Secrets of Our Hearts

by Sheelagh Kelly

  Their excitement dying down, the labourers were ordered back to work by their foreman, and soon all were busy again renewing the track. Around fifty in all, some worked with picks, some in a wagon casting down shale with their spades, others shovelling earth into corves, yet more manoeuvring the girders and tracks that were suspended from the crane, guiding them into position, whilst a host of others worked with spanners and hammers to secure it, the whole site a cacophony.

  His boots crunching the ballast, his ears ringing with the sound of steel upon steel, Niall narrowed his eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that now dangled from the corner of his long Irish lips, as he squatted to wrestle with metal and timber, and his thoughts turned once again to his errant brother.

  A fair man, after a night’s sleep he had pondered Sean’s dilemma more objectively, yet for all he tried to put himself in the other’s shoes he could not condone such behaviour. Sean might like to think that the matter was ended, but he had another think coming. From now on Niall would be alert to his every move.

  Thus, that evening, tipped off by a watcher that Sean was heading out again, he pre-empted Nora’s instruction to follow him by dashing straight out for confrontation.

  ‘You’d better not be going to see her again!’

  Clean-shaven, his hair slicked with brilliantine and smartly dressed in tweed jacket, white open-necked shirt and grey flannels, Sean merely eyed the challenging stance with disdain before continuing on his way up the sunny terraced street.

  ‘Hark on!’ Niall barked after him. ‘If you do this you won’t be regarded as part of this family any more! This is the last time I’ll be talking to you.’

  Once there was a time when Sean had worshipped his big brother, but with Niall become so judgmental and strait-laced, all respect vanished in a trice. Still walking, he flung a nonchalant reply over his shoulder. ‘I’ll consider meself told then.’

  His threat so blithely unheeded, Niall strangled his intended retort, wasted no time standing there fulminating, but returned to his womenfolk, immediately to form a pact of war.

  Henceforth, the women took it in turns to stand by the parlour window, noting what time Sean left and what time he returned, no matter how late. Even whilst detesting such methods, Niall was to play his part too, refusing to speak to his brother and darting him arrows of contempt whenever they came face to face.

  It was a measure of their combined depth of loathing, their desire to arrest Sean’s wicked descent, that these tactics were to be maintained for eight tense weeks. Until, one Friday evening in late August, when a day of high wind had already whipped up tempers, the lid of restraint was about to be blown clean off: Sean arrived home with his scarlet woman in tow.

  Following the collective gasp of outrage, Nora blurted, ‘He can’t do that – that’s our Evelyn’s house!’

  But Sean could and did proceed to escort the woman right to his threshold, both of them laughing as the wind swept her hair from back to front so that it totally obscured her face, then whipped Sean’s cap into the street, causing him to make an acrobatic leap for it, before they finally managed to slam the door.

  His mother-in-law was almost apoplectic over this presumption. ‘Well, I’m not having it!’ Heaving her solid carcass forth, surprising nimble of foot, she rushed outside to stand on the pavement and glare, closely followed by her daughters, all bracing themselves against the gale, whilst their hair was whipped and their pinafores billowed and ruffled, and paper flew all about the street.

  Unable to see how this would help matters, Niall chose to remain indoors, as disgusted as the rest, though not so vocal. But no matter that Sean and his lady friend had gone inside, Nora and her deputies were to brave the elements for extra moments, standing firm and Medusa-like in the gale, so as those looking out could be under no illusion.

  ‘They’ll have to come out sometime,’ declared Ellen, eyes narrowed and watering, arms folded under her indignant bosom, whilst her clothes flapped about her.

  ‘What if they don’t?’ enquired Dolly, the least forceful of them, trying to keep a wisp of hair from her mouth. ‘What’ll we do then?’

  ‘They’ll have to!’ From inside, Niall heard his wife reiterate.

  ‘Not if she stays the night.’ When they all turned to frown at her, Dolly explained quickly, ‘Well, if she’s the type of brazen article who takes up with a man whose wife’s barely cold, she’ll hardly have qualms about anything else.’

  ‘Just let her try it!’ Nora propelled this verbal gauntlet at the wall of the house opposite, before leading the return indoors to maintain her surveillance in comfort. ‘I’ll be over there and drag her out by her frizzy hair.’

  Inwardly balking at such a bad example for a grandmother to set the children, Niall sought to distract them, especially the older ones, who were exchanging knowledgeable looks of concern.

  ‘Is that your homework you’re trying to do on the edge of that newspaper?’ Recently turned twelve, Honor was seated at the table chewing the end of a pencil, as if more concentrated on the row from outside.

  She broke away from her trance and went back to studying the pencilled words that were crammed into the white border around the newsprint. ‘No, I’m just making a list of my sins for confession.’

  Her father smiled. ‘I thought school had run out of money for books. Sins, eh? You’d better get a bigger piece of paper then, all the things you’ve been up to.’

  Her serene posture was cracked by a laugh of quiet outrage. ‘Dad, stop it, you’re putting me off!’ Then her face became serous again as she tried to recall every offence committed during the week, for an imperfect confession meant damnation.

  ‘Sorry.’ Her father smiled and stopped teasing her, knowing how seriously she viewed the act of confession. Then he turned his attention to three-year-old Brian, who was pressed to one of his knees, unnerved by the howling of the wind through the gaps in the windows, and he pulled the child onto his lap. ‘Don’t worry, Bri, it’s just the silly old wind making that noise – you know like your dad makes when he’s eaten pea soup.’

  There was collective laughter from his children.

  ‘That doesn’t hurt you, does it?’ reasoned Niall.

  ‘I don’t know about that, Dad,’ laughed Dominic, holding his nose.

  ‘Oy, mister!’ His father levelled a threatening finger, but his eyes were full of fun. ‘You want to watch it or I’ll be confiscating all of that five bob you’ve lined up for yourself tomorrow, instead of letting you keep some of it.’

  Dominic adopted a non-comprehending frown. ‘Don’t you mean half a crown?’ He would be performing his duties as altar boy at a wedding ceremony.

  ‘I mean five bob!’ Niall was stern but amused. ‘I happen to know there are two weddings tomorrow – thought you’d pulled the wool over me eyes, didn’t you? Well, think again! You’ll have to get up early to hoodwink your dad.’ He projected a grin of rebuke at his son who, in feature, took after Ellen’s side of the family, and could be sly, but was redeemed by possession of a charming smile, which bounced back at Niall now.

  ‘I only just found out myself there was another wedding!’ protested Dom with a laugh.

  Momentarily reassured by the smiling banter, Brian rested his head on his father’s chest, though his ears still adhered to the external noises – as did Juggy’s.

  ‘Has Uncle Sean been naughty?’ she finally dared to ask.

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ retorted a stern father, but Niall felt the sharp eyes of his eldest son on him, and, annoyed at Sean for putting him in this position, sought to let Dominic know, without giving too much away, that this was no way for a man to behave. ‘Suffice to say that a man’s good name is everything,’ he declared to all.

  ‘I think Doran’s a good name,’ mused Juggy, kneeling by the fire and cradling her doll. ‘Though I’d quite like to be called Pretty – that’s what they call the girl who sits next to me in class.’

  Niall responded wit
h a chuckle and a compliment. ‘You don’t need to be called Pretty when you’re already pretty.’

  ‘Father didn’t mean it sounded good,’ Honor broke off her list of sins to explain quietly to her little sister. ‘He meant that when people hear your name they think of you with respect, for the way you behave, and that you’ve got nothing to be ashamed off.’ She looked to Niall for confirmation, and when he gave a pleased nod, she added, ‘And Father’s got a very good name.’

  ‘So, is it the lady what’s got the bad name?’ persisted Juggy, having received more than an inkling from the angry voices that competed with the gale outside.

  Her father decided enough was enough. ‘None of that need concern you,’ he said firmly, and designing to take his children’s minds off this, and also the eerie whistling of the wind, he instructed Batty, ‘Chuck us that book, little un – we’ll have a story before bed!’ Opening the tome, he set upon imbuing them with one of its moral tales in an effort to drown out their grandmother’s voice.

  ‘I will! If they’re not out in five minutes I’ll go in and drag them out!’

  However, the threat was not to be carried out.

  A couple of hours later, around nine, when the youngsters were safely upstairs, Sean and his partner in crime finally emerged. Immediately the Beasty women rushed out to hurl insults.

  ‘Well, I’m glad she has the grace to blush – Ah say, you do right blush!’ scathed Nora from across the street, amid a mass drawing-in of chins and glaring and huffing from her equally irate daughters.

  Struggling to pull his door shut against the wind, Sean did not even look at them as he took a protective hold of his companion’s arm.

  ‘That’s right, take her home – take her back to her sty, and good riddance!’ This from Harriet.

  ‘I like your hair, love!’ Dolly mocked loudly, then declared to her abettors, ‘Nobody has hair that colour – she must dye it!’

  ‘With a bucket of rusty water by the look of it!’ brayed Harriet. Even as she spoke the words were ripped from her mouth and dispersed on the gale along with a noisy collection of debris, yet a few of them hit their target.

  ‘The cheek of them!’ an indignant Emma told her companion, all windswept and troubled as they made their departure. ‘It’s my own natural chestnut.’

  ‘I know that. They’re just jealous, ignore them – and don’t take any notice of their threats neither; they’re all mouth,’ advised Sean. He put a firm arm around her and quickly steered her away from further insult. ‘They can just get used to it.’

  Alas, far from growing used to it, tireless in their determination, one or another of the Beasty women was there to mutter and to scowl on each future occasion that Sean’s lover came to visit. Even more humiliatingly, the neighbours had become aware of the rift. At his current arrival, there was a small audience to witness the antics of his reception committee. Worst of all, though, for an uncle who loved them, Niall’s children were being indoctrinated by this bitterness.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Ellen slapped a hand that had come up to wave as she and her mother took their turn at observation, crammed into their doorway in an effort to shield themselves from providing entertainment for the neighbours, whilst at the same time maintaining their vigilance towards Sean and his fancy piece.

  ‘I wasn’t waving at the lady,’ protested a forlorn Juggy, rubbing her hand, her skinny body squeezed between mother and grandmother’s hips. ‘Only at Uncle Sean.’

  ‘You don’t wave to either of them!’ her mother bent to warn her in a manner and tone that could not be misinterpreted. ‘And she’s certainly no lady!’

  Though Sean translated the comment only too well as he closed the door upon it, his little niece asked innocently: ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind!’ Ellen shoved her daughter back inside, she and her mother following. ‘You do as you’re told and don’t say a word nor make a gesture to either of them. He’s not your uncle any more.’

  The child’s father was to endorse this, both in word and deed. In a change of tactic, from then on whenever encountering his brother, Niall would simply walk past as if the other were invisible. Hence, his children were to act by example. It was all very sad for one who had doted upon them.

  Yet however some might like to pretend that Sean did not exist, others continued to watch and to criticise his every move. Which was how they were to discover that the hussy had finally stayed the night.

  This was the ultimate outrage. At the sight of Sean and Emma emerging together at eleven thirty that Sunday morning, Nora abandoned her sentry duty and charged like a rhinoceros from the house, running directly across the street and arriving at such a velocity that she almost bowled her son-in-law over in her attempt to slap his face. She would have struck Emma too had Sean not quickly recovered from his shock to grab her arm.

  ‘You’re disgusting, the pair of you!’ Nora was snarling at them by the time Niall rushed over to referee, and to try to hold her back as she strained to be at those who had demeaned her kin. Ellen, Dolly and Harriet had rushed to join in the hounding, forming a barrier around Sean and the woman so that they could not escape. ‘Besmirching my daughter’s memory with that guttersnipe – where did she sleep, that’s what I want to know!’

  Though deeply embarrassed by the attention this was drawing – everyone dressed for the performance in Sunday clothes – Niall wanted to know too.

  The mark of retribution glowing on his cheek, an angry Sean tried to disentangle himself, whilst at the same time trying to protect Emma from Harriet, the most dominant of his sisters-in-law, who kept aiming vicious prods. ‘We don’t have to put up with this!’

  But Niall caught his arm, ‘Yes you do! You owe Nora an explanation as to how you’ve got the gall to have another woman in your wife’s bed!’

  Cornered, Sean managed to wrench his arm free, then drew a frightened Emma closer to him, barking at his accusers, ‘If you’d have been talking to me you might have found out before this – might have been invited to our wedding!’

  Totally shocked, they stopped to gawp at him, lending him the chance to carve an exit from their oppressive circle, though once free he did not run but stood his ground and faced them.

  Nora was first to recover, her accusation shrill with disbelief. ‘You can’t be married. We’d have heard from Father Finnegan!’

  Ruffled of temper and clothing, Sean was still putting them to order as he explained, ‘We got married at Emma’s church.’

  ‘Where’s that then?’ grilled Niall.

  ‘St Oswald’s.’

  There was a consensus of derision over the Protestant venue. ‘Well, you’re not really married then!’ countered Nora.

  Sean remained firm. ‘The certificate says we are.’

  ‘If you think I’m letting you bring your floozie to live in my daughter’s house—’

  ‘Nora!’ A lock of black hair tumbling over his brow, Sean leaned towards her with an expression of determination. ‘I’m very sorry but Evelyn’s dead. She isn’t coming back. I loved her but I can’t keep the house as a shrine. I’ve got to get on with my life. So it isn’t Evelyn’s house any more, it’s Emma’s.’ Taking advantage of their stunned faces, he dashed his hair back into place, straightened his spine, then said, with more equanimity than he felt, ‘If you’d like me to introduce you …?’

  ‘No, we bloody wouldn’t!’ yelled Harriet who, at twenty-five, might be the youngest, but had inherited the lion’s share of her mother’s obnoxious character. Whilst there might be name-calling from Ellen and Dolly there was the definite threat of violence here, and Sean had no wish to hang around and sample it.

  In an act of finality, he turned his back on them all, muttering, ‘I knew it’d be a waste of time,’ as he and his wife escaped up the street, shoulders braced against a tirade of insults.

  ‘You needn’t think you’re getting away with this!’

  ‘I don’t see as there’s much you can do about it,’ sighed Niall
to his mother-in-law, who was to repeat this threat as he shepherded her and everyone else indoors. ‘I’m as angry as the next person. I think he’s despicable, but—’

  ‘There’s one thing I can do about it right now!’ declared Nora, in warlike form, gathering her daughters. ‘Come on – you an’ all!’ And her hand made a graphic summons at Niall as she led the procession back to Sean’s house.

  No one locked their doors around here for there was nothing to steal; Nora found something though, as she barged straight in and made for a cottage piano. ‘We’ll have this, for a start! Ellen, grab that end.’ She herself took hold of the piano and started to heave it, groaning and squeaking, across the brown lino, her daughter shoving from the other end. ‘Dolly, grab them Staffordshire dogs! Hat, you do the kitchen!’

  ‘You’re taking all his stuff?’ questioned a slightly amazed Niall, for the moment hanging back.

  ‘It’s not his property, it’s ours!’ Nora grunted and grimaced over the shifting of the piano, banging her shins as she fought to manoeuvre it over the bunched-up carpet that acted as a wedge against its wheel, her anger anaesthetising the pain. ‘I gave our Eve most of the things in this house when she got married, and I’m damned if that little bitch is having the benefit – now are you going to help us or just stand there gawping?’