Anne Bennett - A Daughter’s Secret

The teaching of the tunes was done in the children’s own homes and the payment for this was usually in the shape of a bottle of poteen, which was distilled in the hills of Donegal. It never seemed to affect McAllister’s ability to teach, however much he drank, and he rode from farm to farm on the horse that was also used to pull the cart for the shop.

Philomena once said to Biddy that half the time she didn’t know how he made it home and it was a good thing his horse knew the way. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to find him fallen into a ditch somewhere one day, having slid from the horse’s back.

Biddy knew exactly what Philomena meant, for the man had often been well away when he left their house. If she ever complained about this, however, Thomas John would always maintain there was no harm in the man, that he just had a terrible thirst on him.

Aggie thought there was no harm in him either. In fact she thought him wonderful and strove in all ways to please him. With her love of dancing she soon progressed, and after she had been at it a year McAllister declared her a gifted little dancer. Soon after this, he asked her and Cissie to go for extra lessons on Wednesday evenings, to which Thomas John readily agreed.

He was delighted with McAllister. Tom had got on so well with the tin whistle that Joe had asked to learn too, and Tom had begun to learn the fiddle. Each week, McAllister would listen to them playing the tune he had taught them the previous week, which he expected them to master before he would teach them another. They soon had a fair collection of material and would often entertain their parents in the long winter evenings. They would play for Aggie too, and she would roll back the rugs and dance on the flagged floor of the cottage, her brown eyes flashing, her dark brown plaits bouncing to each side and her feet fair flying along. Afterwards her cheeks would be flushed and pink, and Tom realised with some surprise one day that Aggie was very pretty.

Afterwards, those pictures would often come back to haunt Tom. They were a time of innocent pleasure that would never return – before his life and Aggie’s were touched by evil.

As Aggie began to develop, her infatuation for McAllister grew stronger. In her own home, as he taught her brothers, she was able to study everything about him, like his fine head of hair, so black it sometimes shone blue in the lamplight. He had wonderful masculine hands too, with a dusting of hairs on the backs of them, and long and very flexible fingers with square nails. She watched the movement of his mouth, with his fine, full lips, listening to the lilting timbre of his voice and the way he threw his head back when he laughed, as he did often.

Tom wondered if Aggie knew that her eyes went all dopey and dreamy in this scrutiny of McAllister. It worried him slightly, though he barely knew why, and he hoped that the man himself had never noticed.

But, of course he had, and it pleased him greatly to have a young, nubile girl lusting after him. As yet she was but a child, anxious to please him and do things for him. When she was a little older, maybe he would see just how far she would go in pleasing him, for she was turning out to be a very fetching little thing.

Not long after Aggie had passed her fourteenth birthday, Biddy announced to the family that she was having another baby. She was unaccountably excited about this pregnancy, different from the way she had felt about the others. At first she said Aggie had to give up the dancing for she would need her full help in the house. It was Thomas John who said she needn’t do that.

‘Sure, it is the only place she goes, unless you count Mass. It doesn’t take her out of the house much all told, and the girl needs some distraction.’

Biddy never argued with Thomas John, the only person that she ever listened to and took heed of. Aggie knew that, and she gave a sigh of relief at her father’s words and hugged herself with delight.

Her little sister was born on a blustery day in February 1900 when the wind howled so fiercely around the cottage, it sounded like a creature in torment. It rattled the windows and caused the fire to splutter and smoke. All that ceased to matter to Aggie as she held in her arms the little sister that she had helped the midwife bring into the world. She felt a special bond with her. She was overwhelmed when Biddy asked her if she would like to be the child’s godmother, and the baby was christened Nuala Mary when she was less than two weeks old.

The whole family was charmed by that one small baby – even wee Finn, who would spend hours just gazing at her.

‘Don’t you try lifting her out of there,’ Biddy said to her small son one day, catching him by the side of the crib.

Finn looked quite astonished that his mother might think he had such a notion. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I might hurt her.’

‘You could well,’ Biddy said grimly. ‘And that goes for you too, Tom and Joe. Don’t you two be thinking of playing with her, for you are too big and too rough altogether.’

Tom thought his mother didn’t need to say that to him. He had left school now and was at work full time alongside his father. With his hands chapped and callused he wouldn’t touch the child at all, and as for holding her, she was so petite and delicate-looking, he would be afraid that she would break.

‘They are stronger than you think,’ Aggie told him one day when he said this.

She was lifting the child as she spoke and Tom marvelled at the easy way she did this. She laughed, but gently, at the look on his face. ‘It’s easier for a woman,’ she said. ‘And that’s how it must be, of course, for I will probably have my own weans one day.’

‘Aye, and meanwhile you are mooning after him, McAllister …’

Aggie flushed with embarrassment and guilt but she denied the accusation vehemently. ‘I am not.’

‘Yes you are,’ Tom maintained. ‘You just be glad that Mammy hasn’t noticed.’

‘There’s nothing to notice,’ Aggie said heatedly. ‘This is all in your imagination.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Tom said. ‘And for the life of me I don’t see what the attraction is. He is an old man and a well-married one too.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Aggie said, and as Tom shook his head at her, Aggie hid a smile. At home she was just good old Aggie to her father and brothers, and an extra pair of hands to her mother, especially now, and her life one of boring drudgery.

Twice a week she was Agnes Sullivan, talked and listened to as if she wasn’t a child any more, especially when she attended the special Wednesday evening dancing classes with Cissie. And that was all down to McAllister. He wasn’t exactly old either – not like her daddy was old, anyway – but he was mature. The lines on his face just added to his character, and he had the darkest brown eyes. But what was the point of saying any of that to her brother? He’d laugh himself silly if she tried.

Of course, when he was in the farmhouse, teaching her brothers or drinking with her father, he had to be far more proper towards her, seeming to know without her having to say anything that her parents wouldn’t like any sort of familiarity. If he addressed her at all, he called her ‘Aggie’ and she called him ‘Mr McAllister’, but on Saturday, after the younger children had left, and especially on Wednesday evening, she was Agnes and he was Bernie. He also kissed her and Cissie on the cheek when the class was over, making them blush at first, before they began to enjoy it, but the two girls were sensible enough to say nothing about this at home.

Aggie did daydream about Bernie McAllister sometimes, and her nights too were punctuated with fantasies about him. Sometimes, she would imagine that he would hold her in his arms and kiss her properly. She had no idea what a proper kiss was; she just knew people seemed to hold great store by it, as a sign that one person liked another. She never allowed herself to go further than that kiss, though, and yet in the morning she would be ashamed of herself. She never even whispered these thoughts and dreams to Cissie, fearing she would be shocked.