A Daughter's Secret

by Anne Bennett

  Philomena saw him standing on the hill above the shop. Her heart went out to him and she suddenly thought she had to talk to the dejected boy, try to help him in some way. Calling to her elder two children to mind the others for a while, she followed him.

  Tom was glad he met no one because he knew he would be poor company that day. What McAllister had done filled his mind. As if abusing and raping his sister and causing her to flee from her home were not enough, he had had the barefaced cheek to commiserate with his father that morning. ‘One heart you can be sure of,’ he’d said. That man’s heart would be as black as pitch, Tom thought.

  And then, as if his thought had conjured him up, he saw McAllister riding down the country lane below him. He knew he was bound for the O’Learys’ cottage, whose farm abutted the Sullivans’. Tim O’Leary told him that morning at Mass that he had a fiddle lesson with McAllister that afternoon. Tom had thought at the time that he was glad he had given up the music.

  After the attack on Aggie and the house laid low with measles, McAllister wasn’t that keen on visiting. When everyone was better, Tom had declared that he didn’t want to continue with the music lessons. Thomas John, weakened by the measles, was quite glad of this at the time and Joe gave up too, but then he had never been as keen, or as good at it as Tom.

  Tom was just glad that the man had no occasion to come to the house any more. He couldn’t have borne it. But others, being unaware of what McAllister was capable of, treated him as they always had. Tom imagined him being fêted and praised at the O’Leary house, for the O’Learys, like most people in the town, thought McAllister a grand chap.

  No really knowing why, Tom descended to the lane and walked the route McAllister had taken, with no plan in his head until he came to trees on either side of the road followed almost immediately by a left-hand fork. An idea began to take shape. If he were to stretch a rope of some sort between the trees, McAllister wouldn’t see it until he was virtually on top of it and neither would the horse. Tom felt that he would have struck a blow for Aggie if he were to injure the man in some way. He tore home as fast as he could, to find a suitable line.

  Philomena watched him go and wondered what had sent him home in such haste. She hadn’t long to find out, for the Sullivans’ place was no distance across the fields. Though Tom proceeded stealthily, once he got near the farm all was quiet. He knew the bale of metal twine they used for mending fences was in the barn and he chopped a sizeable bit from the bale with the axe before heading back.

  Philomena saw immediately what Tom was about and went down to stop him. She reached him as he was tying the last knot to the second tree. He was startled and frightened when he saw Philomena but she set out to reassure him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom. I know what you are trying to do and why, and though I understand, this isn’t the way.’

  ‘You don’t know what he has done.’

  ‘I can have a good guess,’ Philomena said. ‘Is this something to do with your sister’s disappearance?’

  Tom stared at her, his mouth agape, more unnerved than ever. Then in a horrified voice, little more than a whisper, he said, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Philomena said. ‘That is, well, I knew he had a fancy for her, but I didn’t think, never dreamed… Tom, is she expecting his baby?’

  Tom nodded miserably, knowing there was no longer any need to deny it, to Philomena at least.

  ‘And do you know where she has gone?’

  ‘To Birmingham, to his sister.’

  ‘Where she will get rid of it?’

  ‘That was the plan,’ Tom said. ‘None of this was Aggie’s fault, you know. He had her filled full of poteen. She could barely stand when she came home. God knows how she had got so far. She was in a state and he had the dress near ripped from her back.’

  ‘Was that the night your mother was helping out at Sadie Lannigan’s?’ Philomena asked.

  ‘Aye, and my father was in Buncrana,’ Tom said. ‘You may be sure that this would have come out long ago if either or both of them had been in. It’s a wonder he didn’t think of that.’

  ‘He thinks of nothing but satisfying his desires when he is that way inclined, if you know what I mean,’ Philomena commented glumly. ‘I know that to my own cost. He never thinks of the consequences of his actions.’

  ‘Aggie would have done all in her power to keep what happened that night a secret, anyway,’ Tom said, ‘if she could have. I mean, if she hadn’t been expecting.’

  ‘Aye,’ Philomena agreed with a grim smile, ‘pregnancy is one thing that no one can hide for long.’

  ‘He told her he would say she came on to him, offering it on a plate, as it were. Aggie thought everyone, even possibly our own parents, would believe him over her.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ Philomena said with feeling. ‘And the devil of it is she is right. The man is usually believed first in any case, and Bernie can be charming when he wants. I mean, I fell for his charm and I am not a stupid woman. He has this ability to make people think he’s just such a grand man altogether.’

  ‘I know,’ Tom said. ‘And it’s all bloody false. You should see how he went on to my father this morning.’

  ‘I did, and I saw your reaction. Then I knew my earlier misgivings were right,’ Philomena said. ‘And that is why I followed you and came to try and stop you.’

  ‘Why?’ Tom demanded. ‘He is worth nothing.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Philomena said, ‘and I tell you now that he if was on fire in the gutter I wouldn’t spit on him. I do agree that he needs teaching a lesson, but not by you. I don’t want you getting into trouble.’

  ‘I won’t unless I’m caught. Or you tell on me.’

  ‘Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?’ Philomena replied. ‘I would never tell on you. I hate the man and wish to God he was not the father of my children and that I was not married to him for the rest of my life, but I am and that’s that. But honest to God, Tom, haven’t your family suffered enough?’

  ‘Aye, but—’

  ‘Think,’ Philomena reasoned. ‘If it is found that you did this in a bid to hurt my husband, questions will be asked and then you risk exposing your sister. He will delight in dragging her name and that of your whole family through the mud. I know just how vindictive he can be and I know he would see to it that you would never be able to lift your heads up again.’

  Tom realised that he hadn’t thought the whole thing through enough. He was starting to untie the first knot when he heard the drumming of horse’s hoofs approaching fast up the lane.

  ‘Come on,’ said Philomena. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best. I pray to God it is Bernie galloping this way and not some other poor innocent soul going about their lawful business.’

  Oh Almighty Christ, thought Tom. That was another thing he hadn’t considered. He allowed Philomena to draw him into the shelter of the trees and his sigh of relief was audible when it was McAllister who came into view seconds later.

  The overcast skies had turned the afternoon to dusk and it had begun to rain. Visibility was bad and McAllister was riding far too fast. He had his head down as he careered round the corner, thumping his legs into the horse’s sides to make him go faster still. The horse ran into the wire at speed. It hit it above the knees and with a scream it stopped dead and dropped to the floor. McAllister didn’t have a chance to save himself. He sailed through the air over the horse’s head and landed heavily. Both woman and boy heard the thud as he hit his head on the knoll of a tree and then lay still.

  Tom’s heart was in his mouth. He had no intention of seriously injuring McAllister. He would have run to see if the man was all right, but Philomena forestalled him.

  ‘Leave him to me,’ she said. ‘Untie the rope and hide it. It wouldn’t do for anyone to think this is anything other than an accident.’

  Before Philomena went to her husband, though, she caught the horse, who had struggled to its feet, and examined its bruised and battered kne
es.

  ‘Poor feller,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to those when I get you home,’ and she tied the horse loosely to a tree before turning to her husband. There was no need to rush, because she knew by the strange angle of his neck that the man was dead.

  She knew she was wicked but all she could feel at that moment was relief – relief and thankfulness. Oh, she’d play the part of the grieving widow, all right, for the benefit of the townsfolk, and pray for the repose of her husband’s blackened soul, for if anyone needed prayers he did. But she was free of him and she could have danced a jig.

  However, paramount in her mind at that time was protecting the young boy from the consequences of what he had done, and that meant clearing up all the evidence.

  ‘How is he?’ Tom asked then, coming towards her as he wrapped the twine around his arm.

  ‘I’m afraid, Tom, he is dead.’

  The blood in Tom’s veins suddenly ran like ice and his teeth chattered with fear as he stared from the prone figure to Philomena. ‘Are you sure? Maybe he is just knocked out.’

  ‘Tom, his neck is broken.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Philomena, I never meant that.’

  ‘I know, but if we are both to get away with this then we must keep our heads.’

  Tom could hardly believe his ears. ‘You mean you’re not going to call the Garda and tell them what I did?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. What purpose would that serve? As I see it, you have done me a favour. Bernie had it coming to him. He couldn’t have gone on the way he was and not expected some retribution to fall his way eventually. Aggie is not the first to have her life damaged and destroyed by my husband and, God help me, I can’t feel sorry for the death of a man like that.’

  ‘D’you think it will be believed that he died by accident?’

  ‘Yes, if we are clever about this,’ Philomena said.

  ‘I will say the horse made his way back to the stable without the rider and with bruised and bloodied knees. Fortunately, the knees are damaged enough so that the mark of the twine won’t even be seen.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the horse.’

  ‘So am I,’ Philomena said, ‘but I’ll see to him and he’ll be grand. But make sure you hide that twine well.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Now be off,’ Philomena said. ‘It would never do for someone to be along the road and catch sight of Bernie, and me not even home with the horse.’

  Tom needed no further bidding and he scampered off, stopping only to throw the twine to the bottom of the well. He didn’t care either that his parents both gave out to him for being so long away and getting his good Sunday clothes so wet because that was familiar and safe. He went into the room, changed to his everyday things and followed his father to the cowshed without a word.

  Philomena also took care to change her clothes and footwear, and recoiled her dampened hair into a tighter bun before informing the Garda that her husband was missing. There was no need for them to be suspicious, or to disbelieve anything Philomena McAllister told them. She was known as a respectable woman of the parish and community. When she showed them the damaged knees of the horse, they were very worried indeed and set up a search of the area immediately.

  The body was soon found. The priest was sent for and the whole town alerted to the fate of Bernie McAllister, who died when he was thrown from his horse.

  SEVEN

  Aggie drifted in and out of consciousness, though this was helped by the laudanum that Lily was dosing her with. She saw no harm in this. She took tincture of opium herself, as all the women in the house did. It gave her a warm and delicious feeling of euphoria, especially when mixed with gin, which they all drank in copious amounts. Laudanum was also the usual remedy for fever and ensured that Aggie would sleep till Lily’s return.

  ‘Wouldn’t do for her to come to, like, and find me gone, would it now?’ she said to Susie on Monday evening as they sallied forth to work. ‘Might frighten her half to death.’

  ‘Mm,’ Susie said in agreement. ‘Has she said owt yet?’

  ‘No,’ Lily said. ‘She’s not with it half the time. She’s still a really sick girl, Susie.’

  ‘I know and it’s lucky for her that you came upon her when you did.’

  Aggie didn’t know where she was and who the woman was with the gentle hands and the soft voice, who would wash her so tenderly, for Lily was very kind.

  She was honest too, in her way. She had found the money in Aggie’s possessions, which she had rifled through in an effort to find out who she was. She had discovered from the travel ticket on her bag that her name was Agnes Sullivan and she was from Ireland. Lily had left the money alone. While she might lift a gold watch or a wallet from a well-heeled gentleman, even one of the punters, without the slightest pang of conscience, she wouldn’t steal from one of her own. Despite the money, she knew from Agnes’s clothes that she was a long way off being rich and she guessed that money had been to pay for an abortion she no longer needed.

  It was Tuesday evening when Aggie opened her bleary eyes as Lily was bathing her face and said, ‘Who are you? Please, I have to know.’

  ‘Course you do, ducks, and there ain’t no secret of that either,’ said Lily. ‘I’m known as Lily, Lily Henderson, and a few days ago I found you collapsed on the road and the rain teeming down on you. So I came for my friend Susie Wainwright, and we carried you in here.’

  She let this knowledge settle in and then went on, ‘And I know your name is Agnes Sullivan.’ At Aggie’s startled look she explained, ‘It was on the ticket attached to your bag.’

  Aggie sighed in relief. And then, because in her life so far only one person had called her Agnes and that was Bernie McAllister, she said, ‘I am never called Agnes. I am known as Aggie. And I don’t really understand. When was this?’

  ‘Wednesday night.’

  ‘And what day is it now?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘And you have cared for me all this time!’ Aggie exclaimed. ‘How kind you must be.’ And then Aggie remembered what she was doing in Birmingham and her one hand touched her stomach. The movement was barely perceptible and yet Lily not only saw it, she also understood it.

  ‘The babby’s come away, ducks,’ she said gently. ‘You lost it that first night.’

  She saw relief flood the girl’s face and so wasn’t surprised when she said fervently, ‘Oh, thanks be to God!’ As soon as the words had left her lips, though, she realised what they must have sounded like to Lily, and she flushed with shame. ‘You must think me awful, but you see I didn’t… It wasn’t… I mean I never…’

  Lily covered Aggie’s shaking hands and said, ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me or anyone else either, and you just remember that. You’ll tell me or not in your own time and in your own words.’

  Aggie sighed in relief that this woman would never force her to tell anything she didn’t feel happy about.

  Because of Lily’s innate kindness, her soft speaking voice and the tender way she had cared for Aggie, even giving up her bed, Aggie thought her some kind of saint. Lily’s age would be about forty, and she had a kind and open face, with rosy cheeks and beautiful soft brown eyes, so full of expression that they lit up her face when she smiled. Her hair, Aggie guessed, had once been the same colour as her own, but now it was liberally laced with grey and yet it suited her somehow.

  She looked homely and wholesome, and so later that night, when she said she was going to work, Aggie looked at her with amazement. ‘I could make you up a dose of laudanum before I go, if you like,’ Lily said. ‘I make it into a sort of cordial. That’s what I gave you to bring down the fever and ensure that you slept until I returned when you were really sick.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘Opium, mainly, and gin, of course, a bit of water and sugar.’

  ‘Opium?’ Aggie repeated. ‘Isn’t that a drug?’

  ‘Course it is, ducks,’ Lily said, ‘and you takes enough, it makes you feel just wonderful. Blo
ody marvellous, in fact.’

  ‘I have never taken drugs in my life.’

  ‘You have, love, since you come here,’ Lily said. ‘I had to get the fever down somehow.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you at all, Lily,’ Aggie said hastily, wary of offending.

  ‘Point is,’ Lily said, ‘if you don’t sleep what are you going to do with yourself, because I will likely not be back till the early hours?’

  ‘What do you do till then?’ Aggie asked innocently.

  Lily looked at her as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard. ‘I know you came over from Ireland, but surely you are not that naïve,’ she said. ‘I am a prostitute, Aggie, and the streets are where I work.’

  Aggie’s eyes opened wide with astonishment and Lily smiled. ‘Shocked you, have I?’

  Shocked was an understatement. The only prostitute she had ever seen had been Gwen Halliday’s next-door neighbour. In Aggie’s world, prostitutes were a subclass that respectable people didn’t associate with.

  There was nothing to prepare her for Lily Henderson, who worked in that profession and yet had lifted a vagrant and desperately ill girl from the cobbles and given up her own bed while she nursed her back to life and dealt with the child she had aborted. Aggie owed her a huge debt, one that she might take a lifetime to repay because she knew but for Lily’s intervention she would have died. Now she told herself firmly that how Lily wished to live her life was her business.

  She wouldn’t risk upsetting this woman to whom she owed so much, and the only one who had shown her such compassion and understanding, and so when Lily said, ‘Right, now, if you have got over your amazement, I am making up a tincture and you are going to drink it,’ she nodded her head.

  ‘I’ll do whatever you think is right, Lily.’

  Two days later Aggie insisted on getting up, though Lily thought she was still not well enough. In fact, Aggie was surprised how weak she felt, and her legs shook so much she managed to cross the room only with difficulty and collapse with a sigh of relief into a chair Lily had placed before the fire.