When Daddy Comes Home (12 page)

On her evenings off, she was determined to have fun. Entertainment at Butlins was free, not only for the holidaymakers but also for the staff as well. Every morning, the holidaymakers were greeted with the words ‘Good morning, campers!’ broadcast through the loud speakers. Then a red-coated entertainer would announce the planned activities for the day. There was plenty for everyone, young or old, and Antoinette and her room mates would listen to the entire menu of what was on offer that evening before making their choice.

Antoinette’s favourite were the talent nights when hopeful performers would shed their daytime clothes, don their finest and strut on stage with all the confidence of a true professional. One of their fellow waitresses, who wore glasses
as thick as the bottom of Coca-Cola bottles and shyly scurried up and down aisles serving tables, transformed herself at night into a glamorous club singer. Her checked cotton uniform was replaced by a sparkling dress, and instead of socks and plimsolls she wore four-inch heels, leaving her glasses backstage. When she opened with her rendering of ‘Summertime’, the room would fall silent and goosebumps rose on every arm as the silvery notes of her voice drifted into all four corners of the room. Holding the microphone in one pale hand while the other fell loosely to her side, she stood gazing myopically at an audience that was only a blur to her as she lost herself in the music of the famous Gershwin song. She received the thunderous applause afterwards with only a small puzzled smile, as though she did not believe in the power of her voice; then she would leave the stage and disappear. The next day she was the softly spoken, shy waitress again.

On other evenings, the four girls would go and see the usual entertainers – singers, dancers, comedians and magicians and every other kind of showman – all hoping that a talent scout would see them and lead them to stardom. Some went on to find fame, others sank into oblivion. Antoinette liked the magicians who found doves under handkerchiefs and gave the holidaymakers the illusion of sawing their skimpily dressed assistants in half, but they always emerged intact from their box, smiling at the crowd as the lights sparkled on their sequinned costumes.

To her delight, she found that on the five evenings she worked the holidaymakers were even more generous than she had expected. Every night she counted out the handfuls of silver change which they had left for her on their table. It meant that she was able not only to save all her wages but a good deal of her tips as well. Then, to add to what she thought
of as her good luck, Butlins informed her that for every week she had worked she would receive a bonus of ten shillings, provided she stayed to the end of the season. Added to both her daytime and evening wages, that meant she had enough money not just for her rent and fees but to buy clothes suitable for a secretarial college.

Working both days and nights made the time pass so quickly that she hardly had time to miss home. She sent several postcards to her mother, keeping her up to date with her activities and letting her know that she was safe, but only received one short letter in reply.

A week before she left, Antoinette and her new friends went shopping for suitable clothes for the secretarial course she hoped she would be starting in the autumn. Before she left Ireland, she had registered herself but only when she returned would she know if she had been awarded a place. Antoinette wanted to look demure and ladylike and recalled how Derek’s friend Charlotte had looked on that disastrous evening when they had met. She would copy that look, she decided, and picked out simple, elegant skirts and jumpers. Like three mother hens, the trio clucked their disapproval at the plain garments she chose. They favoured a bolder, more glamorous look and were vocal in expressing their opinion. With a wide smile, Antoinette ignored them and paid for her purchases. She was delighted with her choices, even if they were not, so she took them over the road to a café to celebrate with scones, cream cakes and cups of strong tea.

The final day at Butlins arrived. Antoinette was surprised at how emotional she felt leaving the place, and realized that she had been happy there. The work had been hard but she
had also had lots of fun and made good friends. All the activity had made the time go by so fast that she could hardly believe she had been there three months. Everybody bustled about, packing their things and preparing to return to normal life.

‘Will we see you next year?’ asked one of her room mates.

‘I hope so,’ said Antoinette.

‘You’ll nearly be the right age anyway,’ said another mischievously. ‘We won’t have to fight all the lads off for you then.’

Antoinette laughed. She’d enjoyed being their mascot and had felt safe all summer under her friends’ protection. They all hugged and made arrangements to meet at the same place next year, before boarding their coaches that would take them to their different destinations.

As the coach to the station pulled away from the camp, Antoinette waved frantically to her girlfriends, before settling back into her seat. She didn’t know what the coming year held for her and she was nervous about returning home. She would have to start making arrangements to live in her own place now, and cope with starting at the college. It was all rather daunting.

But I’ll be back next year, if I possibly can, she promised herself. And I don’t see why I shouldn’t be.

Antoinette could not have known, that week in early September, that her life was about to change again. She would never return to work another season.

A
ntoinette sat on one of the wooden seats outside the interview room. In her bag she had a term’s fee for the secretarial college. At last, after two years of saving added to what she had made during the Butlins season, she had enough money to realize her ambition. Now she wondered nervously if she would be accepted. She had already been provisionally accepted on the basis of her application form but it all rested on the personal interview with the principal, Miss Eliot.

She had started that day by brushing out her beehived hair for a more sober style and she applied her make-up sparingly. Then she put on one of the plain skirts and jumpers that she had bought in Wales, hoping that she had made the right choice. She wanted so badly to look the same as the other girls applying.

But there was one thing she didn’t have that all the other applicants would have, and that was a parent in attendance. Well, there was nothing she could do about that. She would just have to go on her own.

Now, as she waited her turn for an interview, she was aware that she was attracting curious gazes from the other two people present: a girl about her own age and a woman who was obviously her mother. They were dressed in similar outfits of smart tailored coats with fur collars, and low-heeled
polished shoes that matched the handbags they clasped in leather-gloved hands. They looked relaxed and comfortable and the girl seemed confident about the interview ahead. Antoinette watched them go as they were called in for their turn, wishing she had just an ounce of their self-confidence.

She was the last to be ushered in to the principal’s office. As she entered she saw an imposing woman in her late fifties sitting behind a desk. She was dressed in a dark grey suit with her thick hair pulled away from her face into a severe bun and seemed an austere figure to Antoinette. Miss Eliot looked surprised and then displeased at the sight of the unaccompanied teenager.

‘YouDre Antoinette Maguire, aren’t you? Are you alone?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Yes.’ There was no point in trying to make excuses so she said nothing more.

Miss Eliot gave her a curious look. ‘Well, it is usual in these circumstances for a parent to be present. If you are offered a place, I shall need to discuss the matter of our fees with someone.’

Antoinette knew that there was a waiting list of girls wanting to enter the prestigious college. From the expression of disapproval on Miss Eliot’s face, she had the sinking feeling that the absence of a parent was going to count against her more than she had thought. But she had not spent two years working and saving to admit defeat easily.

She straightened her back, looked Miss Eliot in the eye and said, ‘I’ve got the fees in my handbag. I’ve been saving them up for the last two years.’

For a moment, the older woman looked completely nonplussed, then her expression of disapproval softened. ‘Do you want to be a secretary so badly, my dear?’

Antoinette thought that truth might win the day. ‘No,’ she said frankly, ‘it’s that I want a school-leaving certificate stating that I left school at eighteen not fourteen, which I did.’ She saw no point in adorning the facts when she was sure that Miss Eliot would see straight through any subterfuge.

Miss Eliot allowed herself a brief smile at the teenager’s bravado. ‘Sit down, please.’

Antoinette sat with relief. She knew that she had passed some sort of test and the rest of the interview passed quickly and easily. It seemed like only a few minutes later that Miss Eliot asked her to sign the forms and pay her deposit. Then, with a brief handshake, the principal welcomed her as a student of the Belfast Secretarial College.

Antoinette had received a distinctly frosty welcome on her return home from Butlins. Her father ignored her, spending even more time than usual out of the house and her mother was cool, only speaking to her to urge her to find her own place to live.

‘You know what was agreed, Antoinette,’ she said. ‘YouDre to move out. Your father doesn’t want you here any longer. YouDre perfectly able to support yourself now.’

As soon as she had her place at the college, Antoinette went looking for somewhere to live. Before then, she would have had difficulty finding someone who would rent a room to her but now that she could prove that she was a student and explain that she needed to rent rooms near her college, landladies would be more amenable. Almost at once she found somewhere she thought would be suitable – a bedsitter in a shared house in the student area of the Malone Road. It wasn’t the most salubrious place she could imagine, but it was cheap,
the landlady was prepared to rent to her, and it would be an escape from the home where she was so clearly no longer wanted.

She put down her deposit and said she could move in immediately. Then she went back to pack her things. Her parents were both out, so she left the gate lodge alone and with no goodbyes.

I ought to feel sad, she thought as she climbed down the stairs holding her suitcase. But she felt nothing. After all, Judy was no longer here to provide some vestige of warmth and companionship. There was nothing here for her anymore.

She shut the door behind her, believing that she would never return.

On the first day of term, Antoinette woke early. She looked around her dismal bedsitter with its thin carpeting where the pattern had faded so much it was nearly indistinguishable. It was sparsely furnished, with two scratched wooden chairs at an equally worn table and an old armchair by the window. She had bought some brightly covered cushions to make it more comfortable but despite her brave attempts to make the room cosier, it still looked bleak. But she knew that she was lucky to have found a place to live. Plenty of landladies would have refused to rent to young girls without work, even if she was a student. But a large deposit had secured the seedy room for her.

This was the first day of college; today, she would begin the training that would take her away from rooms like this one to a new life.

She stretched, then clambered off the sagging mattress and stumbled sleepily out into the passage that led to the communal kitchen. She had taken her bath the night before so that
she would not have to queue for the bathroom in the morning with the five other tenants who shared the house. All the others had been out the previous evening and she had been able to stoke the meter with plenty of coins and then soak in the enamel bath for as long as she wanted without fear of interruption.

In the kitchen, her nose wrinkled with distaste at the sight of the mess the other tenants had left: dirty plates were piled high in the sink and congealed food, remnants of a hasty supper, was stuck in hard lumps to the Formica kitchen table. She looked in vain for a clean cup and then, with a sigh, removed one from the scummy water in the sink and rinsed it under the tap. Setting the kettle to boil and putting some bread in the toaster, she waited for her breakfast and felt a pang of nostalgia for the gate lodge.

‘But that was the life before
he
returned,’ she told herself sternly. ‘I’m better off here.’ When she had made her tea and buttered her toast, she took her breakfast to her room. Once she’d finished, she dressed and then picked up her new case that contained all the books she needed for the course.

It would only take her half an hour to walk to the college and, mindful of having to economize, she decided to do just that. It was a pleasant early autumn day and as she crossed Belfast, her spirits lifted. She finally felt like the student she had wanted to be for so long.

Antoinette’s fingers moved clumsily over the letters and knocked onto the black metal guard that prevented her from seeing the keyboard.

Concentrate
, she told herself as she looked at the exercise book and placed her fingers over the correct keys. ‘A, S, D, F,’
she muttered, and then shifted her fingers across on to G, H, J, K, then L. She sighed. Surely people did not torture themselves daily on these machines? How would she ever learn to do it correctly? It seemed impossible, she thought as she repeated the frustrating exercise again.

‘Concentrate, Antoinette,’ said Miss Eliot in steely tones as she marched up and down between the desks, surveying each girl’s efforts. ‘Accuracy, not speed, is the purpose of this lesson,’ she repeated for the umpteenth time.

The squat little typewriter with its matching guard seemed to mock her as her fingers searched for a rhythm. Forty-five more minutes passed. Outside the sun shone and inside twenty heads neatly coiffeured, not a beehive to be seen, bent to their task. Thirty-eight hands moved rhythmically but the two belonging to Antoinette felt as though their fingers had swollen during the night. Somehow they had become unmanageable appendages that slid off the keys and refused to obey her.

At last typing was over. A shorthand lesson followed and as she opened her book, Antoinette looked in dismay at what appeared to be numerous meaningless squiggles.

‘How can I ever learn to write that?’ she asked herself despairingly, as she tried to master Mr Pitman’s peculiar slanting letters with their dots and hoops. She knew they had to be mastered. She needed a certificate stating she was qualified in shorthand to give her entry to the work place and she was determined that the next time she searched for employment, she would be armed with exam results. No more waitressing for her.

At the end of the first lesson, she felt she could start a letter
Dear Mr Smith…
but how she was ever going to finish it was a mystery.

The last lesson before lunch was bookkeeping and she was able to relax. All the practice in the coffee shop where she had to work out bills in her head had made numbers easy. She noticed to her satisfaction that she appeared to be the only one that thought so but she quelled her desire to smile. She did not want to draw any attention to herself or have to explain where her ability in mental arithmetic came from. Years of waitressing and adding up countless bills in her head might be the honest answer but it was not one she wanted to give.

The welcome lunch break came. Seeing the other girls meet in groups to make their arrangements, Antoinette picked up a book and quickly left for the nearest café. She did not want to try and mix with the other students. She would only have to answer awkward questions that she would rather avoid. Her circumstances and the fact that she lived alone in a bedsitter would be outside the comprehension of the other girls there. She knew what their homes would be like: there would be silver on the sideboards, thick rugs on the floors and glowing fires in the grates; their houses would smell of polish and the scent of flowers and, come the evening, aromas of cooking would waft from the kitchen.

Unlike Antoinette, these girls would not be concerned with the cost of food, or how many coins were put aside for the meters or whether they could pay the rent. Certainly none of them walked to the college to save fares. No, they were dropped off in the morning by mothers driving the family car and when they came home, they were greeted by loving parents who were interested in their progress.

She knew the kind of homes these girls came from. On her nocturnal walks taken to escape the claustrophobic loneliness of her bedsitter, she would wander through the middle-class
suburbs of Belfast and pass houses where people like her classmates lived. Through the large picture windows, she caught glimpses of families sitting together talking, or saw soft lights casting a glow on groups at the dining table engrossed in the evening meal and each other.

The girls who came from those homes all had that gloss that a worry-free life bestows. She recognized the confidence that protected them. Their lives were already planned – for the boys, university followed by a well-paid career; for their sisters, a genteel job that would not be too taxing before they got married and made caring for a family their priority.

As she ate her lunch in a nearby café, she thought of her cheerless temporary home: the communal kitchen with its constant mound of unwashed dishes, the lavatory where she had to take her own roll of paper each time she went, and the shared bathroom with its chipped bath. She pictured the waist-high scummy ring left by tenants too busy for such a mundane task as cleaning it. There was a hollowness inside her when she visualized the emptiness of her room and how bare it felt without even her dog to greet her. A wave of loneliness threatened to choke her.

She pushed that feeling away and replaced it with another picture. It was of herself, well groomed with gleaming hair and beautiful manicured nails taking dictation in a modern office from a handsome male employer. She saw herself walking away, her notebook in hand, to sit in front of a shiny modern typewriter that ran on electricity and had no guard to hide its keys. She saw her hands move rapidly as she typed a letter without one spelling mistake, gave it to her employer ready for signature and heard him say with a grateful smile, ‘I don’t know how this company would manage without you.’

That daydream lasted through a second cup of coffee and still floated in her head as she made her way back to the college.

The end of term came and with it, the first set of exams. Antoinette had found the course monotonous and had already made up her mind to leave and find work. She may not have finished the entire year but she would have a certificate stating she had left the secretarial college at seventeen, was proficient in typing and basic bookkeeping and that her shorthand was passable. That would be enough to get her a job interview, she thought. She was desperate to start work, get an income and leave her bedsitter. The loneliness there felt as though it was killing her. She hadn’t made any friends on her course and she hadn’t tried to. Keeping separate felt like a necessity. She tried to keep it all inside and concentrate just on the future which must surely be brighter.

At the end of term, she passed her exams and left the college for good. She didn’t regret leaving even though going there had been her dream for so long; she had got what she needed. Armed with her secretarial credentials and a personal reference from Miss Eliot, she went looking for a job and quickly found work as a receptionist at a small firm of hairdressers.