Читать книгу Secrets of Our Hearts - Sheelagh Kelly - Страница 6
ОглавлениеWhilst continuing to be the subject of gossip for many a day amongst the neighbours, Sean was rarely mentioned in his brother’s household again, except for when Father Finnegan or one of the nuns dropped in on their parishioners, whereupon the sinner was roundly castigated in his absence, for marrying out of the Church. Other than this, the mere whisper of his name became taboo.
And yet, Niall observed, when any residue of anger was allowed a voice, it was not over Sean’s disloyalty, but more his financial gain.
‘Is there no justice?’ spat Ellen, on learning from their next-door neighbour, on this autumn Saturday afternoon, how much her brother-in-law had netted from the sale of his house. ‘The jammy bloody devil, why should he and that tart be rewarded when it’s our lass who put all the hard work into it?’
Though similarly angry, after a brief outpouring, her mother gave stoical reply. ‘Well, we did what we could to rescue Eve’s things. Short of taking t’house down brick by brick there’s nowt much else we could have done. Thanks for letting us know, though, Mrs Lavelle. Will you stay and have a cup of tea?’
Clad in black, with an air that nothing good would ever happen to her again, the neighbour gave one of her typically heavy widow’s sighs. ‘Aye, I might as well; I’ve nowt else to see to.’ And she flopped her rear onto an Edwardian armchair, signalling for her daughter, Gloria, who accompanied her, to do the same.
Nora hefted the teapot at the prettier, but slightly vacant-looking woman with the limpid blue eyes. ‘Will you have one, Gloria?’
‘Aye, she will.’
Her mother answering for her, having rarely been allowed to make a decision in all her thirty-nine years, the downtrodden Gloria took a seat. Though she needed no encouragement to take an interest in her neighbours – at least in one of them – and whilst her mother did all the talking for her, Gloria herself proceeded to cast a series of adoring smiles at Niall. Sadly, none of these was noticed, for Niall was involved with making shuttlecocks for the children with the bunch of feathers he had collected on his travels along the railway line, trying to concentrate on this whilst the women speculated over the people who had moved into his brother’s old house.
‘We’ve been wondering what he does for a living,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you know, Mrs Lavelle?’
‘We think he’s a gunslinger, from the way he walks,’ cackled Dolly, holding her arms away from her sides to demonstrate.
‘That’s from hefting stretchers for ten years.’ Mrs Lavelle knew everything. ‘He’s an ambulance man.’
Nora had been studying Gloria. ‘Where’s them nice new teeth you bought, Glo?’
‘They hurt her, so she only wears ’em on Sundays,’ provided Mrs Lavelle.
Juggy’s head popped around the jamb then. ‘It’s spitting. Can I go play in Kathleen’s passage?’
‘Yes,’ said her mother, ‘so long as you take Brian.’
‘I will!’ called Juggy on her way back out. ‘He’s gonna be the patient.’
‘Well, don’t be doing any operations on him!’ shouted Ellen, then murmuring to the women, ‘We don’t want any bits missing when he comes home.’
Dolly’s laugh was like the high-pitched bleating of a goat. A length of twine nipped between his teeth, Niall’s face tensed in irritation, whilst his wife briefly left the gathering to look from the window and check on the whereabouts of their other offspring.
After exhausting all the latest scandals, Mrs Lavelle said, ‘Well, we’ll have to be going soon. Oh, I nearly forgot!’ She grabbed the paper carrier that her daughter had been patiently nursing, and proceeded to display a tablecloth. ‘We really came in to show you what we found for our Gloria in Rhodes Brown’s sale.’
Harriet, before even remarking on any attribute of the cloth itself, asked immediately, ‘How much was it?’
Niall glanced at Ellen and shook his head – Harriet always demanded to know the price of everything – then he returned his attention to the shuttlecock and tried to ignore the female babble.
‘Two bob!’ came the boastful reply.
There were murmurs of admiration over the bargain. Where Gloria was toothless, Dolly had an overabundance, and these were bared like a row of tombstones as she inspected the purchase with exaggerated interest. ‘And is this for your bottom drawer, Gloria?’ From the way she addressed the woman, who was twelve years her senior, one would think Gloria was a little child. ‘Eh, you must have loads of stuff by now, you are a lucky lass …’
But after the visitors had gone this sentiment underwent an addition, a gleam of malicious laughter in Dolly’s eye. ‘She’ll be lucky if she ever gets to use them, an’ all. Bottom drawer’ll collapse under the weight of all that stuff before she finds anyone who’ll have her.’
‘Ooh, you mean cat,’ scolded Ellen. Niall also cast a disapproving look for this two-faced conduct, which was another thing that irritated him besides Dolly’s bleating laugh, the latter grating his ears yet again.
‘Well, she doesn’t do herself any favours, does she?’ pointed out Dolly, her face creased in mirth. ‘You’d think by the time she reached that age her mother would have bought her a brassiere. She looks like a sackful of piglets off to the butcher’s .’
‘Well, at least she’s got some piglets.’ Harriet spoke bluntly, as she rose to take away the cups, her eyes upon the other’s flat chest. ‘You want to watch it, you might have to eat your words – you being the last one of us left on the shelf.’
Niall shared a wince with Ellen, but at least with Harriet one knew where one stood; she always said things to your face. Satisfied with the positioning of the feathers around the cork, he secured the twine.
Dolly bridled, though waited until her more forceful sister was out of the room to mutter, ‘Smug devil. Just because she’s cornered herself a man doesn’t mean he’ll be daft enough to wed her. You’d think she was going out with the Prince of Wales. It’s not as if he’s anything to write home about – even our Nye’s better-looking than him.’
Whilst Ellen and Nora chuckled, Niall gasped offence. ‘What do you mean, “even”?’ Using his palm to bat the shuttlecock onto the table, he leaned back and picked up a newspaper.
‘Well, at any rate, Gloria seems to think you’re the bee’s knees,’ Nora told him, with a sly look at her daughters.
‘Yes, I shall have to watch her,’ teased Ellen.
Niall blustered with embarrassment and rustled the pages of his newspaper. ‘What’re you on about, you daft beggars?’
‘Oh, we’ve seen her making sheep’s eyes at you! Why do you think she’s always popping in here?’
‘She’ll have to ask her mam’s permission first,’ bleated Dolly.
‘You’re all bloody daft,’ muttered Niall grumpily. Then, as three drenched children swept in to ask if he would partake in a game of cards, he threw aside the newspaper with a cry of surrender. ‘I can see I’m not going to be allowed to read!’
‘Eh, don’t go tearing it,’ warned Ellen with a wink at her mother. ‘You might miss seeing a report about your wolf.’
Whilst this was a jest, the children took it seriously, each of them jumping in with their own query, ten-year-old Dominic being first. ‘Have you seen it kill owt, Dad?’
‘Not yet.’ Niall lit a cigarette, its smoke overpowering the reek of wet hair and clothing.
‘John Mahoney’s dog killed Reg Wilson’s rabbit this morning, and there was all this blood, and purple guts hanging ou—’
‘Yes, thank you!’ Niall called a halt to spare the younger ones’ sensitivities, then addressed the boy’s mother. ‘You’ll have to stop feeding him meat. He’s getting to be a right bloodthirsty devil.’
Dom’s smile burst forth.
‘Are you scared of it, Dad?’ tendered five-year-old Batty, his cheeks pink with cold.
‘Father’s not scared of anything, are you?’ Honor informed her brother in a quietly disapproving voice that said, how could he even ask.
Yes, thought Niall, sometimes I am scared, scared that this is all there is to life, to undergo the same routine day after day, being tormented by female drivel year after year until I die; to be nothing more than the wage earner. But to his offspring he said, ‘Me, scared? Nah? If he shows them big teeth at me I’ll flatten him with me shovel and bring him home to make a fur coat for your mam.’
Re-entering to the children’s giggles, Harriet pricked up her ears. ‘Our Nell’s getting a fur coat?’
Ellen hooted. ‘On the pittance he earns? That’ll be the day.’
‘Shame, I could have borrowed it when I go to meet Pete’s family.’ Harriet’s young man was a comparatively recent acquisition, but already both were smitten.
‘I doubt it would impress them,’ smirked Ellen. ‘It’s that so-called wolf he’s supposed to have seen again. I reckon he needs specs.’
‘I’ve told you, it’s not just me!’ objected Niall, a smile on his face yet slightly annoyed that his wife should denigrate him thus, and in front of his children too. Even if it was intended as a jest it was no way for a woman to address the breadwinner. ‘All the other lads have seen it.’
‘They’re having you on!’ Ellen was relentless in her teasing. ‘I bet one of them’s got hold of a big dog and touched it up with a tin of paint.’
‘Don’t believe me then!’ Cigarette in mouth, Niall dismissed the laughing doubters, but remained adamant as he dealt out cards to his children for a game of Happy Families. ‘Dick Kelly says he’s going to set a trap for it. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your faces when he does.’
‘Well, don’t be fetching the stinky old thing home here,’ warned his wife. ‘If I’m ever lucky enough to get a fur coat I’d like it to be genuine.’
However, by the time autumn was in full flush, what Ellen had assumed to be a figment of her husband’s imagination turned out to be quite real. Niall and his workmates had seen it a few times now; but more pertinently it had earned a wider notoriety for killing and partly devouring sheep, its gruesome attacks being reported in the newspapers. It was definitely not a dog, said the experts. And there was Niall’s name in print, being one of those witnesses interviewed. So they had to believe him now, didn’t they?
On the contrary, they teased and tormented him even more, Nora and her daughters, that the following Sunday during dinner, Harriet decreeing mockingly, ‘Eh, he’ll do anything to make himself look important!’
Smarting beneath his fixed grin, feeling his children’s eyes on him as they watched for a reaction, Niall continued in his stoic silent manner to eat his dinner, and awaited his wife’s contribution. But for a change Ellen stuck up for her husband, laying down her knife to lean over and pat him, saying with genuine affection, ‘Aw, he’s important to us, aren’t you, dear?’
Niall returned her smile, half-expecting some clever comment from one of the others.
So it was no surprise when Dolly added, ‘Aye, if we didn’t have him who else could we poke fun at?’
‘I’m sure you’d find somebody, Dol,’ muttered Niall, which everyone took as a joke.
Then the clink of cutlery displaced chatter as all became intent on the delicious roast.
After dinner, with Nora and Dolly in the scullery washing the pots, Harriet ironing work overalls, and Ellen escorting her children to Sunday school, Niall relaxed in his brown leatherette armchair and took up the newspaper, which had so far remained unread due to morning Mass. This was his favourite time of day.
He must have been napping though, for when the children came home he was jolted awake to find the paper in a crumpled heap on his lap. Refreshed, he laughed at himself and greeted them.
‘Look what I’ve got, Dad!’ From under his jacket Batty presented a small toy car.
‘Why, you little demon!’ scolded his mother, then quickly explained to her husband, ‘The fly beggar must have picked it up whilst I wasn’t looking.’
Niall was at once stern. ‘Eh, now then, Bartholomew Doran, what have I told you? You can’t have things unless you’ve got the money to pay for them.’
‘It doesn’t belong to anybody,’ protested the innocent. ‘It were just there on the road.’
‘Is this the sort of thing you’ve learned at Sunday school?’ demanded his father. ‘No! Now, take it back. There’ll be a little boy looking for that.’
‘But he wouldn’t have lost it if he’d looked after it,’ reasoned Batty. ‘You told me people don’t deserve to have things if they don’t look after them.’
‘Never mind what I said!’ retorted Niall firmly, his voice rising. ‘And you can stop trying to wheedle your way round me. It’s not yours, now take it back to where you found it.’ He shook his head in disbelief at Ellen. ‘How did we raise such a freebooter?’
Covering a smile, his wife led the little boy away to replace the stolen item. Niall spent a few moments chatting to his other offspring before they were made to attend certain duties, at which point he rustled his newspaper to order and resumed reading.
The rest of the afternoon was comparatively peaceful, everyone sitting reading or sewing or other suitably quiet pursuits. Towards five o’clock Nora went to put the kettle on and, discovering there was no tin of peaches in the pantry for tea, returned to appoint an errand boy. Despite this being the Sabbath one could always buy what one needed around here from those who were not observers.
‘Dom, nip out and get me some.’ His grandmother delved in her purse.
Engrossed in an adventure story, Dominic seemed reluctant to tear his eyes from it, and was tardy in moving to obey. ‘To Mrs Madden’s?’
‘No, she’s too pious to open on Sunday. You’ll have to go to that one by Navigation Road.’ Nora handed her eldest grandson a coin.
‘I’ll go, Mam.’ Ellen jumped up to intercept it. ‘I need something meself.’
‘He’s nearly eleven,’ scolded Nora, ‘I think he can find his way.’
‘I know that!’ Her daughter gave a light reply and performed a quick tug of her silky blue jumper over trim hips. ‘But I said, I need something myself.’
They all knew it for a lie. Ellen was much too protective of her children, never allowing them to cross the road on their own, standing at the school gates to wait until they had gone in safely, waiting for them again at home time, even though the school was close by, ever fearful that something would befall them, unable to relax unless they were safely under her care.
‘What is it then?’ challenged her mother.
‘Just something!’ Ellen gasped. ‘Bloomin’ heck, do we have to have an inquest?’
Niall hardly lifted his eyes from the newspaper. The children were his wife’s concern and he rarely interfered.
But Nora shook her head in exasperation. ‘You’ll still be holding his hand when he walks up the aisle, you will! Stop mollycoddling the lad.’
Dom looked most insulted, flopping back in his chair and huffing as he reached for his book. ‘There’s no need for me to go if me mam’s off then.’
‘You’ll go if you’re told to go,’ cautioned his father from behind the News of the World.
‘It’s all right, he doesn’t have to,’ negated Ellen.
Dom might have been excused but his five-year-old brother leaped up to accompany her.
‘There’ll be no sweets,’ warned his mother, in strict manner, ‘especially for those who take things that belong to other little boys. Don’t think there will.’ But from the indulgent twinkle in her eye Batty knew she could easily be persuaded.
Aware that this brother was in possession of such a knack, Honora’s head shot up from her exercise book. ‘I’m coming if he’s off!’
‘No, Honor! You’ve got that school work to finish …’
‘Oh, but—’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Unable to read his newspaper with all the argument that was going on, Niall slapped it onto his knee with a heavy sigh. ‘Look, why don’t I save everyone the bother and go meself? I might as well go for a walk, I’ll get no peace here.’ He began to rise.
Ellen pushed him back in his chair, saying sternly, ‘I’m going!’
‘Good, bugger off then,’ grumbled Niall, only half joking as his wife made for the door, the five-year-old tagging on to her skirt.
* * *
With Batty hopping alongside her – protesting when she dragged him past the sweet shop on the corner – Ellen journeyed along a warren of short streets, going out of her way to call in on a friend and to spend some ten minutes chatting whilst her bored infant was made to sit and wait. Finally, she resumed her errand, a relieved little boy almost dragging her along the street as they made for the main thoroughfare, where he knew there to be other sweet shops.
They had reached the corner, and were about to turn into Walmgate, when suddenly two bicycles appeared on the pavement as if from nowhere, racing at full speed side by side. Two shocked faces loomed large, the young riders displaying panic as all parties realised there was about to be a collision. Her instinct to protect her child, a horrified Ellen yanked on the little arm, lifting Batty off his feet and out of the path of danger, crying out as she herself was hit by one of the speeding bikes, and falling into the path of the other, its rider flying through the air and landing on his head in the road.
‘I wonder who she’s met this time,’ sighed Nora when her daughter had not returned after half an hour, and the table had been laid with bread and butter for tea. Ellen was an incorrigible gossip, who had been known to spend two hours over a short trip to the corner shop. ‘Go and see what’s keeping her, Dom. Tell her we’d like those peaches for tonight’s tea, not Christmas.’
From his chair, Niall threw her a wry smile and went back to reading the newspaper.
But his eldest son had not reached the door before there came a series of knocks on it, a rapid, urgent summons.
Niall lowered his News of the World and exchanged puzzled looks with the others, whilst his son revealed the caller.
‘Oh, Mrs Beasty!’ Gloria’s limpid blue eyes brimmed with tears as she addressed Nora first, then directed her look of compassion at Niall, clutching a handful of blouse as she spoke. ‘It’s your Ellen … you’d better come …’
They all rose as one then and converged anxiously on Gloria, demanding to know what was amiss.
‘Knocked over … ambulance …’ Words tumbled disjointedly between the unaccustomed dentures, invoking panic in the listeners.
And then they were all running in the direction of her pointed finger, Niall, Harriet, Dolly and Nora – and the children.
‘Stay!’ their father turned back to command them harshly, then ran on, not knowing what he was running to, his heart almost pounding out of his chest as he headed for Walmgate, the terrified mother and sisters in his wake.
Immediately they saw the ambulance. But even as Niall ran towards it, the vehicle was pulling away from the crowd of onlookers. He and the women called after it, frantically waving, yelling and shrieking for it to stop.
‘Here’s the husband!’ People were pointing and gesturing, amongst them Father Finnegan, who also tried to arrest the vehicle, dashing into the road and waving both arms, but its driver paid no heed as it departed, bell ringing.
His senses ripped apart, Niall thudded to a halt as he reached the scene to be met by the priest, but his frantic blue eyes were to travel beyond Father Finnegan’s entreating features, taking in fresh horror. There were smears of blood on the road and on the pavement. Then he saw Batty in the arms of a nun, not a scratch on him, and his whole being was swamped by relief. Ignoring Father Finnegan’s attempt at ministration – ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right, Nye!’ – he shoved his way through the curious onlookers and took charge of his little boy, kissing and hugging him, but the child did not say a word, his eyes round with shock. Nora, Harriet and Dolly came screaming after him, frightening the child further with their reaction, whilst the priest and the nun tried ineffectively to calm them.
They were all taken in charge then by a policeman who, quickly ascertaining that these were relatives of one of the victims, gave brief explanation as he hurried them to a car, which took them to the hospital; where, after a long wait, they were met by an apology and the abrupt announcement that Ellen had died.
Mingled with the cries of grief was incomprehension. How could she be dead? The sun was shining! This same thought served all. But for Niall the shock was manifold, his mind harbouring a deeper, darker impact of guilt. He had wondered, imagined time and again, what he would feel if his wife were to meet with a fatal accident, and here it was, happened.
It was all right for them. They were women, they could wail and weep and sob and beat their breasts. Men couldn’t do that – well, his brother might have done when Evelyn died, but Sean was weak, and everyone knew just how genuine that display had been when he’d married someone else five minutes later. No, Niall could not do that. Consumed by guilt that he had wished it on her – caring Ellen, so loving of her children, so missed by them – he could only stare and hang his head. In previous imaginings he had rehearsed his own role as one of affected grief. But it wasn’t pretend. He truly did throb with sorrow. How could he not?
Prior to an investigation, there had been anguished debate amongst family and friends – how could one be killed by so innocuous a vehicle as a bicycle? Then the inquest had revealed that Ellen had died due to a fractured skull, received not directly from a bike but from the kerb upon which she had fallen. Whilst the youth who had landed on his head had suffered only a gash, Ellen’s skull had been as fragile as an eggshell.
Pending any more serious charge, the youths had been summoned for riding their bicycles on the pavement, their fate yet to be decided – not that it could ever be as bad as Ellen’s, condemned those who had loved her. At the Requiem Mass Father Finnegan had asked the mourners to pray for those wretched sinners. Stupefied as he was by this trauma, Niall had felt the palpable wave of anger that emanated from Ellen’s womenfolk, rippling like magma along the pew, but they had voiced no comment until now, when, in the privacy of their home, they gave vent to their revulsion, protesting vociferously about the priest’s request.
‘I don’t care if they are repentant!’ raged Harriet to the throng of grief-stricken relatives, friends and neighbours crammed alongside that monstrous sideboard on borrowed chairs, who sipped respectfully from their glasses of sherry, the plates of ham sandwiches and fruit cake barely touched. ‘I’d kill them myself if I had them here before me!’ Agitated fingers picked at a black-edged handkerchief, seeking a patch that was not sodden. In the puffy face, her eyes were as dull and empty as stones, but her angular jaw oozed resentment. ‘I mean, one of them landed on his bloody head, for Christ’s sake! How come he walks away scot-free, and poor Nell …?’ Faced with her sister’s bereaved children seated all forlorn in black, her nasal anguish was to terminate in a fresh bout of sobbing.
‘Murderers,’ denounced a red-eyed Nora, her own voice leaden and morose. ‘That’s what they are. God might forgive them, I never will.’ There was a combined rumble of agreement from the gathering.
Two more of Ellen’s sisters, Mary and Kate, continued to sob quietly, their husbands offering awkward condolence, their movements stiff and unaccustomed to these black suits and starched collars. Distant relations of Niall were here too, and his friend Reilly, whom he hardly ever saw, had hurried to his side with characteristic loyalty, but these were outnumbered by the Beasty followers.
One of the neighbours, Mrs Dunphy, sighed pityingly and shook her head. ‘Eh, two in one year, Nora.’
‘At least there was nobody at fault in poor Eve’s case,’ sniffled Dolly, blowing her nose for the umpteenth time, her eyes similarly lifeless. ‘I mean, it was terrible to lose her but there’s not much you can do against a disease, is there? But there’s plenty can be done about those buggers – I’m sorry to swear but that’s what they are! And how Father Finnegan can even ask us to forgive them – they deserve hanging!’ There were more murmurs of agreement and more tears.
Then she and everyone else looked to Niall for similar declaration. Soused in guilt as he was for the many times he had imagined his wife dead, the best he could deliver was a shuddering sigh and a shake of head.
Taking this to indicate that the widower was too choked by grief for words, the tearful women rallied to him, reached out supportive hands, assuring him they would be here to assist in his hour of need and ever after.
‘Don’t you worry, lad,’ murmured Nora in stalwart tone. ‘We’ll always be here.’
You would think that something like that would turn one’s routine on its head, thought Niall, but no. Weeks after the mourners had taken home their chairs, here he was doing exactly the same things at the same hour, amongst the same people, albeit one less of them. And the strange thing about it was, he still expected her to be here when he came home on an evening.
The routine might be the same but life was not – how could it be, burdened as he was by such tremendous remorse? Never in his selfish imaginings had he stopped to think what Ellen’s death would do to her offspring. But he did now. If he had been left prostrate at the age of twenty by the loss of his mother, what agony must such little children feel? Even though they had gone back to school the day after the funeral, and were once again to be seen playing their childish games in the street, the devastation they had suffered could so easily be resurrected, tears never far from the surface. One might have expected little Batty to be worst hit, he being witness to his mother’s death; and perhaps this was true, for no one could see into another’s head. Yet the five-year-old seemed to have suffered few ill effects. No, it was Brian and Juggy who were most clingy, the latter seemingly terrified to let Niall out of her sight, lest her one remaining parent not return.
For the third time that week he heard footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder to find himself shadowed. With a doomed sigh, he stalled and waited for his younger daughter to catch up. Scolding her gently, he told her to go home and get ready for class, and remained there for a moment to make sure she obeyed, casting a stern expression in response to the beseeching one that she threw over her shoulder.
Whilst he stood watching, another figure came out with a bag in her hand, crouched towards the child and spoke gently for a mere second, before running up the street to accost the father. Having been about to turn away, Niall gave another inward sigh and waited for Gloria, trying to avoid looking at those breasts that appeared to have no synchronisation as they bounced this way and that beneath the floral pinafore.
‘Me mam says I have to bring you these to have with your break, Niall!’ Earnest of face, failing to hide her admiration of him, Gloria pressed the paper bag in his hand; it contained two buns. ‘I made them meself,’ she lisped through toothless gums.
With his smiling nod of gratitude, she hovered for a second, then, with a last adoring look, turned and ran back down the street. Upon reaching her doorstep she turned to fling a last gaze at him, but by this time another neighbour had accosted Niall to donate yet another gift, and, robbed of his smile, Gloria turned sadly indoors.
‘Here, take these with you, love,’ whispered old Mrs Powers, the skin of her hand paper thin and displaying a network of veins as she donated a small package. ‘Two rashers of bacon – you’ve got a stove in your hut, haven’t you?’
Niall replaced the cap he had just tipped. ‘Aye, I’m grateful of it an’ all, what with these nippy mornings.’ Gracing her with a polite smile, he took off his haversack and inserted the package, and even though his needs had been well provided by Nora, he told the donor, ‘I’ll have them for me dinner. Thank you very much, it’s very kind of you.’
‘It’s no more than you’ve been towards me, dear.’ With a beneficent nod, old Mrs Powers backed indoors – only to be replaced by her neighbour, Mrs Whelan, who had come out to collect her milk from the step.
This time, though, there was only verbal contribution. ‘Eh, how’s them poor little mites of yours, Mr Doran?’ No one looked their best in a morning, but Mrs Whelan’s appearance would not improve during the day, the worry of her husband’s constant unemployment adding years to her scraggy features. ‘I wish there was some way I could help …’
‘There’s nowt much anybody can do, love – but thanks.’ Niall gave a tight smile, his eyes straying to check on Juggy, as he itched to be off.
‘I know,’ sighed Mrs Whelan, ‘but I just wish I could make it right for you. You’ve done so much for us over this past year. I’d never make ends meet without all them rabbits and coal you’ve given us—’
‘Ooh, keep it under your hat, love!’ he said hastily, ‘or I’ll be losing my job.’ By rights everything on the line, whether it be a few lumps of coal or a rabbit caught in a snare, belonged to the LNER. A soul of great integrity, Niall would steal from none, but in this case he had no regret: what loss was a few bits of coal to a huge railway company? And what was moral about a soldier who had fought for his country being subjected to the means test?
Tipping his hat to Mrs Whelan, and checking that Juggy had finally gone indoors, he resumed his eager stride. However inhospitable the conditions, he had become glad of his work, for it took him away from that pain-filled mien and that of her siblings; for the daytime at least.
But it would always be waiting for him when he got home.
‘I don’t know how I’d cope without you, Nora,’ he informed his mother-in-law, having arrived home after dark on that same day, to an ordered house, a nourishing meal on the table, and his offspring washed and ready for bed, he himself now sated. ‘I’m really grateful for you looking after them so well.’
Her hawkish face calm, yet still etched with the pain of losing too many children, Nora waved aside her role as she supervised the reluctant exodus to bed, then removed Niall’s empty plate. ‘It keeps me busy. Anyhow, I’ve got Hat and Dolly to help.’
Niall acknowledged this too as he accepted a cup of tea from the latter. ‘I know how hard it must have been for you all.’ Any denigrating opinion he might have of them was swept aside; no one could have been kinder to him.
‘It’s the least we can do for our Ellen’s husband,’ replied Harriet, touching his shoulder.
Niall felt himself blushing and thanked God they could not peer into his soul. But he simply nodded and to cover his awkwardness said, ‘Mrs Powers gave me some bacon as I was on me way to work this morning, and Gloria ran after me with a couple of buns.’
Dolly smirked. ‘You’ll be needing a new set of teeth then.’
‘She’s only trying to help,’ said her mother, more generously. ‘I’ve been glad of her and Mrs Lavelle meself, I can tell you.’
Niall agreed that everyone had been so good, many of the neighbours continuing to play their part in helping the bereaved husband, running after him in the street to offer some little bit of comfort. ‘But I wish they’d just leave off a bit now—’ He broke off abruptly as there came a tap, and the face of yet another neighbour appeared round the door.
‘I’ve not come to bother you, Mrs Beasty.’ In respectful manner, the monkey-like Mrs Hutchinson set a tin of peaches on the table. ‘I’ve just brought you these from town. It’s nice to have a little treat through the week, isn’t it?’
Niall saw his mother-in-law’s jaw twitch in anger. And though she managed to contain it under a veil of politeness, as she thanked the woman for her thoughtfulness, Mrs Hutchinson was sufficiently intimidated by that steely-eyed face to remove herself from it within seconds. ‘Well, let me know if you need anything else, dear!’
Immediately the door closed, Nora said of the peach tin – the kind that Ellen had gone to purchase on the day of her death – ‘Stick ’em in the cupboard, Dolly! I couldn’t stomach the blasted things if I was starving.’ Her tone was one of deep loathing. ‘You can’t say anything when they’re only showing concern but, by God, I don’t know how I stopped meself from crowning her with it.’
Niall’s eyes followed Dolly as she relegated the peaches to the back of a cupboard, his voice hollow. ‘Aye, I were just about to say, when she came in, I wish they’d just leave me to get on with it now. Every time I open the front door I can feel their eyes on me, brimming with pity.’
The women agreed that it was the same for them, Dolly voicing what all had experienced. ‘Whenever you see any of them gathered together they clam up – you can tell they’ve been talking about Nell.’
‘People love a tragedy,’ pronounced Nora, her eye and tone become bitter.
‘They make me sick,’ seethed Harriet, revisited by her own grief. ‘Acting all teary and concerned – it’s not their tragedy it’s ours.’
Niall chewed his lip, noting how quickly they turned, how they hated to be on the receiving end of the gossip. So did he.
‘And the worst thing is,’ declared Nora mournfully, ‘they’ll have got over it in a few weeks. We never will.’
Dreading Christmas, Niall found it even worse when it finally arrived not crisp and white but wet and miserable. Telling himself it was for the children’s sake, he tried to make the best of an overcast celebration, scrimped on his own pleasures to take them all to a pantomime, and to buy each the type of present they would normally not receive. Yet, at the end of a very testing day, there remained an empty bed and a sobering indictment: no gift he had bestowed could replace their mother.
The winter months of 1935 were tough. Battling his way up the line through flurries of January snow, he had never felt so desolate. The wolf was obviously finding it arduous too in these foot-high drifts, for the vulpine spoor that defaced the pristine blanket led investigators not to a savaged sheep but to the remains of tinier mammals. Despite these giveaway tracks, the predator continued to remain at large. Wishing he too was a lesser beast, so as not to think and to feel emotion, Niall tried to inject himself with hope; told himself that spring was just around the corner.
But even after the upland streams and tributaries had thawed and their icy contents came tumbling down from the hills to swell the Ouse and Foss and threaten the city, before mercifully receding, Niall was to remain swamped in desolation.
Is this it? he was often to ask during the months after Ellen’s funeral. Was this what he had wished upon himself? Why, he was even worse off than before. At least he had had a wife to cuddle up to on a night. However much she might nag him over his shortcomings, Ellen had been good at heart, knitting him jumpers and socks, making sure he was warm and well fed before setting off to work on winter mornings, treating him to his favourite sweets whenever she went into town. How could he have been so lacking in imagination, so perverse as to think he would not miss her as much as anyone else in this house? Steeped in melancholia, for months he had crucified himself over his last words to her. He had told her to bugger off, and she had. For good. And all over a tin of bloody peaches! Grief superseded by anger, he raged at the stupidity of it all. I told her I’d go for them! Why does she never listen? And then the anger had reverted to misery, for that was another thing: the habit of referring to her in the present tense; expecting her still to be there when he got home on a night, waiting to take his coat and to rub his cold hands with her warm ones, to steer him towards the fire …
But he had imagined her dead and now he had got his just deserts. Life held no further pleasure than to see his children become adults, and marry, and hopefully make better decisions than he himself had done. And isn’t that sufficiently worthwhile, a sudden, inner voice demanded at his lowest ebb. At least you can help to guide them, make up for your failure as a husband. And there would be grandchildren. Yes, yes, of course there were things that were still meaningful. And thereupon the tide of self-pity began to recede. Never even to contemplate re-marriage, Niall decided then that, with his mother-in-law willing to cook and to wash and to lay out his clean underwear for him, his children would be enough; must be enough. Accordingly, from that point of catharsis, it was to Nora he handed his wage packet, and she who took over from Ellen in the running of his life.
