Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal. Toni Maguire
evening to return them. It was arranged that every school day I would go to my grandparents’ house for tea, then they would take me to my bus and my mother would meet me at the other end. Knowing she was not going to see me until after the Easter holidays, my grandmother prepared a food parcel full of my favourite Irish soda breads and pancakes, which we packed into the car along with saucepans, packets of groceries and fuel.
Saying tearful goodbyes to my grandmother, we loaded up the car with our suitcases. Then, with Judy and I tightly squeezed into the back, we started our journey to our new house. Behind us followed a van containing our meagre furniture from England, none of which my mother could bear to part with.
Main roads became country ones, then we drove down a lane where the hedgerows were wilder and gravel replaced the tarmac, until we came to a dirt track leading to double wooden gates.
My father jumped triumphantly from the car, threw open the gates with a flourish and we saw the thatched house for the first time. It was not what I had expected.
Back in the hospice cold touched my skin as the memories churned in my head, and I felt incapable of movement. The hardness of the chair prodded me awake; Antoinette was gone and Toni, my adult self, was back in charge.
I poured myself a vodka from my flask, lit a cigarette and rested my head against the back of the chair to reflect on the happiness of those early years. Why, I wondered, did I feel overcome with feelings of impending doom? There was nothing in this place to scare me.
‘Yes there is, Toni,’ came the whisper. ‘You’re scared of me.’
‘I’m not,’ I retorted. ‘You’re my past and the past is dealt with.’
But the denial was hollow. As I looked into the corners of the empty room through my cloud of smoke I felt the power of Antoinette drawing me back through the gates to the thatched house.
In an expanse of gravel liberally studded with dandelions stood a small square house. Peeling white paint exposed grey patches from earlier days and brackish stains ran in streaks from the guttering. There were two water butts held together with rusty iron brackets, a padlocked stable door and four grimy uncurtained windows.
To the side of the house stood two tumbledown sheds with corrugated iron roofs. A tangle of brambles and nettles barred the double doors of the larger one and missing slats left black gaps in the walls. The door of the smaller shed hung open, revealing yellowing squares of newspaper hanging on string and the worn wooden seat of a chemical lavatory. Planks formed a path almost obliterated by brambles and weeds and damp had rotted away the wooden square in front.
My mother, I knew, saw the pretty cottages of Kent. Saw her handsome husband and felt the love for a static memory that was locked into her mind. It was that of a dance hall, where she, older than most of the women there, had been danced off her feet by an auburn-haired charmer to the envy of her friends.
With that picture in her head and her optimism still intact, she started explaining her plans. The large outhouse would be turned into a deep litter barn for chickens, a vegetable garden would be grown at the rear of the house and flowers would be planted underneath the windows. Taking my hand she led me inside.
The draught from the open door sucked the dust balls from their corners. The last struggles of hundreds of trapped flies had ended in the giant dusty cobwebs that looped from unpainted rafters and windows, and a trail of old mouse droppings led to the only built-in cupboard. The walls had been painted white but from the floor to the height of my waist they were speckled with the dark green of damp.
A black peat-fuelled range stood at one end of the room and under a window was the only other fitting, a wooden shelf with a metal bowl on top and a tin bath underneath.
Two doors at opposite ends led into the bedrooms. By the front door a staircase, not much more than a ladder, provided an entrance to the attic. When we climbed up to explore we found a large dark space where only the thatch protected us from the elements, and a damp musty smell made me wrinkle my nose.
My mother set to work on her dream immediately, vigorously sweeping the floors as the men unpacked the van. Peat was brought in; a fire was lit in the stove and water drawn from the well at the bottom of the garden. My first task was to remove all the frogs that came up in the bucket, carrying them carefully back to the grass near the well.
‘Then they can choose whether they want to rejoin their families or stay above ground in the sun,’ my mother explained.
As warmth seeped from the stove, familiar furniture was arranged around the now cobweb-free room and the battery-driven radio played music my mother could hum along to, a cheerful atmosphere pervaded the previously desolate room.
Tea and sandwiches were prepared and I took mine outside to sit with Judy on the grass. I shared my corned beef sandwich with her while she sniffed the new smells with a twitching nose and her head cocked on one side, giving me a hopeful look.
Kent seemed a world away and I, like her, felt like exploring. Seeing the grown-ups were all busy I put Judy’s red lead on and slipped out through the gates. As we strolled up the nearby lane the early spring sun beat down, taking away the lingering chill of the cottage. The unclipped hedgerows were bursting with wild flowers. There were clumps of primroses and early wild honeysuckle. Purple violets peeked out from underneath the white hawthorn. Bending down I picked some to make into a posy for my mother. Time passed unheeded as the new sounds and sights caught my attention and more flowers tempted me to wander further down the lane.
Stopping to watch fat pigs in a nearby field with their plump pink young running alongside, I heard my father shouting, ‘Antoinette, where are you?’
I turned around and trotted trustingly towards him, clutching my posy of wild flowers. But the man I saw coming towards me was not the handsome smiling father who’d met us from the boat. In his place strode a scowling, red-faced man I hardly recognized, a man who suddenly appeared huge, with bloodshot eyes and a mouth that trembled with rage. My instinct told me to run but fear kept me rooted to the spot.
He grabbed hold of me by the neck, put his arm tightly around my head and pulled it against his body. He lifted my cotton dress to my waist and wrenched my pants down to meet my cotton socks. One calloused hand held my semi-naked body against his thighs while the other stroked my bare bottom, squeezing one cheek hard. Seconds later I heard a crack and felt a stinging pain. I wriggled and screamed to no avail. One hand tightened its grip around my neck while the other rose and fell time after time. Judy cowered behind me and the posy, now forgotten, lay crushed on the ground.
Nobody had ever hurt me deliberately before. If ever my plump knees had knocked together, making me fall, my mother always picked me up and wiped away my tears. I screamed and cried in pain, disbelief and humiliation. Tears and snot streamed from my eyes and nose as he shook me. My whole body shuddered with terror.
‘Don’t you ever go wandering off like that, my girl,’ he shouted. ‘Now get back to your mother.’
As I pulled my knickers up over my stinging bottom, the choking tears making me hiccup, his hand gripped my shoulder and he dragged me home. I knew my mother had heard my screams, but she said nothing.
That day I learnt to fear him, but it was another year before the nightmare started.
The second Easter had arrived at the thatched house and the bitter cold of our first winter was almost forgotten. The barn had been repaired, incubators installed in what had been my bedroom and I, against my wishes, had been moved to the attic.
Our original chickens, which my mother saw more as pets than income, scratched happily in the grass outside. The cockerel strutted in front of his harem, proudly displaying his brilliantly coloured plumage, and the incubators were filled with eggs. Unfortunately, numberless rabbits had helped themselves many times to the flowers hopefully planted beneath the windows, and potatoes and carrots were the only survivors of the vegetable patch.
Holidays,