A Daughter's Secret

by Anne Bennett

  ‘If he goes for him, we are all done for,’ Aggie said. ‘Alan told me that. It wasn’t his choice to have him in the club at all and he told me I had to try to please him or he will have this place closed down.’

  ‘He couldn’t know that Finch was going to attack you the way he did, though?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Aggie said. ‘And he must never know. In the long run how will it help me, any of us, to be tipped out on the streets?’

  ‘I hear what you say, Aggie, and even agree with it,’ Patsy said. ‘But how the hell are we going to keep it from him? Your neck is all inflamed and the teeth marks are obvious. Here,’ she handed Aggie a hand mirror, ‘see for yourself.’

  Aggie surveyed herself critically, turning her head this way and that. ‘They throb too, and I don’t want to go near the club. Finch said he will have me again tonight.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ Patsy said, ‘he is one vicious sod all right.’

  ‘I… I really don’t think I could stand it,’ Aggie said.

  ‘I don’t blame you, bab,’ Rita said. ‘Your body is a mass of bruises and bite marks. Anyroad, if you go down there Levingstone will want you to dance, won’t he?’

  Aggie shuddered. ‘I couldn’t dance. I can barely walk.’

  ‘So what is to be done?’ Rita said.

  ‘Couldn’t you just say you weren’t feeling well?’

  ‘He’ll hardly believe that,’ Aggie said. ‘I have spent the day in bed, and anyway that won’t help because if I am not to go to the club, then he will expect me to share his bed, and then he will see everything anyway.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Patsy said to Rita.

  Rita thought for a minute or two, then: ‘As I see it there is only one answer, and that is to get you in the same state as you was in last night.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Aggie said fervently, ‘I haven’t really recovered from that yet. Anyway, won’t Alan be really cross with me?’

  ‘He might be cross,’ Patsy said, ‘but he’ll get over it. One thing in his favour is he never bears a grudge. And at all costs, we mustn’t let him see what Finch had done to you. As you said, it is for the good of everyone.’

  Aggie gave a sigh. ‘You know what? They seem to be able to act in any way they want and just get away with it.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt about it, it’s a man’s world all right,’ Patsy agreed. ‘And if I was ever given another crack at it, I would want to come back as a man.’

  ‘Me too,’ Aggie said.

  ‘Yeah, well, meanwhile we have to cope with being women and protecting ourselves as much as possible,’ Rita commented wryly, handing a brimming glass of gin to Aggie.

  Aggie looked at it almost fearfully. ‘I still feel a bit sick and I have a thumping headache.’

  ‘More of the same is the only way to deal with that,’ Rita declared encouragingly. ‘Hair of the dog, see – well-known cure – and anyway, I have mixed some opium in it. That will put paid to any headache.’

  Aggie still hesitated and Rita said, ‘Come on, Aggie. It really is the only solution. This way you won’t have to go down to the club and Levingstone can say that you are indisposed.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Patsy gave a wry smile. ‘And we’ll make quite sure he will be telling the truth. Be quick, for God’s sake, before he comes storming in here and stops you before you are completely incapable.’

  Aggie knew the two women were right. She lifted the glass to her lips, swallowed the liquid down and held the glass out to be refilled.

  Levingstone had missed Aggie’s presence around his own quarters and was very glad he had a meeting to go to that afternoon, because he felt the day to be a long one. When he returned, he was surprised not to see Aggie waiting for him and the maid said she hadn’t been in all day.

  His lips tightened in annoyance and he went in search of her, certain that she must have slept off all the effects of the booze she had consumed. However, just minutes later he was looking down on Aggie, who was so drunk she was incapable of speaking or doing anything other than lie in bed in a semiconscious stupor.

  He was so angry, he wanted to take hold of Aggie and shake her. Instead, he sent for Rita and Patsy to see if they could shed any light on the matter, but they both pleaded ignorance. Levingstone eyed the empty gin bottle and the half-empty one beside it.

  ‘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 s
till 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.’

  TWELVE

  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.