A Daughter’s Secret

Aggie shook her head but it seemed to be filled with cotton wool and she couldn’t form any words. She could remember the sexual act, though. It seemed etched in sharp relief on her brain and she imagined it always would be.

‘And whatever you think now, it was bloody marvellous,’ McAllister said, ‘in fact so good that if you don’t get dressed soon, I may begin all over again.’

Those words sent Aggie scrambling for her torn dress, though McAllister had to help her put it on. She was able to put on her own knickers but the stockings befuddled her altogether until she gave up on them and, holding them in her hand, pushed her bare feet into her boots.

McAllister tucked the shawl around Aggie’s shivering frame and said, ‘Will you be all right from here?’

Aggie looked at him wordlessly. She was having trouble standing and didn’t know if she would be able to put one foot before the other, but McAllister seemed interested only in himself.

‘Philomena will be wondering,’ he said, as if he had just remembered that he had a wife.

Aggie wanted to beg him not to leave her drunk and alone, and to give her some idea how she was going to get into the house unseen, or tell her what tale she could tell her mother to explain any of this, but she knew she could never manage to say any these things.

She could hardly believe it when McAllister just melted into the night and left her totally alone and so drunk she had trouble standing up. She wanted to call to him to come back and not abandon her in this way, and she actually tried to follow him, but her legs buckled, she fell to her knees and wept.

When McAllister reached home, Philomena, worn out by four weans to see to and a grocery store to run, had taken herself off to bed. She had left the lamp on low and, as McAllister turned the wick up to throw more light into the room, she woke from her semi-doze and watched him undress through narrowed eyes.

He had a look on his face that she had seen before, like a cat that has had the cream. As he nipped out the lamp and slipped in beside her she smelled the sex on him, even overriding the ever-present smell of poteen.

She felt her heart plummet to her boots and wondered who had had his attention that night. She knew it was his night for taking the two older girls and hoped to God it wasn’t one of those he had taken down. Dear Christ, they were little more than children, and neighbours into the bargain.

She would confront him – ask him outright. But what would that achieve? She knew he would deny it and she would get angry and so would he, and the shouts and roars of them might waken and frighten the weans and resolve nothing …

However, McAllister had noted her slight movements. ‘You awake, Phil?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, now don’t be like that,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Isn’t this your darling husband, come to give you a bit of loving before we both settle down for the night?’

Philomena gave a shiver of distaste, knowing her ‘darling husband’ had just come from a sexual encounter with another. ‘Not tonight, Bernie. I am tired, so I am,’ she said.

‘Tired be damned, woman,’ McAllister snapped angrily, grabbing for her. ‘You are my wife.’

‘Aye, poor foolish sod that I am,’ Philomena might have said. But she didn’t. She knew him well and felt his tension like a coiled spring that night. If she were to inflame him in that state she might well come off the worst for it. Instead, with a sigh, she submitted to him and, after pawing and groping at her, he had his way, as she had known he would.

Fully satisfied, he had fallen asleep almost immediately. Philomena listened to his even breathing and felt so degraded that she cried herself to sleep.

Tom was concerned. Aggie was usually home long before this and he wondered if some accident had befallen her. He couldn’t go and look for her because he was alone in the house, apart from Nuala and Finn, in their beds and fast asleep, and he couldn’t leave them unattended.

His father had left just after evening milking. He had closed a deal on a bull that afternoon and had gone off to Buncrana to seal the sale over a few pints, as was the custom. Tom knew from experience he wouldn’t be back for hours yet.

His mother, though, could be in at any time, for she had gone to help a neighbour who was having a baby. Aggie wasn’t long out of the house when the Lannigans’ eldest boy came over and said his mammy was took bad and had been like it all the day. Biddy knew she was expecting but the baby wasn’t due for a few weeks yet.

‘I must go up and see what’s what,’ she had said to Tom, ‘for all I’d like to seek my own fireside this night. Sadie’s man is away in England working and she has three weans to see to. I’ll take Joe with me in case I have to send for the doctor. You wait here with the wee ones until Aggie comes home.’

But Aggie hadn’t come home and if she didn’t return before her mother, she would probably feel the sting of the bamboo cane kept by the side of the fireplace.

Tom crossed to the window and looked out. He was almost certain he saw a shape at the head of the lane and it certainly wasn’t his mother, who would in all probability come across the fields anyway as that had been the way she had gone. It must be Aggie. Then why didn’t she just come on down to the house?

Sudden apprehension that something was very wrong caused the hairs on the back of Tom’s neck to rise. He took his jacket from behind the door and left the house.

Aggie had eventually pulled herself up by holding on to the hedges. She ached all over and the pain between her legs was almost unbearable. Shambling and unsteady, she slowly made her way forward by holding on to the bushes, though she fell to her knees more than once.

At last she stood unsteadily at the head of the lane, looking down on the cottage where the lamp shone brightly in the window. She didn’t know what to do next. Only one thing was certain and that was that her mother would beat the living daylights out of her when she saw the state of her. Her insides crawled with fear of going home and of not going home, and tears seeped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

When Aggie saw Tom appear before her it was as if her last vestige of strength oozed out of her and she sank to the ground with an anguished cry.

‘Oh, Tom!’

‘What is it, Aggie?’ Tom cried, going forward, and then he was nearly knocked back by the smell of poteen. He recoiled and gasped almost in disbelief, ‘Aggie, have you been drinking?’

Aggie nodded and, concentrating hard, she said, ‘Lots.’

Her words were slurred and indistinct, but Tom understood and he was shocked to the core that his elder sister was in such a state. She clutched at him and began to cry.

‘Hush, Aggie. Come on now,’ he said almost impatiently.

‘But he took me down, Tom.’

‘Ssh,’ said Tom, looking about anxiously. Words carried in the night air and those were not words to be said where any might overhear. He hoped to God it wasn’t true, that it was the ramblings of a girl in the throes of drink, but a dead weight seemed to settle in his stomach. ‘Come on, let’s get you up to the house,’ he said.

‘I can’t, Tom. Mammy will—’

‘Mammy isn’t there,’ Tom said and, in an attempt at light-heartedness added, ‘You have chosen the right evening to go on a bender. There is only me and the wee ones home because Mammy is at Sadie Lannigan’s, as she was took bad, and she took Joe along with her. So let’s away in before they are back and you can tell me all. Can you walk if I support you?’

Tom almost carried Aggie, and was very glad to reach the cottage and lower her gently into a chair. There he surveyed his sister properly and gasped with horror. He noted the slack mouth and vacant eyes of the very drunk, but he also saw that the eyes had been blacked – by someone’s fist, by the look of things – and tear trails were visible on her cheeks, mixed with dried blood smeared across her face. Her shawl was earth-stained, her dress ripped so that it was almost indecent. He saw too that her legs were bare and that her knees were grazed and had been bleeding. There were two deep scratches the length of her legs and she held her stockings screwed up in her hand.

He could barely speak he was so angry, but he was also not quite sure what to do. He knew before all else he had to try to sober her up so that she could tell him who had hurt her, but he was terrified that any minute his mother would burst through the door. If she saw Aggie in this state she would surely kill her.

He brought Aggie a drink of water from the bucket by the door and gave it to her because it was all he could think of. She drained it thankfully and he brought her another. Again Aggie took the cup and drained it.

Then Tom said, ‘Who did this to you?’

There was no point in lying. Aggie looked at her brother steadily. ‘Bernie McAllister.’

Her words were indistinct and little above a whisper, but Tom understood her and felt himself burn inside. He was just a boy and so he said to Aggie, ‘Daddy will trounce him when he hears this.’

‘Tom, Daddy is to know nothing,’ Aggie said, clutching his arm. All the way home, the one coherent thought in her head was that she had to keep silent about the whole thing. She knew McAllister would say she was willing and then she would be the one being trounced.

‘He has to know,’ Tom insisted. ‘Didn’t he bash your face up and all?’

Aggie nodded. ‘He made me drink. He held my nose.’

‘Well, then. If you tell Daddy that …’

Aggie’s heart began to jump about in panic. She knew she had to make Tom see the reason for secrecy. She concentrated and said, ‘McAllister will say I took the drink of my own free will, and that I was more than willing for sex, and they will believe him,’ she said sadly. ‘You know they will.’

Aggie didn’t understand herself why a stranger was believed over a family’s own flesh and blood, but that’s how it was. It always seemed to be the woman’s fault. She knew the cruelty of McAllister now. A man who could make her drunk so she was incapable of preventing him violating her, and then abandon her in the dark and freezing cold when she had been barely able to stand, would have no qualms in telling everyone the wanton that Aggie had become that night.

She could almost hear him say that she had become addled with the drink she had begged from him and had offered her body for sex and enjoyed it as much as he had. She knew once he told this tale, faster than the speed of light she would be locked up in one of the convents for bad girls that she was supposed to know nothing about.

Tom was still shaking his head. He couldn’t understand this. In his book, you did wrong and you were punished. That was how things worked.

‘It’s wrong that he should get away scot-free,’ he said.

‘I am not prepared to run the risk of telling our parents, are you?’ Aggie asked bitterly.

Tom looked into Aggie’s eyes and saw the fear there, and even understood some of it. He shook his head; he felt completely helpless. He said, ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea, Aggie? I have the water boiling and people say it’s good for shock.’

Aggie gave a sigh. ‘That would be good,’ she said. ‘And then I need a bowl of warm water. I need to wash all over.’

‘I will fetch your nightdress from the room,’ Tom said, ‘and then sit in there until you are done. But be quick. Mammy may be in any minute.’

With Tom out of the way, Aggie began to wash herself as fast as she could from head to foot, dabbing at the bruises on her face and legs but being more fierce altogether with the dried blood on the inside of her legs. Once ensconced in her nightdress, and with a cup of tea inside her, Aggie felt a little calmer though she could still feel her heart thumping.

She said to Tom, ‘I think it will be better if I am in bed when they all come back, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Tom said fervently. ‘I’ll say you were feeling badly and you pretend to be asleep whether you are or not, and face the wall so Mammy won’t catch sight of your face.’

‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Jesus, haven’t we enough to worry about today?’ Tom said. ‘Let tomorrow look after itself.’ And then as Aggie still hovered, he urged, ‘Go on, get yourself away. I’ll clear up here.’

‘All right,’ Aggie agreed, getting to her feet. ‘Thank you, Tom, for all you have done. There is just one more favour I must ask of you.’ She lifted her ruined dress from the floor as she spoke. ‘Will you burn this? It wouldn’t do for Mammy to catch sight of it.’

Later, before Tom thrust the dress into the fire, he examined it and gave a low whistle. He imagined a lust-driven Bernie McAllister tearing it from his sister and was angry that he would go unpunished. He shook his head, for hadn’t they already been down that road? To protect Aggie they both had to stay silent. He pushed the dress into the fire, poking at it almost savagely until the flames had devoured every vestige of it.

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