When Daddy Comes Home

On Sundays, when the coffee shop was shut, Antoinette would cook breakfast and she and her mother would share it together while Judy, now an old dog whose rheumatism was beginning to slow her down, would sit at Antoinette’s side, her eyes following their every movement hoping that both mother and daughter were going to stay at home and not leave her. On the days that Ruth and her daughter left for work together she would follow them to the door, a look of abject misery which the years had perfected on her face.

It was a quiet life, but a comforting and healing one, as the great fissure that had once existed between Antoinette and her mother gradually began to close. The one thing they never talked about was what would happen on that distant day when her father was released. In fact, Ruth never spoke about her husband at all and there was never a letter from him in the house – not for Ruth the indignity of a letter marked with a prison stamp – and never one written to him, as far as Antoinette saw.

Her father’s eventual release was a dark shadow on the horizon but that time was far off yet. There was no need to think of it now. Antoinette lived in blissful ignorance of Ruth’s future plans. It was just the two of them now.

Eighteen months after they moved to the gate lodge, Antoinette resolved to do something about the ambitions that she had quietly been nurturing inside her. Although she liked her job at the coffee shop, she wanted more for herself than a life as a waitress, and she wanted to make her mother proud. But the problem was that prospective employers would be put off by the fact she had left school at sixteen with no qualifications. Without proof of her education, there was no way she could begin to better herself. But Antoinette had worked out a way to get around that. By going to a secretarial college, she would not only get a formal qualification but also a certificate that stated she had left school at eighteen, giving her those precious two extra years. All she needed was the money to pay the fees and she was already planning how that could be done.

She had heard that lots of Irish girls went over to England or Wales during the summer to work in the holiday camps. The pay was good and the tips were lucrative, she was told. It would be a quick and relatively easy way to earn the money she would need to put herself through college, and the coffee shop would let her take some time off to work elsewhere and then take her back when she returned. Belfast was always full of students looking for temporary work, so it wouldn’t be hard to find someone to take her place for a while.

It felt wonderful to have a goal to work towards. When Antoinette explained her plan to the owner of the coffee shop, it seemed that fate was on her side. He had a relative who owned a hotel on the Isle of Man and who was always looking for staff. Why didn’t she go out there over Easter and earn some good money as a combination of waitress and chamber maid? It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up and so within a fortnight Antoinette was on her way to the Isle of Man on the ferry.

It was not quite the enjoyable experience she had anticipated. The girls were treated as little more than glorified dogsbodies, kept on the run from the early hours of the morning till late at night. Antoinette found it exhausting and not as well paid as she had been led to expect. But with few opportunities and even less time for spending her money, her savings mounted up and she decided to come home a few days earlier than she’d originally planned and spend some time relaxing at the lodge before going back to work.

Excited to be returning home, she hurried back from the docks to Lisburn as fast as she could, wishing the taxi could go at twice the speed. But when she let herself into the lodge and dashed into the sitting room, her arms full of presents for her mother, she came to an abrupt halt, startled by the sight that she least wanted to see in the world.

‘Hello. How’s my wee girl?’

It was her father, sitting in the green wing armchair, smiling at her smugly, while her mother sat at his feet, her face alight with happiness.

Chapter Four

Antoinette lay in bed, unwilling to get up, trying to tell herself that the night before had just been a bad dream. But she knew it was real, hard though it was to accept it. She was incredulous – how could her mother have done such a thing? It was as extraordinary as it was cruel.

Unable to delay any longer, she pushed back the bedclothes, swung her legs to the floor and started to dress. Her whole body drooped as she pulled on clothes that had not changed in style since she had received her first pay packet. Her entire wardrobe consisted of pleated skirts and high-necked jumpers in muted hues; bland clothes that her mother liked. They were the uniform of a middle-class girl whose one wish was to conform and not to stand out from the crowd.

Antoinette waited in her bedroom until she heard her mother leave for work; she had no desire to confront her 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.

Chapter Five

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 on their mothers but on fashion, makeup and weekend dances, and she wanted the same.

Antoinette looked at herself in the mirror, giving her reflection a cool, appraising look. She knew she was different. Even apart from her English accent, her clothes were old-fashioned and her dark brown hair, falling almost to her shoulders in a page-boy cut, was more suitable to a fourteen-year-old than a girl of seventeen. It was all down to Ruth’s influence.

Not any more, thought Antoinette wistfully. I want to be like other girls. I’m going to be fashionable.

She thought of the groups of happy, confident young people she often served at the coffee bar when she worked the evening shift. The boys with their neatly cut hair, dressed in jackets and well-pressed trousers, might look like younger versions of their fathers but the girls had created their own style, one that looked as though it had very little to do with their mothers. Their hair was teased into the new fashionable beehive, and their faces were coated in a pale pan stick that contrasted harshly with their black-lined eyes which peered out at the world through thickly mascaraed lashes.

Antoinette’s skin saw only a flick of powder, her lips wore a natural pink lipstick and her eyes were only enhanced by one coat of mascara. This set her apart from her contemporaries almost as much as her clothes did.

I’ll start at once, she decided.

The glamorous, swinging sixties had begun and with them came a new affluence. Blue-collar workers became part of the middle classes and housing estates sprung up everywhere, offering young couples the chance to own their box-like house, identical to all the others nearby. Cars were parked outside every house, television aerials decorated every roof and the words ‘hire purchase’ replaced ‘debt’. This was a boom time, and it brought with it a new youth culture that Antoinette longed to be a part of. Teenagers had found an assurance their parents had never known, and in their leisure time they danced to the new rock ‘n’ roll, went to cafés, drank cappuccinos and talked confidently together. They refused to be younger versions of their parents and instead invented their own fashions and attitudes.

These were the people Antoinette wanted to mix with and to do so she knew she would have to change. She could do little about her English accent but she could certainly change her appearance.

A very different Antoinette began to emerge. She bought tight dresses and hid them at the back of her wardrobe, along with stiletto-heeled shoes and new underwear. A hairdresser recommended by one of her youthful customers worked his magic and made the neatly cut dark brown hair disappear. In its place was a back-combed beehive. Plucked eyebrows now accented eyes that had grown harder, and a loss of appetite turned her once-plump shape into a more fashionable slim one.

Ruth watched the transformation, puzzled and displeased. She was used to unquestioning obedience from a child that had always sought approval, and she was taken by surprise by this sudden rebellion. While she did nothing to stop it, she fought back subtly, using her skill with words to manipulate her daughter and provoke the reaction she wanted. She used words full of hurt and bewildered anger for her emotional blackmail.

‘I don’t know why you want to make me unhappy. Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?’ she would say plaintively.

But Antoinette refused to listen.

As the new, fashionable Antoinette took shape, she found that the girls who frequented the coffee shop now chatted to her. Her new friends’ main interests were make-up, teenage fashion and how to get a boyfriend, and these interests took up most of their mental energy. Antoinette was grateful for this, as it left them with little curiosity about Antoinette’s home life, so she didn’t need to use the false one she had created: a happy home, a loving mother and a father who worked away.

The weekend when Antoinette decided she was going to complete her transformation arrived. The process took hours. First, a bright orange dye was washed through her hair and then she set about drying it and teasing it into that fashionable shape so loved by teenage girls and despaired of by their parents: it rose high above her hair, stiffened into place with a generous squirting of lacquer. It was so thickly coated that a comb could hardly penetrate it.

Then, her face. She took a pan stick and covered her skin with it so that she was strangely pale. She ringed her eyes so heavily in black liner that they appeared to have shrunk in size. Then she took up the latest addition to her fast-growing make up collection: a small plastic box complete with mirror containing a cake of black mascara. Generous gobbets of spit turned the black cake into a gooey mess which she carefully applied to her lashes. After each coat, she added another until the thickened lashes nearly weighed down the lids. Finally, the natural colour of her mouth was obliterated by the palest of gleaming pink lipstick studiously applied to puckered lips as she practised pouting in front of the mirror.

She looked at her reflection, pleased with what she saw. She pursed her lips and smiled. Much to her satisfaction, the mirror showed no sign of the shy studious teenager her mother knew, nor of the old-fashioned girl that worked at the coffee bar. No, this was a modern girl, one who shared the assurance of the people she admired.

She felt as though she had emerged from a cocoon, and had shed the safe skin of ‘obedient daughter’. Deep down, she still lacked the confidence to be completely sure of the outcome of her metamorphosis but she tried to put that out of her mind.

Instead, she welcomed her new image. She pouted at the girl in the mirror.

‘Goodbye, Antoinette,’ she said. ‘Hello, Toni.’

Her new self was born and she was a girl ready to party on a Saturday night.

Chapter Six

Now that Antoinette looked the part, the girls she’d met at the coffee bar invited her to share Saturday evenings with them. They would meet in groups and descend in a pack on the local dance venues, spending the evening dancing, giggling and flirting with the boys.

At last, Antoinette felt herself accepted. More than anything else, she wanted friends and the companionship of other young people. She needed desperately to be part of a group, to giggle companionably with them and to have what she had been missing her entire life: fun.

One Saturday morning, she excitedly watched the beginning of the conversion of the nearby field from muddy site into a magic place. At last she was finally going to enter that secret world, the one where teenagers dressed in the height of fashion, danced the night away, passed cigarettes around to appear sophisticated and drank smuggled-in alcohol. She couldn’t wait.

She watched as coils of electric cables were run from large, noisy, diesel-fuelled generators to provide the sparkling lights that shone on the dancers. She saw a huge glitter ball, something she had only seen before on television, being carried into the tent.

Sections of wooden floors to be laid over the damp earth were taken in and then, once that was in place, the furniture followed. A small army of helpers carried in folding tables and an assortment of chairs was placed in groups around the hastily erected wooden dance floor. She had been told that there would be a bar inside, but that it only offered soft drinks. Anything stronger had to be smuggled in but that wasn’t difficult. Customers with bulging pockets were given a cursory search by good-natured security guards as they looked for forbidden alcohol they seldom found. The walls of the marquee were easily raised and small bottles full of spirits slid under its folds to the eager hands of their co-conspirators.

Antoinette liked drinking. Ever since her father had first introduced her to the intoxication of spirits, she had enjoyed the sensation of numbness and relaxation that alcohol brought. While most teenagers were just discovering how to drink, Antoinette was a practised hand. Even now she liked to keep a bottle in her room so that she could take fortifying sips when she needed them. As soon as she had looked old enough, she had been able to buy it herself from off-licences, pretending it was for her mother.

At the moment, Antoinette had a small bottle of vodka, her chosen spirit, hidden in her room, in the belief that her breath would not be tainted by its smell. She did not know how easily available spirits were at the dances, so she decided to have some before she left, and poured herself a generous helping.

Fuelled by a double-vodka-induced confidence, she put on her American tan stockings, pinning them to her pink suspender belt. Then she slithered into a dress so tight that it nearly bound her knees together and forced her feet into high white stilettos. She teased her hair as high as it would go, then sprayed it with a coloured lacquer, turning it into a bright orange halo. As she applied her make-up, her face lost its glow and became deadly pale. Two black-rimmed eyes, more panda than doe-like, looked into the mirror one more time and she was delighted with what she saw. Now she was ready to hobble the short distance from the gate lodge to the marquee.

As she went downstairs and into the sitting room, Antoinette gave scant thought to what her mother’s reaction would be when she was face to face with her daughter’s transformation. But she heard the shocked intake of breath as she entered, and quickly averted her eyes from Ruth’s horrified face as she made her way towards the front door. She didn’t care what her mother thought. At last she was going to swing her tightly encased hips on the dance floor and that evening that was all that mattered to her.

For once Ruth was speechless and before she could regain her voice, Antoinette made her hasty exit.

‘I’m off now!’ she called unnecessarily as she closed the door firmly behind her.

A pack of girls, all dressed in similar attire to Antoinette, was waiting for her in the queue that had already formed outside the marquee. Once admitted, they made their way to the ladies’ toilets where, giggling and chattering, they preened in front of the mirrors. Handbags snapped open for the teenage ritual of repairing make-up. They did not give a thought to the fact that a ten-minute walk from their homes to the tent was hardly likely to have disturbed their hours of work. Hair was once again tweaked and teased then sprayed liberally, filling the air with a cloud of cheap perfume. The tail end of a comb was inserted into the construction, lifting it even higher, and only then were they satisfied there was nothing more that could be done to it.