Anne Bennett - A Daughter’s Secret

The words seeped into Aggie’s addled brain and so did the realisation of what she had done. She knew it was the very worst sin a girl could commit, and she didn’t know how in the world she had allowed it to happen.

She tried to tell McAllister how she felt, but it was as if her brain and her mouth were unconnected, and he just laughed. She beat at him with her fists, but there was no power in the blows and he laughed again. But at least he rolled from on top of her and left Aggie shivering in abject fear and helplessness.

‘Cover yourself up, for Christ’s sake,’ he said almost harshly, pulling her to her feet. ‘Put your shawl around you at least.’

But Aggie seemed incapable of anything. She staggered and would have fallen had he not caught hold of her.

‘For Christ’s sake, get a grip on yourself.’

Aggie said nothing, but stood swaying and staring at McAllister until he picked up the shawl from the ground, saying as he did so, ‘Don’t look at me that way. You wanted it as much as I did and you can’t deny that now, can you?’

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.