Secrets of Our Hearts. Sheelagh Kelly

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 with 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