A Daughter’s Secret

It was Levingstone – Mr Levingstone to any other than Lily – who provided the house the girls lived in. It was a large house, three-storeyed and terraced, and housed six. Each room was fairly basic, though some of the girls had put up ornaments or pictures to make it more homely.

Lily hadn’t done anything more than cover the oilcloth on the floor with a few rugs. Apart from that she had a bed and a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a large ottoman for spare linen. She was content.

As well as the sitting room, the girls shared a kitchen and a bathroom off it. They were very lucky: few prostitutes had such good accommodation. It wasn’t the only house that Levingstone managed, though; they were dotted around the city.

He also ran a club for selected male clients. The only girls in the place, apart from the maids in his own private quarters, had to be both young and beautiful, and the men could choose who was to entertain them for a few hours. Upstairs were the plush bedrooms, and Lily knew that working that way was much safer than being on the streets night after night.

Lily had been with Levingstone longer than most. They had grown up on the same street and so she had a little influence and she was sure she could convince him that Aggie could be an asset.

Tom often felt overwhelmed by what he had done. Whatever type of man McAllister was, he had killed him just as surely as if he had hit him with a lump of wood. It was all right Philomena saying that McAllister was no loss, she hadn’t done the deed, and she’d actually tried to stop him. What in God’s name had he been thinking about even to consider such a thing anyway? Hatred for McAllister had got in the way of reason and justice, and he really thought he should pay the price for that.

At home, if he had done anything wrong then he would be punished for it, sometimes severely. He had never protested because that was the way it was, but now he had done this very wrong thing, almost the worst thing one person can do to another, and nothing was going to happen to him.

Worse still, he was unable to confess it. The priest couldn’t speak of what was said in confession but he would know who Tom was and could seek him out later and maybe urge him to confess all to the police. Then everything would come out about Aggie and McAllister, and Philomena’s part in it. It would also be the end of his life, for if he wasn’t hanged he would probably be transported, and then how would his parents cope? They would be destroyed with shame by the actions of their children.

He shouldn’t attend Mass or take Communion while this mortal sin nestled in his soul, yet he knew full well he would never be excused Mass. Then if he didn’t go to the rails for Communion, it would be noted, and back at home the inquisition would start. He would have to go on as he was for years and years, every Sunday compounding that sin till his soul would be as black as coal. He tossed and turned in bed at night, unable to sleep, though his body was often weary and his eyes smarted with tiredness, until Joe would growl at him to keep still.

Small wonder he had nightmares. They were so bad that he was almost afraid to go to sleep at night and was sluggish throughout the rest of the day. Thomas John would often lose patience with him, and Tom could only hope that he would feel better when the man was buried.

However, on the day of the funeral, the whole town turned out to pay tribute to this ‘fine man’. Tom had hoped that the sister McAllister had spoken about would be there, and maybe, if the opportunity presented itself and he didn’t lose courage, he could ask her about Aggie. Philomena, though, told him Gwen would not be coming.

‘For myself I can’t stand the woman,’ she told Tom. ‘But I asked her for Bernie’s sake. The letter was returned marked “Not known at this address”, and I have no other way of letting her know about the funeral.’

‘Yes, but what does that mean for Aggie?’ Tom said. ‘I mean, was she moved someplace else when Aggie got there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Philomena said. ‘But you can do nothing about it so try not to worry. Believe me, the funeral will be enough of a strain for the two of us to go through.’

And it was, particularly in the room at the back of Grant’s Bar where the funeral party went after the Requiem Mass and the prayers intoned at the graveside. Tom listened in amazement to the varied tales the men told about McAllister’s exploits and the women who shed tears over the grand figure of a man taken in his prime like that. Tom realised that once a person dies, he becomes a saint.

He found it all very hard to stomach. When they began to commiserate with Philomena on her tragic loss and go on about what a good husband and father he was, Tom reckoned that he had heard enough and he slipped outside.

Philomena saw him go and went out after him as soon as she was able to.

‘All right?’ she asked.

Instead of answering, Tom burst out, ‘How do you stand it, Philomena?’

‘Stand what?’

‘Look,’ Tom said, ‘you may as well know that there is seldom an hour goes by when I don’t feel guilty at the death of your husband. Yes, I meant to harm him, but not kill him, and I wish it hadn’t happened to him. But the way they go on in there is just sickening. He was not the great man they are describing and lamenting the loss of.’

‘You’re right, he wasn’t,’ Philomena agreed placidly. ‘No great shakes at being a good husband and father either.’

‘So doesn’t it make you feel mad inside when they go on and on, talking about a man neither of us recognises?’

‘People are people the world over,’ Philomena said. ‘Many are nervous about speaking ill of the dead, thinking – oh, I don’t know – that they may come back and haunt them or something, I suppose. It’s easy for people like that to remember only the good times, and Bernie could be the life and soul of any gathering.’

‘I know that, but—’

‘Words are easy to speak, Tom,’ Philomena said. ‘I know the real Bernie McAllister, but that man’s body is lying in a coffin in a graveyard and cannot hurt me or bring disgrace on me or mine ever again, so I will keep my own counsel. In a while, I’ll sell the shop and move away from here, and start afresh where no one knows us. I’ll bring my children up on my own, which I have been doing since the day they were born anyway. And you, Tom, must forget that day Bernie died and forget you had a hand in it.’

‘I can’t!’ Tom cried. ‘I took a man’s life, whichever way you look at it.’

‘Aye, you did,’ Philomena said. ‘And thank God for it, for he wrecked so many young girls’ lives and would have gone on and on doing that if he had lived. I tell you, Tom, you did the world a favour. Now you think on that and then put all this behind you, for you have your whole life to live yet. I must go back in now before I am missed.’

Tom watched Philomena go back to join the party and thought about the things she had said to him. He knew she had spoken wisely. He accepted that he had helped kill a man, and yet all the regret in the world would not alter that fact. So, he had to either do his damnedest to put it all behind him now, or let it eat away inside him till he was destroyed too. He mentally squared his shoulders and followed Philomena.

Ten days after Aggie first felt well enough to get up, Mr Levingstone agreed to take a look at her and was even more interested when Lily told him she could do Irish dancing. She had found out by accident as Aggie let it slip to her one night and she had gone on to tell the five girls that she shared the house with. They, of course, wanted to see this for themselves and as one of them had a gramophone, as soon as Lily deemed Aggie strong enough, they sallied forth to buy the records with the dance tunes that she knew.

Aggie herself wasn’t too keen on this. Every time she thought of that night in December, she felt sick and she knew that it was her love of the Irish dancing that had led in the end to the attack. If she had never been to classes to learn, then she would, in all likelihood, be still be at home now with her parents and her brothers and baby sister. She agreed to demonstrate her dancing only to please Lily, yet when she heard the familiar strains of the jigs and reels fill the air, she felt her toes curling with anticipation.

And when she began to dance a skip jig in the bare feet that she was used to, all nervousness left her. It was as if she was an extension of the music. The girls sat spellbound watching her, and the applause at the end was spontaneous and heartfelt. Aggie was pleased though she flushed with embarrassment.

‘My God, girl, Levingstone will snap you up,’ Lily said when they went back into the room for Lily to change to take to the streets again. ‘He would be mad not to. He would be sitting on a bleeding gold mine.’

Aggie made a face and Lily rapped out, ‘Don’t look like that. Let me tell you, girl, it will be a sight more respectable than what I do.’

Aggie remembered asking McAllister, rather primly, if there had been no ordinary jobs that people could do. She had known nothing then, and it had been Lily that had put her right to the true situation when she had suggested looking for a job.

‘Where was you thinking of looking, ducks?’

‘I thought of work in service somewhere,’ Aggie had said. ‘It’s all I know really.’

‘Listen, bab,’ Lily replied, ‘you won’t be taken into service or any other place respectable without references.’

Aggie could see that now – see that and understand it as well – but still she asked, ‘What am I to do?’ The silence spoke volumes. ‘I … c-couldn’t do what you do,’ she stammered.

‘That surely would depend on how hungry you get,’ Lily snapped.

‘Don’t be offended.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Lily said. ‘I bring you in and look after you, put food on the table and get coal for the fire to prevent us freezing to death, and you look down on me. The money you brought is almost gone, so what’re you going to live on then, fresh air?’

‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Time you grew up, girl,’ Lily said. ‘Think I chose this life? You think when I was a nipper at school I thought, when I grow up I’m going to be a prostitute? Tell you why I did it, girl. I lost my parents to typhoid and there was just me and my little brothers. I was thirteen, and it was either me go onto the streets, the only thing that would pay enough to keep us, or throw ourselves on the mercy of them at the workhouse. Course, I didn’t know the least thing about how to go about it then, and I was terribly frightened. The first man I propositioned was Levingstone.’

‘Did you do anything with him?’

‘Yeah, I did,’ Lily said almost defiantly. ‘He was kind, though, and gentle, and yet I felt dirty – filthy, in fact. When he had gone, I vomited into the gutter. But he paid well. He came again the next night and the next, and each time I vomited. Then he asked if I wanted to work for him, but he didn’t have management of the clubs then. As a sort of extra payment, and because we had been neighbours, he looked after my brothers too, saw them through school and that, and later paid their passage to America. And I became one of his whores. There weren’t no choice really, and that was it. I stopped being sick in the end, though I never liked it and don’t now. That’s why I drink so much. We all do. And we take the opium ’cos it blurs the edges a bit.’