A Daughter’s Secret

Aggie had expected the beating to be a severe one. Finn was so unnerved by the flailing cane that he ran out into the yard, crying for his father. Thomas John came in and took the cane from his wife’s hand.

‘Whatever the child has done,’ he said, ‘she has had enough punishment.’

Aggie slumped to the floor and Thomas John helped her to her feet. ‘What was all that over?’ he demanded of his wife.

‘Oh, madam here ripped her dress,’ Biddy said, ‘the good one that she wore to her dancing class. And instead of telling me and letting me fix it, or use the material to make up something for Nuala, she put it in the fire and burned it. She has admitted it so.’

Thomas John rubbed his chin, for that was indeed puzzling behaviour from his daughter. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will own that you would be annoyed but there was no need to beat her so badly. Anyway, she has even less clothes now for you have that dress almost whipped from her.’

Biddy, now that she was calmer, saw that Thomas John was right. There were huge rips in the material. She looked at her daughter, trying to remain standing with her father’s support, then said to Aggie grudgingly, ‘All right, maybe I did go a bit too far. Go on into the room and take off your dress. I will put some goose fat on your back and you will then do well enough.’

Aggie did as her mother said, glad to lie down for she was in extreme pain. She had been beaten before many times, as all her brothers had, but seldom so severely. Later, when Biddy saw her daughter’s back, crisscrossed with open stripes, blood squeezing from them, she felt sorry for her. It had been a bold thing to do right enough, but she was a grand help to her and had never given her a minute’s bother till now.

‘Stay in bed for now,’ she said as she rubbed the fat well in. ‘After that we’ll see.’

Aggie sighed in relief and yet she still said, ‘Are you sure, Mammy?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I’m sorry, Mammy.’

‘So am I, child dear,’ Biddy said. ‘It was such an odd thing to do. I mean, what possessed you to burn a dress? You’ve never done such a thing before.’

‘I’ve never had it near ripped from my back and then been raped,’ Aggie might have said. She didn’t, of course. What she did say was, ‘I don’t really know why I did it. I was so annoyed with myself because I really liked that dress.’

‘So, what happened?’

Aggie decided to stick to a semblance of the truth. ‘It was the day you went to the Lannigans’ and I was coming home from dancing when I fell on the road in the dark and tumbled over the remains of a rusty iron fence and into a thick briar bush in the bottom of a ditch. I’d heard the dress tear on the fence, and then it was ripped to bits on the briar bush before I managed to get myself free. When I got home and looked at all the jagged rips and all, I just threw it into the fire, I was so cross.’

‘But didn’t you have your shawl on?’ Biddy asked.

Aggie had to think fast. ‘Yes, but it fell off as I tipped forward. Anyway, after that I was ill and sort of forgot all about the dress.’

‘All right,’ Biddy said. ‘We’ll say no more about it now. You’ll not do such a thing again, sure you won’t.’

‘No, Mammy,’ Aggie said fervently. ‘I think I can promise you, hand on heart, that I will never do such a thing again.’

Biddy was satisfied but Aggie breathed a sigh of relief, glad that she wasn’t expected to move anywhere because she didn’t think she could have done so. As it was, she had to lie on her stomach to sleep, and despite the cold couldn’t bear even her nightdress or the bedclothes to touch her skin.

Sometime during the night she was woken with drawing pains in her stomach, similar to those she had each month. ‘Oh, praise God,’ she breathed in thankfulness. She would endure any amount of beatings if it would also beat out the child she knew she was carrying. However, after a time the pains in her stomach eased and on checking herself, she saw that there was no blood and she lay in the bed and thought of what she was to do, her mind in a wild panic.

She knew that Biddy would soon tumble to what was wrong, for there would be no pads left to soak in the bucket. She was also aware that she had got away with it so far only because first her mother had been so busy with them all so ill and then was taken bad herself, but time was against her now. That last beating would be nothing to the beating she would have to endure if her mother tumbled to the fact that she was having a child, and her unmarried. She would kill her altogether then. Aggie shuddered in fear, for her mother’s true rages were absolutely terrifying.

Worry drove away all thought of sleep, but by morning she was no further forward. She seriously thought of throwing herself in the river, but that was a mortal sin and she would roast in Hell’s flames. No, she decided, she had to see Bernie McAllister, though her insides crawled at the thought, and tell him what he had done to her. There was no help for it. Maybe he would think of something. He had to think of something, and quickly too, Aggie told herself, because it was more than half his fault. She would have to wangle it so that she had a quiet word with him after Mass on Sunday.

The next day, Biddy let her stay in bed again and put goose grease on her back three times. When Aggie woke the second day after the beating she knew that, although she was stiff and sore, she would be better up and occupied because the worry was driving her demented and there was far too much time to think just lying there. She rose gingerly and was immediately assailed by nausea and vomited into the chamber pot she’d grabbed from beneath the bed.

The following day, Tom said as he crossed through her room from his and his brothers’ beyond, ‘You all right, Aggie?’

Aggie turned to look at her brother and even in the dim light of the lamp Tom held, he could see the bleached pallor of her face and the way her eyes seemed to stand out in her head, but her voice at least was firm enough and quite sharp.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, it’s just that I heard you being sick this morning, and yesterday as well.’

Oh God! Aggie thought. How hard she had tried to stop the nausea rising to her throat, but had been unable to. When the bout was over she had climbed out of the window to throw the vomit into the gutter before swilling the pot itself with water from the rain barrel beside the door. But now Tom knew something was up, and if he or Joe were to get one hint of what ailed her and said something about it before she could snatch a word with Bernie, the whole thing would blow up around her.

So she faced Tom and said, ‘I had something that disagreed with me, that’s all.’

‘What? Two days running?’

‘Yes,’ Aggie snapped. ‘Don’t fuss, Tom.’

Tom shrugged and went on out before his father would give out to him, like he did every morning to Joe, who liked his bed too much to be up and at it.

With Tom gone, Aggie sat down on the bed again. She knew she should have been raking up the fire and putting on the kettle, but she felt so tired and drained.

She knew if she lingered any longer her mother would give out to her, and with a sigh she got to her feet. Joe, his hair still tousled from sleep, clattered through the room, pulling on a jacket as he went, the untied laces of his boots dangling, threatening to send him flying.

‘Ssh,’ Aggie said warningly. ‘You’ll have Finn and Nuala awake with your carry-on.’

‘Sorry, Aggie,’ Joe said. ‘Only I’m late, see.’

‘As ever. You should get up when Tom calls you,’ Aggie smiled.

‘I’m still tired then.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Aggie said with feeling. ‘But get you away now before Daddy bites the head off you.’

Joe shrugged. Nearly every morning his father was cross with him and he was used to it now. Daddy said he would never make a farmer and Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to be. It was a grind of a life, though Tom seemed to like it well enough.

And Tom did. Usually milking was one of his most favourite occupations, finding it soothing to lean his head against the velvet flank of the cow and see the bucket between his legs fill with the creamy milk.

However, that morning his thoughts were far away and Aggie was at the forefront of them. He knew she wasn’t right, whatever she said, and he knew his father was worried about her too. Only the previous evening, watching Aggie pick at the meal before her, he had said to their mother, ‘Aggie’s never really perked up after that dose of measles she had, I’m thinking, and not eating enough to feed a bird. Maybe we should ask the doctor for a tonic.’

Aggie had said she was all right, that she was just not hungry, but she had a sort of hunted look on her face.

Thomas John was far from satisfied but Aggie got so agitated that he said he would leave it so for now, but if she didn’t pick up in a day or two he would ask the doctor to take a look at her.

Tom was the only one to notice the horrified and frightened expression on Aggie’s face as she began to collect up the plates. Did she think he was some sort of idiot to think he would believe that something had disagreed with her to make her so sick?

Nuala had just passed her first birthday and he remembered that when her mother was carrying her, she had been sick every morning. So was Aggie having a baby? She could well be, though it was the very worst thing that could happen to a young unmarried girl and something that couldn’t be hidden either. He wondered what in God’s name she intended to do about it if she was.

In the bedroom Aggie was having similar thoughts, and she hoped that Bernie McAllister might have some sort of plan up his sleeve, or she was done for: her life would be over before it had really begun. She felt tears sting the back of her eyes and brushed them away impatiently.

The time for crying was long gone. She mentally braced her shoulders and opened the door into the kitchen to start the day.

The next Sunday, Aggie inveigled herself close to McAllister as she left the church, and once outside she whispered, ‘I need to speak to you.’