When Daddy Comes Home. Toni Maguire
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that morning and, besides, the hurt and anger were so great she hardly knew if she would be able to speak. Then Ruth called out, as she did every morning, ‘I’m off to work now, darling. See you this evening!’ Her voice was more cheerful than usual, no doubt because of her husband’s weekend visit.
When she had heard the door slam behind her mother, Antoinette went downstairs. Judy was waiting at the foot of them and, as she had done so many times in the past, she sat on the floor and put her arms round the old dog’s neck, resting her face against the warmth of the fur for comfort. Judy, sensing her despair, licked her face as though trying to offer consolation while Antoinette felt the tears come to her eyes then trickle silently down her cheeks.
She went into the living room. Her nostrils filled with the scent of an enemy – an enemy she had thought she would never have to face again. Like a small animal sensing danger, she stiffened.
She could smell him even in an empty room.
She knew then that she had not dreamt the events of the previous night. When she had seen her father sitting there, she’d been unable to speak. Instead, she’d fled the room, dropping her parcels, and taken sanctuary in her bedroom. There she had stayed until he had left, trying to understand what had happened and almost unable to believe her eyes. She had thought that she and her mother had started a new life together but now it seemed that Ruth had just been marking time until she could restart the old one. Antoinette had just been her companion while she waited.
Her father had left hours ago to return to prison when his weekend pass had expired yet that odour she remembered, of cigarettes and hair oil mingled with the faint smell of stale sweat, contaminated the room. Her eyes alighted on the ashtrays overflowing with the crumbled remains of her father’s rolled-up cigarettes; here was the physical proof of his visit. She opened the windows, took the ashtray with its cigarette butts and emptied it, but his smell still lingered, unleashing unwanted memories.
Now she had to face up to the fact that her father’s weekend pass, granted after he had served two years of his four-year sentence, had brought him straight to his wife, who had clearly been delighted to have him back. From what she had seen, Antoinette knew that the visit had not just been tolerated by Ruth – it had been warmly welcomed.
Her father had been in her home, he’d tarnished it. She felt as though she had suddenly stepped into quicksand and, struggle as she might, she was being sucked down, back to the past, back into that dark place she had been in for so many years. She tried to hold on to the fragile strands of the safety she’d known in the gate lodge, tried to push away the memory of the previous night and draw comfort from her familiar surroundings.
But, through the numbness of shock and disbelief, another emotion was breaking through. The realization of her mother’s total betrayal started to fuel her anger, and gradually it consumed her.
‘How could my mother still care for a man who has committed such a heinous crime? She knows what he did to me, her own daughter. How can she still love him?’ she asked herself repeatedly, as she paced about the room. ‘And if she has been able to forgive him, then what can she really feel for me? Has it all been a lie?’
Our hearts might belong to us but we have very little control over where they go and Antoinette was no different; one moment, she wanted to hate her mother and the next, she longed to be comforted by her and have her love returned.
But she couldn’t accept the answers to the questions she asked herself. She felt ill at the thought that just a few feet away from her bedroom, her parents had shared a bed again.
Had they had sex, she wondered. The idea that Ruth might have done willingly what she had been forced to do made her shudder. And worst of all, she knew that if her mother was willing to have her father back in the house even for a moment, it meant that in a few months’ time, when he was released, she would welcome him back for good into the home she shared with Antoinette.
The sense of security which she thought she had found disappeared; the bottom fell out of her world and she felt herself falling into an abyss of unbelieving despair. That morning the feelings of betrayal became firmly fixed in her mind and no amount of will-power could make them disappear ever again.
During the weeks after her father’s return to prison, a barrier of distrust replaced the warmth of friendship between Ruth and her daughter. There was an invisible wall between them, this time constructed by Antoinette. The betrayal she had felt when she saw her father sitting in their living room was too much for her to overcome and she wanted to get out and run away as far as she could, but she knew that was not an option open to her.
Now that she had amassed some savings to put towards her dream of secretarial college, Antoinette still wanted to follow her plan of working away for the summer despite her experience on the Isle of Man. Hundreds of Irish girls would leave their homes to work the summer season at the holiday camps, hotels and guest houses of the mainland. With accommodation and all meals provided, along with high wages and good tips from happy holidaymakers, they could return with a substantial sum of money.
She’d already got a job at Butlins lined up for the summer season and her father’s date of permanent release, eighteen months earlier than the sentence handed down, was due before her departure. Could she bear staying at home after he had joined them there?
Up until now, she had not wanted to leave her mother, but faced with her perfidy and the prospect of having to share a house with her father, she longed to go. But if she left before she had earned enough money, she would use up her savings and have to say goodbye to funding further education. Without those all-important secretarial qualifications, she knew she was looking at a future of waitressing or shop work.
‘What choice do I have?’ she asked herself. She would be homeless. Nobody would rent a room to a girl who was under eighteen, even if she could have earned enough to support herself.
The money she could earn at the camp, though, added to what she had already saved, would pay for the secretarial course she so desperately wanted to take. With qualifications, she would be free to leave home, get her own flat in Belfast and be independent of her parents.
I’m frightened for my future, she told herself. I’ve seen too many middle-aged women trying to scrape a living by working long hours in second-rate restaurants, while the younger girls are given plenty of work at the better places where tips are high. Her jumbled thoughts scuttled around in her brain until she saw she had no option but to stay.
Every Saturday morning since Antoinette had lived at the gate lodge, she had seen the billowing white furls of the dance marquee being erected in an enterprising local farmer’s fields. On a Saturday night, she had heard the beat of a band as the music floated in the evening air. She would lean out of her bedroom window as far as she could, straining to hear more while she looked longingly at the huge tent. Lit up by the many lights inside, it glowed against the dark of the sky, looking for all the world like a giant illuminated marshmallow.
She knew that in there, young people entered their own world where they had their own music, wore their own fashions and had fun. As she craned out of her bedroom window, she remembered what her mother had to say on the subject.
‘Nice girls don’t go to such places, dear. If a boy wants to take you out then he comes to the house and collects you properly. You certainly don’t go looking for him in there.’ Ruth would always add her strange humourless laugh to her pronouncement and smile her bright, empty smile.
Whenever her mother said this to her, Antoinette always replied obediently, ‘No, Mummy’, and was content to stay in with her mother, spending the evening pleasing Ruth by keeping her company.
Thing had changed now, though. Now she wanted to be part of that world she could see through her bedroom window. She wanted to go to the marquee. Weekends were going to become party time for her; she was going to mix with other teens and live as they did. She was certain that other girls’ lives were not centred