Toni Maguire - Helpless - The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted

I could sense my mother desperately searching for the right words to calm him down but, not being able to find anything appropriate, she stayed silent.

She just looked at him helplessly, as his angry words spouted from a mouth twisted with rage; words that I had very little understanding of, but I recognized the venom in them and quaked with terror.

‘They’ve put down their names for that new estate that’s being built. Going to buy their own houses now. Renting’s not good enough for them. Would have thought driving around in those flash cars was enough. They look down their noses at us – us who’ve worked hard on the farms when they were still at school. Mortgages they’re getting, is it? Well, I call it debt. It’ll ruin them, see if it don’t.’

All the time he ranted about the factory workers his frustration at his lack of achievements kept spilling out. He blamed my mother for trapping him into marriage, blamed me for being there. If, he said, he did not need a job that provided us with a home maybe he too would be driving a new car instead of riding his bicycle.

I pushed myself tighter against the back of the chair as I listened to my mother’s murmured conciliatory tones. His dinner was quickly put in front of him, fresh tea was made and poured, a slice of bread cut and buttered, but nothing was going to assuage his fury.

He glared at both of us before picking up his fork and shovelling food into his mouth.

‘For God’s sake, woman! Can you not cook anything else but this bloody awful stew,’ he exclaimed the moment he had tasted the first mouthful. For a moment I thought he was going to throw it onto the floor, something I had seen him do in the past, but some sense of self-preservation, or maybe the knowledge that there was little else to eat, prevented him. Instead he continued to eat, and between mouthfuls he cursed my mother. Then he went quiet.

Judging from the increased colour in his face his temper had not receded; he was just thinking of another reason to blame my mother for his overall dissatisfaction. I could feel both her apprehensive tension and his erupting anger. I felt a knot in my stomach that made me feel sick. I wanted to leave the table but I didn’t dare move. I knew better than to draw his attention to me.

He scraped the plate, using a crust of bread to gather up the last drop of gravy. Then with a clatter of cutlery he pushed it to one side and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. With a venomous look, his eyes raked up and down my mother’s body.

‘Jesus, what a bloody mess you are. It’s no wonder I don’t want to come home. You’re enough to make a man ashamed. This house’s a midden. Think we could ever ask anyone here? My old Ma was right about you: she said you were a dirty cow. She always kept a clean home, and she had four of us to take care of. But you, you lazy bitch, just don’t care.’

His face became even more flushed as the insults rained down. My mother cringed as though each word was a physical blow, but she made no attempt to offer a defence.

Suddenly my father’s chair was flung back as he rose from the table. My mother must have known what was going to happen next. She tried to retreat but he was too fast for her. She covered her face with her hands as his clenched fists rained blows on her shoulders and her arms. Tears oozed through her fingers, I could hear her soft moans of pain mixed with pleas for him to stop. Then as suddenly as he had started he stopped and his arms fell to his side.

‘Naw, bloody waste of time beating you; you never learn. Look at yourself, woman. Really gone to seed, haven’t you?’

His hand rose again this time to poke her in the chest with one meaty finger. ‘Look at your damn slip.’

As the derisive words left his mouth my gaze was drawn to my mother’s skirt and I saw that her underslip fell several inches lower than it.

A smile suddenly appeared on my father’s face, one that scared me as much as his scowl had. He stood so close to my mother that his body forced her to step backwards until her back touched the wall. Fear drained the colour from her face, leaving it a ghostly white. I heard her try and say his name, heard his harsh breathing, saw his hand snake into his pocket and withdraw a cigarette lighter. It only took a few seconds to flick it alight with his thumb. Before my mother had a chance to realize what he was going to do, to my horror he bent down and put the naked flame to the lace hem of her slip. His other hand was pushed against her stomach, stopping her moving.

‘Burt,’ she screamed, ‘please let me go.’ She tried to shove him away but he just laughed and held her in place. Panic made me leap from my chair and do what I had seen her do when a spark from the fire had landed on clothing drying in front of the stove. I picked up an old newspaper and, pushing in between them, started beating at the small flame that had taken hold. He sniggered at us and let her go. She rushed to the sink and drenched her skirt with water, and just for a moment I forgot how afraid of him I was.

‘You are bad. You are a bad, bad, mean daddy,’ I yelled, looking up into his surprised face.

‘Who do you think you’re shouting at?’ he roared back. ‘Don’t you be cheeking me, you little brat. Get up to your bed now, do you hear?’

His hand cracked against the back of my head and black spots floated in front of my eyes and I nearly fell with shock at the power of that blow. But some sense of dignity made me keep my balance and walk out of that room, up the stairs and into my room.

I kept my tears for when I was alone.

When the rows seemed to continue from one day to the next, my tiny bedroom became my haven.

There I could burrow under my bedding – a mixture of old coats and torn sheets – and pull them over my ears. With eyes tightly shut and my body trembling with fear, I tried to block out the noises that frightened me. Those shouts, screams and blows that I knew came from downstairs or my parents’ bedroom and not from my dreams.

But no matter how deep I wriggled under the bedding or how high I tried to pull it over my ears, the bellows of my father’s fury always reached me.

‘Bitch! Whore!’ he would shout, and although I did not understand the words, the ferocity of his rage always made me shudder.

My thumb would creep up into my mouth as my body shook with silent tears and my free hand clutched my rag doll with the painted face. Each time I would also hear my mother’s shrill pleas for him to stop followed by her heart-wrenching sobs.

Please make them stop , was the chant that repeated over and over again in my head; but when they did, the thick silence terrified me even more.

But there were days when the blackness of my father’s temper lifted. His scowl turned into a smile and he spoke in gentler tones. The trips to the pub, he told my mother, were a thing of the past; he was going to stay in after dinner. She had heard it all before and knew deep down that the period of sobriety would not last, but that did not stop her hoping every time that they would.

On those days, the premature lines that worry had etched onto my mother’s face lightened and the basket full of the various materials that made up a rug-making kit would appear. The only sparse flashes of colour in our home came from those homemade rag rugs which, apart from the cold brown lino, provided covering for the floors.

My parents would sit in front of the blazing log fire with the tools, necessary to turn the most basic of material scraps into floor coverings, spread out in front of them. Assortments of threadbare clothing, thrown out for rags by the farmer’s wife, a pair of scissors and a pile of sacks were mainly all that was necessary. My mother cut the salvageable material into long strips and sorted it into different colours, then passed it to him to patiently weave into the sacking. Wanting to be useful as well, I silently picked up scraps that had fallen onto the floor and placed them in another bag.