at her as if she couldn’t believe what she had just heard. ‘I know you came over from Ireland, but surely you are not that naïve,’ she said. ‘I am a prostitute, Aggie, and the streets are where I work.’
Aggie’s eyes opened wide with astonishment and Lily smiled. ‘Shocked you, have I?’
Shocked was an understatement. The only prostitute she had ever seen had been Gwen Halliday’s next-door neighbour. In Aggie’s world, prostitutes were a subclass that respectable people didn’t associate with.
There was nothing to prepare her for Lily Henderson, who worked in that profession and yet had lifted a vagrant and desperately ill girl from the cobbles and given up her own bed while she nursed her back to life and dealt with the child she had aborted. Aggie owed her a huge debt, one that she might take a lifetime to repay because she knew but for Lily’s intervention she would have died. Now she told herself firmly that how Lily wished to live her life was her business.
She wouldn’t risk upsetting this woman to whom she owed so much, and the only one who had shown her such compassion and understanding, and so when Lily said, ‘Right, now, if you have got over your amazement, I am making up a tincture and you are going to drink it,’ she nodded her head.
‘I’ll do whatever you think is right, Lily.’
Two days later Aggie insisted on getting up, though Lily thought she was still not well enough. In fact, Aggie was surprised how weak she felt, and her legs shook so much she managed to cross the room only with difficulty and collapse with a sigh of relief into a chair Lily had placed before the fire.
‘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