A Daughter's Secret (11 page)

‘But I really can’t have a dancing teacher,’ Aggie said. ‘Please don’t ask it of me. I will teach myself, dance my feet off, do anything else you want…’

Aggie had been unaware that she was wringing her hands until Levingstone enfolded them with his and said quite gently, ‘What’s this all about, Aggie?’

She turned to look at him and even Levingstone was moved by the depth of sadness there as she whispered, ‘It was the dancing teacher in Ireland that raped me and made me pregnant. He forced me to flee here, to leave my home and family behind for ever. I want no truck with any dancing teacher.’

Levingstone gave Aggie’s hands a little shake. ‘I can’t fix what happened to you,’ he said, ‘but any impropriety will not be tolerated in any dancing teacher I engage.’

‘How do you know? How can you be sure?’

‘Aggie, you are under my protection,’ Levingstone said. ‘No one will touch you, never fear.’

Aggie had dropped her head and he lifted it and looked into her eyes.

‘Do you trust me, Aggie?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Aggie said without hesitation.

‘Then we will have no more silliness about the dancing teacher.’

Behind the gentleness in Levingstone’s tone, Aggie heard the steel and she knew in all things this man would have his way. She also knew she couldn’t make any more fuss because then he might be really angry with her.

‘I have found you a dancing teacher,’ Levingstone announced to Aggie. It was just over a week since she had been measured for the clothes and so Aggie was surprised. She had thought and hoped it would take him longer to find someone who knew much about Irish dancing in Birmingham.

Levingstone smiled at her surprised look. ‘That gave you a shock, I see,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in letting the grass grow under my feet when I have decided something. Anyway, this man goes by the name of Colm Donahue. In fact, I didn’t have to go that far to look for he is the cook, Bessie’s, nephew and he works with a fiddler called Tim Furey. Bessie said Colm was in competitions all over Ireland and set to win all before him,’ Levingstone went on, ‘but he crocked his ankle up, and that was that as far as competition-level dancing went. So now he teaches it instead and he vouches for the fiddler. According to Bessie, he says it is better to have live music than a
gramophone record. Then if you are teaching something new you can go over the same movement again and again to get it right.’ He gave Aggie a rueful glance. ‘I should say he is a hard taskmaster, but that shouldn’t bother you too much, should it?’

‘I have never been afraid of hard work,’ Aggie said. ‘I have been about it since I was a child.’ She stopped as her words brought a flash of memory of her home in Ireland, dancing to the music of Tom’s fiddle, and she felt pangs of homesickness stab at her heart.

Levingstone watched her with narrowed eyes and knew, from the wistful look on her face, she was remembering her earlier life. He knew a little of her background, but as far as he was concerned, the girls’ lives started when they came to work for him and what went before was irrelevant.

So he said to Aggie, ‘It does no good looking back, you know?’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Aggie said sharply. ‘The memories come unbidden and they sadden me, for my life here is so different.’

But then she was changed too. Every night she welcomed a man who wasn’t her husband into her bed. And that was the word too: welcomed. He had said he would not force her to have sex, that he had never had to force a woman, and he was right. She had been on fire for him and still was. Surely that made her a disgusting and depraved creature?

‘Is it a bad life?’ Levingstone asked. ‘Are you happy, Aggie?’

She considered the question and answered honestly, ‘I don’t mind my life at all. I have never had such an easy time of it. In fact, when I first came here, I was overawed with the opulence of this apartment and you having servants and all. It still feels odd to have people doing things for me as if I was some big important person. Mary and Bessie are very patient with me, though, and so kind, and I am getting better at treating them as they expect, but I would be very hard to please if I didn’t like living with you, and I know my life would have been vastly different if I’d had to trawl the streets looking for perfect strangers to have sex with.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Levingstone said. ‘That sort of life is years away from you at the moment.’

Levingstone hadn’t said she’d never have that sort of life. She remembered Lily saying something similar and warning her that Levingstone liked young, pretty girls around him – Susie had been disregarded because of her wonky eye – and she suddenly went cold inside.

She knew it was no good badgering Levingstone about it and so instead of going down that road she said, ‘If you are determined to engage this dancing teacher for me, I suppose I had better know something about him.’

‘Don’t know that I can tell you that much,’ Levingstone said. ‘I have only met him the once myself.’

‘Well, how old is he?’

‘Youngish, I believe,’ Levingstone said. ‘Well,
that is, he’s not a boy or anything. Early thirties, I’d say.’ He glanced at Aggie. ‘At your age I suppose you think that old?’

‘Not old exactly,’ Aggie said. ‘But not young either.’

‘Oh, very nice,’ Levingstone said sarcastically. ‘What does that make me then?’

‘You, Alan, are timeless,’ Aggie told him. ‘It’s just with the dancing teacher… oh, I don’t know.’

‘Now what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on, Aggie, I know you better than that,’ Levingstone said. ‘Out with it.’

Well, I know you will think it’s silly and maybe will be cross with me,’ Aggie began, ‘but he is coming here to teach me, and being the nephew of your cook and all, he’ll know what I am.’

Levingstone shrugged. ‘So? What of it?’

‘He won’t think that I’m fair game?’

‘I can’t tell you what he might think,’ Levingstone said. ‘A man’s thoughts are his own affair, but I can’t seem to stress this enough for you. This man will not lay one hand on you, and what’s more, he will treat you with respect or he will have to answer to me.’

Aggie doubted that until she met the two men. Tim Furey was younger than Colm and far more handsome. He had a fine head of black curly hair atop a round, open face with merry eyes, and a wide mouth that turned up slightly so that it looked as though he was constantly smiling.

Colm, on the other hand, was just beginning to go bald, and his face and nose were slightly on the long side. His mouth tended to be thin, which gave his face a mournful look. His saving grace, however, was his deep, dark brown eyes that could light up his face when something pleased him.

And Aggie pleased him because when he saw her dance he knew that she had a rare and very beautiful talent. He thought it a crying shame that she was going to dance to a crowd of leering men, who wouldn’t care about the dance at all and would just want to maul and abuse her young body. In fact, he thought it somewhat obscene. He portrayed none of this in his manner to her, but Aggie saw his speculative eyes on her more than once.

As far as Tim was concerned, Aggie was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and still had a naïvety and vulnerability about her, which was strange when he considered the future that was mapped out for her.

When he said some of this to Colm, though, he was quite sharp with him for his own thoughts about Aggie were in turmoil.

‘We are here to teach young Aggie dancing, and that is all. The rest is none of our business. Never say these things to Aggie either, for if she was to repeat them to Levingstone, we would soon be out on our ear. Anyway, you were glad enough to take the job on when I offered it to you.’

‘I hadn’t met the girl then, nor seen her dance.’

‘That shouldn’t make any difference.’

‘It’s the thought of all those men ogling her and worse,’ Tim said. ‘She is so young and I know it’s daft, given what she does, but she looks sort of untouched.’

‘Strangely, I know just what you mean,’ Colm said. ‘She isn’t going down to the club yet, though. My aunt told me that much. She said the master is keeping her for himself. He does that sometimes with a girl that takes his fancy, and then, when he tires of her, she joins the others.’

‘That’s monstrous!’ Tim exclaimed. ‘And the man is old enough to be her father, at least.’

‘That’s life,’ Colm said with a shrug. ‘And however old he is, at the moment the love of his life is Aggie and she shares his bed every night. Now tell me, does the girl look unhappy?’

‘Well, no, she doesn’t,’ Tim had to admit.

‘Levingstone is caring for her in one way,’ Colm said. ‘What sort of life would she have on the streets?’

‘Has she no parents? No one at all to care for her?’

‘What do you think?’ Colm said. ‘Would she be here if she had?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Right, so you just stick to the job you’re paid to do and whatever way we feel about it, for both our sakes we will keep our mouths shut.’

At first when Tim played his fiddle, Aggie couldn’t help remembering an earlier, simpler time when
she would dance to the sound of Tom’s fiddle and sometimes Joe’s tin whistle for their parents’ amusement. Colm wondered what she was thinking about because she often looked a little forlorn. He didn’t ask, but stuck to the job he was there to do.

Aggie would probably not have told him anyway. She acknowledged that Colm bore not the slightest resemblance to McAllister, which in turn made her relax more, and so Colm saw her improving week by week. When the memories threatened to overwhelm her, she used the tinctures of opium, which helped chase them away.

They had decided from the first to use the foyer of the club as a dance floor. It was deserted when they practised in the morning, for none of the girls was an early riser and the foyer was far enough away from the bedrooms so that no one was disturbed.

Colm would keep Aggie hard at it, often making her go over the same movement again and again until her muscles ached and her toes throbbed. She never complained, though, and only when Colm was satisfied would he release her. Aggie would always be starving, for Colm didn’t allow her to eat before that first practice and so she would tuck gratefully into the breakfast she shared with Levingstone and tell him how the dancing had gone.

After they had eaten, Aggie was allowed to rest until the afternoon, when she would have another gruelling practice. The other girls were awake by
this time and many would drift along to watch. Aggie was intrigued by the girls who worked in the club, knowing that eventually, when Levingstone decreed, she would be joining them.

They were impressed by her dancing ability and told her so candidly, though some were envious that Levingstone thought so much of her. Many of them had shared his bed, maybe for a few days or a few weeks, and since Aggie’s arrival he had taken little notice of any of them.

One old hand at the club, Rita, still felt resentful about this, and she lost no time in warning Aggie, ‘Don’t think you are set for life with him. You’ll do till something better comes along. He was all over me like a rash for a few months, and then one day I found myself down here. Now it is your turn, and in a couple of weeks it will be someone else’s. You are just one in a long line and don’t you forget it.’

When Aggie said nothing, another girl, Brenda, said with a grin, ‘You don’t believe her, do you? She is right, though. Just enjoy it while you can, I say.’

‘Yes,’ said another, called Patsy, ‘and while he thinks you are the tops, screw as much money as you can out of the old bugger.’ And the girls laughed together.

A month after the order was placed, the completed Irish costumes were delivered and Levingstone demanded that Aggie put them on and model them
for him. For the white costume, Aggie had chosen a simple design of spirals and coils on the brooch that fastened the cloak, and this design was embroidered around the neck and hemline of the dress. She wore it with the black stockings and soft shoes. For the yellow dress she had chosen a more intricate design on the brooch of six intertwined serpents, which Mrs Flaherty had told her was a detail from the opening text from St Mark’s Gospel in the Book of Kells. Here again the design had been embroidered on to the dress and with that dress she wore shiny black shoes.

Aggie had tied her hair back with one of the ribbons that Levingstone had bought her on their shopping trip and he thought he had seldom seen anyone lovelier. He knew with a pang that he wouldn’t have her totally to himself for much longer. He had been promising the punters a surprise for some time now.

When they saw her and watched her dance, he knew they would want her for themselves, and there were some people he really couldn’t afford to offend. He tried to tell himself that that was life and she was just another girl, but he knew that she wasn’t. She had got under his skin in a way that none of the others had, and was even sharing his bed in his apartment. No girl had done that before. He valued his privacy in his own rooms and any girls that he had had living with him before had used the guest room.

Aggie didn’t know this, of course, but she hadn’t been there a week when he had asked her into his bed.

Aggie knew that she had pleased him with her dancing and so she asked for something that had been in her head for some time, waiting for the right opportunity to broach it.

‘Alan, could I possibly see Lily and the others sometimes?’

Levingstone’s face darkened. ‘Haven’t you everything you would ever want here?’ he asked. ‘I have done everything to make you happy.’

‘You are kindness itself to me,’ Aggie said, quick to reassure him. ‘I am happy and I have everything here for my comfort.’

‘Look at the beautiful and classy clothes you have to wear.’

‘I am grateful to you for buying me such things,’ Aggie said, choosing her words with care, ‘but you see, no one but you sees them. I go nowhere and see no one but you. Mary and I might exchange the odd word and I talk to the girls downstairs sometimes, after I have finished practising. But you must admit, Alan, that apart from going out with you to choose the clothes and be fitted for the Irish costumes, I haven’t once left this place since I moved into it in mid-March and sometimes I am lonely.’

‘I don’t know that I want you to be too friendly with those old lags,’ Levingstone said. ‘You’re more than a cut above them.’

‘Don’t talk about them like that,’ Aggie answered reprovingly. ‘They are surely what society has made them. Anyway, am I any better?’

‘Of course you are,’ Levingstone said. ‘You are my woman, that’s the difference.’

‘Lily and Susie saved my life,’ Aggie reminded him, ‘and then Lily nursed me for weeks; gave up her bed and everything. Without them, Lily in particular, I wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t something like that deserve a bit of loyalty? Anyway, they are the only people I know in the whole of Birmingham and the ones who befriended me when I was desperate and destitute.’

‘Well, I agree you might owe Lily at least some sort of debt,’ Levingstone conceded at last, ‘and she is all right, is Lily – best of the bunch – but I don’t want you walking about the streets alone because they are not safe, particularly around there. So when I collect the rents this Saturday you can come with me. Will that suit?’

It wasn’t exactly what Aggie wanted and she hoped that Levingstone wasn’t going to stay with her for the duration of the visit because she could hardly be completely natural with Lily and the others if he did. However, she knew that that concession was all she was going to get – this time, anyway. So she wound her arms around him and kissed him slowly and lingeringly on the lips, and when he pushed her gently away moments later he was smiling.