Читать книгу A Daughter’s Secret - Anne Bennett - Страница 8

THREE

Biddy came in with Joe about an hour after Aggie had gone into the room, bringing in the cold of the night and declaring that Sadie Lannigan had given birth to a baby girl and though the newborn was small, both she and her mother were thriving.

‘Sadie roared so loud I was sure all those in the six counties would have heard her,’ Biddy said. ‘And in the end nothing would do her but she had the doctor, and I sent Joe to fetch him. I hope her man earns well, wherever he is, because the doctor doesn’t come cheap. Anyway, when the doctor came, I sent Joe to Buncrana to fetch up the woman’s mother-in-law to see to her. Sadie doesn’t care for the woman, I know that, but as I said to her, the woman is family after all and I have my own bed to go home to.’ She looked around the room at this point and said, ‘Where’s Aggie? Don’t say she’s not in yet?’

‘Oh, aye, Mammy,’ Tom said. ‘She has been in this long while, but said she was feeling badly and she went to bed.’

Biddy’s lips curled in annoyance. She was quite astounded that Aggie had taken herself off to bed without waiting to see if her mother might have need of her. She took one of the lamps and went into the room, intending to give the girl a telling-off at least, and possibly rouse her from the bed altogether.

However, Aggie, worn out by the events of that night and the unaccustomed alcohol, was in a deep sleep, her body just a hump in the bed, so little of her was visible. Biddy cast her eyes around the room and they softened as they lighted on her youngest child slumbering peacefully in the crib beside her sister’s bed. Biddy knew Nuala would be the last. She had told Thomas John there was to be no more of that carry-on now.

When she had held her baby daughter in her arms that blustery day in February, she had felt a rush of maternal love that she had never felt before. She didn’t understand it herself, for she was no great lover of children, but she knew at that moment she would have laid down her life for that child.

She felt her to be a true gift from God and vowed that this child would not be worked to death either, or have her childhood over before it had begun. That was Aggie’s lot in life, but it was not for this perfect little being.

However, it had been the presence of Nuala in her room that saved Aggie that night, because Biddy would not risk disturbing the baby by trying to wake her sister and decided that she would leave any upbraiding till the morning. She came from the room, saying as she did so, ‘She is fast off. By, she will get the length of my tongue tomorrow.’

Tom let out the breath he had been holding. It was audible only to Joe, and Tom saw his brother’s eyes narrow quizzically, but he knew he would say nothing in front of his mother. Once in the bedroom he would give him some tale to satisfy.

He turned to his mother and said, ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea, Mammy? You must be perished.’

Aggie woke up in a lather of sweat, the bedclothes in a tangle around her and a thousand hammers thumping in her head. Her throat felt raw and she opened her bleary eyes as Tom came into the room on his way to the byre to milk the cows. Aggie was usually up by then too.

‘What’s up?’ Tom said, but quietly, mindful of the sleeping baby, and Joe still dressing in the other room.

‘I feel awful, Tom,’ Aggie said, her voice a mere croak.

Tom lifted the lamp he was holding and looked at his sister. She did look bad. Her bloodshot eyes were screwed up against the light and Tom saw the blackening underneath them was less noticeable as her face was brick red and glistening with sweat.

‘My head aches terribly and my throat is so sore,’ Aggie told him.

‘You likely have a hangover,’ Tom whispered. ‘I have never experienced one myself, but I hear tell you often feel powerfully bad the next day and everyone speaks of the aching head. Even Daddy has had it a time or two, I know.’

‘Does it get better?’

‘Oh, aye,’ Tom said confidently. ‘You’ll be as right as rain by and by.’

‘Well, that’s as may be, but I can’t get up just now,’ Aggie moaned. ‘I would be sick if I tried it. Could … could you get me a drink of water, Tom?’

‘Aye,’ Tom agreed sympathetically. ‘I’ll tell Mammy too, shall I?’

Aggie shuddered. Facing her mother was what she feared, but she knew she would have to cope with that eventually so she said, ‘Aye, Tom, if you will.’

Tom had no need to tell his mother. She put her head round the bed curtain, saw Tom dipping a cup into the pail of water by the door and demanded to know what he was doing.

‘It’s for Aggie, she’s badly,’ he said.

‘What nonsense is this?’ Biddy snapped, struggling from the bed. ‘Leave down the cup. Be away you and help your father, and I will see to Aggie.’

Biddy saw, as Tom had, that Aggie was far from well, though she put the discolouring under her eyes down to lack of sleep when Aggie professed that she had tossed and turned half the night. She gave her the water and Aggie gulped at it eagerly, but almost immediately brought it back up again, though fortunately Biddy had seen it coming and had whipped the chamber pot from under the bed just in time.

That was just one of many times that Aggie was sick that day, though she ate nothing at all. By evening, despite Tom predicting she would feel better, she felt worse.

‘Maybe we should have the doctor in?’ Thomas John said.

‘I don’t think we need to bother the doctor yet,’ Biddy answered. ‘I will bathe her down just now with cool water and likely she’ll be better by morning.’

Aggie was not better, though – much worse in fact. She had developed a racking cough and was semidelirious. Tom, who had never heard of anyone who had had a hangover for two days, was worried for his sister, and so was his mother when he called her in. There was no question now but that the doctor had to be called.

‘Measles,’ he declared, after examining Aggie. ‘And a bad case, I’d say. Mind you, half the town has been coming down with it and they will likely infect the rest. It spreads like wildfire and so it will probably go round the whole family now. Might as well get it all over with, anyway. The older they are when they get it, usually the worse they are. As for Aggie, keep bathing her in tepid water to get the temperature down. I can make up something at the surgery to help there, and something for the cough too if Tom or Joe will come and fetch it. She probably won’t eat much, but give her plenty of fluids and keep the lamps turned low and the curtains drawn.’

By the next day, despite the doctor’s medication and Biddy bathing her down, Aggie was raving. The sheets were damp with sweat, the coughing shook her whole body and the rash had broken out that day too. Aggie was ill for over three weeks. Christmas had come and gone by the time she was in any way recovered. By then, the clothes hung on her frame gaunt from lack of food, and her legs were shaky and slightly wasted. Finn and Nuala had succumbed and she helped nurse them, though both recovered much quicker than she had.

The little ones weren’t right over it when Tom and then his father caught it. Aggie was run off her feet tending to them and helping Joe with the jobs around the farm, until he too was taken sick. With the whole family ill, Aggie had no time to reflect for any length of time on the night she was raped, although she was relieved not to have to see Bernie McAllister, not sure at all how she would treat him when they did eventually meet.

She made one important decision, however: she was finished with the dancing. She would tell her mother she was tired of it. She knew Biddy wouldn’t mind. She had said more than once that Aggie was too old to be prancing about the place when she could be such a help at home.

When her mother too became ill, Aggie’s life grew harder still and she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. Tom and her father were nowhere near better, but at the very least the cows had to be milked twice a day. Then there was the house to tend, the others to nurse, and Finn and wee Nuala to see to as well.

All in all, January had drawn to a close and February begun before the house regained a sense of normality. It was the middle of the month, just after Nuala’s first birthday when Aggie realised she hadn’t seen her monthlies for some time. She had been due the middle of December, a week after the incident with Bernie McAllister, and when it didn’t happen, if she had thought of it at all, she put the absence down to how ill she had been. In January she had been too busy to give any mind to it at all. But now, in February, she faced the dread possibility that she was carrying Bernie McAllister’s child and she was filled with horror and shame.

Only a few days later, Biddy now up and about, at last missed the dress Aggie had asked Tom to destroy. Aggie knew her mother would miss it – she hadn’t that many clothes that she could lose any of them – and she had no option but to tell her that she had torn the dress so badly that she had burned it.

Biddy could hardly believe her ears. ‘You took it upon yourself to destroy a dress?’

Aggie knew she was for it whatever she said or did, but she tried. ‘It was so badly torn, Mammy. I couldn’t have worn it.’

‘It was for me to be the judge of that, surely,’ Biddy said. ‘Tears can be mended and if it had really been beyond redemption then it could have been made up into a dress or two for wee Nuala. Did you not think of that?’

‘No, Mammy,’ Aggie said softly.

‘Then maybe the bamboo cane will help you remember in future.’

Aggie had expected the beating to be a severe one. Finn was so unnerved by the flailing cane that he ran out into the yard, crying for his father. Thomas John came in and took the cane from his wife’s hand.

‘Whatever the child has done,’ he said, ‘she has had enough punishment.’

Aggie slumped to the floor and Thomas John helped her to her feet. ‘What was all that over?’ he demanded of his wife.

‘Oh, madam here ripped her dress,’ Biddy said, ‘the good one that she wore to her dancing class. And instead of telling me and letting me fix it, or use the material to make up something for Nuala, she put it in the fire and burned it. She has admitted it so.’

Thomas John rubbed his chin, for that was indeed puzzling behaviour from his daughter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will own that you would be annoyed but there was no need to beat her so badly. Anyway, she has even less clothes now for you have that dress almost whipped from her.’

Biddy, now that she was calmer, saw that Thomas John was right. There were huge rips in the material. She looked at her daughter, trying to remain standing with her father’s support, then said to Aggie grudgingly, ‘All right, maybe I did go a bit too far. Go on into the room and take off your dress. I will put some goose fat on your back and you will then do well enough.’

Aggie did as her mother said, glad to lie down for she was in extreme pain. She had been beaten before many times, as all her brothers had, but seldom so severely. Later, when Biddy saw her daughter’s back, crisscrossed with open stripes, blood squeezing from them, she felt sorry for her. It had been a bold thing to do right enough, but she was a grand help to her and had never given her a minute’s bother till now.

‘Stay in bed for now,’ she said as she rubbed the fat well in. ‘After that we’ll see.’

Aggie sighed in relief and yet she still said, ‘Are you sure, Mammy?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I’m sorry, Mammy.’

‘So am I, child dear,’ Biddy said. ‘It was such an odd thing to do. I mean, what possessed you to burn a dress? You’ve never done such a thing before.’

‘I’ve never had it near ripped from my back and then been raped,’ Aggie might have said. She didn’t, of course. What she did say was, ‘I don’t really know why I did it. I was so annoyed with myself because I really liked that dress.’

‘So, what happened?’

Aggie decided to stick to a semblance of the truth. ‘It was the day you went to the Lannigans’ and I was coming home from dancing when I fell on the road in the dark and tumbled over the remains of a rusty iron fence and into a thick briar bush in the bottom of a ditch. I’d heard the dress tear on the fence, and then it was ripped to bits on the briar bush before I managed to get myself free. When I got home and looked at all the jagged rips and all, I just threw it into the fire, I was so cross.’

‘But didn’t you have your shawl on?’ Biddy asked.

Aggie had to think fast. ‘Yes, but it fell off as I tipped forward. Anyway, after that I was ill and sort of forgot all about the dress.’

‘All right,’ Biddy said. ‘We’ll say no more about it now. You’ll not do such a thing again, sure you won’t.’

‘No, Mammy,’ Aggie said fervently. ‘I think I can promise you, hand on heart, that I will never do such a thing again.’

Biddy was satisfied but Aggie breathed a sigh of relief, glad that she wasn’t expected to move anywhere because she didn’t think she could have done so. As it was, she had to lie on her stomach to sleep, and despite the cold couldn’t bear even her nightdress or the bedclothes to touch her skin.

Sometime during the night she was woken with drawing pains in her stomach, similar to those she had each month. ‘Oh, praise God,’ she breathed in thankfulness. She would endure any amount of beatings if it would also beat out the child she knew she was carrying. However, after a time the pains in her stomach eased and on checking herself, she saw that there was no blood and she lay in the bed and thought of what she was to do, her mind in a wild panic.

She knew that Biddy would soon tumble to what was wrong, for there would be no pads left to soak in the bucket. She was also aware that she had got away with it so far only because first her mother had been so busy with them all so ill and then was taken bad herself, but time was against her now. That last beating would be nothing to the beating she would have to endure if her mother tumbled to the fact that she was having a child, and her unmarried. She would kill her altogether then. Aggie shuddered in fear, for her mother’s true rages were absolutely terrifying.

Worry drove away all thought of sleep, but by morning she was no further forward. She seriously thought of throwing herself in the river, but that was a mortal sin and she would roast in Hell’s flames. No, she decided, she had to see Bernie McAllister, though her insides crawled at the thought, and tell him what he had done to her. There was no help for it. Maybe he would think of something. He had to think of something, and quickly too, Aggie told herself, because it was more than half his fault. She would have to wangle it so that she had a quiet word with him after Mass on Sunday.

The next day, Biddy let her stay in bed again and put goose grease on her back three times. When Aggie woke the second day after the beating she knew that, although she was stiff and sore, she would be better up and occupied because the worry was driving her demented and there was far too much time to think just lying there. She rose gingerly and was immediately assailed by nausea and vomited into the chamber pot she’d grabbed from beneath the bed.

The following day, Tom said as he crossed through her room from his and his brothers’ beyond, ‘You all right, Aggie?’

Aggie turned to look at her brother and even in the dim light of the lamp Tom held, he could see the bleached pallor of her face and the way her eyes seemed to stand out in her head, but her voice at least was firm enough and quite sharp.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, it’s just that I heard you being sick this morning, and yesterday as well.’

Oh God! Aggie thought. How hard she had tried to stop the nausea rising to her throat, but had been unable to. When the bout was over she had climbed out of the window to throw the vomit into the gutter before swilling the pot itself with water from the rain barrel beside the door. But now Tom knew something was up, and if he or Joe were to get one hint of what ailed her and said something about it before she could snatch a word with Bernie, the whole thing would blow up around her.

So she faced Tom and said, ‘I had something that disagreed with me, that’s all.’

‘What? Two days running?’

‘Yes,’ Aggie snapped. ‘Don’t fuss, Tom.’

Tom shrugged and went on out before his father would give out to him, like he did every morning to Joe, who liked his bed too much to be up and at it.

With Tom gone, Aggie sat down on the bed again. She knew she should have been raking up the fire and putting on the kettle, but she felt so tired and drained.

She knew if she lingered any longer her mother would give out to her, and with a sigh she got to her feet. Joe, his hair still tousled from sleep, clattered through the room, pulling on a jacket as he went, the untied laces of his boots dangling, threatening to send him flying.

‘Ssh,’ Aggie said warningly. ‘You’ll have Finn and Nuala awake with your carry-on.’

‘Sorry, Aggie,’ Joe said. ‘Only I’m late, see.’

‘As ever. You should get up when Tom calls you,’ Aggie smiled.

‘I’m still tired then.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Aggie said with feeling. ‘But get you away now before Daddy bites the head off you.’

Joe shrugged. Nearly every morning his father was cross with him and he was used to it now. Daddy said he would never make a farmer and Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to be. It was a grind of a life, though Tom seemed to like it well enough.

And Tom did. Usually milking was one of his most favourite occupations, finding it soothing to lean his head against the velvet flank of the cow and see the bucket between his legs fill with the creamy milk.

However, that morning his thoughts were far away and Aggie was at the forefront of them. He knew she wasn’t right, whatever she said, and he knew his father was worried about her too. Only the previous evening, watching Aggie pick at the meal before her, he had said to their mother, ‘Aggie’s never really perked up after that dose of measles she had, I’m thinking, and not eating enough to feed a bird. Maybe we should ask the doctor for a tonic.’

Aggie had said she was all right, that she was just not hungry, but she had a sort of hunted look on her face.

Thomas John was far from satisfied but Aggie got so agitated that he said he would leave it so for now, but if she didn’t pick up in a day or two he would ask the doctor to take a look at her.

Tom was the only one to notice the horrified and frightened expression on Aggie’s face as she began to collect up the plates. Did she think he was some sort of idiot to think he would believe that something had disagreed with her to make her so sick?

Nuala had just passed her first birthday and he remembered that when her mother was carrying her, she had been sick every morning. So was Aggie having a baby? She could well be, though it was the very worst thing that could happen to a young unmarried girl and something that couldn’t be hidden either. He wondered what in God’s name she intended to do about it if she was.

In the bedroom Aggie was having similar thoughts, and she hoped that Bernie McAllister might have some sort of plan up his sleeve, or she was done for: her life would be over before it had really begun. She felt tears sting the back of her eyes and brushed them away impatiently.

The time for crying was long gone. She mentally braced her shoulders and opened the door into the kitchen to start the day.

The next Sunday, Aggie inveigled herself close to McAllister as she left the church, and once outside she whispered, ‘I need to speak to you.’

McAllister’s eyes widened salaciously. ‘Can’t wait for another session, is that it?’

‘Ssh,’ Aggie cautioned, looking anxiously around at the people streaming out of the church to see if anyone was in earshot. ‘Not here. Come a little way in amongst the gravestones.’

Tom had seen her talking with McAllister and he skirted the back of the church and secreted himself behind another gravestone, not far from where they had stopped. He could plainly see that Aggie was angry with what McAllister had said and he heard her say sharply, ‘You disgust me. It gives me no pleasure to have to seek you out this way, but I needed to see you as soon as possible.’

‘What about?’ Bernie asked suspiciously.

‘Shh, I can’t tell you anything here,’ Aggie said. ‘We daren’t risk being overheard. I can’t get away easily in the day, and certainly not without permission being granted and a load of questions asked. Anyway, there are too many people about in the day, but the house is quiet before half-past ten most nights, so could you meet me at the head of the lane tomorrow night about that time?’

Bernie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dare say I could,’ he said. ‘But I wish you would stop all this secrecy and tell me what it is all about.’

‘You’ll know all tomorrow.’

‘Not a little hint?’

‘None,’ Aggie retorted. ‘I need to go. My mother is looking for me.’ And catching sight of Biddy standing at the gate gesturing to her impatiently, she scurried towards her.

Bernie watched her go with a lewd smile on his lips.

This was noticed by his wife, who followed the direction of his gaze and her eyes came to light on Aggie Sullivan. Surely to God he hadn’t designs in that direction. Thomas John would tear him apart if he thought he was messing with his daughter. Well then, let him, she suddenly thought and, God forgive me, I would even help him, for Bernie is little use to me either in the shop or out of it. It would make no odds to me if he was to meet a sticky end. In fact, it would be one less thing to worry about.

As Philomena turned away, Tom emerged from behind the tombstone. He had listened to the whole conversation and he was more worried than ever. He knew for certain now what Aggie wanted to see McAllister about because every morning she was sick. She was expecting the man’s child, and the shame and disgrace of it would destroy them all.

He did wonder what Aggie expected McAllister to do about it, but he knew he needed to be told. However, Tom decided, after what McAllister had done to her before, there was no way he was going to let her meet him alone and in the pitch-black. He wouldn’t tell her, though. He would just go after her and try to keep her safe.