Toni Maguire - When Daddy Comes Home

Ruth watched the transformation, puzzled and displeased. She was used to unquestioning obedience from a child that had always sought approval, and she was taken by surprise by this sudden rebellion. While she did nothing to stop it, she fought back subtly, using her skill with words to manipulate her daughter and provoke the reaction she wanted. She used words full of hurt and bewildered anger for her emotional blackmail.

‘I don’t know why you want to make me unhappy. Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?’ she would say plaintively.

But Antoinette refused to listen.

As the new, fashionable Antoinette took shape, she found that the girls who frequented the coffee shop now chatted to her. Her new friends’ main interests were make-up, teenage fashion and how to get a boyfriend, and these interests took up most of their mental energy. Antoinette was grateful for this, as it left them with little curiosity about Antoinette’s home life, so she didn’t need to use the false one she had created: a happy home, a loving mother and a father who worked away.

The weekend when Antoinette decided she was going to complete her transformation arrived. The process took hours. First, a bright orange dye was washed through her hair and then she set about drying it and teasing it into that fashionable shape so loved by teenage girls and despaired of by their parents: it rose high above her hair, stiffened into place with a generous squirting of lacquer. It was so thickly coated that a comb could hardly penetrate it.

Then, her face. She took a pan stick and covered her skin with it so that she was strangely pale. She ringed her eyes so heavily in black liner that they appeared to have shrunk in size. Then she took up the latest addition to her fast-growing make up collection: a small plastic box complete with mirror containing a cake of black mascara. Generous gobbets of spit turned the black cake into a gooey mess which she carefully applied to her lashes. After each coat, she added another until the thickened lashes nearly weighed down the lids. Finally, the natural colour of her mouth was obliterated by the palest of gleaming pink lipstick studiously applied to puckered lips as she practised pouting in front of the mirror.

She looked at her reflection, pleased with what she saw. She pursed her lips and smiled. Much to her satisfaction, the mirror showed no sign of the shy studious teenager her mother knew, nor of the old-fashioned girl that worked at the coffee bar. No, this was a modern girl, one who shared the assurance of the people she admired.

She felt as though she had emerged from a cocoon, and had shed the safe skin of ‘obedient daughter’. Deep down, she still lacked the confidence to be completely sure of the outcome of her metamorphosis but she tried to put that out of her mind.

Instead, she welcomed her new image. She pouted at the girl in the mirror.

‘Goodbye, Antoinette,’ she said. ‘Hello, Toni.’

Her new self was born and she was a girl ready to party on a Saturday night.

Now that Antoinette looked the part, the girls she’d met at the coffee bar invited her to share Saturday evenings with them. They would meet in groups and descend in a pack on the local dance venues, spending the evening dancing, giggling and flirting with the boys.

At last, Antoinette felt herself accepted. More than anything else, she wanted friends and the companionship of other young people. She needed desperately to be part of a group, to giggle companionably with them and to have what she had been missing her entire life: fun.

One Saturday morning, she excitedly watched the beginning of the conversion of the nearby field from muddy site into a magic place. At last she was finally going to enter that secret world, the one where teenagers dressed in the height of fashion, danced the night away, passed cigarettes around to appear sophisticated and drank smuggled-in alcohol. She couldn’t wait.

She watched as coils of electric cables were run from large, noisy, diesel-fuelled generators to provide the sparkling lights that shone on the dancers. She saw a huge glitter ball, something she had only seen before on television, being carried into the tent.

Sections of wooden floors to be laid over the damp earth were taken in and then, once that was in place, the furniture followed. A small army of helpers carried in folding tables and an assortment of chairs was placed in groups around the hastily erected wooden dance floor. She had been told that there would be a bar inside, but that it only offered soft drinks. Anything stronger had to be smuggled in but that wasn’t difficult. Customers with bulging pockets were given a cursory search by good-natured security guards as they looked for forbidden alcohol they seldom found. The walls of the marquee were easily raised and small bottles full of spirits slid under its folds to the eager hands of their co-conspirators.

Antoinette liked drinking. Ever since her father had first introduced her to the intoxication of spirits, she had enjoyed the sensation of numbness and relaxation that alcohol brought. While most teenagers were just discovering how to drink, Antoinette was a practised hand. Even now she liked to keep a bottle in her room so that she could take fortifying sips when she needed them. As soon as she had looked old enough, she had been able to buy it herself from off-licences, pretending it was for her mother.

At the moment, Antoinette had a small bottle of vodka, her chosen spirit, hidden in her room, in the belief that her breath would not be tainted by its smell. She did not know how easily available spirits were at the dances, so she decided to have some before she left, and poured herself a generous helping.

Fuelled by a double-vodka-induced confidence, she put on her American tan stockings, pinning them to her pink suspender belt. Then she slithered into a dress so tight that it nearly bound her knees together and forced her feet into high white stilettos. She teased her hair as high as it would go, then sprayed it with a coloured lacquer, turning it into a bright orange halo. As she applied her make-up, her face lost its glow and became deadly pale. Two black-rimmed eyes, more panda than doe-like, looked into the mirror one more time and she was delighted with what she saw. Now she was ready to hobble the short distance from the gate lodge to the marquee.

As she went downstairs and into the sitting room, Antoinette gave scant thought to what her mother’s reaction would be when she was face to face with her daughter’s transformation. But she heard the shocked intake of breath as she entered, and quickly averted her eyes from Ruth’s horrified face as she made her way towards the front door. She didn’t care what her mother thought. At last she was going to swing her tightly encased hips on the dance floor and that evening that was all that mattered to her.

For once Ruth was speechless and before she could regain her voice, Antoinette made her hasty exit.

‘I’m off now!’ she called unnecessarily as she closed the door firmly behind her.

A pack of girls, all dressed in similar attire to Antoinette, was waiting for her in the queue that had already formed outside the marquee. Once admitted, they made their way to the ladies’ toilets where, giggling and chattering, they preened in front of the mirrors. Handbags snapped open for the teenage ritual of repairing make-up. They did not give a thought to the fact that a ten-minute walk from their homes to the tent was hardly likely to have disturbed their hours of work. Hair was once again tweaked and teased then sprayed liberally, filling the air with a cloud of cheap perfume. The tail end of a comb was inserted into the construction, lifting it even higher, and only then were they satisfied there was nothing more that could be done to it.