Toni Maguire - When Daddy Comes Home

‘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.

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.