Secrets of Our Hearts

by Sheelagh Kelly

  Devastated, he gasped – then tried to grab her again. ‘You don’t mean that!’ he pleaded. ‘I can tell you feel the same from the way you look at me—’

  ‘I mean it!’ Her glare staved him off. ‘It’s finished. Now, I’d be obliged if you’d let me go home – alone!’

  So saying, she tottered briskly away.

  Assailed by misery, still shocked at how quickly this had occurred, Niall stared at her retreating form, the shoulders stiff with anger. Then, after a few melancholy moments, he began to drag his feet in her wake, trailing her from a distance, but only to ensure she encountered no peril along the way. When her prancing silhouette finally disappeared under the archway, he felt as if his world had come to an end.

  He should have given up, had he listened to his conscience and not his heart, for to pursue a married woman was morally repugnant. He would have given up, had not a tiny spur of hope managed to pierce that crust of desolation: how could it be wrong when his every waking moment was consumed by such deep longing for her, when he had seen that affection returned in those gentian-blue eyes? She felt the same compelling need as he did, Niall was certain of it, if only she would forget about past failures and allow herself to be happy.

  Fighting his urge to run and confront her with this, he let a few days pass before visiting The Angel, hoping by then she would have calmed down. She accused him of having a quick temper, which was totally inaccurate, for only under the greatest provocation did he lose it – and even if he did have a temper, then by God, her own could equal his. However, it would not do to argue this point, for the look on her face when he did finally enter told him that she had not yet relented, and any optimism he might have cultured on the way here was brought to an abrupt halt.

  Wearing a cautious smile, he approached the bar.

  ‘What can I get ye?’ Her voice was unusually cool, her eyes emotionless and refusing to connect with his.

  ‘I just came to apologise …’ began Niall softly.

  ‘Right – a pint is it?’ Still terse, Boadicea grabbed the pump.

  ‘I know I can be hot-tempered,’ he confessed, ‘but it’s only when I get upset about something that really matters to me. Please don’t let it spoil things.’

  ‘There’s nothing to spoil.’ She was growing agitated. ‘Now would you be wanting this or not? ’Cause I’ve others to serve.’

  Niall did not even bother to point out that the taproom held few customers. ‘Why won’t you talk to me about it?’

  Her voice rose an octave. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

  ‘If I thought you hated me I’d never come here again, but I know you feel the same way as I do, and I’m not giving up.’ Seeing that she was about to fend him off again, he made a swift gesture of acceptance with his hands. ‘All right! You’re still mad with me, I can see that. You don’t want to talk to me tonight, so I’ll just have to keep coming back till you will.’

  But this only procured an outraged roar, and there was a hint of anguished desperation to her eye as she stormed off into the kitchen.

  The landlady emerged from a different direction. Finding one of her customers unattended, she tilted her chin at Niall and enquired what she could get for him.

  ‘Nothing, thanks. I’ve changed my mind,’ he told Mrs Langan quietly, before he turned and left.

  But, undaunted by the frosty reception, he was to return the following evening. This time, Boadicea would not even serve him, conveniently vanishing for the duration of his visit. Hence he was forced to leave without so much as a word passing between them.

  Good Friday was similarly barren. With no work to go to, the shops all closed and the streets deserted, not even a newspaper to take his mind off his dilemma, there was good reason for Niall’s sombre outlook, and therefore no suspicions were raised at home. The entire day composed of matters religious, like a dutiful Catholic he attended morning and evening Mass with his family, and, prohibited from the pub, went early to bed alongside his boys. But all this did not stop him plotting his next visit to The Angel. And on Saturday evening there he was again, as dogged as he had promised.

  Making his way through the drinkers, returning convivial nods along his way, Niall arrived at the bar. His money at the ready, he glanced around in search of Boadicea. She was not immediately evident. The landlord, his wife and barman were working their way through the noisy queue of customers. Niall waited his turn, idly clicking his pennies together whilst maintaining his surveillance, trying to pick her out amid the sea of heads, and eventually was served.

  Mr Langan appeared vexed as he pulled the glass of stout, for once not displaying his usual bonhomie and not open to trivial conversation, but Niall asked him anyway.

  ‘Is Boadicea about?’

  The landlord paused to glare. ‘Hang on, I’ll just go and find her for you – does it bloody look like it when we’re rushing about like blue-arsed flies?’ His contemptuous reply was pursued by a rebuke. ‘And I reckon you’re the one responsible for her leaving us in the lurch!’

  Niall’s lips parted in surprise as the scolding continued.

  ‘Coming in pestering her,’ mumbled Langan, who had resumed filling the glass. ‘By rights I shouldn’t even be serving thee! Losing us our best barmaid …’

  ‘You mean, she’s left for good?’ Niall looked stunned.

  ‘Give the man a coconut!’ The landlord firmly placed a glass of Guinness before him and held out a hand.

  Dazed and upset by this unexpected outcome of his adoring attentions, Niall placed the coppers on the man’s upheld palm; then he turned away from the bar and sought out a place in which to consume it. But a pub on a Saturday was no place for quiet contemplation, and he sat there for only a few moments before rising again to leave. What was the point in staying when the woman he loved no longer worked here? Such a drastic reaction said one thing: she really did have no wish to see him again. Utterly crushed, he went home.

  There was plenty of time for contemplation afterwards, though it was a deeply miserable state to be in. Maintaining a vigil with the faithful, in a church pitch-black as death, Niall waited piously for midnight, confident of Christ’s return. But even in the midst of such devotion, he fought to keep his mind from straying to Boadicea, and his heart was much less confident about her.

  Even with the joy of the Resurrection, his brain remained quite numb, making it hard for him to summon much enthusiasm on Easter Sunday, as he gathered with a crowd of friends and neighbours along the roadside in Walmgate. Whilst Grandma, Aunts Dolly and Harriet keenly awaited his children in the religious procession that would bring the ornaments back to church, his eyes were seeking another. Of course, had he wanted merely to see Boadicea, he could have positioned himself outside her boarding house. He had indeed considered the possibility many times since last night, but one recurring thought prevented it: if she had given up her job in desperation to avoid him, then she could equally have given up her lodgings and left the area altogether. Unable to bear the thought of having driven her away, he chose to remain in ignorance, desperate to see her even in passing, holding tightly to this last tendril of hope as his eyes flitted back and forth over the crowd of bystanders.

  ‘They’re here!’

  His thoughts momentarily jerked away from Boadicea by an excited voice in the crowd, Niall glanced to his right and leaned forward, craning his neck to see beyond the jutting row of heads, which extended all the way to Walmgate Bar and beyond, into Lawrence Street, right up to the Poor Clares’ convent from where the procession had set out, and was now entering the dim tunnel of the barbican into Walmgate. First to emerge were Father Finnegan and his two fellow priests, and their acolytes strewing flowers upon the road, Father Finnegan in his biretta and Easter robes, swinging his incense burner to right and left, the smaller altar boys with clasped hands and earnest intent.

  ‘Eh, look at our Dom!’ Niall’s womenfolk smiled and nudged each other at the sight of his son’s angelic appearance in his crisp whi
te surplice over red soutane, pacing dutifully beside the priest, ahead of the platforms bedecked with flowers that carried the holy statues, followed by hundreds of little boys and girls all veiled in white.

  Women’s eyes brimmed with tears at the vision – men’s eyes too – all watching proud and loving as, upon the air drifted the sound of childish singing, the scent of crushed flora, their offspring making an unhurried way towards them along the road, their pace faltering as they came under the parental gaze, all eager for a smile of approval, and then onwards, finally to turn off the main thoroughfare. At which point the watchers fell in behind the procession as it wound its way along a side street to St George’s church.

  Proud and emotional though he was over his children, once they had gone ahead, Niall’s thoughts were soon returned to Boadicea. Head downcast and crammed with pictures of her, he joined the multitude, and began to amble towards the double bell-cote that protruded above the roofs of houses at the far end of the street.

  Meanwhile, from another direction could be heard the loud approach of a military band, competing with the joyous ringing of bells, as those Catholic soldiers from the barracks made their way to worship too. Through sheer volume of numbers, it took a little longer than the usual two minutes for Niall and his in-laws to reach their destination, the separate parties finally converging at the junction of two streets – whereupon sat an uninspiring church, unadorned, save for a cross upon each of its stone gables, yet its open door revealing a friendly and inviting interior. By the time he arrived, the music had stopped and the players were storing their brass instruments behind the low outer wall for safekeeping. This, and the accommodation of many bodies taking a further period, Niall’s shuffling approach to the entrance was slow, so his fantasies had ample time to take a grip, and as he squashed through the gateway with others, his mind was miles away. On the verge of entering church, he stood back to allow his womenfolk to go before him, when he lifted his eyes, and came face to face with the adored one.

  His gut lurched and he could not prevent a smile of delight as he fixed his gaze to that dear face. Neither could Boadicea – though hers was obviously performed on impulse, for just as quickly she appeared angry at herself over this display of weakness and, turning her face away, she squeezed through a gap in the crowd and into the flower-bedecked and candlelit church.

  It had all occurred in seconds. The smile had not yet had time to fade from Niall’s lips as his mother-in-law inched her way past him. Experiencing a slight note of panic alongside his heartache, he pretended the smile was for her, before composing his face into a more suitably religious mien. Then, nursing mixed emotions, he too wandered into the church, surrendering to the embrace of incense, freesia, lavender polish and candle wax.

  Slightly ahead, Nora crossed herself with holy water, genuflected before the stone altar, then moved into a pew and kneeled. A set of rosary beads dangling from her mitts, she clasped them, and bowed her head in meditation, such a demeanour betraying no hint of mistrust. But she had noticed the way her widowed son-in-law had feasted his eyes on that buxom woman, and, mingled with her prayer was a note of resolve that something must be done about this.

  Assuming that his shared illicit smile had gone unnoticed, for Nora would surely have commented otherwise, Niall remained untroubled by any fear of being found out, burdened by a greater dilemma: should he corner Boadicea at home, demand that she listen whilst he poured out his heart, and perhaps run the risk that this would drive her away altogether, or should he do as she purportedly desired and leave her be, and perhaps run the risk that she might depart from his life anyway, without ever knowing how deeply he cared?

  With a bank holiday lending much time to stew over this horrible quandary, Niall remained in bed for longer than was usual that Monday, trying to lose himself in sleep, whilst downstairs the children consumed the chocolate eggs that their aunts had brought home from the factory. Though when he finally decided to shift his unkempt carcass for a late breakfast, it looked as if it might be not such a slothful day as he had anticipated, for Nora proposed they take the children to the Museum Gardens.

  ‘In fact, it’s such a lovely day,’ she announced, ‘I reckon we’ll have a picnic lunch – that’s when your father decides to get his whiskers off.’

  The children were exuberant, Juggy most of all, as she leaped up to balance on tiptoe beside her father’s dining chair, running a chocolate-scented hand over his stubbled jaw, only to receive a tired grumble. ‘Oy, don’t go clarting me up with Easter egg, missus.’

  Whilst the youngsters might jump for joy, there was insurrection from Harriet. ‘I had planned to go and see Pete …’

  ‘You can see your fancy man later,’ retorted her mother. ‘Easter’s a time for families.’ Her face remained stern as she muttered to Dolly, who had also preferred a lie-in to Mass, ‘Don’t think you’re jibbing out neither, sat there with your hair like a haystack – you can get yourself smartened up.’

  Her face creased from oversleep, Dolly bleated, ‘I was going to!’

  ‘I can’t manage these children on my own and they haven’t been out in ages,’ Nora continued to rally. ‘It’ll do you all good.’

  Feeling that her comment was directed mainly at him, even whilst resenting her interference, Niall accepted that in the midst of his own troubles he had been somewhat remiss towards his offspring. Which was why, without objection, he went to wash and shave, and to dress in his best suit, and, when everyone was ready, accompanied the family to the other side of town.

  En route, they were to pause at the end of the street to chat with some neighbours. After fifteen years of marriage, the middle-aged couple were parading their firstborn, eager and proud to display him to anyone they might meet. Whilst Niall stood back, the women crowded round to bestow congratulations, the smaller children craning on tiptoe to see into the pram.

  ‘Ooh, isn’t he gorgeous?’ Harriet shoved her face towards the pram and extended a forefinger, which the baby immediately grasped. Not so overtly maternal, Nora nevertheless managed to offer a compliment, though not to her own child.

  ‘Don’t bend so close to the poor bairn,’ she warned Dolly, who was baring her overabundant teeth to the little occupant. ‘You’ll frighten the life out of him.’

  ‘Can I push him, Mrs Fry?’ Approaching womanhood, Honor had developed a keenness for such pastimes.

  ‘Maybe later,’ said the new mother, unconvincingly.

  Smarting from her mother’s insult, Dolly lifted her head away from the pram, and for something to say, was overly gushing to the parents. ‘After all this time, a little miracle!’

  ‘Delivered by the angels,’ declared the doting father.

  ‘Delivered by the angels,’ muttered Dolly from the side of her mouth, as the two groups moved off in opposite directions. ‘Delivered by Pickford’s more like – did you see the size of it? What a brute!’ she tittered. ‘And there’s our Honor asking to push him. She’d need a crane just to get him into the pram.’

  Niall chose not to join in the cruel humour, but walked on ahead. Juggy ran to catch him up, slipping her hand into his, though he seemed hardly aware of it. All the way to town, his mind was to remain preoccupied.

  Whilst there had been a stream of bank holiday traffic carrying locals to the coast since early morning, there had been influx too from other parts of England, with tourists eager to view York’s antiquities. By midday hundreds were scattered along the banks of the Ouse, and upon the grassy ramparts of the city walls where daffodils fluttered in profusion, and across the lawns of the Museum Gardens. Struggling to find a patch of daisy-laden turf that was large enough to take her extended clan, Nora finally spotted a vacant lot and charged ahead to stake her claim, her sturdy ankles in their thick lisle stockings striding over outstretched limbs, not caring if she trod on one or two of them in her rush. Dolly and Harriet followed with the baskets, whilst Niall took up the rear, the rest of his tribe scampering in between.

  Tho
ugh the sun shone brilliantly today, the grass was still damp from recent snowfalls. Wise to this, the women had brought their mackintoshes and these were spread to form a groundsheet upon which everyone contorted themselves into position, then sat like basking seals, closing their eyes against the sun’s glare and tilting their smiling faces to its warmth, pending lunch. And it was not long before this juncture was reached, a brown paper parcel of sandwiches hauled from Nora’s bag, and divided.

  Half-heartedly devouring one potted meat sandwich after another, Niall wondered what Boadicea might be doing, his fantasies transporting him into a trancelike state, until a Thermos flask was rudely thrust under his nose.

  ‘Get the top off this blasted thing for me, will you?’ demanded Nora.

  The spell broken, he removed the stopper easily and handed the flask back to his mother-in-law.

  ‘Eh, I don’t know what we’d do without you!’ praised Nora, and handed him the first serving of tea in reward.

  Responding with a thoughtful half-smile, Niall took a sip from the Bakelite beaker, attempting to tear his mind from Boadicea, instead to concentrate on the sights and sounds and scents around him: the chirruping of sparrows that bobbed amongst the picnickers, appealing for crumbs; the excited laughter of his three-year-old son in white knitted jersey and shorts, as big sister Honor helped him do tipple-tails on the sloping lawn; the pungent scent of blossom; the cries of wonder from his children at the sudden glorious spectacle of colour, as one of the resident peacocks displayed his tail feathers. For a time these were sufficient to distract him. But then his attention was ensnared by those who promenaded along the sloping rockery pathways that led in different directions around the gardens: happy couples arm in arm, some of whom made detours into a shady arbour, obviously to share a secret kiss; and his mind returned to his own loved one.