A Daughter's Secret

by Anne Bennett

  She gave a sigh. She knew she would have to take a grip on herself. She wasn’t yet forty years old and she was fit and healthy. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. In this reflective mood she was crossing over Upper Thomas Street when she felt her arms suddenly grasped from behind, and her hands twisted up her back while a smelly sack was thrown over her head.

  Her screams were muffled by the sack and she began thrashing her head from side to side and fighting against the restraining arms until a blow to the head rendered her unconscious.

  When Aggie came to, she was in a bedroom that she had never seen before. A strange man was sitting on a chair not far from the bed, and when he saw her eyes flicker open, he got up and approached her. Aggie flinched, expecting another blow, but the man neither touched her nor spoke to her. Then he turned and left the room, and Aggie heard the key turn in the lock.

  She was still scared, but she wouldn’t let herself just lie there like a frightened rabbit. She heaved herself out of bed, but immediately her head began to thump, the room swam before her eyes and she felt a little sick. She held on to the bedpost till everything stood still again and the nausea had passed.

  Knowing the door to be locked, she was making her shambling way to the window to try to establish her whereabouts, at least, though it was as black as pitch, when suddenly the door opened. She wasn’t even surprised to see Finch – he would be the only person on earth who wished her harm – but still she felt her blood turn to ice.

  Finch had a smirk of satisfaction on his face and he curled his lip as he said, ‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat has dragged in. How do you do, Agnes Sullivan?’

  Despite her fear, Aggie was suddenly very angry. ‘I’ll tell you how I do, you slimy toad,’ she said. ‘Much worse for seeing you. What right have you to have me captured in the street and brought to this place? Let me go this instant!’

  ‘Can’t do that, my dear. You belong to me now.’

  ‘I do not,’ Aggie retorted.

  ‘Oh, but you see you do,’ Finch said. ‘When I bought the club I bought everything in it, and that included you, but when I took up residence there, I found that the bird had flown.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ Aggie cried. ‘You can’t go around buying people like that.’

  ‘But I have, you see,’ Finch said. ‘Now you will work for me.’ And then he added, ‘On the streets, in the gutter, where you belong.’

  ‘No,’ Aggie cried. ‘That part of my life is over now and you can do what you like to me, but I would never work for you if you were the last man on earth. I despise you.’

  Aggie expected the blow and, though she tried to dodge it, Finch caught her full in the face. A second was delivered to her stomach and doubled her over, and when Finch hit her again in the face he knocked her to the floor. Aggie’s body was one mass of pain and she was terrified, but she willed herself not to show fear.

  Sheer willpower kept the tears at bay as she spat out through her swollen bleeding lips, ‘I will not work for you and it doesn’t matter what you do. I would rather die than stoop to that.’

  Finch recognised a quality in Aggie that had not been there before, a confidence and assurance, and he knew that if he beat her senseless, she wouldn’t change her mind. If he turned his back for one moment she would run away, no matter what the consequences would be.

  He had lost some of the power he had over Aggie and he had to regain it somehow but he knew just how he was going to do that.

  ‘You will do as you are told in the end, my dear, never fear,’ he said in a voice that made Aggie’s skin crawl. ‘Just remember there are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it.’

  * * *

  When Finch had gone, Aggie crawled back into bed to try to ease her aching body. She probably looked a sight because she could feel the dried blood coating her face, but there was no mirror in the room and no way of cleaning herself up either. She wondered what other delights Finch had in store for her, and though her mind recoiled from further pain, she was determined that she would not work on the streets for him or anyone else, and would get away from him at the first opportunity.

  She woke and thought it was probably morning, though it was still dark outside. She got out of bed and padded to the window. She could see nothing, for shutters had been fitted to it from the outside. Her heart sank: there was no possibility of escape that way.

  When her eyes had adjusted to the semidarkness she saw that something had been left by the door – a slice of dry bread on a plate and a large glass, which was full of gin.

  She was both hungry and thirsty. When she was lifted the night before she had been looking forward to a good meal and now her stomach growled in protest. She tore at the bread and had eaten it in minutes but it took only the edge off her hunger. She didn’t want to drink the gin. She hadn’t touched gin or opium since 1916 and she didn’t want to go down that road again. She held out as long as she could, but in the end she took little sips of it. These served only to dampen her mouth, so in the end she had to gulp it, and knew from the taste that opium had been added to it.

  When she had drained the glass, the room began to spin, and she barely made it back to bed before passing out. Twice more that day, she was given a bare slice of bread and a glass of gin, and the second time a bucket was placed in the corner of the room.

  Her mind recoiled from that. It was obviously there for her to relieve herself, and she realised Finch was going to keep her locked in the room till she gave in. Well, he could rot in Hell for she had no intention of doing that. But as time passed it was hard to remain focused because there was nothing in the room but the bed, nothing to do to pass the time, and she welcomed the oblivion drinking the opium-laced gin induced in her.

  The food was brought by a large man who never spoke a word, or even looked at her, not even when she asked him what she was doing there and where Finch was.

  On the third day, she was left a bottle of gin with the bread, and though she tried to ration it, she was unable to. She felt filthy for she was still in the clothes she had worn when they had brought her in, the bucket stank to high heaven and she had seldom felt more miserable. She was rousing herself to drink only enough to send her back into a stupor, and by the end of the next week there was little resemblance to the working girl she had once been.

  * * *

  After three weeks of giving Aggie such a lot of gin heavily laced with opium, Finch gave orders that it was to stop and so was the bread. Aggie at first could not believe that there was nothing waiting for her when she opened her bleary eyes. She lay back and closed them again, but she was unable to sleep, for her whole body had started to tremble and she knew that she needed a drink badly.

  After a little while, she could stand it no more, and she hammered on the door. She heard the key being turned and the man who always brought her food was looking at her questioningly.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Aggie said.

  ‘Mr Finch says no more for you.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I need it.’

  The man shrugged and Aggie clutched at him. ‘Please?’

  He shook her off and she sank to the floor sobbing. The man left her and closed the door.

  When Finch entered the room later he saw Aggie curled in a ball on the bed and groaning, for the shooting pains in her stomach were so severe they were making her feel sick.

  ‘You look like something you would see lying in the gutter,’ Finch said. ‘Get up.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You had better or the toe of my boot will help you.’

  The thought of Finch kicking her in the stomach caused Aggie to stumble to her feet. She was unable to stand upright, though, and was leaning forward like an old woman on trembling legs that threatened to give way at any moment, the pain causing globules of sweat to gather on her brow.

  ‘Look at you,’ Finch taunted. ‘Your clothes are a mess and filthy dirty, and you stink to high heaven. Your hair’s in tatters and your m
ucky face is all caked with dried blood.’ He shook his head as if he was unable to understand her foolishness. ‘And to think the solution to stop all this is in your hands.’

  There was only one thing on Aggie’s mind, and she fell to her knees before Finch and implored, ‘Please, Tony, let me have a drink.’

  ‘Of course, my dear, when you earn it.’

  ‘Tony, I really can’t go out on the streets,’ Aggie said. ‘Please don’t make me do this.’

  ‘I am not making you do anything, my dear,’ Finch said with an evil smile. ‘You just don’t eat or drink until you do. And get away from me. You disgust me.’ He gave her a push and so she lay spread-eagled on the floor.

  Aggie could scarcely believe that he had left her like that. She hammered on the door till exhaustion overcame her and she sank to the floor and slept.

  By the evening of the second day she knew she couldn’t take any more. She would do anything to have the drink and opium her whole innards were craving for, but no one came, though she hammered the door and shouted.

  When Finch came in the following day she was almost hysterical. She flung herself at him.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, ‘anything, but please let me have a drink first?’

  Finch detached Aggie’s arms from his clothes and brushed himself down fastidiously. ‘I am glad you have seen sense at last, Aggie, but at the moment, no one with any sense would go within a hundred yards of you. I will have water sent up and clothes for you to change into after your wash.’

  ‘And a drink?’

  ‘Not until you have earned it, my dear,’ he said with a leer.

  Aggie was taken in Finch’s car to one of the roughest areas of Birmingham, where there were three pubs close together.

  ‘Plenty of trade,’ Finch said, almost rubbing his hands with glee. ‘You will open your legs a good few times tonight, I think.’

  Aggie felt as sick as a pig when the first drunk nearly stumbled over her on his way home. In the lamplight she saw his eyes gleam when he caught sight of her, knowing immediately what service she was offering.

  When he leaned towards her the stink of beer nearly knocked her on her back, and the sight and smell of the brown rotting teeth when he opened his mouth caused the nausea to rise in Aggie’s throat. She wanted to push the man away from her, but of course she couldn’t do that.

  ‘How much?’ the drunk growled out.

  ‘Half a crown.’

  ‘Half a crown? Better be good for that. I like to get me money’s worth. Come around the back so we’re not disturbed, like.’

  Aggie thought she would die with shame when she allowed that vile, smelly man to pull down her drawers. Then he expected her to take his throbbing member in her hand and rub it a bit to get him in the mood. Suddenly he spread her legs wide with his hands and she lifted her skirts. When he entered her she bit her lip to prevent a cry escaping because she thought that she had been ripped in two.

  Finch was right. When the news filtered through the pubs that there was a whore outside ready and willing, she had a steady stream of customers. By the end of the night, Aggie’s degradation was complete. She knew her life was effectively over now, for she could no longer do without the gin and the opium, and would do anything it took to get hold of it.

  Finch pocketed her earnings as they went back in the car. As he passed her the gin bottle he said, ‘Not bad for an evening’s work. Now you listen to me, Aggie. You do this every night and if you earn enough then you will get fed and have as much gin and opium as you want, but if you don’t earn enough, you will get nothing. Do we understand each other?’

  Aggie understood, all right. She understood that Finch owned her, body and soul. He had been right at the outset: she now belonged to him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Tom too thought his life had ended. Every day was just one long line of chores with no let-up at all, and he could see the same life going on year after year. This was against the background noise of his mother’s incessant whining and complaining voice. Nothing he did seemed to please her, and in the end he accepted that that was the way it was going to be. If he retaliated then his mother would be even worse. He knew many of the townsfolk thought him weak and spineless and he could hardly blame them.

  He lived for his brother’s letters, glad, as the years passed, that one of them at least was doing well. On reaching New York, Joe had almost immediately got a job at an engineering works owned by a man called Brian Brannigan, a former Irish immigrant himself, who had made good.

  ‘Good God!’ Tom said when he read Joe’s account of this. He was sure if Joe had fallen in a dung heap he would have come up smelling of roses. His good fortune did not just end there, either. Over the years he had risen through the firm in a most spectacular way, and ended up marrying the boss’s daughter, Gloria.

  However, in 1929 came the Wall Street Crash and Joe’s father-in-law, bankrupt, killed himself because of it. Joe was left almost penniless and destitute, with both a distraught wife and mother-in-law dependent on him.

  He tried to get a job, but it wasn’t easy, for America was sunk in a deep depression. Tom urged him to come home, but he said that his mother-in-law would not leave the land where her husband lay buried and so they were stuck in America for the time being.

  Then in the autumn of 1934, Gloria gave birth to a son they called Benjamin Joseph, and Joe’s joy was muted by the responsibility of another mouth to feed.

  Biddy was almost gleeful that his household seemed closer to starvation. Tom felt quite helpless. He would willingly have sent Joe his last halfpenny, but he was never given money of his own. All he could do was write encouraging letters to Joe and Gloria, and hope and pray that their lives would improve before too long.

  The day was a fine one and just one of many that spring, Tom thought with satisfaction as he sat and ate his dinner. It was 24 April, and already the crops were ripening in the fields and the two new calves and the litter of pigs growing up fit and healthy. Suddenly, through the window his eyes caught a movement in the lane and he turned to his mother, who was at the other side of the table. ‘There’s a garda coming here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Aye. Shall I see what he wants?’

  ‘No,’ Biddy said, getting to her feet. ‘I will.’

  Tom shrugged and returned to his dinner, and Biddy opened the door to the young and nervous garda and stepped into the yard to find out what he wanted. The voices were muted and Tom could not distinguish what was said, but he thought he would know all soon enough.

  The garda however was quite appalled by Biddy’s reaction to the news he had just given her. When he got back to the station he said to the garda behind the desk, ‘My mammy always said that Biddy Sullivan isn’t right in the head and, honest to God, it makes you wonder. I mean, I have just given the worst news ever to a mother and she looked … well, she almost looked pleased.’

  ‘Maybe she was in shock?’ the other policeman suggested. ‘That can affect a body in all sorts of strange ways.’

  The young garda shook his head. ‘She didn’t look in shock to me,’ he said. ‘She had a smile on her face as if was good news I had given her.’

  And Biddy considered it to be good news. When she turned to face Tom, the expression on her face unnerved him, for she was smiling. Tom hadn’t seen that very often and he watched the light dancing in her cold eyes as if she was truly delighted about something.

  ‘What did the garda want?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘He came to tell me what I have wished for many a year. Your sister Nuala and her husband have been killed in a car crash in Birmingham.’

  Tom was stunned. He felt a pang of loss for he had loved his sister dearly and missed her dreadfully when she had first gone to England.

  And now she was gone, her young life snuffed out along with that of her husband, and his mammy was saying it was what she had wished for. He met her gaze and said steadily, ‘Mammy, that’s a dreadful thing to say.’
>
  ‘She killed your daddy,’ Biddy spat out, and she remembered the overpowering grief she had felt the day that Thomas John died. From that moment she had prayed for something bad to happen to Nuala.

  ‘You can’t be certain of that,’ Tom answered, ‘and even if you are right and the news in the letter did hasten Daddy’s death, she didn’t know. It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘Well, I think differently,’ Biddy snapped. ‘And I am glad that she has got her just deserts at last. Now if you have eaten your fill, shouldn’t you be about your duties and not arguing the toss with me?’

  Tom was only halfway through his dinner, but both the news and his mother’s response to it had taken away any appetite he might have had. Without another word, he returned to the fields. But as he toiled that afternoon, memories of his beautiful sister kept invading his mind.

  Everyone had been Nuala’s willing slave and Tom always admired the dainty loveliness of her as she grew up. Little did he know when he had seen her off on the train in Derry so many years ago that he would never see her again. Tears ran down his face, not just for the death of her, but for the wasted years when he could have made contact with her and yet he had taken the coward’s way out rather than risk upsetting his mother.

  Then he saw his mother come out of the cottage and scurry up the lane. Tom stood up, easing his aching back and shading his eyes from the sun, watched her heading off towards Buncrana. Now what is she up to? She never went to Buncrana on a week day. Whatever it was he knew he would only find out about it when she was willing to tell him.

  He had always known she had funny notions, different from other people’s. However, from her reaction that morning he had to acknowledge that she was a very wicked woman. He truly hoped, though, that with Nuala dead and gone, Biddy would at last get rid of the resentment she had carried around with her for so long.

  That same evening, as they sat before the fire, Biddy told Tom that she was going to Birmingham the following day for Nuala’s funeral, and that she had sent a telegram to those in Birmingham telling them this. Tom’s mouth had dropped open in shock for he could hardly believe his ears. He hadn’t thought either of them would actually attend the funeral service, knowing how his mother had felt about Nuala. He would have been surprised if she had sent flowers or had a Mass said for her, but this …