A Daughter’s Secret

‘She’ll die if we don’t bring her in, like.’

‘Oh, Lily, for God’s sake!’ Susie exclaimed. ‘She’s probably just some old drunk and no loss if she does peg it.’

‘There weren’t no smell of booze off her.’

‘And just how could you be so sure of that?’ Susie said sarcastically. ‘Your breath is so gin-laden it is nearly knocking me back.’

‘All right, but this isn’t about me.’

‘All the same …’

‘For Christ’s sake, just come and look, will you?’ Lily cried. ‘It won’t take you a minute. It’s no distance from here.’

‘You’re a bloody nuisance, do you know that?’ Susie grumbled, getting up and shoving her feet into her still-damp boots. ‘Pass me my coat, you old nuisance, and if this is some wild-goose chase—’

‘It isn’t. I just know it isn’t.’

A few minutes later, Susie knew it wasn’t either. ‘She’s just a bit of a kid,’ she said, looking at Aggie in the light of the matches she had thought to bring with her. ‘Let’s get her inside quick. Your room would be best, as it’s on the ground floor.’

‘Yes, I suppose,’ Lily said. ‘She can have my bed as well for now at least.’

‘Can’t put her on the bed yet, though, Lil,’ Susie said, as between them they lifted Aggie’s inert body. ‘Her’s wringing wet.’

‘Can’t leave her on the bare boards either,’ Lily said. ‘Do her no bloody good at all, that.’

They manhandled her as gently as they could into the house and then into Lily’s fairly spartan bedroom.

‘Leave her down on the floor a minute while I get a blanket off the bed to lay her on,’ Lily said to Susie. Lily set light to the fire that she had laid before she left the house that evening.

‘I should take off her coat first,’ Susie advised. ‘It’s that wet, the blanket will be sodden in minutes.’

Lily saw the sense of that and it was as they eased Aggie’s coat off they realised that the moisture was not just water; some of it was blood running from her in a scarlet stream and covering her dress.

‘Almighty Christ!’

‘Where’s it coming from?’

‘God alone knows,’ Lily said grimly, ‘but we need to find out.’

‘Come on, then,’ Susie urged. ‘And quick. This young girl looks in a bad way to me.’

When they removed the last of Aggie’s soaked and bloodstained underclothes they realised the blood was pumping from inside her and the two women looked at one another.

‘God blimey, she’s miscarrying!’ Susie cried.

‘Aye, poor sod,’ Lily said sadly. ‘And if we’re not careful we’ll lose her as well as her babby.’

‘You’re right there, Lil. I’ll get some towels.’

They used the towels to pack around Aggie and then Susie rubbed at her shivering body, trying to bring life to it. Aggie’s eyes never opened, though she stopped shivering, and Lily wrapped her in the second dry blanket she had ready and moved her nearer to the fire. ‘Now, we’ve made her as comfortable as we can,’ she said. ‘I reckon that babby will come away before long.’

The two women sat on into the night, talking quietly together, near the crackling fire. Aggie was hot now, very hot, and Lily knew she had a fever. She sponged her down constantly, listening to her laboured breathing and watching the grimaces of pain flit across her face.

It was two in the morning before Aggie expelled the tiny foetus from her body and by that time both Lily and Susie were very tired. Lily washed Aggie down with warmed water she had ready and then put one of her own nightdresses on her. With Susie’s help she lifted her onto the bed. She packed her with fresh towels and then raised the bottom of the bed with bricks that Susie had found in the yard to try to prevent her haemorrhaging. Aggie didn’t regain consciousness.

By the morning the sweating had eased and Aggie’s face had returned to a more normal colour. The fever had broken and Lily breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Come on,’ Susie said. ‘I’m fair jiggered, but I will give you a hand hauling down one of the mattresses from the attic because you will never manage it alone.’

Lily was glad of Susie’s offer, for she had thought to just curl up on a rug. It wouldn’t really matter where she lay, she thought, as they struggled to bring the mattress down the stairs, because she was so tired she could have gone to sleep on a clothesline.

‘Where d’you want it?’ Susie asked as they pulled it into the room.

‘Right beside the bed,’ Lily said, ‘so I will be on hand if I am needed. And you best seek your bed before you fall to the floor in sheer weariness.’

Susie went thankfully. Lily turned to the girl on the bed. She noted her face was as white as the sheets Lily had pulled up to her chin, and her dark brown hair, released from her plaits, was fanned out on the pillow.

‘Who are you, bab?’ Lily murmured almost to herself. ‘And what man did the dirty on you, eh? Susie is right, you are very young.’

She didn’t expect an answer – the girl was still unconscious – and with another sigh she got to her feet, made up the mattress and undressed before slipping between the covers and falling into a deep sleep.

In a small cottage in Ireland the previous morning Tom rose to help with the milking with a heavy heart. He had been in his bed just about an hour and a half and he had no enthusiasm to face the day, for concern for Aggie was like a large knot of worry inside him. Added to this, he had to pretend he knew nothing about her disappearance in the night.

Biddy was annoyed that Aggie had not done her jobs that morning. Thinking that she had overslept, she told Joe, pounding through the house to join his brother and father in the cowshed, to rouse Aggie.

‘I can’t. Aggie isn’t there, Mammy,’ Joe said.

‘Not there?’ Biddy echoed, going in to see for herself. Aggie’s bed was empty. Biddy could only presume that she had risen early and gone off on pursuits of her own. She herself had to complete the jobs Aggie usually did and she remarked to Thomas John that the girl would get the rough edge of her tongue when she did return. Thomas John, however, remembered his daughter’s strange behaviour the previous day and warned her not to be too harsh on the girl.

‘Maybe she wasn’t feeling too well this morning and needed to walk in the fresh air a wee while,’ Thomas John went on. ‘Generally, you must admit she has never given you any bother.’

‘No,’ Biddy conceded. ‘In the main, she is a good girl.’

‘Well, then,’ Thomas John said, ‘let her have a few minutes to herself and I’m sure she will be full of apology and explanation when she does come home.’

She didn’t come home, though, that was the problem, and with the milking over Tom and Joe were sent to scour the farm lest Aggie had fallen and hurt herself. By the time they returned, Biddy had checked her room, found her things missing and knew she had run away.

‘But where would she run to and why?’ Thomas John asked.

‘The why we can go into when she is brought back,’ Biddy commented grimly. ‘As for where, well sure there is nowhere but Buncrana, for the girl knows no one beyond, and has no money. Tom, as soon as dinner is eaten I want you to go into Buncrana and ask around her friends and all. Be discreet. I don’t want the Garda alerted yet. I am sure she will be found in no time at all.’

Tom knew she wouldn’t be. If all had gone to plan she would now be on her way to Birmingham. Hatred for McAllister, who had forced this course of action on his sister, deepened still further. Though he knew it was fruitless Tom played the part and asked around. When he returned Thomas John insisted on informing the Garda and two officers came to the cottage that evening.

They were grim-faced but reassuring. ‘You’d not be up on what the young are at at all, at all,’ the older man said, ‘but as she has no money and no place to go, we’ll soon pick her up, never fear.’

‘There were gypsies camping not that far away for a few days,’ the younger garda said.

‘I hope you are not suggesting that my daughter has run away to gypsies?’ Biddy asked, affronted.