A Daughter’s Secret

‘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.

THREE (#ulink_1419bac2-dc36-514e-b2b2-cd4f042ed3de)

Biddy came in with Joe about an hour after Aggie had gone into the room, bringing in the cold of the night and declaring that Sadie Lannigan had given birth to a baby girl and though the newborn was small, both she and her mother were thriving.

‘Sadie roared so loud I was sure all those in the six counties would have heard her,’ Biddy said. ‘And in the end nothing would do her but she had the doctor, and I sent Joe to fetch him. I hope her man earns well, wherever he is, because the doctor doesn’t come cheap. Anyway, when the doctor came, I sent Joe to Buncrana to fetch up the woman’s mother-in-law to see to her. Sadie doesn’t care for the woman, I know that, but as I said to her, the woman is family after all and I have my own bed to go home to.’ She looked around the room at this point and said, ‘Where’s Aggie? Don’t say she’s not in yet?’

‘Oh, aye, Mammy,’ Tom said. ‘She has been in this long while, but said she was feeling badly and she went to bed.’

Biddy’s lips curled in annoyance. She was quite astounded that Aggie had taken herself off to bed without waiting to see if her mother might have need of her. She took one of the lamps and went into the room, intending to give the girl a telling-off at least, and possibly rouse her from the bed altogether.

However, Aggie, worn out by the events of that night and the unaccustomed alcohol, was in a deep sleep, her body just a hump in the bed, so little of her was visible. Biddy cast her eyes around the room and they softened as they lighted on her youngest child slumbering peacefully in the crib beside her sister’s bed. Biddy knew Nuala would be the last. She had told Thomas John there was to be no more of that carry-on now.

When she had held her baby daughter in her arms that blustery day in February, she had felt a rush of maternal love that she had never felt before. She didn’t understand it herself, for she was no great lover of children, but she knew at that moment she would have laid down her life for that child.

She felt her to be a true gift from God and vowed that this child would not be worked to death either, or have her childhood over before it had begun. That was Aggie’s lot in life, but it was not for this perfect little being.

However, it had been the presence of Nuala in her room that saved Aggie that night, because Biddy would not risk disturbing the baby by trying to wake her sister and decided that she would leave any upbraiding till the morning. She came from the room, saying as she did so, ‘She is fast off. By, she will get the length of my tongue tomorrow.’

Tom let out the breath he had been holding. It was audible only to Joe, and Tom saw his brother’s eyes narrow quizzically, but he knew he would say nothing in front of his mother. Once in the bedroom he would give him some tale to satisfy.

He turned to his mother and said, ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea, Mammy? You must be perished.’

Aggie woke up in a lather of sweat, the bedclothes in a tangle around her and a thousand hammers thumping in her head. Her throat felt raw and she opened her bleary eyes as Tom came into the room on his way to the byre to milk the cows. Aggie was usually up by then too.

‘What’s up?’ Tom said, but quietly, mindful of the sleeping baby, and Joe still dressing in the other room.

‘I feel awful, Tom,’ Aggie said, her voice a mere croak.

Tom lifted the lamp he was holding and looked at his sister. She did look bad. Her bloodshot eyes were screwed up against the light and Tom saw the blackening underneath them was less noticeable as her face was brick red and glistening with sweat.

‘My head aches terribly and my throat is so sore,’ Aggie told him.

‘You likely have a hangover,’ Tom whispered. ‘I have never experienced one myself, but I hear tell you often feel powerfully bad the next day and everyone speaks of the aching head. Even Daddy has had it a time or two, I know.’

‘Does it get better?’

‘Oh, aye,’ Tom said confidently. ‘You’ll be as right as rain by and by.’

‘Well, that’s as may be, but I can’t get up just now,’ Aggie moaned. ‘I would be sick if I tried it. Could … could you get me a drink of water, Tom?’

‘Aye,’ Tom agreed sympathetically. ‘I’ll tell Mammy too, shall I?’

Aggie shuddered. Facing her mother was what she feared, but she knew she would have to cope with that eventually so she said, ‘Aye, Tom, if you will.’

Tom had no need to tell his mother. She put her head round the bed curtain, saw Tom dipping a cup into the pail of water by the door and demanded to know what he was doing.

‘It’s for Aggie, she’s badly,’ he said.

‘What nonsense is this?’ Biddy snapped, struggling from the bed. ‘Leave down the cup. Be away you and help your father, and I will see to Aggie.’

Biddy saw, as Tom had, that Aggie was far from well, though she put the discolouring under her eyes down to lack of sleep when Aggie professed that she had tossed and turned half the night. She gave her the water and Aggie gulped at it eagerly, but almost immediately brought it back up again, though fortunately Biddy had seen it coming and had whipped the chamber pot from under the bed just in time.

That was just one of many times that Aggie was sick that day, though she ate nothing at all. By evening, despite Tom predicting she would feel better, she felt worse.

‘Maybe we should have the doctor in?’ Thomas John said.

‘I don’t think we need to bother the doctor yet,’ Biddy answered. ‘I will bathe her down just now with cool water and likely she’ll be better by morning.’

Aggie was not better, though – much worse in fact. She had developed a racking cough and was semidelirious. Tom, who had never heard of anyone who had had a hangover for two days, was worried for his sister, and so was his mother when he called her in. There was no question now but that the doctor had to be called.

‘Measles,’ he declared, after examining Aggie. ‘And a bad case, I’d say. Mind you, half the town has been coming down with it and they will likely infect the rest. It spreads like wildfire and so it will probably go round the whole family now. Might as well get it all over with, anyway. The older they are when they get it, usually the worse they are. As for Aggie, keep bathing her in tepid water to get the temperature down. I can make up something at the surgery to help there, and something for the cough too if Tom or Joe will come and fetch it. She probably won’t eat much, but give her plenty of fluids and keep the lamps turned low and the curtains drawn.’

By the next day, despite the doctor’s medication and Biddy bathing her down, Aggie was raving. The sheets were damp with sweat, the coughing shook her whole body and the rash had broken out that day too. Aggie was ill for over three weeks. Christmas had come and gone by the time she was in any way recovered. By then, the clothes hung on her frame gaunt from lack of food, and her legs were shaky and slightly wasted. Finn and Nuala had succumbed and she helped nurse them, though both recovered much quicker than she had.

The little ones weren’t right over it when Tom and then his father caught it. Aggie was run off her feet tending to them and helping Joe with the jobs around the farm, until he too was taken sick. With the whole family ill, Aggie had no time to reflect for any length of time on the night she was raped, although she was relieved not to have to see Bernie McAllister, not sure at all how she would treat him when they did eventually meet.

She made one important decision, however: she was finished with the dancing. She would tell her mother she was tired of it. She knew Biddy wouldn’t mind. She had said more than once that Aggie was too old to be prancing about the place when she could be such a help at home.

When her mother too became ill, Aggie’s life grew harder still and she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. Tom and her father were nowhere near better, but at the very least the cows had to be milked twice a day. Then there was the house to tend, the others to nurse, and Finn and wee Nuala to see to as well.

All in all, January had drawn to a close and February begun before the house regained a sense of normality. It was the middle of the month, just after Nuala’s first birthday when Aggie realised she hadn’t seen her monthlies for some time. She had been due the middle of December, a week after the incident with Bernie McAllister, and when it didn’t happen, if she had thought of it at all, she put the absence down to how ill she had been. In January she had been too busy to give any mind to it at all. But now, in February, she faced the dread possibility that she was carrying Bernie McAllister’s child and she was filled with horror and shame.

Only a few days later, Biddy now up and about, at last missed the dress Aggie had asked Tom to destroy. Aggie knew her mother would miss it – she hadn’t that many clothes that she could lose any of them – and she had no option but to tell her that she had torn the dress so badly that she had burned it.

Biddy could hardly believe her ears. ‘You took it upon yourself to destroy a dress?’

Aggie knew she was for it whatever she said or did, but she tried. ‘It was so badly torn, Mammy. I couldn’t have worn it.’

‘It was for me to be the judge of that, surely,’ Biddy said. ‘Tears can be mended and if it had really been beyond redemption then it could have been made up into a dress or two for wee Nuala. Did you not think of that?’

‘No, Mammy,’ Aggie said softly.

‘Then maybe the bamboo cane will help you remember in future.’