by Anne Bennett
‘What on earth is the rush anyway?’ Lily said. ‘You’ll get better in time.’
‘Aye, I know that,’ Aggie said. ‘But until then you are supporting me and that is not right.’
‘Have I complained?’
‘No, and in a way that makes it worse,’ Aggie said. ‘I have money for now that you can use, and gladly.’
She stopped. Despite what Lily had said about not having to tell her anything she didn’t want to, she felt she owed her rescuer some explanation for how she came to be in Birmingham, so she went on, ‘I had it to give to the woman who was going to take my baby away, though maybe you guessed that already. Anyway, that money isn’t needed for that any more.’
‘I found money when I was looking through your things to find out who you were,’ Lily said. ‘And yes, I had a fair idea what it was for. I haven’t touched a penny piece of it, don’t worry. By, it must have taken some saving.’
‘I didn’t save it,’ Aggie said. ‘I couldn’t have if I had wanted to. The only money I ever had placed into my hand was two farthings my mother would give me for Mass on Sunday morning. No, that money came from the father of the child I was having.’
‘You were lucky then,’ Lily commented. ‘Not many cough up.’
‘Doubt he would have done either,’ Aggie said, ‘if I hadn’t sort of blackmailed him. I was desperate, you see, and so I threatened to tell his wife everything. He said he would claim that I led him on, offered myself to him, and while most people in the town might believe him rather than me it would at least sow the seeds of doubt in his wife’s mind. Anyway, whichever way it was, he seemed more bothered about his wife knowing than anything else, so he gave me the money. They have a grocery shop in the town – at least his wife has – and he probably took the money from the till or something. I didn’t want to know really, because I felt bad enough about Philomena as it was.’
‘None of this is your fault, you know,’ Lily said. ‘I suppose he forced himself on you?’
‘Well, aye, he did right enough,’ Aggie said. ‘But I didn’t struggle much. I have thought about it over and over since, and sort of blamed myself, but he had me full of poteen, you see. It’s this really powerful drink. They distil it in the hills. It’s made from potatoes and—’
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ Lily said. ‘One of the girls was given a bottle of it by a punter, and when she had a few glasses of it she nearly went off her head. I’m not that fussy, as a rule – I mean, I drink anything going – but I couldn’t take that stuff. Just the smell was enough. I said to her that it was like something you would use to strip paint. I’m surprised that you developed a taste for it.’
‘I didn’t,’ Aggie said. ‘I hate the stuff, but he held my nose and I had to swallow it in the end.’
‘Oh, you poor cow!’
The sympathy in Lily’s voice brought a lump to Aggie’s throat. Lily saw the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes and heard the anguish in her voice as she went on, ‘When I found I was expecting, God, there aren’t words to tell you how scared I was. I was in despair. You have no idea what it is like over there. To have a child out of wedlock is a desperate thing altogether, and a mortal sin too. The shame of it, not just for me but for the whole family, is immense.’
‘They don’t exactly clap their hands with joy here either, you know,’ Lily commented.
‘I suppose not. It’s just that there… well, I know my parents couldn’t have borne it.’
‘What I can’t get over, though,’ Lily said, ‘is when you had the money and all, why you came all the way to Birmingham to get the job done.’
‘There wasn’t anyone in Buncrana that would do such a thing,’ Aggie explained. ‘Anyway, McAllister, the man who raped me, had come from here a few years before and he told me to contact his sister and she would sort me out.’
‘And who’s that?’
‘A woman called Gwen Halliday.’
‘Oh Christ!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘So this man that violated you was her little brother Bernie?’
‘Aye. Did you know him?’
‘Well, her more than him really. He used to live with his sister, see, and not that far away either. People say that he couldn’t keep it in his trousers from when he was in his early teens. Course, she was on the game as well, so he saw it all round him, and then too she spoiled him rotten. Felt bad about him being orphaned when he was just a nipper, likely. Anyroad, she always seemed to care more about him than her own boy. People say that it wasn’t entirely natural either; that she made a man of him when he was just twelve.’
‘Surely not?’
Lily shrugged. ‘Who knows, or cares really? It’s just what people say. I was surprised, though, when she told he was marrying someone. Didn’t seem the marrying sort, if you know what I mean. I saw his wife-to-be too, and she looked a respectable woman. Her and Gwen never hit it off, but then Gwen would think no one would be good enough for her brother. Anyway, despite this fixation with her brother she is all right, is Gwen, and soon has our girls organised when it happens to them.’
‘Pregnancy, you mean?’
‘Of course, what else? Can’t work when you have a baby, can you, and even if you could, how can anyone bring a kid up in a place like this? No, any that find themselves up the Swanee goes to Gwen and she fixes them up.’
‘Well, they will have to find her first,’ Aggie said, ‘because her house is empty – saw it myself – and a woman there said something about her doing a flit and the bums coming. I didn’t really know what she was talking about at first.’
Lily smiled. ‘The bums are the landlord’s men, and they put you out if you don’t pay your rent. Gwen was in the hospital a few weeks back and she obviously couldn’t work and so got into arrears. She’ll pop up again somewhere or other before long. After all, she has got to eat.’
‘And so have we,’ Aggie said. ‘I insist you take that money and use it for now. By the time it’s gone, I hope I will be strong enough to look for a job somewhere and pay you back.’
Lily looked at her. She was a very beautiful girl, she realised, now that she was rested and less fearful and had had good food inside her. Maybe Alan Levingstone would have an opening for such a comely girl in his club, for Lily would like to keep her off the streets as long as she possibly could, though that’s where she would probably end up eventually.
She knew that Aggie would have no idea of what the future held, but she couldn’t see any other job she might be offered without references of any kind. She decided not to tell her just yet, not until she had sounded out Levingstone, at least.
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 wo
od. 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.’
‘Was the letter that came yesterday from one of your brothers?’ Aggie asked.
‘Yeah,’ Lily said. ‘I have only the one now, because the youngest died on the trip out, but the eldest is doing well. Point is, Levingstone didn’t have to do the half of what he did. Course, he was one hell of a lot younger then, not so hard-boiled and cynical, and he said he felt sorry for me. When he took over the management of this house, I was the first one he moved in, and there ain’t any other line of work I could take up now.’