Toni Maguire - When Daddy Comes Home

It was a quiet life, but a comforting and healing one, as the great fissure that had once existed between Antoinette and her mother gradually began to close. The one thing they never talked about was what would happen on that distant day when her father was released. In fact, Ruth never spoke about her husband at all and there was never a letter from him in the house – not for Ruth the indignity of a letter marked with a prison stamp – and never one written to him, as far as Antoinette saw.

Her father’s eventual release was a dark shadow on the horizon but that time was far off yet. There was no need to think of it now. Antoinette lived in blissful ignorance of Ruth’s future plans. It was just the two of them now.

Eighteen months after they moved to the gate lodge, Antoinette resolved to do something about the ambitions that she had quietly been nurturing inside her. Although she liked her job at the coffee shop, she wanted more for herself than a life as a waitress, and she wanted to make her mother proud. But the problem was that prospective employers would be put off by the fact she had left school at sixteen with no qualifications. Without proof of her education, there was no way she could begin to better herself. But Antoinette had worked out a way to get around that. By going to a secretarial college, she would not only get a formal qualification but also a certificate that stated she had left school at eighteen, giving her those precious two extra years. All she needed was the money to pay the fees and she was already planning how that could be done.

She had heard that lots of Irish girls went over to England or Wales during the summer to work in the holiday camps. The pay was good and the tips were lucrative, she was told. It would be a quick and relatively easy way to earn the money she would need to put herself through college, and the coffee shop would let her take some time off to work elsewhere and then take her back when she returned. Belfast was always full of students looking for temporary work, so it wouldn’t be hard to find someone to take her place for a while.

It felt wonderful to have a goal to work towards. When Antoinette explained her plan to the owner of the coffee shop, it seemed that fate was on her side. He had a relative who owned a hotel on the Isle of Man and who was always looking for staff. Why didn’t she go out there over Easter and earn some good money as a combination of waitress and chamber maid? It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up and so within a fortnight Antoinette was on her way to the Isle of Man on the ferry.

It was not quite the enjoyable experience she had anticipated. The girls were treated as little more than glorified dogsbodies, kept on the run from the early hours of the morning till late at night. Antoinette found it exhausting and not as well paid as she had been led to expect. But with few opportunities and even less time for spending her money, her savings mounted up and she decided to come home a few days earlier than she’d originally planned and spend some time relaxing at the lodge before going back to work.

Excited to be returning home, she hurried back from the docks to Lisburn as fast as she could, wishing the taxi could go at twice the speed. But when she let herself into the lodge and dashed into the sitting room, her arms full of presents for her mother, she came to an abrupt halt, startled by the sight that she least wanted to see in the world.

‘Hello. How’s my wee girl?’

It was her father, sitting in the green wing armchair, smiling at her smugly, while her mother sat at his feet, her face alight with happiness.

Antoinette lay in bed, unwilling to get up, trying to tell herself that the night before had just been a bad dream. But she knew it was real, hard though it was to accept it. She was incredulous – how could her mother have done such a thing? It was as extraordinary as it was cruel.

Unable to delay any longer, she pushed back the bedclothes, swung her legs to the floor and started to dress. Her whole body drooped as she pulled on clothes that had not changed in style since she had received her first pay packet. Her entire wardrobe consisted of pleated skirts and high-necked jumpers in muted hues; bland clothes that her mother liked. They were the uniform of a middle-class girl whose one wish was to conform and not to stand out from the crowd.

Antoinette waited in her bedroom until she heard her mother leave for work; she had no desire to confront her that morning and, besides, the hurt and anger were so great she hardly knew if she would be able to speak. Then Ruth called out, as she did every morning, ‘I’m off to work now, darling. See you this evening!’ Her voice was more cheerful than usual, no doubt because of her husband’s weekend visit.

When she had heard the door slam behind her mother, Antoinette went downstairs. Judy was waiting at the foot of them and, as she had done so many times in the past, she sat on the floor and put her arms round the old dog’s neck, resting her face against the warmth of the fur for comfort. Judy, sensing her despair, licked her face as though trying to offer consolation while Antoinette felt the tears come to her eyes then trickle silently down her cheeks.

She went into the living room. Her nostrils filled with the scent of an enemy – an enemy she had thought she would never have to face again. Like a small animal sensing danger, she stiffened.

She could smell him even in an empty room.

She knew then that she had not dreamt the events of the previous night. When she had seen her father sitting there, she’d been unable to speak. Instead, she’d fled the room, dropping her parcels, and taken sanctuary in her bedroom. There she had stayed until he had left, trying to understand what had happened and almost unable to believe her eyes. She had thought that she and her mother had started a new life together but now it seemed that Ruth had just been marking time until she could restart the old one. Antoinette had just been her companion while she waited.

Her father had left hours ago to return to prison when his weekend pass had expired yet that odour she remembered, of cigarettes and hair oil mingled with the faint smell of stale sweat, contaminated the room. Her eyes alighted on the ashtrays overflowing with the crumbled remains of her father’s rolled-up cigarettes; here was the physical proof of his visit. She opened the windows, took the ashtray with its cigarette butts and emptied it, but his smell still lingered, unleashing unwanted memories.

Now she had to face up to the fact that her father’s weekend pass, granted after he had served two years of his four-year sentence, had brought him straight to his wife, who had clearly been delighted to have him back. From what she had seen, Antoinette knew that the visit had not just been tolerated by Ruth – it had been warmly welcomed.

Her father had been in her home, he’d tarnished it. She felt as though she had suddenly stepped into quicksand and, struggle as she might, she was being sucked down, back to the past, back into that dark place she had been in for so many years. She tried to hold on to the fragile strands of the safety she’d known in the gate lodge, tried to push away the memory of the previous night and draw comfort from her familiar surroundings.

But, through the numbness of shock and disbelief, another emotion was breaking through. The realization of her mother’s total betrayal started to fuel her anger, and gradually it consumed her.

‘How could my mother still care for a man who has committed such a heinous crime? She knows what he did to me, her own daughter. How can she still love him?’ she asked herself repeatedly, as she paced about the room. ‘And if she has been able to forgive him, then what can she really feel for me? Has it all been a lie?’