Don’t Tell Mummy (6 page)

Now, on my breaks at the shop, I kept the owner informed of Sally’s antics, of how she and Judy had bonded, and even told her about June. On hearing, a few weeks later, that the
chickens hid their eggs in the overgrown grass at the base of the hedges, she offered me a small goat.

‘Antoinette,’ she told me, ‘take this to your mother. There’s nothing better for keeping the grass down.’

Proudly I attached the small animal to a piece of rope, thinking that now we could have goat’s milk as well as less grass, and took it home, presenting it as a gift to my mother.

‘Now we can get milk,’ I told her as the two dogs looked at my new friend with disdain, barked a couple of times and walked off.

‘It’s a billy goat dear,’ she said, with a burst of laughter. ‘There’s no milk from them. This time you have to take him back.’

The following morning the little goat trotted beside me once more, giving me company for the first two miles of the journey as I walked back to the shop to return him. By that time I felt a sense of relief at handing him back, after my mother had explained how large his horns would grow and the harm he would be able to do with them.

Over those winter months there were moments of genuine warmth between my mother and me and I treasured them, because it was clear that overall her attitude towards me had inexplicably changed. Where once she had taken a pride in my appearance, dressing me in pretty clothes, washing my hair regularly, tying it back with ribbons, her interest in my appearance had almost ceased. I was rapidly growing out of my school uniform; my tunic was several inches above my knees and my jumper, which barely reached my waist, was growing threadbare at the elbows. The pleats in my uniform had now almost disappeared, leaving creases in their place, and the dark green
had become shiny, adding to my grubby, uncared-for appearance. My hair, which once my mother had brushed lovingly every day, had now grown straight and lank. The curls of babyhood had long gone, to be replaced by an untidy shoulder-length curtain, framing a face that seldom smiled.

In these times, teachers would have spoken to my mother, but in the 1950s they took out their displeasure on the child.

One young teacher, taking pity on me, tried to be kind. She brought some pretty yellow ribbon in to the classroom and in the break brushed and tied my hair back, holding up a small mirror so I could admire my reflection.

‘Antoinette,’ she said, ‘tell your mother to do your hair like this each day. It makes you look so pretty.’

For the first time in several months I felt I was pretty, and excitedly showed off my new appearance to my mother. Her anger seemed to appear from nowhere as she snatched the ribbon from my hair.

‘Tell your teacher that I can dress my own child,’ she said, obviously furious.

I was bewildered. What had I done wrong? I asked, but I received no answer.

The next day my hair hung in its usual untidy style and was spotted by the teacher.

‘Antoinette, where is the ribbon I gave you?’

Feeling that I would be letting my mother down in some way if I repeated her words, I stared at my feet. A silence fell as she waited for my answer.

‘I’ve lost it.’ I heard myself mumble, feeling my face flush from the untruth. I knew I appeared ungrateful and sulky to her, and felt her annoyance.

‘Well, at least tidy yourself up, child,’ she snapped, and I lost my one ally at that school because it was the last time she bothered to show me any kindness.

I knew I was unpopular amongst my peers, as well as with the teachers. I also knew, young as I was, that the dislike was caused not only by the way I spoke, but also by my appearance. I noticed how differently the other girls looked to me from under their neat, shiny haircuts. Some had slides holding their hair in place, others had theirs tied back with ribbon. Only I had it falling in an untidy mess. Their school uniforms were neatly ironed, their shirts crisp and white and their jumpers were free of darns. Other children who lived several miles from school had bicycles, so their shoes had not become scuffed by the continuous damp that had removed all the shine from mine.

I resolved to do something about my appearance. Maybe then, I thought, I would be more popular.

Summoning up all my courage, I waited until I was alone with my mother to broach the subject of how I could look smarter. That evening, when I got home from school I nervously broached the subject.

‘Mummy, can I iron my gym tunic? It needs some of the pleats put back in it. Can I borrow some of Daddy’s shoe polish? Can I wash my hair tonight? I’d like to go to school looking smarter.’

One after another my requests tumbled out of my mouth into a silence that became more strained with every syllable I uttered.

‘Have you quite finished, Antoinette?’ she asked in the cold voice I had come to know so well.

I looked up at her then and, with a sinking heart, recognized the anger in her face. The anger I had seen in her eyes
when I had first tried to tell her about my father’s kiss had returned.

‘Why do you always have to make such a fuss?’ she asked, her voice almost a hiss. ‘Why do you always have to cause trouble? There is nothing wrong with the way you look; you always were a vain little girl.’

I knew then that any chance I had of being accepted by improving my appearance had gone, and I knew my mother well enough not to argue. Disagreeing with her would result in the one punishment I could not endure, that of being completely ignored.

Every day, as I walked to school with my hands and feet equally cold, I dreaded the day ahead – the unfriendliness of the children, the thinly veiled contempt of the teachers – and I searched my brain for a way of making them like me.

My homework was always meticulously done, my marks high, but somehow I knew that only added to my unpopularity. I noticed that on our breaks other children would have sweets, fruit pastels or sticky toffees. Sometimes these were swapped for marbles, always they were coveted as bargaining tools. Sweets I knew were something children liked, but how could I buy any with no pocket money? Then I saw my opportunity. Once a week the teacher collected the school-dinner money from both classrooms and placed it in a tin box, which she left on her desk. I hatched a plan.

I waited for the other children to leave, quickly went up to the desk, opened the box and took as much of the money as I could stuff into my baggy, elastic-legged knickers. For the rest of that day I walked cautiously around the school, feeling the coins pressing against my skin, reminding me of my guilt. I dreaded that their clinking would reveal me as the thief, but felt jubilant at the success of my plan.

Naturally, once the theft was discovered, our whole class was interrogated and our satchels were searched. Nobody, however, seemed to think of doing a strip search.

I was a very quiet child, because I was very depressed. I appeared well behaved on the surface, but nobody took any interest in how I was feeling underneath. As a result I was the last child to be suspected. When I went home that night I buried the money in the garden. A few days later I dug up a small amount of change, with which I bought a bag of sweets from the village shop on the way to school.

Sidling up to other children in the playground with an uncertain smile on my face, I stretched my arm out with the bag, offering them around. I was immediately surrounded. Hands dipped into my bag, children jostled each other as they eagerly snatched my offerings. I stood in the centre of the group, hearing them laughing and feeling for the first time that I was part of them. A wave of happiness hit me as I felt finally accepted. Then my bag was empty, the last sweet was gone. The laughter, I realized, was at me as the children melted away with whoops of glee as quickly as they had appeared.

I knew then that although they liked the sweets, they were never going to like me. After that day they liked me less for they could sense how desperately I wanted their approval and despised me for it.

I remembered then the visits to Mrs Trivett’s house and the question I would always put to her: ‘What are little girls made of?’ I remembered her reply, and thought now that I must be made of a different substance.

I
would always be exhausted by the time I had walked home, but I still had homework to do. I would sit at the table in our kitchen, which also doubled as our sitting room, trying desperately to stay awake. The only heat came from the cooking range at the far end of the room, the only light from the oil-fuelled Tilly lamps, which gave out a dim, orangey glow.

Once my homework was finished, I would try to sit closer to the warmth of the range and read, or I would watch my mother put a griddle pan onto the stove. Onto it she poured a batter mixture, which magically turned into drop scones or soda bread. We had to be as self-sufficient as possible in those days. Bought cakes and bread were considered to be as great a luxury as red meat or fresh fruit. If it was not home grown we simply didn’t buy it.

We had our chickens, which not only provided us with a regular source of eggs but also paid in part for the groceries we bought from the twice-weekly van. Potatoes and carrots were supplied from our vegetable patch, and when I went to the neighbouring farm to collect milk I also collected the buttermilk that my mother used for baking.

Now that I was seven and a half I could read fluently and, during the time we spent at the thatched house, my love for
books grew. A mobile library would come at the weekends and I could choose whichever books I wanted. Apart from my animals, books were my escape. I could disappear into other worlds of fantasy, adventure and fun. I could play detective with Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’, explore the underwater world of the
Water Babies
and feel frightened by
Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Little Women
showed me how women could be independent. I dreamt of being like Jo when I grew up. Under the light of the Tilly lamps I could have secret adventures with imaginary friends and vanish with them into a life where I was beautifully dressed and where everyone liked me. As my love of reading grew, so did my father’s resentment of it.

He never read more than the sports section in the newspaper and considered my mother’s and my interest in books a waste of time. Whereas he didn’t dare criticize her, he had no qualms in venting his displeasure on me.

‘What are you doing that for?’ he’d grumble. ‘Can you not find something better to do? Does your mother not need you to help? See if there is some washing up to do.’

Another time he’d say, ‘What about your homework?’

When I replied, ‘I’ve finished it,’ he’d give a disdainful grunt. Unnerved, I would feel his resentment wash over me and pray for bedtime so that I could make my escape.

Full of resentment for anybody who might be happy or educated, my father’s rages and tempers were unpredictable. There were the times when he came home quite early, bringing my mother and me sweets and chocolates. Those were the evenings when the jovial father would appear with hugs for my mother and friendly greetings for me. In my mind I had two fathers, the nasty one and the nice one. The nasty one I was very scared of, while the nice one, whom I
remembered meeting us at the docks, was the laughing, good-humoured man whom my mother loved. I was only ever allowed rare glimpses of the nice father now, but always hoped for more.

In the spring my father rented a wooden barn, which he said he could keep all his tools in, so that he could repair the car. Housing the chickens, he said, had taken up all the available sheds near the house. This would save us money, he said, since he was a qualified mechanic. Wouldn’t it be stupid to be paying other men good money for a job he could do better himself?

My mother agreed with him, which put him in a good humour and suddenly his manner towards me changed. He stopped always being cross, criticizing everything I did. From alternating between 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.