Don’t Tell Mummy: A True Story of the Ultimate Betrayal. Toni Maguire

wanting me out of the way, ignoring me or shouting at me, he suddenly became friendly all the time. Remembering his hasty fumbles that time when my mother was out of the room, I viewed his overtures with suspicion, but I forced my doubts to one side because, above everything else, I had a desperate need to be loved by my parents. I should have trusted my instincts.

      ‘She’s done so much homework this week,’ he said to my mother one evening. ‘She’s had all those long walks to school and back, I’ll take her out for a drive in the car.’

      My mother smiled brightly. ‘Yes, Antoinette, run along with Daddy. He’s going to take you out for a drive.’

      I jumped into the car enthusiastically, my pleasure only marred when Judy was barred from coming with us. As I sat gazing out of the window I wondered where the drive would take us. I was soon to find out. At the end of our lane he turned off into the field where the small wooden barn he had rented stood. This was where all my weekend drives would lead.

      He drove into the dim, shadowy building. The only natural light came from a small window with sacking nailed across it. I felt a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach, felt an unknown fear and knew that I did not want to get out of the car.

      ‘Daddy,’ I pleaded, ‘please take me home, I don’t like it here.’

      He just looked at me, with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

      ‘Stay here, Antoinette,’ he commanded. ‘Your Daddy has a present for you. You’re going to like it, you’ll see.’

      The fear I had of him intensified into terror, creating a leaden weight of dread that kept me firmly in my seat. He got out of the car to lock the shed, then opened the passenger door. When he pulled me round to face him I saw that his trousers were unzipped. His face was red; his eyes were glazed. As I looked into them he no longer seemed to see me. A tremor started deep inside me, shaking my body and forcing its way out of my throat as a whimper.

      ‘You be a good girl now,’ he said, taking my child-sized hand, small, plump and dimpled, in his. Holding it firmly, he forced my fingers round his penis then moved them up and down. All the time I was doing it I could hear small animal whimpers escaping from my throat and mingling with his grunts. I shut my eyes tightly, hoping that if I couldn’t see then it would stop, but it didn’t.

      Suddenly my hand was released and my body thrown back across the seat. I felt one hand holding me firmly by pressing on my stomach while another pulled my dress up and yanked my knickers down. I felt shame as my small body was exposed to his eyes and I was pushed further down on the cold leather seat. He pulled me sideways, leaving my legs dangling helplessly over the edge. Legs that I tried in vain to close. I felt him force them further apart, knew he was gazing at the part of me that I thought private, felt a cushion slide under my bottom and then the pain as he pushed himself into me, not hard enough in those early days to tear or damage, but hard enough to hurt.

      I lay as limp and as mute as a rag doll, trying to focus on anything apart from what was happening, while the smell of the shed with its combination of damp, oil and petrol, mingled with my father’s male smell of tobacco and stale body odour, seemed to seep into the very pores of my skin.

      After what seemed like an eternity, he gave a groan and pulled out of me. I felt a warm, wet, sticky substance dripping onto my stomach. He threw a piece of sacking at me.

      ‘Clean yourself up with that.’

      Wordlessly, I did as he instructed.

      His next words were destined to become a regular refrain: ‘Don’t you be telling your mother, my girl. This is our secret. If you tell her, she won’t believe you. She won’t love you any longer.’

      I already knew that was true.

      The one secret I held back from my father was the secret I held back from myself. My mother did know. The one fear he had was that she would find out. So that was the day we started the game; the game was called ‘our secret’, a game that he and I were to play for seven more years.

       Chapter Seven

      My eighth birthday arrived, bringing with it an early autumn quickly followed by the chill of winter. A diet of dark-brown peat was constantly supplied to the stove, producing a red glow, but however much we fed it the warm pool of heat never seemed to spread more than a few feet. I would huddle as close to it as possible as my permanently damp coat, shoes and woollen tights steamed on the wooden clothes horse. Since I only had one of each they had to be ready for the following day.

      My mother’s voice would float up the still uncarpeted stairs to wake me in the darkness of every early morning, and a chill would nip the tip of my nose as it ventured outside the cocoon of blankets. Automatically my arm would stretch out to the wooden chair, which doubled up as table and wardrobe, as I fumbled for clothes, which I would draw in under the blankets. First my school knickers, followed by woollen tights, brought from the kitchen the night before, were wriggled into. Then, with chattering teeth, my unbuttoned pyjama top would be hastily pulled over my head to be replaced by a woollen vest. Only then would I swing my legs out of bed, leaving my warm nest behind and venturing into the cold of the unheated house. Hastily I would boil the kettle on the range, which would eventually, with some prodding from the poker and some small pieces of peat, come slowly to life.

      I would wash quickly at the kitchen sink while my breakfast egg was cooked, then scramble into the rest of my clothes. Breakfast would be consumed hurriedly, then, pulling on my still damp coat, I would pick up my satchel and leave for school.

      At the weekends, dressed in an old sweater, mittens and wellington boots, I would help my mother collect eggs, both from the deep litter outhouses and from the scattered hiding places of the free-range chickens. Hoping for brown eggs, she gave them cocoa every morning at eleven o’clock. Whether it increased the ratio of brown eggs to white we were never sure, but the chickens would come running when she called. Greedily, their beaks would dip into the warm sweet liquid time and again. Lifting their heads from the bowls they would shake them, their little beady eyes gleaming as the liquid trickled down their throats.

      Frogs would be rescued from the well’s bucket and twigs collected for kindling. But my favourite time was when my mother baked. Scones and soda bread were removed from the griddle and, once cooled, placed into tin containers, because food had to be protected from the army of mice that took shelter with us during the winter months.

      Sugary-smelling cakes and biscuits were placed onto racks and, if my mother was in a good mood, I would be rewarded with the bowl to lick out, my fingers sliding around its cream and white sides, scrupulously gathering up the last drop of the buttery mixture. I would suck them clean, under the gaze of Judy’s and Sally’s bright and hopeful eyes.

      Those were the days when flashes of the old warmth that kept my love fuelled sprung up between my mother and me. For if her mind was firmly locked on the memory of the handsome auburn-haired Irishman in that dance hall, the man who waited for her at the docks, a man generous with his hugs and unfulfilled promises, mine was for ever locked on the smiling loving mother from my early childhood.

      From the money that I’d stolen, I bought myself a torch and batteries. These I hid in my room and at night I would smuggle up a book. Tucked up in bed with the blankets pulled high I would strain my eyes every night as I shone the weak light of the torch onto the print. The rustling and scurrying sounds of the insects and small animals that lived in the thatch receded once I lost myself in the pages. Then for a short time I was able to forget the days when my father took me for the ‘drives’.

      Each time he picked up his car keys and announced that it was time for my treat I silently implored my mother to say no, to tell him she needed me for an errand, to collect the eggs, fish the frogs out of the well water, even bringing in the water for washing from the rain butts, but she never did.