A Daughter's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

she fell to her knees and wept.
    When McAllister reached home, Philomena, worn out by four weans to see to and a grocery store to run, had taken herself off to bed. She had left the lamp on low and, as McAllister turned the wick up to throw more light into the room, she woke from her semi-doze and watched him undress through narrowed eyes.
    He had a look on his face that she had seen before, like a cat that has had the cream. As he nipped out the lamp and slipped in beside her she smelled the sex on him, even overriding the ever-present smell of poteen.
    She felt her heart plummet to her boots and wondered who had had his attention that night. She knew it was his night for taking the two older girls and hoped to God it wasn’t one of those he had taken down. Dear Christ, they were little more than children, and neighbours into the bargain.
    She would confront him – ask him outright. But what would that achieve? She knew he would deny it and she would get angry and so would he, and the shouts and roars of them might waken and frighten the weans and resolve nothing…
    However, McAllister had noted her slight movements. ‘You awake, Phil?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Ah, now don’t be like that,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Isn’t this your darling husband, come to give you a bit of loving before we both settle down for the night?’
    Philomena gave a shiver of distaste, knowingher ‘darling husband’ had just come from a sexual encounter with another. ‘Not tonight, Bernie. I am tired, so I am,’ she said.
    ‘Tired be damned, woman,’ McAllister snapped angrily, grabbing for her. ‘You are my wife.’
    ‘Aye, poor foolish sod that I am,’ Philomena might have said. But she didn’t. She knew him well and felt his tension like a coiled spring that night. If she were to inflame him in that state she might well come off the worst for it. Instead, with a sigh, she submitted to him and, after pawing and groping at her, he had his way, as she had known he would.
    Fully satisfied, he had fallen asleep almost immediately. Philomena listened to his even breathing and felt so degraded that she cried herself to sleep.
    Tom was concerned. Aggie was usually home long before this and he wondered if some accident had befallen her. He couldn’t go and look for her because he was alone in the house, apart from Nuala and Finn, in their beds and fast asleep, and he couldn’t leave them unattended.
    His father had left just after evening milking. He had closed a deal on a bull that afternoon and had gone off to Buncrana to seal the sale over a few pints, as was the custom. Tom knew from experience he wouldn’t be back for hours yet.
    His mother, though, could be in at any time, for she had gone to help a neighbour who was having a baby. Aggie wasn’t long out of the house when the Lannigans’ eldest boy came over andsaid his mammy was took bad and had been like it all the day. Biddy knew she was expecting but the baby wasn’t due for a few weeks yet.
    ‘I must go up and see what’s what,’ she had said to Tom, ‘for all I’d like to seek my own fireside this night. Sadie’s man is away in England working and she has three weans to see to. I’ll take Joe with me in case I have to send for the doctor. You wait here with the wee ones until Aggie comes home.’
    But Aggie hadn’t come home and if she didn’t return before her mother, she would probably feel the sting of the bamboo cane kept by the side of the fireplace.
    Tom crossed to the window and looked out. He was almost certain he saw a shape at the head of the lane and it certainly wasn’t his mother, who would in all probability come across the fields anyway as that had been the way she had gone. It must be Aggie. Then why didn’t she just come on down to the house?
    Sudden apprehension that something was very wrong caused the hairs on the back of Tom’s neck to rise. He took his jacket from behind the door and left the house.
    Aggie had eventually pulled herself up by