Читать книгу When Daddy Comes Home - Toni Maguire - Страница 12

The coffee shop where Ruth had arranged for Antoinette to meet her father was one of the many that were rapidly springing up in the centre of Belfast. These forerunners of wine bars sold cappuccino coffee to the youth of Belfast and this one was Antoinette’s favourite. It was there that she and her friends met before going to the dance halls, where they would sip their frothy drinks as they made plans for the evening ahead.

That afternoon, on the day of her father’s release, she felt no pleasure in the familiar surroundings; the darkness of the interior looked gloomy to her while the large silver and black coffee machine, usually alive with a friendly hissing and gurgling, stood silently on the bar.

It was too early in the day for the hordes of people who frequented it in the evening to be present, while the lunchtime crowd, a mixture of smartly dressed businessmen and sophisticated women, had returned to their offices.

Her father’s imminent return had sunk Antoinette into a depression. It was like a black hole that she had sunk into, where she could not even think about tomorrow. Even the simplest task seemed impossible and anything was liable to make her panic. All her responses shut down and she became the robot she had once been, secure only when obeying orders.

And then there were her other worries. What could she say if she met one of her friends? How could she explain him away? Why had her mother arranged for them to meet on what Antoinette saw as her territory? It was as though any independence that she had gained, any life that she had forged out for herself, had been taken away from her.

All those thoughts were running through her head as she walked to one of the wooden tables and took a seat. His bus was due to arrive at 3 p.m. She was grateful for this as she knew that the chances of bumping into anyone at that time of day were slim.

Which father was going to greet her, she wondered. Would it be the ‘nice’ one, who eleven years ago had met his wife and daughter at the Belfast docks; the father who had made Ruth glow with happiness as he hugged her and made his daughter giggle with pleasure when he swung her five-year-old body in the air, and then kissed her soundly on both cheeks? That father, the jovial man who had chucked her under the chin as he presented his wife with presents of boxes of chocolates after one of their many rows, was now only a dim memory. Or would it be the other father, the one with the bloodshot eyes and the mouth that quivered with rage at the very sight of her? Her childhood fear of the man she remembered most vividly, the one she had tried to force out of her mind, came back to her.

Antoinette arrived early. She was dressed as her old self: her newly washed hair now hung to the collar of her navy jacket and a grey skirt and pale-blue twin set had replaced the teenage uniform of jeans and shirt. Her mother had come into her room early that morning. She had made preparations to see her husband again and was dressed in a grey jacket with a fur collar that framed her face, softening it. Her hair was freshly permed with a copper rinse to hide the grey that had appeared in recent years and once again fell in soft waves about her face. Her mouth was painted a bright red, a colour she had always favoured, while rings sparkled against the hands tipped with scarlet-lacquered nails. She had opened the wardrobe and selected the clothes she wanted Antoinette to wear.

‘That looks so nice on you, dear,’ she had said. ‘Wear that today.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Antoinette had muttered. ‘It’s old-fashioned.’

‘Oh no, dear, it makes you look very pretty. It’s your colour blue. Wear it to please me, won’t you?’

And she had.

Antoinette wanted to arrive before her father so that she had the advantage of being seated at a table with a clear view of the door. She wanted to see him before he saw her.

Hanging lamps cast soft pools of warm light on the wooden tables. A cup of coffee had been brought to her and she needed both hands to hold it to her mouth because her palms were damp and slippery with the moisture that fear brings. Her stomach fluttered with nervous tremors and her head felt light from a sleepless night.

She felt his presence a split second before she saw him. Looking up at the door, she could only make out a male form. With his back to the sun, he was a faceless shadow but she knew it was him. She felt the short hair on the back of her neck bristle and she placed her hands on her knees to hide the shaking.

It was not until he reached her side that his features came into focus.

‘Hello, Antoinette,’ he said.

As she looked into his face, she saw someone she had not seen before: the remorseful father. He’d been in prison for over two years and apart from that weekend leave, when she’d only seen him for a few moments, she had not spoken to him.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ she replied. Not wanting to hear any words from him she blurted out, ‘Mummy’s given me some money to pay for your tea.’

Such was Antoinette’s conditioning to behave normally, she did. To any outsider the two of them presented a perfectly ordinary spectacle – a man taking his daughter out to tea.

The moment she said her first words to her father, Antoinette took another step further into her mother’s world. It was a world where her sense of self-will disappeared, where she danced to the tune that Ruth sang. She had no choice, she had to comply. She acted her part in the charade that everything between them all was normal.

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.