Secrets of Our Hearts. Sheelagh Kelly

I’m sorry about all your things, but we can get some second-ha—’

      ‘It’s not pots and pans I’m bothered about!’ He dashed away his angry tears. ‘What gets me is the spite that’s behind it – that they left you with nothing to manage your house with!’

      ‘I think that’s the whole point,’ Emma told him quietly with a sad little smile, knowing he was not cross with her but with them. ‘They don’t see it as my house … and neither do I, truth be known.’

      He dealt a rapid nod of understanding. ‘Well, we can soon remedy that! After we’ve had our cup of tea, I’m off back out to put it up for sale – in fact I don’t think I can even bear to spend another night near that wicked lot.’

      ‘You might not have to,’ came the sardonic reply from Emma, and she made for the stairs to check whether Nora had taken their bed too.

      But no, it was still there, scorned and all alone in the bedroom.

      ‘Well, she wouldn’t take that, would she?’ scathed Sean, wandering up to join her, his face bleak.

      ‘No, but she’s pinched all the spare linen.’ Having opened a cupboard, Emma quickly closed the door on empty shelves, again trying to make light of the incident. ‘There’s one good thing: we won’t have much to shift, will we?’

      Sean tried his best to raise a chuckle, saying as he embraced her tightly, ‘As long as I’ve got you I’m not bothered about owt else.’ But it was only half true, for he just could not get over the fact that such a deed had been perpetrated by his own flesh and blood. He doubted he could ever forgive that.

      And upon leaving to throw themselves on the charity of Emma’s parents, for however long it might take to sell his house, he threw one final look of disgust at Niall’s abode.

      ‘Well, that’s me and him finished. As far as I’m concerned he’s dead. I wouldn’t even go to his bloody funeral.’

      ‘Don’t say that. It’s not Christian,’ his wife scolded softly.

      ‘Neither is reducing your own brother to a pauper,’ muttered Sean. ‘From now on, he’s no kin of mine.’

       3

      Whilst 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