Anne's Song by Anne Nolan Read Free Book Online

worse.
    Although my parents had no problem making babies, my impression was that theirs wasn't a particularly highly charged physical relationship, although I can't know what went on behind their bedroom door. I don't think my mother would ever have denied him sex – she adored my father – but it just wasn't in her nature to flirt with him in front of her own children, and Dad was much too enclosed, too buttoned up, to be so free with his feelings. However, for a long time I've had my suspicions that he was a serial adulterer. He had enough opportunity. He'd be away singing solo spots in clubs and I know women found him attractive. I'd seen that with my own eyes when I'd visited various clubs. They were always buzzing around him. Nor was he swatting them away. Given that he was prepared to pleasure himself using me as a means, I can't believe he didn't grab whatever chance presented itself for sex with anyone willing and available. Any female must have seemed fair game to him, but this is not something I can prove.
    I want to think and hope that he never subjected any other young girls to what he put me through, but I have no way of knowing. I think he was slightly obsessed with me. I was his eldest daughter. I was the first to grow into a young woman before his eyes and under his roof. That doesn't for a moment excuse his actions, but it may go some way to explaining them. What it doesn't tell me is whether the incestuous acts that he performed on his twelve-year-old daughter meant that he was also a paedophile outside the home. Certainly, no whisper of that has ever reached my ears, but then, he was clearly able to keep his true nature hidden. In some ways, he was like two different people. He could be so warm and wonderful. He'd be the one we'd show our work to when we got back home from school. He was the one who'd taken us to the seaside at Bray when we were young and bought us fish and chips on the promenade. My mum was part of it all, too, but he took the initiative in all things. He was the boss, the one who ran the household. I might not have been comfortable with what had happened when we were alone together but he was still my dad.
    Unlike most men of his generation, he would help bath the babies and change their nappies, and I truly don't believe there was any sick motive behind that. He was simply helping my mother and enjoying being part of family life. He drew the line at some things, though. It was Mum who used to do all the dirty work of going to the pawn shop when we lived in Dublin to get money to buy us shoes, and she was the one who'd scour the second-hand shops for clothes for us kids. We were poor because there were so many mouths to feed, although I can't honestly say I remember having a deprived childhood. There was just never quite enough money to go round.
    Later, he used to drink heavily – whisky and brandy were his favourite tipples – but, back then, he didn't have that excuse – if you can ever have an excuse for what he did, for molesting me. What he did, he did stone cold sober, and it seemed to be an almost daily requirement of his during that period when he had me to himself. I still have so much pent-up anger about what he did. To this day, I hate him for making me feel guilty when I discovered the true implications of his actions, but, thinking logically, I tell myself that I didn't know any better and that it was a nice feeling, which is why, in my innocence, I didn't try to stop him.
    That period of almost a year in Uncle Fred's house, before I started attending secondary school, was when I was subjected to a barely broken time of sexual abuse. Once I began school, nothing was ever like that again, mainly because my father simply didn't have the opportunity. But that didn't mean he stopped trying.
    I don't know how he could look at me and, more especially, at himself after he'd done the things he did. It was as if he could put the parts of his life in separate compartments. I