Later that same evening Breda took one look at Angela taking off her coat and unwinding her scarf from around her face in the cloakroom at the back of the pub and grabbed her by the arm. She dragged her into the snug, which was fortunately empty.
‘Who did this to you?’ she demanded. ‘Was it Eddie?’
Angela nodded dumbly and Breda winced.
‘Oh you poor thing,’ she said, and the sympathy in her voice caused the tears to stand out in Angela’s eyes. ‘What happened?’
Angela told Breda that Eddie had been waiting for her in the alleyway after Paddy had sent him packing earlier and that she didn’t really know why he had been so cross with her. The aggression that had spiralled into violence began when she tried to stop him molesting her. She had tried to explain to him that the way she had behaved the previous evening had been shameful, and not the way she would behave normally. She had told him that it could only have come about because of the drink she had consumed.
Breda nodded. ‘And?’
‘He reacted badly. Really badly,’ Angela said. ‘Said he’d spread rumours about me.’
When Angela told her the type of thing Eddie had been threatening, Breda knew how fearful Angela must have been. Eddie was amusing and charming, a seemingly genial man and popular with all the regulars, and what he said about Angela would be believed. She had heard of men who had done this kind of thing before and Breda had always half-suspected that there was this nasty side to him. It was a vile thing to do and could destroy a woman totally; she’d known of women driven out of the area by enraged wives, worried about the temptation for their husbands. And all too often these women were not bad women at all – they might have made a mistake and gone further with a man than they intended, or possibly formed an unsavoury relationship, but that was sometimes all it took. If a man was determined to sully a woman’s reputation this way there wasn’t any way of counteracting it, and Angela would know that too.
‘What was the payment Eddie demanded to keep his lips sealed?’ Breda asked, though really she already knew the answer.
‘Sex,’ Angela said in a shame-filled voice.
‘God,’ Breda said fervently. ‘Isn’t he off back to America soon? Let’s hope he stays there and hasn’t left a little seed behind to deal with.’
‘How would we deal with it?’
‘Let’s cross that bridge if and when we come to it,’ Breda said. ‘No man should get away with doing what he did to you,’ she exclaimed. ‘You and me will go to the police and …’
‘No police, Breda,’ Angela said. ‘You know the list of lies Eddie would tell them and how plausible he is. He would be believed before I was. In their eyes I would be a brazen hussy and therefore getting no more than I deserved. Nothing would happen to Eddie, who might behave worse afterwards, and my reputation would be in tatters for he would spread that tale wide too.’
Breda didn’t argue further with Angela for she knew she spoke the truth. It was sad and totally unfair, but that’s how it was. What she did say was, ‘Well all right, but you can’t go behind the bar like that. There’ll be talk and supposition and rumour and you can do without any of those. Take three days off – your face will be more or less back to normal by then, or near enough that you’ll be able to disguise it with cosmetics.’
‘What will you tell everyone?’
‘That you are down with a bad cold,’ Breda said. ‘Now get yourself away before the pub starts to fill and go out through the side door because there’s less likelihood of you being spotted.’
‘All right,’ Angela said, but before she closed the door behind her she said, ‘I think it might be better not to tell Paddy. He might feel like teaching Eddie a lesson or something and then he’d be the one in trouble.’
Breda had every intention of telling Paddy, but she said to Angela, ‘Don’t fret yourself. Go home and rest. It’s the best thing for you.’
Once out in the street though, Angela decided not to go straight home. Connie would not be expecting her and she thought she would call in on Maggie. She seldom had much free time and she knew Maggie too was a very busy person. In fact, her friend had found she was busier than ever now since her mother-in-law had had a stroke and was bedridden.
When Maggie opened the door, Angela was glad but she looked around nervously. She knew she had to tell Maggie everything and didn’t want to do that in front of Michael or indeed any of Maggie’s lodgers. Maggie understood immediately.
‘Let’s go through to the kitchen for we have the place to ourselves at least for a wee while. The chaps are fed and watered and are probably in their rooms changing to go out, which they do most evenings, and Michael is in with his mother. She seemed particularly restless this evening. Sometimes he reads her snippets out of the paper but if he is in there a long time I have a peep in and often find him asleep in the chair with the paper discarded on the floor.’
She smiled fondly and then, as they’d reached the kitchen, opened the door to the side which led to a cloakroom and went on, ‘Take off your coat and scarf or you’ll not feel the benefit when you go out and the nights can be raw.’
Angela unwound the scarves almost covering her face and Maggie just stood and stared at her face, aghast.
‘What happened to you?’ she cried. ‘Were you attacked again, you poor thing?’
‘Not exactly.’
Maggie knew that this was the reason Angela had come, to tell her of some heinous thing that had befallen her. Taking her by the arm, she propelled her into the kitchen and sat her down at the table.
‘Stay there and I’ll put the kettle on.’
She disappeared into the scullery and came out minutes later with the teapot and cups on a tray.
‘I … I don’t want to put you out.’
‘You’re not,’ Maggie assured her as she poured tea for them both. ‘The evenings about this time are probably the best time to catch me having a minute to myself and of course I’m delighted to see you, though not looking like this.’
Angela said nothing and into the silence before it should become uncomfortable Maggie said, ‘Your Connie’s growing into a fine girl. She is surely a daughter to be proud of and the image of you. Did she mention I met her in Bristol Street the other evening?’
Angela nodded. ‘Connie is not very friendly with me just now. She told me she met you tonight just before I left for work. But Breda wouldn’t let me serve behind the bar with my battered face. She’s given me three nights off. I’m supposed to have a heavy cold.’
‘Did Connie tell you what we spoke about?’
‘She did, yes.’
‘And did what I said to Connie have any bearing on what has happened to you?’
‘In a way,’ Angela said.
And then it came out in a rush like a torrent: the whole sordid tale of her relationship with Eddie McIntyre. Angela had her head bowed, but her speech was rapid, as if she couldn’t bear to hold it in any longer. She needed to share it with the only other person who knew what she had gone through already. Angela told the tale to the end and even as she recounted it, leaving nothing out, she burned with humiliation at how depraved it all sounded, especially as she had to admit that she had been a willing partner too.
‘Now,’ she said to Maggie, lifting her head as the tale eventually drew to a close, ‘aren’t you shocked to the core? Don’t you feel ashamed that you once called me a friend?’
Maggie reached across the table and grasped Angela’s trembling hands.
‘I didn’t once call you a friend as if our friendship was at an end,’ she said. ‘I am still your friend and can’t think of anything you could do to change that. What’s more, I’m proud to be that friend.’
The flush on Angela’s cheeks deepened as she pulled her hands free and said, ‘You can’t feel the same way about me after the things I have done.’
‘Yeah, and things that you never would have consented to if you had been in your right mind,’ Maggie said. ‘Your problem is that you have had no experience with men.’
‘How can you say that, Maggie? I grew up with five foster brothers and married one of them.’
‘Yes, and they thought of you as their little sister and treated you as such, even Barry initially,’ Maggie said. ‘And when you agreed to marry Barry, did he excite your senses in any way?’
‘Well, yes, because I loved him so, you see.’
‘I know, but did he do anything to make those feelings stronger, touch you in any intimate way? Kiss you passionately or anything like that?’
Angela remembered in a flash how Eddie’s kisses had made her feel, as if she had been transported to another plane where the rules and regulations she had lived her life by had ceased to matter, and she said to Maggie, ‘Barry treated me with respect. He knew I was young and so he was gentle and kind and never asked me to do anything I might consider improper.’
And made you ripe for someone like this Eddie McIntyre, Maggie thought, but what she said to Angela was: ‘Listen to me, people like Eddie McIntyre prey on naïve girls like you – and you are naïve, despite the fact you have been married and had a child. It’s common for men like that to use alcohol to make a girl more malleable. God, it must have been like a gift for him when you told him you didn’t drink, for he knew only a relatively small amount would affect you and he took advantage of that.’
‘Breda sort of said that too,’ Angela said. ‘But I can’t get Mammy’s words out of my head.’
‘What words were they?’
‘She said that what’s in a man sober comes out when he is drunk, so what if I really am that wanton hussy inside? And you know what tears me apart? Eddie actually said that those soldiers that attacked me recognised that lustful side of me and that is why they abused and raped me the way they did. He said they didn’t have to rape me either – because lust oozes out of me, I would have done it for free and enjoyed it because I am sex-crazed.’
‘Angela, you are not and you can’t allow the man’s hateful, cruel words that he threw at you to make you think this way.’
‘Oh I can, do you see, because if it was somehow my fault I should have owned up to it and not have left a wee baby to pay the price.’
‘Stop it, Angela,’ Maggie said quite sharply for she saw Angela’s wide, panicky eyes and heard the shrill note in her voice and knew hysteria wasn’t far away. ‘I have known you since we were both five and went through school together. When war began and Barry was enlisted, we worked side by side in the munitions factory. I know you better than any Eddie McIntyre and I’ll tell you what I think. You were probably lonely, for there was that rift between Stan and Daniel that seems unbridgeable. Connie is probably working too hard to be any company for you and you probably missed me just being up the road for, busy as I am, I missed you a great deal. And you were maybe flattered by this man’s attention because he was well-liked and entertaining.
‘So you were attracted to him and that’s not a crime, but McIntyre used that attraction to encourage you to drink and that made you act in a way you never would have done if you had been sober. Whatever Mary said, there are no carnal desires buried deep inside you, though it is normal to yearn after a man. I still do after Michael now and it was hard sometimes to put the brakes on when we were courting and I wanted him just as much as he wanted me, but we were both in agreement to leave it till the marriage bed. So I know how powerful sexual attraction is. If your defences are down because of the amount you have drunk and the man is not helping you to resist, but instead exciting you to heights of passion you possibly had never reached before, oh Angela it would be almost impossible to stop when you are in the throes of it.’
Angela stared at her friend. She had described so accurately how powerless and out of control she’d felt, consumed by an insatiable passion that demanded some sort of release. ‘That’s just how it was.’
‘Did you ever let him take you completely?’ Maggie asked.
Angela nodded.
‘I hope to God there are no repercussions to this,’ Maggie said. ‘That man took advantage of you.’
‘No, Maggie, he didn’t,’ Angela said. ‘I would like to say that he did, even that he forced me, and then you wouldn’t think the worst of me, but I have to admit I was as mad for it as he was. I could no more have stopped him entering me then than I could have stopped the sun from shining.’
And because that would be the last thing a sober Angela would allow herself to do with anyone, Maggie said quietly, ‘And the next day?’
Angela gave a shudder. ‘Oh God, the next day I was so hungover I thought I would die,’ she said. ‘But after I told Eddie I couldn’t do that sort of thing any more, he threatened to spout rumours about me.
‘And I wouldn’t be able to deny them with any conviction because he would be more or less right. I was mortified with shame because, no matter how drunk I had been, those memories were stark and clear. And this is the terrifying thing, Maggie: though I know what I did was terribly wrong, it was the most truly wondrous experience I have ever had. And that’s why I think I am rotten, wantonness is running all through me.’
‘It’s not a sin to enjoy sex,’ Maggie said. ‘Ideally it’s supposed to be like that. Well, very pleasurable anyway. Did you and Barry …’
‘I loved sex with Barry, don’t think I didn’t,’ Angela said. ‘But we called it “making love” and there is a difference. That’s what we did – showed the love we shared and gave pleasure to each other and it felt good, quite beautiful, but nothing like the sex I had with Eddie. And I’ll tell you something, Maggie, if Eddie has made me pregnant it will be my fault as well as his and I will rear the child and put up with the shame. The hardest thing in the world is giving birth to a child and not being able to rear it.’
‘Remember why you did that?’ Maggie said. ‘It was to prevent Barry hearing that you had given birth to a bastard child. I know Barry died anyway but he died loving you with all his heart. What if the words on a letter from some old busybody telling Barry of your unfaithfulness caused his death through despair, carelessness?’
‘I know,’ Angela said. She thought of the three spinsters who she was fairly certain had sent Barry the three white feathers that had prompted him to go down almost immediately to the recruitment office and sign his name on the dotted line. They were just the sort of people who would think it their bounden Christian duty to inform Barry of his wife’s infidelity. Even if she’d attempted to tell them of the attack on her, they were the sort to never let the truth get in the way of a good gossipy, scandal-ridden story.
‘Then I had Mary to think about,’ Angela said. ‘And little Connie and the job I needed. Oh, they were all good reasons, and there was nothing else I could have done, but I will never totally forgive myself, even though I did go to the workhouse later and they sent me away.’
‘I know,’ Maggie said. ‘I never thought I would be the one advising you to do that dreadful thing. I feel a measure of guilt as well. Anyway, when Hilda had her stroke in the summer I went into the hospital with her. I was talking to one of the nurses and she was telling me what will be happening to the workhouse, and very soon too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know they’ve enlarged the infirmary as it isn’t big enough to house all the patients? They had plans to build a new hospital on the site and empty the workhouse and I said to you not to worry because it would take them ages to have enough money to build.’
Angela nodded again and Maggie continued, ‘They must have thought the same way about the cost and thought it would be quicker and cheaper to enlarge this one at present used as a workhouse.’
‘So what will happen to the inmates of the workhouse?’
‘The nurse wasn’t absolutely sure but said adults would probably be sent to other workhouses around the city somewhere and the children housed in orphanages.’
Angela felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her world and she wondered why the news had affected her so much. It wasn’t as if she ever had contact with the daughter she had abandoned, but it had been some comfort to know where she was.
She’d often had a vague notion of maybe being able to help her one day. In her heart of hearts she knew it was pure fantasy – she hadn’t an idea of the child, not what she was called, what she looked like, what sort of personality and character she had. And then in the middle of this fantasy would appear the three leering faces of the brutal, drunken soldiers who beat her up soundly before violating her. Was it possible this child brought up without a mother’s love and gentling influence could have any traits of the man who had fathered her?
‘Are you all right?’ Maggie almost whispered. She was so fearful for her friend, for she had watched the thoughts tumble around her head, her face twisted in anguish at the memories she knew never left her.
Angela shook her head. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel all right again. I go through the motions, that’s all. Did the nurse know when these alterations were going to take place?’
‘Only vaguely,’ Maggie said. ‘It was supposed to be the autumn but it’s been put back to the New Year because of finding places for the inmates before work can start. But I thought the news might upset you.’
‘It did, and yet I have no right to be upset or care what happened to that child at all. I gave those rights away when I left a poor helpless baby on the workhouse steps.’
‘You can’t turn feelings off like that though,’ Maggie said.
‘No, but I have no right to acknowledge them,’ Angela said and gave a sudden sob that took her by surprise. Maggie held her tight and let her cry because it was all she could do for her.
She left Maggie’s when she had recovered herself a bit, though she felt emotionally battered and the pain was far worse from that than from any physical injuries inflicted by Eddie McIntyre.
Breda called to see her the next morning just before it was time to open the pub. She had a smile on her face as she stepped into the room and without any preamble she said to Angela, ‘McIntyre’s has gone back to the States by all accounts. Neither of us have to worry about him one minute longer.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked Breda.
Angela couldn’t understand why she felt regret that she would never see him again mixed with the relief. She did hope she was truly done with him though and he had not made her pregnant. But time would tell and there was no point worrying about it until she knew one way or the other.
Breda nodded grimly. ‘I’m sure all right. So draw a line under Eddie McIntyre, put the madness he seemed to induce in you down to experience, and let’s hope and bloody pray we will be allowed to do that.’