‘I surely do.’ It was obvious, both from her tone and the depth of longing in her blue eyes, that she spoke the truth.
‘Then we have to find this bloke and set you free.’ Niall refused to use the deserter’s name. ‘I don’t know the first place to look, but I’ll help you if—’
‘No, that’s all right,’ she hastened to say, bracing her shoulders as if to get ready for action. ‘It’s my job to do this. I’ll consult a solicitor first, find out how to go about it. Better for you to stay in the background for now. It wouldn’t look too good, would it?’
Pleased that she was at least making a move towards the enablement of their marriage, at least a civil ceremony, he gave a smiling nod, his eyes gleaming with love for her, and Boadicea’s shining back. There was nothing more to be said then, for Juggy came tumbling across the grass to ask if she could feed the rabbits as soon as her siblings joined them.
At Niall’s consent, and the others’ arrival, Boadicea leaped up to brush the bits of twig from her dress, saying to the children, ‘Right, it’s off to the rabbits – and on the way, we’ll have an ice cream!’
‘Oh, I’m not sure we can afford—’
‘Please, Niall,’ Boadicea gripped his arm, delivered a firm look, then took out her purse. ‘Let me pay – not that I’m trying to bribe them or anything,’ she muttered, with a sly grin.
So with his agreement, they were to move en masse towards the elevated building that was the tea room, the purchase of their ice creams leaving just enough time to visit the shady corner of the park with its large cages of rabbits, and exotic- looking golden pheasants, so that Juggy could finally dispose of the bread she had clutched in her hot little hand. Then they made their way back to Walmgate.
The table had been set for tea by the time Niall and his children got home. ‘Oh, here you are!’ said Nora, ‘I thought you’d got lost!’ At their entry, she had risen immediately to uncover the plates of sandwiches and cake on the table. ‘I hope they haven’t turned dry. I thought you’d be home ages ago. I bet you’re all starving.’
‘We’ve had an ice cream,’ boasted Juggy with a grin.
The hawkish face groaned, but Nora directed her mild rebuke at Niall. ‘I’ve told you about spoiling their tea, you monkey—’
‘It’s half an hour since they had it,’ he had begun to explain, when Batty piped up: ‘A lady bought ’em!’
‘What lady?’ To Nora’s consternation, her eldest grandson was quick to inform her.
‘The one me dad’s courtin’.’
Nora flushed an angry red and all jocularity ceased. ‘You swore to me!’ she levelled an accusing finger at her son-in-law. ‘You said you’d put your children first!’
‘And I have.’ Niall ordered himself to remain calm, and rolled up his sleeves, intending to wash his hands. ‘I decided to ask their opinion. And they’ve no problem with my seeing Boadicea. So neither should anyone else.’
With her puzzled grandchildren hanging on her every word, Nora was forced to contain behind gritted teeth all the things she would like to have said. But as she barged off to the cupboard, swiftly to return, there was message enough for Niall in the brightly labelled tin that was slammed down on the table.
‘Maybe your father’d like some of these!’ she announced to the children.
Whilst his children remained bemused and uncomfortable, Niall stared long and hard at the tin of peaches, fully aware what this represented. His mother-in-law had sworn never again to touch the fruit that Ellen had been on her way to buy on the afternoon of her death. This was her way of reminding him.
12
He had expected a full-blown row with Nora once the children had gone to bed. Or at least, to experience another serving of her own inimical brand of persuasion. But his mother-in-law seemed finally to have grasped, from the determined front he presented, that there was little point. Not that she had given up. This he knew all too well from the way she flexed her jaw as she sat opposite him, ostensibly darning a sock, but underneath concocting some plan of action.
He was to find out on Monday night what course that plan would take.
With no need to be secretive now about his romantic meetings, and no call to ration them, he had decided to take full advantage of Harriet’s absence, and visit Boadicea, for he was anxious to know if she had consulted a solicitor about the divorce. Not long after the children had gone to bed, he made his move.
Her disapproving eyes watching him as he put on his jacket and combed his hair, Nora had no need to ask, though she did anyway. ‘Where do you think you’re off?’
‘I think we both know,’ he answered quietly.
She got to her feet, a challenge in her tone. ‘And who’ll be looking after your children? I can’t do it; I’m going to visit our Peggy.’ And stabbing a silver pin through her old-fashioned hat with its artificial roses, she began to tug on summer gloves. ‘Sorry if that ruins your little designs!’
‘It won’t,’ he answered blithely. ‘I’ve just looked in on them – the little uns are flat out. I’ve told Honor to fettle them if they cause any bother. I’ll only be half an hour or so.’
‘Long enough for the house to burn down!’ Without further ado, Nora grabbed her purse and departed, with the epithet, ‘And we’ll all know who to blame!’
Simultaneous to the slamming of the door, Niall closed his eyes in exasperation. ‘Enjoy yourself, you old sod,’ he muttered.
She was right, of course. However, there was an easy solution. Tucking his comb into his pocket, he went next door to enlist a custodian.
Even before he had posed the question, Gloria’s limpid eyes enlivened at the mere sight of him framed in her open doorway, and she hurried to invite the adored one in.
Niall knew well enough to address himself to the mother first. ‘Hello, Mrs Lavelle, sorry to disturb you. I just wondered if you’ll be going anywhere this evening?’
‘The only place I’ll ever be going is me grave, lad.’ From an armchair came the martyr’s sigh.
‘Not for a long time yet,’ Niall assured her. ‘Er, I’ve just come to ask if Gloria can do me a big favour. Me mother-in-law’s gone out and I need to nip out as well, but there’s nobody to sit with the kids—’
‘I’ll do it!’ Gloria almost swooned at being presented with this chance to help the man she so admired, and turned to her mother, lisping beseechingly, ‘If you’ll be all right on your own, Mam?’
Niall reinforced the daughter’s plea ‘I’ll only be taking her away for half an hour or so, Mrs Lavelle.’
‘Take her for as long as you like, love,’ said Mrs Lavelle, with a telling look at Gloria, which he chose to ignore.
‘Thanks – right then, Glo,’ he backed out, ‘I’ll get off …’
‘I’ve made some scones.’ Seizing a tin, Gloria pursued him, keen for any association. ‘I’ll have one waiting with a cup of tea for when you come in!’
Thanking her, and opening his own front door for her to enter, he hurried away with a smile of anticipation at seeing Boadicea, which was also mingled with satisfaction. Let Nora do her worst. So long as it did not upset the children, he could cope with all her silly goings-on.
Nora did not regard them as silly. There was a determined strategy to her behaviour, as she hovered inside the confectioner’s on the corner of the street, bemusing the shopkeeper by her inability to choose between the jars of aniseed balls, sherbet lemons or toffees, whilst darting looks out of the window; finally having to confess to the woman that she was only waiting for Niall to pass. ‘The minute he comes by, I’ll be out of your hair, Mrs Dalton! I just want to see how long the beggar stops out for.’
Barely had the words left her lips than Niall appeared, causing her to duck her head until he had loped past. Then, muttering thanks to the shopkeeper, she emerged and scuttled back down the street towards her home.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She stopped dead on seeing Gloria seated in Niall’s chair – as if wrapped in hi
s arms – her demand wiping the beatific expression off the poor woman’s face. ‘Don’t tell me, I already know!’ she added, as the baby-sitter rose to offer an explanation.
Gloria’s toothless face had begun to sag with disappointment over the shattering of her dream of spending time alone with the object of her desire when he returned. ‘Niall said you were going out, Mrs Beasty.’
‘I only said that to test him! I wanted to see how low he’d stoop!’ Nora seemed furious as she ripped off her gloves, then her flowered hat. ‘And you’re not to do this again, do you hear?’ she told Gloria. ‘He’s taking advantage of your good nature!’
‘I don’t mind,’ protested the gummy mouth.
Setting her hat firmly on the sideboard, Nora wheeled. ‘Oh, so you don’t care that he’s using your services as a baby-sitter, whilst he goes out canoodling with his trollop?’
Gloria was too shocked and hurt to answer.
‘Well, I do care!’ raged Nora. ‘And I’m telling you, you’re not to do his bidding any more. Have you got that? Anything he asks you to do, you tell him no!’
Gloria nodded and picked up her cake tin, her eyes focused upon it, so that Mrs Beasty would not see that they welled tears.
‘You’re a good lass, you deserve better,’ stated Nora, cooling down somewhat, as she propelled Gloria firmly towards the door. ‘But don’t you say anything to him, just leave him to me.’ Yet at least, she recognised, Niall had had the decency not to leave his children on their own, as he was intending to do before she had pricked his conscience; she could put that to her advantage.
Once Gloria had been ejected, Nora snatched an angry glance at the clock, wanting to check the duration of his tryst.
In the meantime, she made herself a cup of tea, then sat down and penned an urgent letter to Beesy, asking if she had heard anything from her cousin in Ballina, and pressing her to hurry with this vital information. By the time she had finished the letter, and tucked it into her pocket for tomorrow’s post, she had reached another decision. It was futile to waste her breath on more argument tonight. Until she received a reply from Ireland, she would allow her son-in-law the rope that would, with luck, hang him.
Niall had shown no surprise, when he got home later that evening, to find Nora sitting there and not Gloria, for he simply assumed that his mother-in- law had sent her home. What had slightly unnerved him was that there was no tongue-lashing as he might have expected. Although the silence was almost as bad.
‘I won’t be going out again till Saturday,’ he had told her, in somewhat duller mood than when he had gone out. Boadicea had failed to visit a solicitor, seemingly in not as great a rush as he to obtain her divorce. It had rather flattened him.
‘Suit yourself,’ Nora had sniffed, as she finished plaiting her hair and retired to bed. ‘You always do.’
But apart from this, and a refusal to converse with him on an evening, he had noticed little difference in her behaviour towards him throughout the rest of that week, a meal being on the table every night as usual.
On Saturday morning, though, there was the hint of something else in the air, as Nora looked keen to pounce on the letter that Niall had just picked up from the doormat, on his way to the breakfast table.
‘Oh, it’s from Beesy,’ he said, seeing its Irish postmark.
Still bleary-eyed, for it was very early, she had nevertheless become instantly alert, and snatched the letter. ‘Get your porridge, or you’ll miss your bus.’
‘Aren’t you having any?’ Seating himself, Niall sprinkled sugar over the contents of his bowl.
‘I’ll have it after you’ve gone.’ Pouring them both a cup of tea, she sat away from the table in the old Edwardian chair with its barley-twist legs, and opened the letter.
‘Are they both all right?’ Niall sought to enquire over his shoulder, between mouthfuls.
‘Yes,’ said Nora, reading on.
‘What does she have to say?’ he asked, when she did not volunteer any information.
‘If she wanted you to know she’d have addressed the letter to you,’ mumbled his mother-in-law.
Niall gave a laugh. ‘I was only asking.’ Nevertheless, he got on with his porridge.
Nora allowed no expression to cross her face that might give the game away, but her heart was filled with cheer, as she raced through Beesy’s news. The latter had just received word from her cousin Mary in Ballina about ‘that woman’, the information provided by Mary’s ‘very good friend’ Father Kelly, who had seen it as his duty to act upon this immoral relationship, and whose correspondence with the bishop had revealed that the one under investigation had gone to live in a small town in Lancashire when she had left Ireland. So, armed with the damning information provided by Nora, which had been embellished by her allies, Father Kelly had written to that diocese to see what he could unearth. That was all Beesy could tell her for now, though she would post the results as soon as they were known.
Disallowing this note of anticlimax to upset her, and inscrutable of feature, Nora folded the letter away and slipped it into her pocket. Until the receipt of concrete evidence that would unveil the true character of this Boadicea woman, she must suffice to destroy this corrupt relationship by increments.
Little did Niall suspect this, as he took his empty breakfast bowl to the sink and got ready for work, though before too long he would interpret what was afoot.
Almost ready to go, he pointed out what he thought to be a discrepancy. ‘I was just going through my drawer, Nora, and I didn’t notice a clean shirt. I thought maybe you’d put it somewhere else …’
Setting out bowls ready for when the children came down, she paused to stare him in the eye. ‘Is it for church you’d be wanting it?’
He met the gaze that so frightened others. ‘That as well.’
‘As well as tonight, you mean, when you go to see your friend – aye, I thought that’s what you really meant!’ His mother-in-law added a curt nod. ‘Why don’t you give them to her for washing then? Seeing as she’s the one getting the benefit!’
Niall remained perverse, and calm. ‘But I don’t hand my wage packet to Boadicea, do I?’ he said, slinging on his haversack.
The name was a red rag to a bull. ‘I don’t mind washing the clothes of a man who does an honest day’s toil! But if you think I’m slaving away to whiten your collars just so’s you can go visit your Jezebel, you’ve got another think coming!’
Concerned that his children might now be awake and overhear, Niall drew the argument to a halt. ‘I’d better pay somebody to do it then.’ And he went away to bundle up a dirty shirt and two collars, telling Nora as he left, ‘I’ll drop them off somewhere on my way to work.’
‘Be my guest!’ invited Nora. But he did not see her triumphant smirk as he marched next door.
Gloria seemed different today when she answered his knock, and not just because it was early morning. Her apology was not so cringing as usual, at being unable to fulfil his request. ‘Sorry, Niall, me mother says I can’t do it for you.’
Momentarily stunned, Niall held those placid blue eyes, which today almost had a hint of rebellion in them. ‘But how did she know I’d ask?’
‘Mrs Beasty told us all about your—’
‘Gloria!’ came a sudden interruption from the other end of the passage. ‘You’re not talking to him, are you?’
‘Yes, Mam!’ Gloria lisped back, without pause.
‘Well, shut the door!’
And muttering a final, insincere apology, Gloria did just that.
Gritting his teeth, Niall underwent a few seconds’ thought over how many others Nora might have told about his affair. Then, not to be beaten, he went along the street and knocked upon another door.
‘Sorry to bother you, Mrs Whelan!’ He directed an engaging smile at the one who answered. ‘But I wondered if you could do me a favour and wash and iron a few things for me – just a shirt and couple of collars? I’ll pay you anything you ask.’
A b
eneficiary of his kindness for many years, the drab-looking housewife was all too ready to help him, especially if it would bring in an extra shilling to a tight budget. ‘Of course, love, when do you want them doing?’
‘Today. I know it’s Saturday, but well, there was a bit of a mistake at home, and my mother-in-law forgot to wash my decent shirt and I need it for church.’
‘Yes, I heard about your bit of bother, love.’ The expression on the woman’s face showed that Mrs Whelan was not to be hoodwinked.
‘Oh …’ Niall looked slightly shamed. ‘Well, if you’d rather not—’
‘What business is it of mine who you want to take up with?’ came her light reply. ‘I’ve said I’ll do them and I will. On a regular basis if you like.’
‘You’re a treasure!’ Niall handed over the bundle.
Mrs Whelan accepted it with a smile. ‘With grand weather like this we’ll have them dry by noon, and ironed by tonight.’
Reiterating his thankfulness, Niall went off to work, imagining Nora’s face at having the wind knocked out of her sails, when he announced that he had found someone to help with his washing.
After spending the morning at work, and not arriving home until two, he knocked at Mrs Whelan’s door on his way past, in the hope that his small bundle of washing would be ironed. Some of his children were playing further along the street with the Whelan children, the boys with a cricket bat, Juggy and her friend with skipping ropes. The instant he caught his daughter’s eye with a wave, she broke off her game and pelted towards him. Awaiting her, he grinned, and was still wearing this expression when his knock was answered.
‘Ah, hello, Mr Doran …’ Mrs Whelan did not seem too happy at having to convey her information. ‘No, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to do your washing after all.’
Niall grunted as Juggy’s small body slammed into his thigh, and he bent to pet her. But his words were still for Mrs Whelan. ‘Don’t tell me – you’ve had a visit from my mother-in-law.’
Secrets of Our Hearts Page 26
