by Toni Maguire
I worked all night and for some reason it never occurred to me that a report full of Tippex might look suspicious – I was only nine, after all. As you can imagine, I got caught. Instead of tackling me, he rang the school. Told the Head he was a little unsure of the report I had given him and he would like to compare it to the original.
He and Mum went to see the Head. I don’t know much about the conversation, just that she didn’t understand why I had done that – my grades were good for someone who had started their new school in the middle of term. And that’s exactly what she told me when I was summoned to her office. She said Carl and my mother had just left and told me the reason why they had been to see her. Each word that came out of her mouth caused the icy fingers of Fear to run down my spine.
She didn’t appear to be angry with me, more concerned than anything else when she asked why I had tried to change my report. I gave my stock answer to that question – an embarrassed wriggle on my seat, followed by ‘I don’t know.’
‘Your stepfather seemed concerned that you had done it because you didn’t want to disappoint him. I told him your grades were very good for someone who had started mid-term. Didn’t you read all the comments your teachers wrote?’
After I told her that I had, I could feel her waiting for me to say something more. She was far from satisfied with my answers, I could tell.
‘Emily, is there something bothering you, something you’ve not told me about?’ She wanted to know. And as others had done over the years, she looked me straight in the eye, waiting for an answer.
‘I miss my friends at my old school,’ I managed to say.
‘Of course, but you’ll make new ones here soon.’
Not going to happen, they think I’m weird.
Not that I let those words escape my mouth. I realised that she was now watching my fingers twisting my hair.
‘Your stepfather appeared very understanding. He told me he’s helped you with your homework more than once. I understand that he did not come into your life until you were five. So, how do you get on with him?’
Again, those piercing eyes looked straight into mine.
Don’t say anything, whispered Fear.
‘Oh, fine,’ I told her.
She let me go then after telling me to have more confidence in my ability before finally adding, like my headmistress before her, that her door was always open and if I had a problem, to come to her. It was so tempting to say that I was frightened to go home and then ask the Head to phone my dad and tell him to come and take me away from that ugly house and Carl. So, what stopped me? Knowing each step I took towards home was a step nearer the thrashing in store for me.
Perhaps if I had had some coins in my pocket instead of the bus pass Carl had bought for me, I might have gone into the red phone box I passed, just might have made that call. But I hadn’t, and trembling, I jumped straight onto the bus. My hands were still shaking as I pushed open the front door. For a moment no one spoke and I stood frozen to the spot as the two of them stared at me. The atmosphere in that room was thick with menace.
Run, screamed Fear, run as fast as you can! Get away now!
For once I did not stand my ground and wait for the outcome. Instead, I turned around, pushed myself through the front door and headed for the lane.
He caught me, of course he did. His fingers grabbed hold of my coat then spun me round and slapped me hard. There was a stinging pain as the rings cut into my face and I felt a trickle of blood sliding down my cheek.
Oh, God, I thought, he’s left them on.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Emily? You’ve nowhere to run to now, have you? No Gran to take you in!’ It was the sound of him sniggering as his hold tightened that made the hairs on my neck stand up. I just knew I was in danger; this was a side to him far worse than anything I had seen before.
‘We’re going in now.’ Clenching the collar of my coat tightly, he shoved me up the path and back through the front door. ‘You’ve disgraced your mother and me!’ he shouted with spittle flying into my face as he shook me so hard, my teeth just about rattled. ‘You useless little cheat! Thought we were stupid, did you? Well, we’ll see about that when I’ve finished with you!’
I was numb with terror when my bladder let me down and there was nothing I could do to stop myself peeing.
‘You filthy little slut!’ he roared as he drew back his fist and drove it hard into my back, just above the kidneys. Pain flooded my body as more blows rained down until my legs buckled and I fell to the floor. My ears were ringing and through a fog, I could hear my mother screaming, ‘Stop, Carl, for heaven’s sake stop now, you’ll kill her!’ I felt his breath as he crouched over my body. His hands were around my neck, squeezing it tighter and tighter, as with black dots floating in front of me, I gasped for air.
I heard Mum scream again. I don’t know how, but I have a memory of her hands grasping his shoulders, trying to prize him away from me. But she must have realised then that her husband could no longer hear her, he was beyond reason.
I could hear ringing in my ears as I began to lose consciousness and then a sudden stream of ice-cold water hit my head and those hands finally fell from my neck.
‘Don’t move yet,’ my mother’s voice warned and as my sight slowly came back into focus, I could see her leaning over me, still holding an empty bucket. ‘I’ll help you into your room.’
‘Carl, sit down now,’ she said, turning to him. Amazingly, dripping water as he moved, he obeyed her and sank into his chair.
Mum helped me up, took my arm gently and guided me slowly to my room – but not before I had seen the glazed look on Carl’s face.
Yes, he had lost it all right.
Gingerly, my mother helped me undress and brought in the usual medicine and gently rubbed cream on my bruises. She also gave me something to help me sleep, which worked almost straight away.
In the morning she appeared as my eyes opened, her face white with worry and dark shadows under her eyes.
‘You can’t go to school this week,’ was all she said.
Which meant more excuses had to be made up for the school.
Which one would it be? I wondered.
Flu, chicken pox or whatever illness she could think of would explain my lack of attendance.
It was when I went to the bathroom and glanced in the mirror that I understood why I was not going to be let out of the house. A dark ring of bruises wound round my neck, I had a swollen black eye and a cut cheek where one of his rings had struck me. Just looking at my reflection made me feel sick and dizzy, as did the fact that my whole body throbbed with pain and I could hardly stand.
I stayed in my room for three days. Food was brought in (not that I had any appetite), more lotions placed on my bruises, and most of the time I slept. The one thing my mother insisted on was for me not to flush the loo when I peed. I didn’t understand why then, but now I do – she wanted to check for blood after that hard thump to my kidneys.
After the third day, she tried to make excuses for him. I can’t remember what they were for I blocked the words from even entering my mind. He didn’t say he was sorry either. Apart from the odd glare sent in my direction, he mostly ignored me, which was precisely the way I liked it.
My mother didn’t just phone the school, she actually went in, ostensibly to pick up any work I needed to do.
Talk about covering all bases.
Chapter 46
It was not long after I recovered from that beating that I discovered my mother was pregnant again. Not that she was glowing with happiness as she had done before. But then there were few signs of Carl bestowing presents on her, or making her feel special either. I seldom saw her spend time putting on her make-up anymore or rushing off to the hairdressers. Nor did I hear him telling her with a wide smile that he had arranged a special day out for her and suggesting she had better change into something more glamorous, as he had not so long ago.
I no longer heard her giggling or
saw her looking up at him, doe-eyed, when they shared a private joke. Nor did I see him putting his arm around her, or patting her on the knee or on the behind. Not only had all the sparkle gone out of my mother, it had also deserted their marriage, it seemed. That did not mean that he never hit her – I saw the bruises on her arms, the dark shadows under her eyes. She must have been aware of the times he slid into my bedroom too.
Did she really not care? I asked myself.
If she did, to the best of my knowledge she made no effort to stop the abuse even though she must have known what he was up to in there.
* * *
There were days when the atmosphere in the house made me extremely uneasy. It was as though we were all walking on eggshells, just waiting for something to happen. I tried to escape by spending as much time in my room as I could. Homework was always a good excuse. Not that it stopped me having to eat with Mum and Carl and clear up afterwards. Nor did it put an end to my household chores, which increased at the weekends. Duties that Carl always inspected closely after I had finished, hoping to find a smidgen of dust or a neglected ring around the bath – in fact, anything that would tell him I had left something undone and cause him to yell at me.
Another of his warped little games was to decide which one of us was out of favour with him. It was as if he wanted an audience, be it only of one, when he made his choice of which one of us to pick on. I had come to loathe being in the same room as them for when it was my mother’s turn, he would cross-examine her as to who she had seen, who she had spoken to on the phone, even which shops she had visited.
‘No one,’ was the answer to the first two questions and ‘You’ve seen the receipts for the shops I go to, haven’t you?’ to the last one.
In contrast, he would then show me some degree of affection. After practically reducing Mum to tears, he would pay me some compliments, praise my schoolwork and tell me I was becoming rather pretty. While we all like praise, I cringed at his. He succeeded in making me feel even more uncomfortable, especially when I noticed how his eyes would shift in my mother’s direction to gauge her reaction to him being friendly to me.
There was one evening when he was all smiles and told me that soon I would have a better room, one where I would be more comfortable when I did my homework.
‘I’ll put in some bookshelves for you as well,’ he added. ‘I know how you like reading, it’s next on my list of things to do.’
For the first few months we had lived in the ugly house, his free time had been spent ‘getting it just right’. Which meant that it had just been transformed into a larger version of the flat, though even more oppressive. Talk about the darkness in him being reflected in his colour schemes! Burgundy made an appearance everywhere again, as did splashes of dark gold, and as for that heavy solid furniture he liked so much, it really managed to make the place even gloomier if that were possible. Let’s just say there was not one attractive feature in the house, not one part of it was bright and cheerful. Carl seemed to think it all looked wonderful though. Personally, I thought it resembled Dracula’s castle.
I have often wondered if my stepfather had any regrets about what he had accomplished for there was no sense of happiness in our home. You know the expression, ‘Be careful what you wish for’, closely followed by the warning, ‘Lest it all come true’? In Carl’s case he might have had a clear idea of what it was he wanted, but had he ever thought of the outcome? The feisty woman he had met and married was gone for good and the child he had tried to both shape and control did not love him. And underneath all of his blustering and arrogant ways, did a seed of fear not take root and tell him one day I might just talk? For in spite of all his slandering of my father and how much he tried every which way to make me doubt Dad’s reasons for seeing me, Carl had never quite managed to complete that last step – to separate me from him.
Chapter 47
I started noticing that while I was getting ready for school, my mother would make a dash from her bedroom to the bathroom, where it seemed she stayed for a long time. Pausing outside a couple of times, I could hear the sound of her retching. Then, when she emerged, I saw her face was a pasty white. She was definitely not well, I decided, and shared my concerns with Dad at our next meeting.
He always asked after Mum and this time he also wanted to know whether her depression had lifted at all – ‘Is she getting back to her old difficult self yet?’ I heard remnants of a former affection in his voice but he seemed never to ask when Lily was in earshot – I can just imagine what her reaction might have been.
I told him that I wished she was looking better. But no, nothing much had changed, although she no longer stayed in bed for the whole morning or sat staring at the walls without saying a word.
‘She still takes those pills though,’ I said.
‘And Carl, how’s he coping?’
‘Carl’s the same as always,’ I said, not going into any details before steering the conversation back to Mum.
‘I’m worried about her,’ I told him. ‘She always seems tired and she has huge dark shadows under her eyes. And now she’s throwing up every morning as well. What do you think is wrong with her?’
‘I think she’s most probably pregnant again.’
‘Well, she’s not mentioned it and I’ve not heard them talking about it either.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to say until she’s had a scan. What happened last year was terrible for her, she must be so afraid that it could happen again. But if you’re worried, Emily, why don’t you just go and ask her?’
‘Yes, OK, Dad, I will,’ I answered doubtfully for I was not someone she ever seemed to want to talk to. She hardly acknowledged my presence when she saw me in the morning or when I returned from school. Not that I told him that.
* * *
On the Monday morning, I decided to ask. At least then I would know if my mother was ill or if there was a baby on the way. I waited until she came out of the bathroom before blurting out my concerns: ‘Mum, are you being sick all the time because you’re going to have a baby?’
‘Yes,’ came the answer but without the smile that had lit up her face just over a year ago.
She sat down in the kitchen looking, if anything, more tired than ever and told me that she was going to see her old doctor – ‘I know Carl won’t be pleased with me going to my hometown, but he’s been my doctor for years and before him, it was his father. I just don’t want to go to one I don’t know.’
I could tell she was not far from crying then.
‘I won’t say anything,’ I promised, feeling some warmth at her confiding in me.
‘Don’t go mentioning anything to Carl, will you?’
‘You mean he doesn’t know about the baby?’
‘Not yet.’
Chapter 48
Mum didn’t tell me what the doctor had said, or if it was going to be another baby girl. If she had gone to her GP and had one of those photos, she would have known, wouldn’t she?
I don’t think she cared either way.
This time I felt no excitement, I almost felt sorry for a child coming into our world. I thought of that time when my mother was pregnant with Maria and how happy she had been and how excited I was too. But neither of us had those feelings when she carried Mark, my baby brother.
The months leading up to her giving birth were completely different to the time before. Carl no longer strutted around looking proud – without Mum’s family, he had no one to impress, had he? He still appeared not to have any family of his own. There were no visitors bearing gifts of handmade baby clothes, no excited aunts on the phone congratulating them both, no Gran dropping in with homemade food and no more sisterly lunches for Mum to look forward to. The only difference to her lifestyle, which mainly consisted of sitting around looking depressed or cooking, was that she refused to touch alcohol. Not that my stepfather took any notice – he continued drinking enough for both of them. In the years since he had moved in with us, he had gone fr
om being a man who watched his diet and was a moderate drinker to simply sloshing it back. Now, excess flesh had settled on his stomach and jowls and he no longer looked like the trim, fit man he once was.
To begin with, I had heard my mother try and persuade him to go a little steadier. Glaring, he had brought up her family – how many beers they sank at those get togethers, how he never touched a drink before six o’clock and what about all those pills she popped? She was not to insinuate that he was the one with a problem.
So, that was the end of her trying to reduce his intake – it was also the end of her trying to stand up for herself.
Carl might have denied he had a problem, but I saw him waiting impatiently for the hands of the clock to tell him it was six o’clock. That’s if he was at home and not out with his business friends, which was happening more and more.
Even though Mum and I were quite often left alone for most of the evening, we never slipped back into the closeness that had meant so much to me. I so wanted to go back to that time just over a year earlier when I had rested my hand on her stomach and felt the ripples of tiny feet kicking. Or share my smile of happiness when, flushed with excitement, she showed me those photos from her scan.
Mind you, that little tadpole-like creature was nearly lost even before it had created a bulge in my mother’s stomach. She told me one evening when we were alone that it was thanks to my actions that the baby was still where it should be. If she had told Carl about being pregnant then perhaps she would not have come so close to miscarrying. Her excuse for not confiding in him was she was so afraid of losing the baby. If that was the reason, those fears nearly came to fruition.
Haven’t I already said that I felt as though both my mum and I were walking on eggshells? The atmosphere in the house was by now making me feel uneasy and I disliked being in the company of them both.