I was used to expensive restaurants and menus no longer frightened me.

I walked in with confidence and looked about. Regency-striped wallpaper, moss-green carpet and black-and-white clad waiters added to the old-fashioned ambience but those who knew the excellence of the innovative menu were not there in search of metal and glass interiors.

We went up to the receptionist and asked for a table.

‘Certainly, ladies, this way please. I’ll take you to the restaurant,’ she said.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘could you show us into the bar?’

‘Are you lunching with us?’ the receptionist asked frostily. ‘Would you not be more comfortable in the restaurant?’

Ladies at these establishments I knew ordered drinks, preferably a sweet sherry, at their table as they perused the menu. That wasn’t for me.

‘I want champagne and oysters first,’ I declared. ‘We’ll have the meal later.’

The receptionist hesitated for a moment over this breach of etiquette but then showed us the way to the bar where we could sit at a small table in the window and enjoy our treat. ‘Are you and your friend celebrating something?’ she asked with a slight sniff of disapproval; she might not have been overloaded with charm but she still had her curiosity.

I could have told the truth and said, ‘Yes, I’m celebrating my father’s death.’ But, not wanting to shock her, I took pity
and said, ‘We’re just enjoying our holiday. And this place was very highly recommended to us. We’re looking forward to sampling the menu – I’ve heard it’s excellent.’

Her face softened. She obviously assumed that we were tourists from ‘across the water’ who knew no better, so she forgave our lack of decorum and showed us to a window seat.

For once my diet was to be forgotten, indulgence was the name of the game. The barman brought over the ice bucket holding the champagne and poured out two glasses. I raised my glass in a toast to my father.

‘Thanks, Dad, for the first meal you’ve ever bought me!’

‘To good old Joe,’ murmured my friend and, grinning at each other, we clinked glasses conspiratorially. She knew the truth. It was why she had offered to come with me to Ireland and help me. An hour later the champagne bottle was empty, the oysters eaten and it was time to go to the restaurant. We had already ordered a Chateaubriand steak for two with all the accompaniments and a bottle of full-bodied red wine.

‘Will one bottle be enough?’ I asked my friend and saw with some amusement the look of consternation that crossed the waiter’s face. Another thing that ladies do not do is get drunk in smart Irish restaurants. He was not to know that we were no strangers to wine and champagne. I was not bothered. I had already decided that we would get a taxi back and leave the car for later.

‘Yes,’ she replied firmly but relented when I ordered the cheese board. Afterwards we both agreed that Irish coffees were a must.

Three Irish coffees later, after we’d talked as old friends do when the hours seem like minutes, we suddenly noticed the day was fading and the restaurant was about to set up for the evening’s customers.

‘Time to pay the bill,’ I said, and signalled for the waiter.

A look of relief crossed his face when he realized we were leaving and not ordering more drink. The bill was presented with discreet speed on a silver salver.

The receptionist reappeared complete with her original look of disapproval.

‘Would that be your red car parked outside?’ she asked.

I took the hint. ‘Yes. Would it be all right if we left it here till the morning? We’ve enjoyed our meal so much we might have overdone it a little.’ I could see that she heartily agreed. Still, my sensible caution, not to mention the generous tip, seemed to mollify her slightly and with a gracious nod she walked off to order a taxi.

She held the door open for us as we were leaving. Before we could go, a group of men entered. I knew them – they were members of my father’s golf club.

‘So sorry for your recent loss,’ they murmured when they saw me. ‘A terrible thing to lose your father.’

Behind me, I heard the shattering of illusions.

I went back to my father’s house that evening. The funeral was the next day and the quicker the house was sorted out, the quicker I could leave town.

Only then would the past recede and free me from the thoughts of Antoinette that were flooding my mind. The pictures of her came one by one and unwillingly I felt my adult self being pulled back through the years.