Don’t Tell Mummy by Toni Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

waited until her father had returned to work and she and her mother were alone. I saw her still trusting in that mother’slove but fumbling for the right words to explain an act that was foreign to her. Her nerviness showed in the way she stood and the mother’s anger grew more visible with each word that passed her lips. Faithful little Judy, sensing something wrong, was standing by the child’s side with her face looking upwards, her eyes full of canine concern.
    Again I felt that blaze of anger flashing from the mother’s dark green eyes. This time, through my own adult’s eyes, I could sense another emotion lurking behind it. Looking back in time I searched the picture for a clue as to what it might be, and then I saw it. It was fear. She was frightened of what she was about to hear.
    Antoinette, at six and a half, only saw the anger. Her slight shoulders sagged, expressions of bewilderment and hurt flitted across her face as her last hope of safety left her. Her mother did not intend to protect her from this.
    I heard again the mother’s voice commanding her to, ‘Never, never speak of it again, will you?’
    I heard her reply, ‘No, Mummy.’
    Her training had started; her silence was assured and the road forward for what was to follow had been successfully cleared.
    ‘You see, you did tell her, you did,’ my tormenter whispered.
    For years I’d blocked out the picture of my mother being told. I’d forced it to fade from my mind. I had forced Antoinette, the frightened child, to disappear and with her she took my memories. I realized, with a sad acceptance, that my mother had always known what my father felt towards me. How else could the child have described that kiss, if she hadn’t actually experienced it? She couldn’t possibly have invented it. Out in the country in those daysthere was no exposure to television, she had no books or magazines that could have allowed her to learn about such things. My mother had heard only the truth from her child.
    ‘Remember our last year, Toni,’ Antoinette asked, ‘the year before you left me? Look at this picture.’
    She slid another memory into the receptacle of my mind. It showed my father coming home from prison eleven years later. How my mother had sat looking out of the window waiting for him. Seeing him in the distance, only then had her face come to life as she rushed to meet him.
    ‘You were forgotten then. She never forgave you, but she forgave him.’
    Still I did not want to accept the memories that were being set free in my head. I had realized a long time ago that my mother’s recollection had stayed for ever locked onto the picture of the handsome, charming man of her youth. She, five years older than him and cursed with a beautiful mother, remained in her own mind the plain woman, lucky to have such a man.
    ‘And nothing or nobody would take him away,’ Antoinette retorted. ‘Think of the last months at the thatched house, and think about what she finally did.’
    Could she, I wondered that night, have loved him so much that she committed the ultimate betrayal to keep him?
    Another cigarette was lit as I wondered if any of my questions would ever be answered, any explanation given, or had she lived in the state of denial for so long that her truth had also been firmly buried?
    Feeling tiredness almost swamp me, I closed my eyes briefly and, half asleep, I returned to the thatched house.
    A steady stream of almost imperceptible changes over the passage of two years had gradually unwoven the fabric of my life. For comfort I would try and conjure up the face of my English grandmother and the memories of feeling secure and loved when I was around her. I would remember when just my mother and I had lived together, days when she had played with me, days when she had read my favourite stories at bedtime and days of just feeling happy.
    In bed at night, feeling knots of despair growing in my stomach, I tried to cling onto those elusive memories, to