by Anne Bennett
As he neared the same pub again later, he realised that often what is quite a respectable pub by day, can turn into a fairly seedy one at night, and if he hadn’t been so hungry he would have passed it by and sought food elsewhere. But, in the end, he decided to go in. It wasn’t as if he intended spending the night there; a quick pint and a pie, and then it would be time to set out for New Street Station.
He couldn’t wait to be home and he was thinking of all he had to tell them as he left the pub when, all of a sudden, he felt a tugging on his sleeve and a whining voice asked, ‘D’you want some pleasure, kind sir?’
Tom felt the bile rise in his throat. He couldn’t see anything of the woman for the blackout was complete, and he shook her off as one might a bothersome insect.
‘Get away from me, you filthy trollop!’
But the woman was insistent because she was desperate. As she got older, it was becoming harder and harder to earn enough money. She blessed the blackout, though, because she knew that if many men were aware what she really looked like they would run a mile rather than lay a hand on her.
‘Please, sir,’ she begged, ‘I’ll make it good for you. I’ll do anything you want me to.’
‘What I want you to do for me,’ said Tom grimly, ‘is for you to get your filthy hands off my clothes and let me be on my way.’
At that moment, a courting couple, arm in arm, came around the corner. The man held a wavering, shielded torch, but as the couple were so totally absorbed in one another, that torch was spraying its feeble light every which way. For a split second only, it lit up Tom’s face. The woman’s hand dropped from Tom’s and he felt rather than saw her take a step backwards.
Once before she had seen those eyes, and they had haunted her for years because they had been so full of deep sorrow. Now they were filled with disgust, but over forty years later they were the same eyes. She would stake money on it if she had any.
‘Tom.’
The word was wrenched from her almost involuntarily, and it was barely audible. The couple had passed and they were alone again.
Tom said, ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
Tom reached through the dark and, finding the woman’s arm, grasped it tight as he said, ‘Yes, you did. You spoke my name. How did you know it?’
The woman sighed. The one thing she had dreaded had come to pass. Maybe she had best get it over and done. She had thought she was past hurt any more, but the repugnance she had glimpsed in Tom’s face had cut her to the heart.
‘Because,’ said the woman, ‘I am your sister Aggie.’
Her arm was released suddenly as Tom staggered on the cobblestones of the alleyway. His senses were reeling with the news he could scarcely believe. With his whole mind and body screaming denial, he repeated, ‘Aggie?’
Aggie heard the revulsion in his voice. ‘Yes. Aggie.’
‘But how have you come to this?’
‘How long have you got?’ Aggie asked. ‘It’s a long story and not one I wish to relate on the street. And,’ she added bitterly, ‘do you really want to hear it anyway? You have seen what I am, what I have become, and you are finding it hard to hide your disgust. Why don’t you go back to your nice little respectable life, wherever it is, and forget this meeting has taken place?’
Tom was ashamed of himself when he realised that that was exactly what he wanted to do, but surely to God he was made of sterner stuff. This woman of the streets was his sister, for God’s sake. He couldn’t just walk away. He would miss the train, but that wouldn’t matter. There would be another and he could send Joe a telegram in the morning and explain. So he faced Aggie and said, ‘I do want to hear your story, but I don’t know where to suggest we go, for I am only over here for a few days and I booked out of my lodgings this morning.’
Aggie gave a brittle little laugh. ‘They wouldn’t let the likes of me into respectable lodgings anyway,’ she said. ‘It will have to be my place, if you are determined?’
Tom nodded empthatically. ‘I am.’
‘Then before we go anywhere, will you go into the pub and buy me a bottle of gin?’ Aggie asked.
‘You won’t disappear while I am in the pub?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Aggie said. ‘I need a drink too much to go anywhere, but without a few gins inside me I can tell you nothing.’
‘I will be right back,’ Tom said. Once inside the pub he bought a bottle of whisky as well. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long night.
Aggie cheered considerably when Tom showed her the contents of the carrier bag the landlord had packed the bottles in. As she led the way, she glanced around nervously and said to Tom, ‘If you can bear it, can you put your arm through mine and then they will think that you are a punter?’
‘Who will?’
‘Finch’s men,’ Aggie said. ‘They watch me in case I should make a bid for freedom, though where do they imagine I would go if I did? There is nowhere I can go where they wouldn’t find me and make me pay dearly. Mind you, it isn’t so easy in the blackout to keep tabs on a person.’
Tom linked his arm through Aggie’s, though with reluctance, and was glad of the concealing darkness. His head was teeming with questions. This whole set-up – what Aggie said, the way she lived – was beyond him, but he decided to ask nothing yet. He was certain that once inside, with a few gins to oil the wheels, as it were, Aggie would tell him all. Whether he could bear to hear it was another matter entirely.
He didn’t see much of the area that Aggie led him through, nor the dilapidated house she said was hers. ‘I’m on the first floor,’ she said as they stepped into the hall. ‘We don’t put the light on because of the blackout, so follow me closely to prevent you breaking your neck on the stairs.’
Tom was glad to do just that because, although his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he still could see very little, and so it wasn’t until Aggie had lit the gaslight in her room that he saw her clearly for the first time. Her face was pasty white, her dark eyes were ringed with black, and her once magnificent hair was grey, lifeless and hung in lank, greasy strands around her face. More than merely thin, she was like skin and bone.
Tom’s shock was apparent and Aggie gave a grim, tight little laugh and said, ‘No oil painting, am I?’
‘Aggie, I—’
‘Leave it, Tom. I know what I am, none better. Sit down and I will get us a couple of glasses because I don’t know about you, but I am gasping for a drink.’
Tom sat on one of the chairs in front of the hearth and looked around the room. It was long, and divided by a curtain that Aggie told him later separated the living area from the sleeping area. He had opened the two bottles so when Aggie came back from the small kitchenette with the glasses, he was able to pour a generous measure for them both. Aggie lifted her glass to her lips and downed it immediately, for her innards were crying out for it. Then she said with a sigh, ‘Oh God, that was good. Pour me another, Tom, and I will tell you all that happened to me after I left the farm in 1901.’
Tom poured the drink, handed it to his sister and she began a tale of unbelievable sadness. He knew just how despairing and desperate she must have been to find that the only person that she knew of in that city, the one person who might help her, had disappeared.
Aggie told him of the prostitute Lily Henderson, who found her and ultimately saved her life. When she saw his lip curl, she cried, ‘Don’t look like that, Tom. I felt that way once, but all the prostitutes were kind to me. Lily was more than kind; she gave up her bed for weeks and tended me so carefully.’
‘And the baby?’
‘I lost it,’ Aggie said. ‘When I was recovered I knew I had to find a job, but there was nowhere respectable that would employ me without a reference. It was Alan Levingstone, Irish dancing and a nudge from Lily, saved me from the streets for years.’
‘How come?’ Tom asked and Aggie poured herself another drink before she told Tom all about the club.
‘And did you j
ust dance?’
‘No,’ Aggie said. ‘I would like to spare you this, but it wouldn’t be true, I also slept with men there.’ She heard her brother’s sharp intake of breath and burst out angrily, ‘That’s how it was. There wasn’t a choice there for any of us. That’s where I developed a taste for gin and opium.’
‘You take opium?’ Tom repeated in shock.
‘We all do. Levingstone used to supply it,’ Aggie said. ‘It blurred the edges of what we had to do night after night.’
‘That man took advantage of you,’ Tom said. ‘You were little more than a child.’
Aggie shrugged. ‘Maybe he did,’ she said, ‘but at least he was kind to me in a world where I had experienced little kindness. There wasn’t exactly a queue of people offering to help me, you know.’
‘He forced his attentions on you.’
‘No, he didn’t, Tom,’ Aggie said. ‘I gave myself freely. Don’t look like that. It was a different world, I was on my own in it, and I did what I had to do to survive.’
Tom was silent, thinking that that had been the type of future planned for Molly too, when she had first been abducted at the train station. Dear Christ! She had been an innocent victim and so had Aggie, but the thought that such things should happen first to his sister and then to his niece was shocking, horrifying.
‘I’m sorry for judging you,’ he said to Aggie. ‘Please go on.’
Then Aggie told Tom how Levingstone had wanted to marry her and she had welcomed it. ‘I loved him, Tom, truly loved him, and he was handing me respectability: the one thing I wanted. I would have loved him for that alone, but it was more and much deeper than that.’
Tom heard the melancholy in her voice and asked gently, ‘What happened?’
‘Finch happened!’ Aggie spat out, and though Tom saw the curl of Aggie’s lip, as if she could hardly bear to say the name, he also saw fear in her eyes. ‘You want to know about Finch,’ she cried. ‘I’ll tell you about Finch.’
She told Tom of all the abuse she had suffered at Finch’s hand from the first time he had attacked her and the many times after that, culminating in almost killing her in an alleyway just before her wedding day.
‘Finch was furious that I was going to marry Alan,’ Aggie said, ‘because it meant I would never have to sleep with him or anyone but my husband ever again. That was probably why the attack, just before I was due to be married, was so violent.’
‘This is monstrous,’ Tom said. ‘It causes me so much pain to hear this. You had suffered so much. This man you were to marry…’
‘Knew nothing,’ Aggie said. ‘I was afraid of what he might do and so I said that I hadn’t a clue who had attacked me. But he overheard Lily and me talking about it later and then he went after Finch, just as I knew he would. The following morning, in the early hours, Alan’s body was found battered to death in one of the little alleyways in the Jewellery Quarter.’
‘Aggie, I am so sorry,’ Tom said, and the sincerity in his voice caused the tears to flood from Aggie’s eyes. Tom put his arms around her and she sobbed as he remembered the last time he had held her it was to bid her farewell.
When she was a little calmer he poured her a drink before urging her to continue, and she turned sorrowful eyes to Tom and told him of the munitions works, another stab at respectability, of Polly and Jane, and her sister, Chris, who had been killed in the explosion, forcing them to find other employment at HP Sauce. And she told him of the death of Lily and the way that she was kidnapped in the street on her way home from work.
‘I swore I would never work for Finch,’ Aggie said fiercely, ‘but in the end he won, as he said he would.’
‘No, Aggie.’
‘Ah, yes, Tom,’ Aggie insisted. ‘He has me so hooked on gin and opium, I truly can’t do without them now.’
‘Aggie,’ said Tom, ‘you are going to leave this life and I am going to do what I was unable to do as a thirteen-year-old boy, and that is look after you.’
‘No, Tom.’
‘Aggie, don’t tell me you enjoy this life?’
‘What do you think?’ Aggie said. ‘But I am not prepared to let you risk yours.’
‘Aggie, I am not leaving you here.’
‘Have you listened to one word I said about Alan and what happened to him?’
‘I listened to every word you uttered,’ Tom said, ‘and many pierced me to the heart.’
‘Finch will—’
‘He will have no say in it.’
Aggie grabbed Tom’s hands and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Listen to me, for Christ’s sake,’ she cried in anguish. ‘This man is brutal and vicious. He is completely heartless, enjoys inflicting pain and doesn’t work to any of the rules of a civilised society.’
‘I have bent some of those rules too,’ Tom said. ‘In fact the worst rule of all, because I have already killed a man.’
Aggie dropped Tom’s hands and looked at him in horror, her eyes full of shock and disbelief. This was Tom, so gentle that their mother used to laugh at him. He would find it difficult to kill a fly, never mind a man.
‘What are you saying, Tom?’ she said. ‘What nonsense is this? It can’t be true.’
‘It is, Aggie,’ Tom said emphatically. ‘I killed McAllister not long after you disappeared.’
‘McAllister?’ Aggie cried. ‘Jesus, Tom, how I used to fantasise about doing just that.’
‘Philomena said that I had done her and the world a favour because you weren’t the first girl that he had taken down, nor would you have been the last.’
‘Was Philomena in on it too?’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘She actually tried to stop me, but it was too late. Afterwards she helped me cover it up.’
‘How did you do it?’ Aggie asked and Tom told her. When he had finished she said, ‘Well, I don’t blame you in the slightest. Philomena was right. He did ruin my life. I am on the streets because of McAllister, and I hope and pray that something similar will happen to Finch one fine day. Only when that man is dead will I be able to breathe freely again.’
Tom had no intention of trying that trick with Finch. For what he put his sister through he wanted to beat him to pulp, and he would do that in a fair fight when he had no minders in attendance. However, Aggie was his first concern and so he said, ‘Can I stay here tonight, Aggie? I’ll take the settee.’
‘You’ll not be comfortable on that,’ Aggie said. ‘Take the bed. I’ll have the settee.’
‘You’ll not,’ Tom insisted. ‘The settee or even the floor will be grand. I will fetch my case first thing tomorrow because I was booked on the night sailing, you see. I left my suitcase at the left luggage at New Street earlier today. Now I will need to find other lodgings to suit the two of us.’
‘I can’t leave here, Tom.’
‘Let me worry about that. What time does that toad come around in the morning?’
‘Anytime after ten.’
‘And you have to give him money?’
Aggie gave a nod. Tom got out his wallet and peeled off three pound notes. ‘Say I booked you for the evening. Is that enough?’
‘I’ll say it is,’ Aggie said. ‘I ask for ten bob now. Often they won’t pay that much and I’m in no position to argue. I just take what they offer and it never amounts to three pounds for a night’s work.’
‘Are you watched all day?’
Aggie shook her head. ‘I used to be, but now they think there is no need. With what they give me, I am usually out of it for the rest of the day anyway. Why?’
‘Tomorrow you touch nothing,’ Tom said. ‘As soon as the coast is clear, you leave here and meet me in the library by the town hall.’
‘How d’you know there is a library there?’
‘I explored the town the day after I arrived,’ Tom said. ‘And when I saw it was a library I went in and started reading the papers. Did it a few times after that, and it is just about the safest place I can think for you to wait. I could put money on the fact that Finch isn’t
the literary type.’ And then seeing Aggie biting her lip with agitation, he asked, ‘Now what are you worrying about?’
‘Tom, I am so frightened for both me and you,’ Aggie said. ‘I really don’t think I can do this.’
‘Yes, you can,’ Tom said, grabbing her hands again and trying to inspire her with courage. ‘Believe me, Finch knows nothing about me. He doesn’t know that you have anywhere or anyone to run to. We have the element of surprise, don’t you see? It will be the last thing that he will be expecting. Aggie, come on, I want you out of this place tomorrow. Now let us concern ourselves with practicalities. Have you a big bag of any sort?’
‘I have a sailor’s kitbag,’ Aggie said. ‘Early in the war, a young sailor spent the night with me. He had just left the ship and had his stuff with him in his kitbag and in the morning he forgot to take it with him. I put it in the wardrobe, expecting him to come back for it, but he didn’t. I always wondered if he got into a heap of trouble because of it, but it’s big enough to take everything I would want, if I tip his stuff out first.’
‘Excellent. Fill it up,’ Tom said, ‘and be in the library as soon as you can. I hope to be there by half-past eleven at the very latest.’
‘How do you know you will find us a safe place to live by that time?’
‘I don’t, though I will have a damned good try. But one thing I will promise and that is we will be far away from here by tomorrow evening. I have to send a telegram to Joe too, as soon as the post offices are open tomorrow, for he will be expecting me home.’
‘Is Joe still on the farm then?’ Aggie asked. ‘Somehow, I thought he would be the one spreading his wings.’
‘He did,’ Tom said. ‘He hasn’t been that long back at the farm. A lot has happened to all of us since you left, Aggie.’
‘Oh, tell me all,’ Aggie said. ‘This is what I have missed so much – hearing how you were all getting on.’
So Tom told her first of the death of Finn at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Aggie was saddened by that, for she remembered the lovely little boy she had left at home. It seemed such a terrible and tragic waste. She was surprised though when Tom told her that Nuala had been allowed to take a job at the Carringtons’ place, especially when she was of an age to be such a help to their mother.