When Daddy Comes Home

But it was far from normal. This was a man who had been sent to prison, and it was her evidence that had placed him there instead of in the psychiatric ward that her mother had hoped for, the lesser of two evils. She had wondered ever since what his reaction to her would be when they faced each other again and now she was about to find out.

She forced herself to hide her fear and look at him. She expected to see changes, even infinitesimal ones, in a man who had been incarcerated for a sexual crime. Even though the papers had not stated that the minor he was reported to have abused was his own daughter, the fact that his victim was an underage girl should have had some effect. Surely the other prisoners would have shown disapproval. Surely his popularity with other men would have disappeared. Surely not even his skill with a snooker cue could have saved him.

But to Antoinette’s mystification, he looked no different than he had on the day of his trial. His tweed suit, which he had worn then, still fitted him perfectly; his tie was knotted firmly under the collar of his smoothly ironed pale-blue cotton shirt. His hair, with its auburn lights glinting in its thick waves, looked freshly barbered and his eyes reflected not a care in the world as they returned her gaze with a warm smile.

He took the seat opposite her and leant forward and placed his hand lightly over hers. She felt her fingers stiffen as they recoiled from his touch, then felt them tremble. She wanted nothing more than to rise from her seat and run. She didn’t even have the strength to avoid meeting his hypnotic stare.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as though those words carried a magic formula that would make his deeds disappear in as many seconds as it took to utter them.

But she wanted desperately to believe in him. She wanted to have her faith in the adult world restored, and to enter a time machine where those awful years could be rewritten. Most of all, she wanted to be a normal teenager with two loving parents and a happy childhood, laden with memories that she could take with her to adulthood. She wanted to be able to smile at her recollections of the past, to be able to share them with her friends. She knew that the stories of our past, our families and of our friends create the structure of life but hers were too terrible to recall, let alone to tell other people.

She looked at the remorseful father and wanted to believe him – but she didn’t.

Joe believed he had won. He smiled and ordered tea and scones. Antoinette watched him wash down his food with cups of tea but she was unable to eat. She just stared blankly at him and felt the familiar fear return. When she was little, it would make her glassy-eyed with terror while sickness swirled in her stomach.

Eventually he put down his cup and smiled at her. ‘Well, my girl, if you’ve finished we might as well make a move.’ He made no comment at her lack of appetite, just told her to call for the bill and settle it. Then he took her arm in imitation of a caring father and held it firmly as he led her from the café.

Antoinette and her father sat side by side on the bus that took them on their short journey from the centre of Belfast to Lisburn where the gate lodge was. They had taken seats upstairs so that he could smoke. She watched him roll a cigarette, saw the tip of his tongue slowly moisten the paper before he lit it, then felt him relax as he contentedly blew curls of smoke into the air.

She breathed in the fumes, letting them mask the familiar smell of his body that had always repelled her. She tried to make herself as small as possible. His arm pressed against hers and the heat from his body scorched her side at the point of contact. She turned and looked out of the window. His reflection was staring back at hers and on his mouth he wore a smile of insincere warmth, the one she remembered from her childhood.

When they arrived at their destination, Joe and his daughter alighted almost in tandem. He held his small suitcase in one hand and her elbow with the other. She tried not to flinch as the pressure of his fingers on her arm left her with no choice but to walk swiftly by his side. With every step, she felt an overwhelming desire to shake his hand off but the years of having her thoughts controlled had stripped away her will power and she could do nothing.

Once inside the small hallway, he dropped his case on the floor. Judy appeared to greet Antoinette and, seeing her, Joe dropped down and ran his fingers roughly over the little dog’s head as a way of greeting. Judy didn’t respond with the rapturous welcome that he felt was his due, so Joe pulled her ears and forced her face towards him. Unused to such rough treatment, Judy wriggled to escape and then crept to her mistress’s side. She hid behind Antoinette’s legs and gave a suspicious look at the interloper.

Annoyance flashed across his face. Even dogs had to like Joe Maguire.

‘Judy, do you not remember me?’ he asked in a jovial tone that barely covered his displeasure.

‘She’s old now, Daddy,’ said Antoinette quickly, hoping that would shield her pet from his irritation.

He seemed to accept the excuse. He walked into the small living room, sat on the most comfortable chair and surveyed both her and his surroundings with a satisfied smirk.

‘Well, Antoinette, aren’t you pleased to have your old man home?’ His voice was laden with mockery. Taking her silence as acquiescence, he said, ‘Make me a cup of tea like a good girl, then.’ Almost as an afterthought he pointed to the case carelessly dropped by the door. ‘First take that up to your mammy’s and my room.’

As she stooped to lift it, she saw through lowered eyelids a smug smile cross his face. He knew now that two years of absence had not undone the years of training that had suppressed her normal emotional growth. Antoinette was no rebellious teenager – he had seen to that.

She saw the smile and understood it. She picked the case up without a word. His authority remained unbroken and she was aware of it, but she knew she had to conceal the resentment that was rising in her. As she took the case and went back to the stairs, she could feel him watching her every move.

She dumped the case inside the door of her parent’s room, trying not to look at the bed she knew he would now share with her mother. Then she went back down to the kitchen where, robot-like, she filled the kettle and placed it on the hob. Memories of other occasions, when she had used that ritual of tea making as a delaying tactic, sprang into her mind.

It was her mother who came to mind. Inwardly, Antoinette railed at her and asked the questions she was longing to hear the answer to. ‘Mummy, how can you put me in danger like this? Don’t you love me at all? Don’t those years with just the two of us mean anything to you at all?’

But she knew the answers to those questions now.

The whistle of the kettle interrupted her thoughts as she poured boiling water over the tea leaves. Remembering her father’s temper if he was kept waiting, she hastily set a small tray with two cups, poured milk into a jug and placed the sugar bowl beside it, before carefully carrying it through to him. She placed it on the coffee table, and then proceeded to pour out the tea, remembering to put the milk in first, and then two teaspoons of sugar, exactly as her father liked it.

‘Well, you still make a good cup of tea, Antoinette. Now tell me, have you been missing your old man then?’

She flinched as she recalled the many times he had tormented her with similar questions, questions that she could never answer correctly and that eroded her confidence and confused her.

Before she could answer, a loud knock on the front door started Judy barking and pulled Antoinette out of her misery. Her father made no effort to leave the comfort of his chair, clearly expecting her to answer it.

Grateful that she had been saved from replying, she went to the door and opened it to find herself facing a slightly built man in his middle years. His sparse sandy-coloured hair was parted at the right side and his light grey eyes, framed in gold-rimmed glasses, showed no spark of warmth. His dark suit was partly obscured by a three-quarter-length cream gabardine mackintosh but she could see his striped tie knotted with precision under the collar of his gleaming white shirt.

She had never seen him before and, being unused to strangers calling at the house, gave him an uncertain smile and waited for him to state his business. She received a cool stare that looked her up and down and, in response to her curious expression his hand flipped open a slim wallet. He held it in front of her eyes to show the identity card inside then finally spoke.

‘Hello,’ he said in a cold tone. ‘I’m from social services. Are you Antoinette?’

Again that name she hated. That name with its associated memories was the name of someone she no longer wanted to be. A name that had hardly been heard since her father had gone to prison was now constantly repeated on the day of his release. Every time she heard it she felt the identity of ‘Toni’ slip further away. Hearing her name on her father’s tongue was making her regress into that frightened fourteen year old she had been when he left. Now this stranger was using it. She felt a sense of foreboding as she looked at him uncomprehendingly. Why would social services call now, she wondered. They had done very little to help her before.

‘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.

Chapter Nine

The 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.