A Daughter's Secret (14 page)

‘Where did she get the booze?’ he asked.

Patsy shrugged. ‘Can’t say. Maybe she had it hidden away in the room all the time.’

‘I can’t understand what she was thinking of to get in this state,’ Levingstone said, puzzled. ‘She
knows what she is to do, why I spent so much money on her, and this is how she repays me. They will all be waiting for her downstairs tonight.’

‘They’ll have to wait then, I’d say,’ Patsy said.

Rita added, ‘We all have our own ways of dealing with prostitution at the start, and she ain’t the first to use booze.’

‘Not to this extent.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Rita said. ‘I remember getting legless a time or two in the beginning. We have all got feelings. I mean, we ain’t machines, for all the men seem to think we are.’

‘And remember, Aggie is small and slight,’ Patsy said. ‘A bit of booze usually goes a long way with a person like that.’

Levingstone eyed the bottles. ‘I don’t call that a bit of booze.’

‘All right,’ Patsy said, ‘maybe she went over the top, but there is nothing to be gained by trying to talk to her now. Try her tomorrow when she is sober.’

‘And so what do I tell the punters?’

‘That she is indisposed. What else?’

Levingstone knew what the two girls advised made sense. ‘Don’t know what they will say,’ he told them as he took his leave.

They said plenty.

‘God,’ one of the men fumed, ‘Finch told me she was a right one. Gagging for it, she was. I fancied giving her a go myself tonight.’

‘You’ll have to join the queue then,’ another put
in. ‘Every man here wants to sample the delights of little Agnes Sullivan.’

‘The rule still stands that on the night she dances, she does nothing else,’ Levingstone reminded them.

‘She did last night with Finch.’

‘Well, that was Finch,’ said another. ‘That man is a law unto himself.’

‘Yes. He wouldn’t take an excuse like she’s indisposed.’

‘Aye, he’d indispose her all right.’

The men laughed together. Levingstone was very glad too that Finch hadn’t put in an appearance that night, because the men were right. He didn’t operate under the same rules as other people. In fact, he seemed to have few rules to his life at all.

‘Well, you tell her to get better, and quick,’ the first man said. ‘We haven’t unlimited patience and I’m not the only one who can’t wait to give her a try-out.’

Levingstone knew the man spoke the truth and he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t know what was the matter with him. This is how he had worked for years: taking girls and bedding them for a while, then once he was tired of them, tossing them to the punters at the club without a qualm. Aggie, however, had almost bewitched him and he was far from tired of her. He didn’t particularly want other men pawing and groping her, never mind going much, much further than that. Obviously Aggie didn’t like it either. But that was
the business they were both in, and she had to accept that and so had he.

Aggie was wakened in the early hours by severe cramps in her stomach. She curled in a ball and pulled her knees up close to her body to try to alleviate the pain, but it didn’t ease, and she groaned aloud and rocked in agony on the bed.

Then she felt the saliva gather in her mouth, the familiar nausea in her throat and she knew she was going to be sick. She struggled to sit up and lifted the bowl, but after that first bout of vomiting she didn’t really lie down again, for the waves of sickness would assail her if she tried. So she sat on the edge of the bed and vomited over and over.

She was still retching when Rita and Patsy came to see how she was the next morning. By then she had emptied her stomach and all that she was bringing up was yellow bile. The two women couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Aggie wanted to weep from weariness and because she felt so dreadfully ill.

She certainly looked ill. Her face was as white as lint – even her lips looked bloodless – while her eyes were shot with red lines and encircled with black.

Her voice was husky because her throat felt so raw as she said, ‘I ache everywhere.’

‘You poor sod!’ Rita said, examining the marks on her neck. ‘I hope we don’t have to do that very
often, but at least Finch’s handiwork isn’t quite so noticeable.’

‘That’s grand,’ Aggie said. ‘He gets away with it, while I am near dying here.’ She gave a sudden moan and wrapped her arms around her stomach, and the girls looked at her with sympathy. Then she thought of something that would make her feel better; it always did if she could keep it down, that was.

She looked across to Patsy. ‘Can you fetch me a tincture? Mary, Alan’s maid, will make it up for you. Tell her it’s for me and she will do it just the way I like it.’

‘Oh, bab,’ Rita said, ‘do you think that’s wise? Isn’t there gin in that?’

‘Aye, but didn’t you say yesterday it was the best thing to take?’ Aggie said. ‘Hair of the dog, you called it.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Anyway, she laces it well with opium and that always makes me feel better.’

However, Patsy never came back with the tincture. Levingstone caught her with it and asked who it was for. When she told him, he took it from her. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘I intend to have words with that young lady anyway.’

Patsy gave it to him and when he entered the room, Rita took one look at the anger smouldering behind his eyes and slunk out to join Patsy.

Aggie shrank in the bed. Levingstone looked down on the pathetic and obviously frightened
figure, and he felt the anger seeping from him. Her bruised eyes looked enormous in her white face and they were filled with fear as she said in that strange husky voice, ‘Are you very cross with me?’

‘Not cross, more disappointed,’ Levingstone said, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Come on,’ he chivvied. ‘Sit up and drink this while it is warm. You look and sound as if you have need of it.’

Aggie took it gratefully and felt the warm sweet liquid soothe her throat and settle her still-churning stomach.

‘Never be afraid of me, Aggie,’ Levingstone said, stroking her unbound hair gently. ‘I hated the look in your eyes just now. I would never hurt you. I thought you knew that.’

‘I do know that deep down,’ Aggie said. ‘But I hurt you. You said I disappointed you.’

‘You did, and yet I know the whole thing was alien to you,’ Levingstone said. ‘I do understand a little of how you felt afterwards.’

‘Yes,’ Aggie said. ‘I did tell you I might not be so good at it.’

‘Good enough to satisfy Finch, at least. He’s been singing your praises, apparently.’

‘Oh God, has he?’

‘According to the other men he said you were mad for it, a little wanton,’ Levingstone told her. ‘Made me a little jealous, to tell you the truth.’

Aggie put one hand on Levingstone’s arm and looked into his eyes. ‘It was an act, Alan, put on to please him and ultimately to please you.’

‘And then you tried to block it out?’

Aggie nodded, and Levingstone continued, ‘The trouble with alcohol is that you have to sober up eventually.’

‘I know,’ Aggie replied. ‘And I know how much you have done for me, and I will try to be better.’

‘Good girl. The men will be queuing up downstairs when I tell them that.’ He gave a sigh. ‘I’m afraid for both of us, the honeymoon is over.’

‘So, let’s get this straight,’ Lily said, drawing Aggie into the sitting room. ‘You dance for the punters on Friday, Saturday and sometimes on Sundays as well, and on those days you haven’t got to have sex with anyone.’

‘No,’ Aggie said, and added with a sigh, ‘Unless it is Finch, of course.’

Lily’s lip curled with distaste. ‘I didn’t realise he was a member.’

‘Do you know him, then?’

‘God blimey, Aggie, every prostitute knows him,’ Lily said. ‘Keeps away from him and all, as far as possible, for he is as cruel a bugger as ever walked the earth. Tell you, they nearly had a party when they thought he was off to university. Thought they would be free of him for three or four years, only he seemed to be back more often than he was away. They say he hates women ’cos his mama walked out on him when he was a baby, so the rest of the female population have to pay for that. Mind you,’ she went on, ‘have to have a tad of
sympathy for his mother. Fancy giving birth to that.’

Aggie smiled because Finch seemed indeed to be a good way down the queue when good looks were dished out, for he had a large nose, a weak indeterminate chin and a florid face. It was his eyes though that anyone noticed first, for they were so prominent, they seemed to stand out in his head, and so close together they were unnerving.

‘Sadistic sod nearly did for Elsie Phillips last week ’cos she said summat that annoyed him,’ Susie put in. ‘Strangled her till she passed out, he did. She told me straight that if some blokes hadn’t come along when they did, she wouldn’t be here now.’

‘I can well believe that,’ Aggie said grimly.

‘And you have had dealings with him, you say?’ Lily asked her.

‘Aye, yes, I have.’

‘A hatpin is a very comfortable thing to have to hand when you are near someone like Finch,’ Susie told her.

Aggie shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that or anything like it,’ she said. ‘It is different for you. On the streets, you make up your own rules. We work for Alan and, however we feel, we can’t risk upsetting the punters in any way, particularly someone like Finch. Sometimes I am so bruised after a session with him that I have trouble hiding it from Alan, though Finch has never been half as bad as he was the first time. Now he bruises me in places that can’t be seen.’

‘Why bother protecting him?’ Susie said. ‘Let Levingstone take the man apart.’

‘He can’t,’ Aggie said. ‘Finch has too much influence. A word in the right ear and he could have the whole club closed down. He has threatened to do just that. Alan doesn’t know the half of what goes on there. I mean, some of the things we all have been asked to do once the bedroom door is shut… well, let’s say it would make you sick to think about it.’

‘I thought he didn’t allow any funny stuff.’

‘Officially he doesn’t,’ Aggie said. ‘But a lot of the men only come for the kinky sex they can’t get from their wives. If one or two of us refused them, they would stop asking for those girls and that would be that.’

‘And how do you cope with all this?’ Lily said. ‘I know it wouldn’t have come easy for you at first.’

Aggie smiled ruefully. ‘It didn’t and, to be honest, it’s not much better now. That’s why Alan allowed me to visit you today when I asked him. It’s like a reward for me because he knows that I am really doing my best to please the men, and he also knows how difficult I find it. I was terrible at first – so disgusted with myself that I used to get too drunk and drugged to function properly. Alan said I would make myself ill and I must admit I felt ill most of the time.’

‘And now?’

Aggie shrugged. ‘I don’t drink quite as much as I used to, though he knows I have to be well oiled
at the start or I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.’

‘So he is still good to you, then?’ Lily said with a measure of satisfaction.

‘Oh, yes,’ Aggie said lightly. ‘I have few complaints, but I much prefer the nights I just dance for them all. I never mind that.’

‘So you are all right and I can stop worrying about you?’

‘I didn’t realise that you did worry about me,’ Aggie said. ‘But you can stop now because I’m as right as I ever will be.’

Tom thought that life on the farm was virtually the same day after day, and in a way that suited him. As the years passed, and he and Joe moved from boyhood to manhood, apart from Mass on Sundays, the only time they ever left the farm was some Saturdays when the brothers would go to Buncrana with Biddy.

Joe loved going to Buncrana and he could barely wait until the stuff was unloaded and laid out on one of the trestle tables in the market hall before he would be off with all the other young fellows. Tom never went with him, though, because his mother always had things she wanted him to do. He would find himself at Biddy’s beck and call the whole time, and then would return home feeling resentful and annoyed for not standing up for himself more.

Joe couldn’t or wouldn’t see where the problem lay. He would shake his head at his brother in exasperation. ‘Just help her set up the market and then take off like I do.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘I don’t know really,’ Tom would say miserably. ‘It’s just that Mammy expects that I—’

‘Then let her expect, Tom,’ Joe would cry. ‘Jesus, she will suck you dry if you’re not careful. You are a young man and, apart from Mass, this is our one chance in the week to meet up with neighbours and have a bit of a chat. Is that so wrong?’

‘Of course not,’ Tom would declare. ‘It’s just that Mammy thinks it is.’

In a way, though, if Tom were honest, he knew it wasn’t totally his mother’s fault. He didn’t feel like a young man. He hadn’t felt young from the day he realised he had killed a man. Philomena had done as she said she would. She had sold up the grocery store and moved out of the town only six months after the funeral, which some people thought far too soon.

She told no one where she was going, saying to any who asked where she was bound only that she hadn’t decided, that she was just trying to get away from painful memories. Tom didn’t think there was anywhere in the world he could go where he wouldn’t remember the heinous crime he had committed. He felt almost unworthy to meet and chat with ordinary people who hadn’t done such a terrible thing, or come anywhere near it, in the whole of their lives. Better to chain himself to his mother’s side. At least that was a penance of sorts.

It was worse when Joe began going to the socials run by the Church every other Saturday evening.

Biddy had tried kicking up about that, tried forbidding him to go, when he told his family that first Saturday night as they sat eating around the table, but he stood his ground. ‘I am over twenty-one and you have no right to forbid me anything.’

‘No right,’ Biddy shrieked. ‘I am your mother, I have every right.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ Joe said in a low, but firm voice. ‘This is my leisure time, which I have earned. As long as I do all the work that Daddy wants, then how I spend my leisure time should be my own decision.’

‘The boy’s right,’ Thomas John said. ‘All work is no good to anyone. I used to like a dance at the same age, as you did yourself, Biddy.’

‘Aye, but in a neighbour’s house, just.’

‘Times have changed, Biddy. Give the boys their head,’ Thomas John said. Glancing across the table to Tom, he asked, ‘I suppose you will be going along with him?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘Tell you the truth, I have no fancy for it.’

‘I should like to go,’ Nuala said.

‘Huh, you,’ Finn said disparagingly. ‘It’s not the place for weans.’

Tom smiled at his pretty wee sister, who was getting more like Aggie with every passing year. ‘Time enough, pet,’ he said. ‘When you are a wee bit older.’

‘But, Tom, it takes so long to grow up.’

‘Aye, and there is not a blessed thing you can do to hurry it up,’ Thomas John said.

‘And, anyway, I don’t want my wee girl grown into a woman too soon,’ Biddy added.

‘There are great advantages for you in being a child, anyway,’ Finn said. ‘You are expected to do nothing and get away with blue murder.’

‘I do not. That’s not true.’

‘Oh yes it is.’

‘That will do, Finn,’ Thomas John said.

‘I was only saying.’

‘Well, don’t say. We don’t want to hear it.’

‘Aye,’ Biddy put in. ‘Don’t be teasing and upsetting the child.’

‘I wouldn’t be upset by anything he says, Mammy,’ Nuala said. She tossed her head and gave Finn a withering look. ‘He probably can’t help being horrid.’

Tom and Joe burst out laughing and Joe gave his younger brother a cuff as he got to his feet. ‘Follow that, boyo,’ he said as he made his way to the bedroom to change.

‘You should come with me,’ he suggested to Tom, who had followed him in.

‘Sure, I am no good at the dancing,’ Tom said, ‘nor talking with women. I never know what to say. They would think me a dull old stick.’

‘Aye, they’d think that, all right,’ Joe said ruefully. ‘A complete dullard and one set to inherit this farm one day. I tell you, Tom, that alone will
guarantee your popularity from all the mamas there. They would be pushing their unattached daughters your way all night long.’

‘That’s not something I am up for either,’ Tom said with a shiver.

‘What is the matter with you?’ Joe asked.

‘Nothing. I am just different from you, that’s all.’

‘But you go nowhere and see no one.’

‘Well, what of it? I don’t go running to you complaining.’

‘But it’s not a natural way to be going on at all.’

‘It’s my way and I am happy with it.’

‘All right,’ Joe said. ‘If you want to die a sad and lonely old man then it is your lookout.’

‘Right,’ said Tom. ‘I’m glad that we have established that at least.’

He knew that marriage was not for him. How could he convince any doting mama that he was an honest and reliable man, well able to take care of her daughter, when he had another man’s blood on his hands? And if he was to overcome that and marry one of the buxom beauties he had glimpsed a time or two at Mass, he would have to confess to the dreadful thing he had done. There could never be such a big secret to hang between a wife and her husband. Joe knew nothing of that, of course, nor did he have to know. It was a burden for Tom to carry alone.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘can you just see Mammy welcoming another woman in here?’

‘I can’t believe I am hearing this,’ Joe said. ‘Are
you going to let Mammy dictate to you all the days of your life?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I probably am.’

‘God Almighty!’ Joe said. ‘No wonder Aggie ran away.’

Tom turned instinctively to the door that opened on to the kitchen as he cautioned, ‘Ssh, Mammy will cut your tongue out if she hears you speak Aggie’s name.’

‘Well, she isn’t likely to through the door, is she?’

‘I don’t know so much,’ Tom said with a grin. ‘She has ears on her like a donkey.’

‘Well, anyway, the whole thing is stupid,’ Joe said. ‘I remember the hullabaloo when she went missing and it is a mystery where she disappeared to and all, but never to be allowed to talk about it since is madness. You mind Finn cried for her for days because she had the rearing of him nearly as much as Mammy, and now all that will have faded from his mind.’

‘Aye, and Nuala won’t know that she ever had a sister.’

‘No, she won’t,’ Joe agreed. ‘Tell you the truth, I have trouble remembering what she looked like.’

‘Nuala is her double,’ Tom said. ‘Course, Aggie didn’t have the fine clothes that Mammy buys for Nuala, or as much time and attention spent on her hair, and Aggie was often grey with exhaustion for Mammy allowed her little leisure time, but essentially they are very alike. Nuala has something else
too, the confidence that she is loved by each and every one of us.’

‘Doted on, more like, don’t you mean?’ Joe said. ‘Don’t know why we bother either, because Mammy and Daddy between them could do a decent enough job on their own. Finn wasn’t so far wrong tonight.’

‘Finn is as bad as the rest of us, for all his teasing,’ Tom said. ‘It is very hard to refuse Nuala anything with her cheeky face and those eyes that dance in her head.’

‘Aye, and the smile that looks as if someone has turned a light on inside her.’

‘Do you mind when she was wee and we did cartwheels and somersaults to get her to smile at us like that?’ Tom said.

‘I mind it very well,’ Joe said. ‘And I will tell you something else too: we haven’t changed that much.’

Tom laughed. ‘No, you are right there, Joe.’ He added, ‘But I wish Mammy wouldn’t praise her so much outside of the house.’

‘Aye,’ Joe agreed. ‘I mean, to hear Mammy talk, Nuala is the most beautiful, clever and talented child in the whole of Ireland. There is none to match her.’

‘I know. And she keeps on saying it. She doesn’t seem to see that going on like that is bound to upset some of the townsfolk, particularly if they have daughters of their own.’

‘Well, you’ll never change her,’ Joe said. ‘Mammy is a law unto herself.’

‘Aye,’ Tom said glumly. ‘Don’t I know that well enough?’

After Nuala turned twelve and left school, she began making the weekly trip to Buncrana as well. If she was there to help her mother, Tom would often elect to stop behind on the farm. There was always plenty to do, though Finn couldn’t understand him.

‘Don’t you ever want to get away from this place?’ he asked as he and Tom stood in the yard and watched the old horse pull the cart up the lane.

‘What place?’

‘The farm. Where else?’

‘No, not really.’

‘God, Tom, you’re an odd man altogether.’

‘Maybe it’s because I know the farm will be mine one day.’

Finn shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know that even if I was handed the farm on a plate, I would still want to leave it sometimes. As it is…’

‘What?’

‘Well, there will be little for me here,’ Finn said. ‘And I don’t intend to spend my life grubbing about in this place for little or no reward.’

‘You would always have a home here,’ Tom replied.

‘Thanks,’ Finn said, ‘and I know you’d never throw me out, but a man wants more from life than just a roof over his head. Don’t worry about
it, I realised some time ago that the farming life is not for me.’

‘Joe says much the same.’

‘Good job you like it then.’

Tom shook his head. ‘Don’t know whether there was much like or dislike about it,’ he said. ‘I just knew as I grew up that this farm would be mine one day and I think I just sort of got on with it, whereas you and Joe…’

‘Are different, and no worse for that,’ Finn said. ‘We didn’t start off talking about me and Joe, though, did we, but about you?’

Tom grinned. ‘Not a lot to say about me. And what there is can be dealt with in a couple of sentences.’

‘Oh, Tom!’ Finn cried, exasperated. ‘Where is your fire and enthusiasm for life?’

Tom was a wee while answering, and then he said, ‘You know I don’t recall having much of that type of thing myself, not even when I was your age.’

‘Don’t you ever wonder what is out there, beyond Buncrana?’

‘I might have wondered a time or two but never had any desire to go and find out.’

‘All right,’ Finn said. ‘Let’s stay in Buncrana, that great metropolis. Why don’t you go to the socials with Joe a time or two, or ask some of the girls mooning after you at Mass if they would like to walk out with you that afternoon?’

‘Don’t be daft, Finn,’ Tom said. ‘No one moons after me.’

‘They do then.’

‘They don’t,’ Tom said firmly. ‘You’re making it up.’

‘I’m not,’ Finn maintained. ‘I don’t even know why you are acting so surprised. You are a fine and handsome man. Look at the fine head of hair you have and those big brown eyes. Your only bad feature is that you don’t smile enough. When you do you are really handsome, far better-looking than Joe, and added to that you are decent and respectable.’

Tom, however, knew that he was far from being decent and respectable, and he never thought of himself as good-looking in any way. But he was intrigued enough to ask, ‘Go on, then. Who are these hordes of females who think I am so wonderful?’

‘Oh, no,’ Finn said, ‘you will get no names from me. If you were less pious and more worldly you would have discovered them for yourself. Have a peep around next time. And some of them are, well, you know,’ he said, letting his hands trace a woman’s figure in the air, then gave a knowing wink.

‘Finn!’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t think of it in your bed at night, for I’ll not believe it,’ Finn said. ‘Anyway, I am not going to wait for the girls to fall at my feet at Mass. I am going looking for them.’

‘Now, what do you mean?’

‘I mean that I am going to go to the socials with Joe.’

‘But you are only—’

‘Sixteen, I know,’ Finn said. ‘Other fellows my age go, because they have told me.’

‘You’re mad,’ Tom declared. ‘Mammy will never stand it.’

‘She will have to stand it,’ Finn said, ‘for I am determined upon it, and whether she likes it or not I will be away tonight with Joe.’

And Tom knew he would. He would risk his father’s displeasure and even his mother’s terrifying rage. He would stand firm and in the end get what he wanted. Joe did that too. It was only Tom that couldn’t seem able to cope with that.

Maybe, he reflected, something had been left out of his make-up, or maybe it was the result of his upbringing or the dreadful events of that Sunday afternoon. Whatever it was, he knew that while his brothers would probably go out and conquer the world, he would plod along on the farm and stay with his parents all the days of his life. As for the girls Finn said had an eye for him, well, they would have to cast it elsewhere.

‘Come on, then,’ he said to his young brother with a smile. ‘Let’s get all the jobs finished before they get back, for if everything isn’t done to my satisfaction, I might be the one stopping you going to the social.’

Finn went willingly enough. Tom was all right, as big brothers went, he thought, though he never would understand him in a million years.

* * *

Later, Tom always thought that it was from that morning that he sensed a change in Finn. He had always been restless, as if he had a spring coiled inside him that was going to unravel at any time and surge out of him. This personality wasn’t particularly good on a farm that dealt with animals. In fact, Thomas John didn’t particularly like him at the milking because he said he could get only half a pail of milk from any cow, whereas he and Tom could get a full pail, and even Joe usually managed three-quarters of one.