A Daughter's Secret (34 page)

The only boats Tom was familiar with were fishing boats. He had seen the ocean liner in Lough Foyle the time Joe had gone to the States, but that had been in the distance, and when he saw the mail boat looming up large in the water, he thought it the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

It had numerous decks and two funnels. RMS
Cambria
was printed on the side, and it was attached to the dock side with ropes as thick as a man’s forearm, wrapped round concrete bollards. Tom felt ridiculously excited to be walking up the wooden gangplank, which listed slightly from side to side.

Mick, who had watched him with tolerant amusement, said, ‘Let’s hope you like it as well when we are out in the open sea.’

Tom was soon to find out.

The wind was fierce that day, and had whipped the waves into white-fringed rollers. The turbulence was hardly felt until the mail boat had moved out between the two piers, and then the waves broke against the sides of the boat in cascades of foam, the boat rolled slightly in the swell and Tom’s stomach began to churn.

He wasn’t actually sick, but he felt dreadful. ‘A pint of Guinness is just the job for a bit of seasickness,’ said Pat.

‘Oh, I hardly think…’

‘Well-known for settling stomachs,’ Mick assured him.

The saloon bar stank to high heaven, the musty air filled with the smell of Guinness, cigarette smoke, body odour and vomit. Surprisingly the Guinness did make Tom feel a little better when he got it down him. Other men had drifted over to join them and Tom, who’d often found himself tongue-tied with strangers, meeting so few of them, found the beer had loosened his tongue sufficiently to join in with the rest. He forgot all about his sickness, and by the third pint began thoroughly to enjoy himself as he couldn’t remember doing for a long time. He was quite sorry when the shores of Wales could be seen.

Pat and Mick took good care of Tom as the mail boat docked and the passengers disembarked, and he was grateful, for the beer had made him feel quite light-headed. Mick and Pat bundled him into one of the carriages on the waiting train.

Tom sat down with a sigh. ‘Too many Guinnesses, maybe,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘What are you sorry for?’ Mick said. ‘You did no harm, and surely it was better than suffering seasickness?’

‘It certainly was,’ Tom said. ‘I have seldom had such a good time.’

He remembered little of the journey after that though because he fell into a deep sleep and had
to be shaken awake as the train approached New Street Station.

He was confused and disorientated at first. As he stepped onto the platform amongst the throngs of people, he noted the air was stale and smelled smoky. All around him people were chattering, laughing or shouting, porters with laden trolleys were warning people to ‘Mind your backs’ and the news vendors’ shrill voices rose above it all. There was also the constant tramp of feet and the clatter of trains hurtling into the station, more noise than Tom had heard in his life. ‘How do you stand it?’ he asked Pat and Mick.

They were both mystified. ‘Stand what?’

‘This,’ Tom said, spreading his hands expansively. ‘The noise? Well, not just the noise, just about everything.’

Pat clapped Tom on the shoulder. ‘Didn’t we feel the very same when we first came over,’ he said. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Where are they all going to, at all,’ Tom said, ‘all these hordes of people walking so determinedly with set and serious faces?’

Mick shrugged. ‘Who knows or cares, Tom? See, that’s the thing in a city: everyone minds their own business. Now let’s get you sorted out. If you’re making straight for the airfield at Castle Bromwich, and you haven’t lodgings booked, it might be worth leaving your case in Left Luggage until you have a place to stay. You won’t want to lug it around.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Tom said. ‘Where’s that?

‘We’ll show you,’ Pat said. ‘And then show you where you can pick up a taxi.’

Outside, with the case safely deposited, Tom found things were worse. There was no clean air in Birmingham, he decided, for now he smelled petrol fumes and something sour, almost acrid, that hit the back of his throat. He could even taste it on his tongue. The streets were teeming with people of all shapes and sizes. The serious look on their faces and determined strides of them made it seem as though they had to get somewhere in a hurry.

But, added to the press of people on the pavements, was the traffic on the roads. Cars, buses, lorries and vans jostled with the carts and wagons pulled by huge horses with shaggy feet. And then, as they made their way to the taxi rank, a clanking swaying monster came careering towards them, to turn the corner. Tom saw with surprise it ran on rails set into the ground.

‘It’s a tram,’ Mick said, seeing Tom’s preoccupation with it. ‘Best way to get about.’

‘I don’t know that I wouldn’t be too feared to get into one of those.’

Pat laughed. ‘That’s another thing to get used to if you are here any length of time,’ he said. ‘Trams are much quicker than buses because they don’t get snarled up in the traffic.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Tom said.

‘Anyway, here are the taxis now,’ Mick said.
‘You tell the driver you want Castle Bromwich Aerodrome and he will get you there in no time.’

Tom, with real regret, shook hands with the two men who had been so helpful to him and climbed into the taxi. He had never ever ridden in any sort of motor vehicle, and he enjoyed his first ride. It was made all the more pleasant by realising that every minute brought him closer to the time when he would see Molly again.

Tom wasn’t allowed in the camp but the guard offered to fetch Molly when he said who he was. A few moments later, he saw her running towards the gate, holding hands with a pilot, and his heart nearly stopped for she looked so beautiful. Radiant, in fact.

‘Uncle Tom,’ she cried, and her smile lit up her entire face as she waited impatiently for the guard to open the gate. When she dropped the young man’s hand and put her arms around Tom’s neck and held him tight, his happiness was complete.

Then she introduced Mark Baxter. Tom appraised the man as he shook him warmly by the hand and said he was delighted to meet him. He was still in full flying gear and his eyes were glazed with fatigue, and Molly explained that he had had to land his plane in Cannock Chase and walk from there.

‘It is a fair hike from here,’ she said. ‘I was told Mark had been shot down. Until a few minutes ago, I thought he was dead.’ She gave a shudder
as she remembered, and Mark put his arm around her and she leaned against him with a sigh. Tom knew that Molly had met her soul mate and his heart nearly burst with relief and joy.

When he eventually took his leave of Molly, he did something he had promised himself he would do as soon as he got to Birmingham, and that was to seek out Paul Simmons and beg his forgiveness. He had the address of his office from the letter Paul had sent him, but knowing he would never find it by himself he took one of those frightening trams that Molly had told him went straight into the city centre, and then showed the address to one of the taxi drivers grouped around New Street Station.

‘Know where that is, all right, governor,’ the taxi driver said, leaping out from the cab and opening the door for Tom. ‘Hop in and I will get you there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

Less than half an hour later, Tom was standing in front of Paul Simmons and apologising for not looking after Molly properly.

‘Sit down, please,’ Paul said to the nervous man before him, and Tom sat on the chair one side of the desk and Paul faced him on the other side. He said straight out, ‘I was far too hasty when I wrote that letter. Molly told me straight that you couldn’t have stopped her if you had tried. She said there was no course open to her other than the one she took. And then for those dreadful things to happen to her … She was innocent of blame, a young and
naïve girl, unaware that the people she met on the station that night that appeared so kind and friendly were so corrupt. She had no experience to draw on. It made me so angry that she had been abused in such a way.’

‘Me too of course,’ Tom said. ‘We had no idea. Let’s hope life will run a little smoother for Molly now. She seems very keen on Mark Baxter. Have you met him?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Paul said. ‘Another fine man, and a brave one too. They are very much in love. You only have to see them together to realise that.’

‘You think they will marry?’

‘Almost certainly,’ Paul said. ‘And that is where I come in again.’

‘Oh?’

‘Ted would have paid for his daughter’s wedding and would be proud to do so. I would like to do this for this young couple in his stead. Would they mind that, do you think?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, and certainly not if it is put to them like that,’ Tom said. ‘I am going over to see them both this evening. I will broach it, if you like.’

‘I would be very grateful,’ Paul said. ‘And can I say something to you now?’

‘Of course.’

‘I know Molly had a rough time in Ireland,’ Paul said. ‘Not that she has given me a list of complaints or anything, but if she does say anything at all there is a sort of sadness lurking behind her
eyes. Then there was that ridiculous subterfuge in sending her letters. But she has always spoken highly of you – more than highly – for it is obvious that she loves you very much and now that I have met you too, I can understand that.’

Tom’s face was crimson and he got to his feet as he said gruffly, ‘Ah, give over, man. You are embarrassing the life out of me. And now I will take up no more of your valuable time. I must in any case find lodgings for the next few days for it would not be seemly to stay with Molly.’

‘Till we meet again, then,’ Paul said, extending his hand. ‘Let us hope it is sooner rather than later.’

Tom stayed in Birmingham almost a week and in that time, he had met everyone connected to Molly’s life, from her old neighbour, Hilda, to her future in-laws the Baxters, especially Mark. Tom thought Kevin a grand fellow altogether and the two were soon the best of friends. Kevin wanted to know all about his new uncle, Joe, Aunt Gloria and his cousin, Ben, who was four years younger than he.

Tom had also met Will Baker, who had helped Molly escape her captors at great risk to himself and his family, and in doing so had saved her life. He had even been introduced to Terry, who owned the house that Molly was renting, who said that he was grateful to Molly for taking it on, preventing it from being requisitioned. ‘Molly has looked after the house so well,’ he told Tom, ‘and Kevin has kept the garden in tiptop condition. Really, I can’t thank them enough.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Molly said when she heard this.
‘It is you who have done us the favour. Having this house and the job in the Naafi meant I could have Kevin living with me, which we both wanted.’

‘I’ll say,’ Kevin said with feeling. ‘All that time in the orphanage – I mean, they were all right and that, but all I wanted was for Molly to come and get me out.’

The words, spoken so wistfully, caused tears to sparkle behind Tom’s eyes. He blinked them away rapidly. The time for tears was over now. Molly and Kevin were looking forward to a happy future and so must he.

‘It relieves me greatly that you can count such wonderful people as these I have met as your friends,’ he said that evening as he called to say goodbye. ‘I can now rest easy that, with God’s help, your life now will be on an even keel at long last.’

‘I hope so, Uncle Tom,’ Molly said. ‘It will not be before time.’

‘No, indeed it will not.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ Molly said. ‘It has been lovely seeing you every day.’

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ Tom said. ‘Isn’t the wedding planned for June? That being the case, you will be so busy arranging it, you won’t have time to even notice I am not around.’

‘But your train won’t leave for hours yet,’ Molly said. ‘What will you do with yourself till then?’

‘What I have been doing while you have been at work,’ Tom said. ‘Look around the place. Explore.’

Tom had indeed spent a lot of the time when Molly was tied up, exploring the city she had come from. He had been appalled by the bomb damage the city had suffered. Derry had got away lightly as only two parachute mines had landed there, killing thirteen people and demolishing five houses, but here, whole areas were laid waste. In the city centre there were huge gaps where shops had once stood, but even the residential areas around the city centre had taken a pounding.

The first time he had turned a corner to see a whole sea of rubble, he had stood and stared. He knew that the rubble represented streets and streets of houses, for the homes in that industrial city were pressed one against another. What had happened to the people? Where did they go to hide from such bombardment and how did they cope without their houses and possessions? They did as Gloria had, he imagined: camped out in church halls or other suitable places. Little wonder that Molly and Kevin’s grandfather had died. Tom thought it was far more of a surprise that anyone was left alive at all.

In his sojourn around the city centre, he had found a pub on the outskirts that did delicious steak pies. Knowing of the rationing situation, he would eat little at Molly’s and the pie slid down the throat beautifully, especially when accompanied by a pint of Guinness. He didn’t ask at the pub either what animal the steak was from. Sometimes it was better not to know, though he
guessed it was horse meat, which he had heard had been eaten in France for years.

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 just 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…’