A Daughter's Secret (6 page)

‘But, Aggie, I might never see you again,’ Tom said plaintively.

Aggie swallowed deeply because she loved Tom dearly and would probably miss him the most of anyone.

‘That is a cross both of us must bear.’

‘Aye, because of bloody McAllister.’

‘And me, Tom.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ Tom said. ‘I saw you when you came in that night and you wouldn’t have known what you were doing. This is all McAllister’s fault, and because of him I will lose my sister.’

Aggie heard the break in Tom’s voice. She swallowed the lump threatening to choke her and put her arms around him. Generally they weren’t a family that hugged and kissed, and such displays of affection would have embarrassed Tom in the normal way of things. That night, however, it seemed right. Tom hugged his sister back. He would always miss her. Hatred for McAllister burned in his soul.

Twice the next day, Thomas John asked his daughter if she was all right because she couldn’t shift the melancholy that seemed to have settled around her, and each time she said she was fine.

‘You seem out of sorts,’ he had said the first time and she had assured him she felt all right.

The second time he said, ‘Is there anything on your mind, Aggie? You look sad.’

Aggie managed a watery smile for her father. ‘I can’t go round with a great grin plastered over my face all and every day,’ she said as light-heartedly as she could.

Thomas John, however, mentioned his concerns to Biddy. She didn’t see Aggie as a person very often, just as an extra pair of hands, but when her husband brought it to her attention, she could see that something was amiss. ‘What’s up with you, girl?’

Knowing her mother wasn’t the sort to fob off, Aggie muttered that she felt under the weather.

‘In what way?’

‘It’s hard to explain,’ Aggie said. ‘All at sixes and sevens.’

Biddy looked at her daughter and saw her pinched white face, the blue bags beneath her eyes, and the fact that there was so little flesh on her bones. ‘Maybe your daddy was right and you needed a tonic after the measles, for you had it worse than any of the others. Must be that that has affected your monthlies too.’

‘Yes, that must be it,’ Aggie said in little more than a whisper.

‘Yes, well, that can make a person feel sluggish, I always think,’ Biddy said. ‘If you don’t pick up in the next few days I will get your daddy to take you into Buncrana to see the doctor.’

Tom came in the door just as Biddy said this and heard her. His eyes met Aggie’s sorrow-laden ones across the table and he felt pity for her wash over him. Yet he knew that if she was determined to leave, then it was best to go as soon as she could. To delay at all would open a can of worms that would be much better left sealed.

Aggie tried to lift her spirits for the rest of that day for the sake of her parents, but she knew she wasn’t very successful. Each passing moment meant she was one step nearer to leaving this house and her family for ever. She was glad to seek the solitude of her bedroom away from the watchful and concerned eyes of her father.

She didn’t feel the slightest bit tired. Sitting down on the bed, she wished she could have embraced her father that night as she had Finn, until the child had complained that she was holding him too tight. She didn’t try it with Joe, or Tom either, for that would have certainly brought comment, and while Tom might have understood, Joe certainly would have been horrified at her girlish sloppiness. For her parents too there had been just the usual peck on the cheek, but she knew her disappearance would be a grievous blow for her father, for he had a soft spot for her.

She would always miss them, not just her father but her mother too, though she could be sharp and unfair at times; the darling baby, Nuala; cheeky
wee Finn, and Joe, who was always telling them the exotic places he would visit when he was a grown man; and her favourite and special brother, Tom.

Everything was familiar: the cottage where she had been born and reared, where the hens pecked at the grit in the cobbled yard before the door. She would even miss the indolent, smelly pig in the sty beside the house, too fat to move easily and too lazy to care. Farmland stretched on every side, some fields filled with cows, with their big eyes and swollen udders as they placidly chewed the cud, while others were cultivated, and the hillsides were dotted with sheep.

She had looked on the farm so many times without really appreciating the beauty of it as she did now. She knew that she was doing the only thing she could do to save her family’s disgrace, but it was hard and she was bloody scared stiff.

She got up and took a turn around the room, which suddenly seemed very dear to her, and she touched each item in turn until she came to the crib. Then she looked down at her little sister’s podgy hands either side of her head in the total abandonment of sleep and traced her finger gently around one until the baby gave a sigh and her hand closed in a fist. Aggie leaned over the crib and gently kissed Nuala’s little pink cheek as the tears began. She tried to stifle them, but Tom, lying awake too, heard. He wished he could go in, but knew Aggie would probably be embarrassed.

Eventually, awash with tears, she threw herself on the bed and closed her eyes.

She awoke stiff and shivering with cold, and saw with horror the clock said the time was half-past two. She roused herself quickly and began to gather the things that she was taking with her. She decided to travel in her clothes for Mass as they were the smartest she had: woollen plaid dress, black stockings and button boots, a proper coat and matching bonnet. She had taken her mother’s large bag that she took when she went into Buncrana on Saturday, because she didn’t have anything else, and into it she put underwear and nightwear, her two everyday dresses and cardigan and her warmest thickest shawl.

She had one last look around the room and then eased the window up gently and climbed through it. But, as quiet as she tried to be, Tom heard as he was lying wide-eyed on the bed, worry for his sister driving sleep from him, though he was aching with tiredness. He pulled the curtain aside and saw her walk by the window. Hurriedly he dressed and followed her.

Aggie was glad when Tom fell into step beside her. She hadn’t expected it when he had to be up at five for the milking anyway, but she valued his company. They didn’t talk much. They had said all that needed to be said, but Aggie thought for her brother to be there walking by her side was comforting. Tom wished with all his heart that he was older, that he could care for Aggie, and if her
parents wouldn’t let her stay at home then he would take her some other place and see to her. It seemed abhorrent to him that a young girl should travel so far completely alone and all because a man had taken advantage of her.

McAllister was there waiting for her and impatient. ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed. ‘For this to work I must be back in Buncrana with the horse stabled before the place is awake. Come on now, get up and be quick about it.’

Aggie handed McAllister her bag and turned to Tom. ‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Goodbye, Aggie,’ Tom said. ‘Look after yourself.’

‘I’ll try,’ Aggie said, putting her arms rather awkwardly around her brother.

‘We haven’t time for this,’ McAllister snarled.

Aggie turned on him. ‘Listen here, you,’ she said. ‘Your life will not change in any way, shape or form because of that one night. I am leaving behind my home and all in it that I hold dear. I know that I will see none of them ever again and you dare complain because I spend a few minutes saying goodbye to my brother?’

McAllister said no more, for he knew that Aggie had a point. She kissed Tom on the cheek before climbing in beside McAllister. The cart rolled down the road almost silently and Tom saw with surprise that the horse’s hoofs had been wrapped in cloths so that they would make little noise. He had to admit that that was a wise move, for the sound
of hoofs on the road could be heard for miles in the still and quiet of the early hours.

He yawned, weariness suddenly hitting him, and with the cart lost in the darkness he turned back to the farmhouse.

‘Have you anything to wrap around yourself?’ McAllister asked Aggie when they had gone a little way down the road. ‘You are shivering like a leaf.’

‘It isn’t with cold, or at least not that alone,’ Aggie said. ‘It’s mainly fear.’

‘Well, I can do nothing about the fear; you must combat that on your own,’ McAllister answered. ‘But if you have brought a shawl or anything, I would put it around you, that’s all I’m saying.’

Aggie did then delve in the bag and pull out the shawl, but even wrapped tight around her, it did nothing for the icy dread that seemed to be seeping all through her body.

‘Are you sure your sister won’t mind me just landing on her?’ she asked at last.

‘No,’ McAllister said confidently. ‘I have explained it all in a letter that I will give you to show her. Big sister Gwen refuses me nothing.’

‘You might be a better man if she had a time
or two,’ Aggie was tempted to say, but she bit back the retort. There was little point in annoying McAllister at this late stage, particularly when she needed information. So instead she said, ‘And what about getting rid of the baby and all? Will she know someone?’

‘Course she will,’ McAllister said. ‘You won’t be the first person she has helped, not by a long chalk. Everyone in the area knows her. Her name isn’t McAllister but Halliday, Gwen Halliday, for she was married. She lives in Varna Road now in a place called Edgbaston. That’s not far at all from New Street Station in Birmingham city centre.’

‘Her husband might have something to say about me just turning up,’ Aggie said, ‘however lax Gwen seems to be.’

‘Oh, the old man is dead and gone now,’ McAllister said. ‘She was left with the one son to rear but he’s grown up too. See, Gwen is twelve years older than me and was more of a mother to me than my own ever was. She won’t let me down, never fear.’

‘Won’t she be shocked that this is your child that I am having to get rid of?’

‘Why should she be?’ McAllister said. ‘She knows what men and woman get up to. The prostitutes working the area were forever seeking her out. Can’t work if they have kids hanging on to them, can they now?’

Aggie had never been so shocked in the whole of her life. ‘Does she know prostitutes?’ she said.

In Buncrana such things just didn’t go on, but everyone knew that prostitutes were the very dregs of society.

McAllister laughed. ‘Time for you to grow up, little girl,’ he sneered. ‘When our father died, Gwen was fifteen and there were six mouths to feed. With my mother gone to pieces altogether, Gwen went on the streets to prevent us all starving to death. She eventually married one of the punters. Our mother had died by then too, and as I was the youngest she took me in to live with her and her husband. Then when she was widowed, she went back out on the streets again to provide for her son. That’s how it is.’

Aggie mouth dropped open. She had never been so shaken in the whole of her life. Surely that wasn’t really how things were, not in normal, respectable society.

‘What price is virtue, Agnes?’ McAllister went on. ‘Especially if the alternative is starving to death?’ He gave a wry laugh and added, ‘Not that Philomena knows any of this. She would react very much as you did, shocked to the core of her Roman Catholic soul. She doesn’t know much about my earlier life at all. She met Gwen just the once, at our wedding, and they never really hit it off. I used to visit Gwen on my own after that.’

‘I am not surprised they didn’t hit it off,’ Aggie said, her lip curling in distaste. ‘Your wife is an honest and decent woman. You talk about women
choosing to go with men for money as if it is just a job like any other.’

‘So it is.’

‘How can you say that? Aren’t there normal jobs for people?’

‘Jobs are often few and far between,’ McAllister said. ‘And if you should get one, it will usually be backbreaking work for long hours, and all you pick up at the end of the week is a pittance of a wage. Gwen didn’t want that sort of life and I don’t blame her.’

Aggie was silent. She wondered what sort of place she was going to at all where things totally alien to her seemed almost commonplace. What sort of woman was this Gwen, whom she would be forced to rely on? The apprehension in her increased. However, it was too late now for doubts and second thoughts. The die was cast.

McAllister delivered Aggie to Derry Station, but could not take time to stay with her because he had to get the horse back to Buncrana before the place was astir. Aggie understood his concern, even shared it, and yet it was hard to see him disappear into the darkness. The waiting room was open so there was shelter from the wind at least, but inside the dark was so intense Aggie thought a person could almost touch it. She was so cold her teeth chattered and she couldn’t remember being as scared in the whole of her life.

For a time she sat on the wooden bench
running around the walls, aching with cold and fear, but eventually, worn down by weariness, she lay down on the bench, drew her legs under her, and with her shawl wrapped about her she closed her eyes.

She woke stiff and colder than ever, and noticed straight away that the darkness was not so deep. She pulled herself to her feet and began to walk briskly around the small room, slapping herself with her arms to get the blood flowing as she watched light steal into the day. Already she would have been missed at home, but her parents would know no more than that, because Tom would never betray her.

She wondered what they would think, for she’d spoken the truth when she’d told McAllister that she hadn’t a penny piece to bless herself with. She wondered how long it would be until her mother noticed the missing clothes and would guess that she had run away. Mammy would be perplexed for she would know that Aggie had nowhere to run to.

Would McAllister betray her? She doubted that. There was one other person, though, that would, at the very least, be aware that McAllister hadn’t slept in his bed that night and that was Philomena. When the news that she had run away from home became common knowledge, would she put two and two together? Would she challenge him or, heaven forbid, tell her parents of her suspicions?

Would they call out the Garda and could they make her return home if they found her? She imagined they probably could, and that thought made her feel colder than ever. She wouldn’t feel totally safe until a stretch of water separated her from her parents.

It seemed an age until other people began arriving at the station and the ticket office opened. Aggie was then able to spend some of McAllister’s money and make her way to the platform where the train lay waiting. There were few travelling that February morning, but those on the train were curious about such a young girl travelling alone.

Aggie knew they would be and she had her story ready. She told them she was to take up service in one of the big houses near Birmingham in England. As she told the lies she thought that in the end that might be the truth because when this was all over – provided she survived, of course – she had to have a job and place to live. Being in service seemed as good as any other employment.

‘Why Birmingham?’ one woman asked, while another commented that she was young to travel so far alone.

There again Aggie had her answer. Her brother worked in Birmingham, she said, and would be meeting her off the train at the other end and taking her to her place of work. The women were only slightly mollified, but Aggie knew how delighted she would be if the tale she had delivered had been the truth.

She was glad of the women’s concern for her, though, when they reached the mail boat straining against the ropes that secured it to the dock side for she was scared as well as a little excited to be boarding it. But the excitement fled when the boat was on the move, tossed from side to side by the turbulent waves, making Aggie feel so sick she vomited over and over till her stomach ached and her throat felt raw.

‘You’ll likely get used to it,’ one of the women told her.

‘Aye,’ said another. ‘Sure, wasn’t I just the same when I went over first? Now I take it in my stride as you will, cutie dear.’

Aggie gazed at her through bleary eyes. She could not remember feeling this ill since she had had the measles, and she had the feeling she could never get used to the crossing. Anyway, she told herself, she wouldn’t have to get used to it; the chances were that she would never see the shores of Ireland again. Maybe some day she might regret that, but at that moment all she could feel was relief.

‘Come on away inside,’ the first woman urged. ‘The wind would cut you in two and it’s cold enough to even freeze a penguin’s chuff, as my old man would say.’

It was cold, and the sight of the huge, relentless waves crashing in cascades of foam against the sides of the rolling boat did little to stop the churning of Aggie’s stomach, so she gave a brief
nod and followed the woman as she led the way into one of the saloons. The smell of cigarette smoke and Guinness was mixed with slight body odour and vomit from those who hadn’t made it outside. Aggie only managed a minute or so of breathing it in before she was making for the deck again.

And that was where she stayed until the boat docked in Liverpool. Even when the sleety rain began she stayed put, so by the time she was ready to disembark, she was wet to the skin. The women tutted over the state of her and said she would catch a chill if she wasn’t careful. Aggie hid her wry smile. Dear God, if that was all she had to worry about.

She continued to feel sick even when she had left the boat far behind and was in the train travelling down to Birmingham. She hadn’t thought to bring anything to eat, but didn’t feel like anything either, and when her companions offered to share their food with her she shook her head.

‘Thank you, but my stomach isn’t right yet.’

‘Might feel better with something in it.’

‘I don’t think so yet,’ Aggie said. ‘Maybe when we get to that place called Crewe. You say that we have to change trains there?’

‘Aye,’ one of the women told her. ‘It’s a regular stopping place. Nearly everyone has to change at Crewe and it has got a café on the station. And you’re right, you may well feel like something there.’

The only thing that Aggie really felt like, though, when she sat in the slightly smoky café at Crewe Station was a cup of hot sweet tea. She gulped at that gratefully as she gazed out on to the platform through grimy windows that were slightly misted over because of the teeming rain outside, and waited for the train to take her on the last leg of her journey.

She knew in her heart of hearts that the nausea and weakness she felt was more a sickness of the soul. With this behind her she would soon be fine and healthy once more. Then all she would have to cope with was the fact that she was alone in the world, and she’d not be the only one. They had foundlings enough at their own workhouse who had never known the love of a family and growing up among brothers and sisters. She imagined in a large city like Birmingham there would be plenty more and so she told herself firmly to stop feeling sorry for herself.

When she arrived at New Street Station, however, the sheer size and noise of the place unnerved her totally. The train pulled to a stop with a squeal of brakes and hiss of steam, and people spilled from the carriages onto the platform.

Everyone seemed to know where they were going, Aggie thought, sniffing at the damp and sooty air, surrounded by more people than she had ever seen in the whole of her life. The place was full of sound. Apart from the clatter of the trains
and the ear-splitting screech of the hooter, there was the tramp of feet and the noise of raucous voices raised in laughter or greeting.

Porters’ voices warning everyone to ‘Mind your backs, please’ rose above it all as they pushed laden trolleys through the milling crowds. Through this cacophony, a news vendor with a strident, though slightly nasal-sounding voice, shouted out in an attempt, Aggie supposed, to sell the newspapers spread before him, but she had to guess this because she couldn’t understand a single word that he said.

‘So where is your brother, dear?’ said one of her travelling companions. ‘We’ll stay with you till we see that you are all right.’

Aggie was filled with panic. They intended to wait with her till the brother she had invented should put in an appearance, and she looked around anxiously. There were still plenty of people around and, knowing that there was nothing else for it, she picked up her bag and said, ‘There he is, over by the steps. Thank you so much for looking after me.’ She was away before they could think to detain her, to insist they meet the fictitious brother and ascertain that Aggie was all right.

Aggie was soon hidden from their view by the crowds of people and she secreted herself behind a pillar and watched her travelling companions who were scrutinising the crowds going up the stairs closely. Then one gave a shrug and they turned their attention to their luggage scattered
around them on the platform. Aggie didn’t breathe easy, however, till they had left the platform altogether. Even then, she stayed where she was a little longer and the crowds had thinned out considerably when she slid out of her hiding place and made her way towards the exit as resolutely as she could.

If the station had unnerved Aggie slightly that was nothing to the way she felt when she stepped into the street outside. Rain was falling so heavily it was like a wall of water and turned the late afternoon to dusk. Lights were lit on many of the vehicles, which gleamed onto streets glistening with water.

Aggie stared, for she had never seen so many vehicles all packed together on the roads, even some of the new petrol-driven motor cars that she had heard tell of, but never seen. There were horse-drawn vans and carts thronging the streets, and hackney cabs were ringing the station, waiting for customers. The smell was incredible: acrid, sour and sooty. It lodged in the back of Aggie’s throat and made her cough. The noise was relentless: a constant drone mixed with the chattering and shouts of the people, the sound of boots and the clopping of horses’ hoofs on the cobbled streets.

And then Aggie saw a clattering, swaying monster coming towards her. It both repelled and fascinated her. She drew nearer for a better look
and saw that it ran on rails laid all along the road, while steam puffed from its funnel in front. It tore along at a furious rate, using its hooter constantly to warn people to get out of the way.