judge, ‘I just want you to answer a few questions, then you will be free to go. Just answer them to the best of your ability. And remember that you are not on trial here. Can you do that?’
She finally raised her eyes to meet the judge’s, for the tone of his voice when he addressed her made her feel, that in some way, he was on her side. She kept her eyes focused on his. Then she could not see her father. ‘Yes.’
The judge leant over, put his arms on the edge of his bench and looked at her in as kindly a way as he could. ‘Did you at any time tell your mother about what was happening to you?’
‘No.’ She almost believed it to be true, for she had still blocked out the memory of when she had told her. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into the palms. She had thought that all her tears were dried up and she had nothing left to cry with but now they threatened to return. Her eyes prickled and stung but she used all her strength to hold them back. Nothing would let her cry in public and allow these strangers to see her shame.
‘Do you know the facts of life? Do you know how women become pregnant?’
The atmosphere was tense as everyone waited for Antoinette’s answer. She kept her eyes locked on the judge and tried to make the rest of the courtroom disappear as she whispered, ‘Yes.’
She sensed her father watching her and felt the tension in the room increase as the judge asked the final question. She heard the intake of breath when it came.
‘Then surely you must have been scared of becoming pregnant?’ It was a question she had been asked so many times, by social workers and the police and she told him exactly what she’d told them. She replied carefully, ‘He used something. It looked like a balloon and he said that it would stop me having a baby.’
There was a collective sigh as everyone in the court breathed out. She had confirmed what they had all suspected, that Joe Maguire had calculatingly and systematically abused his daughter from the age of six and after she had matured to the point where she had her first period, he had worn condoms.
With Antoinette’s answer, her father’s defence disintegrated. He had tried to claim that his actions were those of a sick man who had been overcome by his impulses. His daughter’s innocent description of a condom, something she did not even know the word for, gave the lie to this. His actions were not impulsive, they were premeditated. Joe Maguire was completely responsible for his actions.
The judge thanked her for her answers and told her she could leave the court. Still keeping her eyes averted to avoid her father’s stare, she walked back alone through the double doors into the waiting area.
She was not present when the judge handed down her father’s sentence. Her father’s solicitor, paid for by her mother, gave Antoinette the details half an hour later.
Joe Maguire had received a four-year prison sentence for a crime he had committed over a period that had spanned seven years. He would walk free in thirty months; one third of the time that Antoinette had suffered.
She felt nothing. For a long time, the only way she had kept her sanity was by not feeling anything at all.
‘Your father wants to see you,’ continued the solicitor. ‘He’s in the holding cells.’
Still trained to obey, she went to see her father. The interview was short. He stared at her arrogantly, still secure in the knowledge that he could control her, and told her to look after her mother. Unable to break the habit of being a good daughter, she said she would. He showed no concern as to who would look after his daughter.
As she left the cells, she was told that the judge wished to see her in his chambers. There, with his wig and scarlet gown removed, he seemed less imposing and more kindly. Seated in the small room, she took comfort from his words.
‘Antoinette, you will find, as I know you already have, that life is not fair. People will blame you, as they already have. But I want you to listen to me very carefully. I’ve seen the police reports. I’ve seen your medical reports. I know exactly what has happened to you, and I’m telling you that none of this was your fault. You have done nothing to be ashamed of.’ He smiled and then walked with her to his door.
She left the court with his words tucked safely into her mind; words that over the years she would take out for comfort, words that helped her face a family and a town who did not share his opinion.
It was 1961 and Antoinette had just turned sixteen years old.
Two years had passed since her father had been sentenced to prison for what the papers called ‘a serious offence against a minor’. The trial had been held in camera in order to protect her identity but that hadn’t mattered – the details were an open secret and everyone in Coleraine knew what had happened. They knew, and they blamed Antoinette. She had been a willing party, they whispered, or why had she kept quiet for so long? It was only when she got pregnant that she cried rape, and brought this terrible disgrace on her father’s family.
Antoinette was expelled from school. Her father’s family told her never to visit them again. The town shut its doors on her and shunned her wherever she went.
Ruth, Antoinette’s mother, had been desperate to escape the disgrace of her husband’s crime and prison sentence, and she wanted to get away as soon as she could from the gossip and whispers in the town. Nothing could have persuaded her to remain. The family house was hurriedly sold, as was Joe’s black Jaguar car, but even after both sales had gone through, she had been left very short of money.
Undeterred, she moved herself and Antoinette from Coleraine to the poor district of the Shankhill Road in Belfast, and a small rented house. Antoinette, relieved that they had left Coleraine but with her dreams of an education in tatters, took jobs as an au pair so that she could help to contribute financially while Ruth got a position as the manageress of a coffee shop in the city.
But the fear pursued her. The terrible feelings of rejection by everyone she cared about would not release their grip on her. She felt lonely, unloved and worthless. The only solution, she thought, was to leave the world she no longer felt wanted by. It was then that Antoinette took pills, washed them down with whiskey and cut her wrists fifteen times with a razor. She survived, just, and spent three months in a mental hospital on the outskirts of Belfast. Because she was only fifteen, she was spared electric shock treatment and sedatives. Instead, intensive therapy helped to lift her depression and eventually she was well enough to leave and resume her life.
Ruth had managed to buy a home for them while Antoinette was ill, and it was to this new place that she went, feeling that perhaps her life might be about to improve for the first time in many years.
The gate lodge was a pretty Victorian building standing on the edge of the town. It had small, cramped rooms cluttered with cheap, shabby furniture; the plaster on the walls was old and lumpy and cracks of age ran across the window frames and marked the skirting boards. Curtains with large flowery prints designed for larger windows had been shortened and hung in ungainly folds half way down the walls while the clashing floral carpets were faded and threadbare.
‘Here we are then, Antoinette,’ said Ruth, as they went in for the first time. ‘This is our new home. A room for you and a room for me. What do you think?’
From the first moment she went into the old house, Antoinette began to feel safe. She didn’t know why this place should be where she began to leave the past behind, but it was. Here, the fear she had lived with for eight years, that had stalked her waking hours and invaded her dreams gradually diminished. Antoinette felt that the lodge was her nest, somewhere where she was protected from the world.
Together, she and her mother began to turn the place into their home. Bonded by their desire to create something homely and welcoming, they covered the bumpy old plaster with two coats of fresh paint, applied with amateurish enthusiasm. They made the tired old sitting room into a pretty individual