Secrets of Our Hearts

Covering a smile, his wife led the little boy away to replace the stolen item. Niall spent a few moments chatting to his other offspring before they were made to attend certain duties, at which point he rustled his newspaper to order and resumed reading.

The rest of the afternoon was comparatively peaceful, everyone sitting reading or sewing or other suitably quiet pursuits. Towards five o’clock Nora went to put the kettle on and, discovering there was no tin of peaches in the pantry for tea, returned to appoint an errand boy. Despite this being the Sabbath one could always buy what one needed around here from those who were not observers.

‘Dom, nip out and get me some.’ His grandmother delved in her purse.

Engrossed in an adventure story, Dominic seemed reluctant to tear his eyes from it, and was tardy in moving to obey. ‘To Mrs Madden’s?’

‘No, she’s too pious to open on Sunday. You’ll have to go to that one by Navigation Road.’ Nora handed her eldest grandson a coin.

‘I’ll go, Mam.’ Ellen jumped up to intercept it. ‘I need something meself.’

‘He’s nearly eleven,’ scolded Nora, ‘I think he can find his way.’

‘I know that!’ Her daughter gave a light reply and performed a quick tug of her silky blue jumper over trim hips. ‘But I said, I need something myself.’

They all knew it for a lie. Ellen was much too protective of her children, never allowing them to cross the road on their own, standing at the school gates to wait until they had gone in safely, waiting for them again at home time, even though the school was close by, ever fearful that something would befall them, unable to relax unless they were safely under her care.

‘What is it then?’ challenged her mother.

‘Just something!’ Ellen gasped. ‘Bloomin’ heck, do we have to have an inquest?’

Niall hardly lifted his eyes from the newspaper. The children were his wife’s concern and he rarely interfered.

But Nora shook her head in exasperation. ‘You’ll still be holding his hand when he walks up the aisle, you will! Stop mollycoddling the lad.’

Dom looked most insulted, flopping back in his chair and huffing as he reached for his book. ‘There’s no need for me to go if me mam’s off then.’

‘You’ll go if you’re told to go,’ cautioned his father from behind the News of the World.

‘It’s all right, he doesn’t have to,’ negated Ellen.

Dom might have been excused but his five-year-old brother leaped up to accompany her.

‘There’ll be no sweets,’ warned his mother, in strict manner, ‘especially for those who take things that belong to other little boys. Don’t think there will.’ But from the indulgent twinkle in her eye Batty knew she could easily be persuaded.

Aware that this brother was in possession of such a knack, Honora’s head shot up from her exercise book. ‘I’m coming if he’s off!’

‘No, Honor! You’ve got that school work to finish …’

‘Oh, but—’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ Unable to read his newspaper with all the argument that was going on, Niall slapped it onto his knee with a heavy sigh. ‘Look, why don’t I save everyone the bother and go meself? I might as well go for a walk, I’ll get no peace here.’ He began to rise.

Ellen pushed him back in his chair, saying sternly, ‘I’m going!’

‘Good, bugger off then,’ grumbled Niall, only half joking as his wife made for the door, the five-year-old tagging on to her skirt.

* * *

With Batty hopping alongside her – protesting when she dragged him past the sweet shop on the corner – Ellen journeyed along a warren of short streets, going out of her way to call in on a friend and to spend some ten minutes chatting whilst her bored infant was made to sit and wait. Finally, she resumed her errand, a relieved little boy almost dragging her along the street as they made for the main thoroughfare, where he knew there to be other sweet shops.

They had reached the corner, and were about to turn into Walmgate, when suddenly two bicycles appeared on the pavement as if from nowhere, racing at full speed side by side. Two shocked faces loomed large, the young riders displaying panic as all parties realised there was about to be a collision. Her instinct to protect her child, a horrified Ellen yanked on the little arm, lifting Batty off his feet and out of the path of danger, crying out as she herself was hit by one of the speeding bikes, and falling into the path of the other, its rider flying through the air and landing on his head in the road.

‘I wonder who she’s met this time,’ sighed Nora when her daughter had not returned after half an hour, and the table had been laid with bread and butter for tea. Ellen was an incorrigible gossip, who had been known to spend two hours over a short trip to the corner shop. ‘Go and see what’s keeping her, Dom. Tell her we’d like those peaches for tonight’s tea, not Christmas.’

From his chair, Niall threw her a wry smile and went back to reading the newspaper.

But his eldest son had not reached the door before there came a series of knocks on it, a rapid, urgent summons.

Niall lowered his News of the World and exchanged puzzled looks with the others, whilst his son revealed the caller.

‘Oh, Mrs Beasty!’ Gloria’s limpid blue eyes brimmed with tears as she addressed Nora first, then directed her look of compassion at Niall, clutching a handful of blouse as she spoke. ‘It’s your Ellen … you’d better come …’

They all rose as one then and converged anxiously on Gloria, demanding to know what was amiss.

‘Knocked over … ambulance …’ Words tumbled disjointedly between the unaccustomed dentures, invoking panic in the listeners.

And then they were all running in the direction of her pointed finger, Niall, Harriet, Dolly and Nora – and the children.

‘Stay!’ their father turned back to command them harshly, then ran on, not knowing what he was running to, his heart almost pounding out of his chest as he headed for Walmgate, the terrified mother and sisters in his wake.

Immediately they saw the ambulance. But even as Niall ran towards it, the vehicle was pulling away from the crowd of onlookers. He and the women called after it, frantically waving, yelling and shrieking for it to stop.

‘Here’s the husband!’ People were pointing and gesturing, amongst them Father Finnegan, who also tried to arrest the vehicle, dashing into the road and waving both arms, but its driver paid no heed as it departed, bell ringing.

His senses ripped apart, Niall thudded to a halt as he reached the scene to be met by the priest, but his frantic blue eyes were to travel beyond Father Finnegan’s entreating features, taking in fresh horror. There were smears of blood on the road and on the pavement. Then he saw Batty in the arms of a nun, not a scratch on him, and his whole being was swamped by relief. Ignoring Father Finnegan’s attempt at ministration – ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right, Nye!’ – he shoved his way through the curious onlookers and took charge of his little boy, kissing and hugging him, but the child did not say a word, his eyes round with shock. Nora, Harriet and Dolly came screaming after him, frightening the child further with their reaction, whilst the priest and the nun tried ineffectively to calm them.

They were all taken in charge then by a policeman who, quickly ascertaining that these were relatives of one of the victims, gave brief explanation as he hurried them to a car, which took them to the hospital; where, after a long wait, they were met by an apology and the abrupt announcement that Ellen had died.

Mingled with the cries of grief was incomprehension. How could she be dead? The sun was shining! This same thought served all. But for Niall the shock was manifold, his mind harbouring a deeper, darker impact of guilt. He had wondered, imagined time and again, what he would feel if his wife were to meet with a fatal accident, and here it was, happened.

It was all right for them. They were women, they could wail and weep and sob and beat their breasts. Men couldn’t do that – well, his brother might have done when Evelyn died, but Sean was weak, and everyone knew just how genuine that display had been when he’d married someone else five minutes later. No, Niall could not do that. Consumed by guilt that he had wished it on her – caring Ellen, so loving of her children, so missed by them – he could only stare and hang his head. In previous imaginings he had rehearsed his own role as one of affected grief. But it wasn’t pretend. He truly did throb with sorrow. How could he not?

Prior to an investigation, there had been anguished debate amongst family and friends – how could one be killed by so innocuous a vehicle as a bicycle? Then the inquest had revealed that Ellen had died due to a fractured skull, received not directly from a bike but from the kerb upon which she had fallen. Whilst the youth who had landed on his head had suffered only a gash, Ellen’s skull had been as fragile as an eggshell.

Pending any more serious charge, the youths had been summoned for riding their bicycles on the pavement, their fate yet to be decided – not that it could ever be as bad as Ellen’s, condemned those who had loved her. At the Requiem Mass Father Finnegan had asked the mourners to pray for those wretched sinners. Stupefied as he was by this trauma, Niall had felt the palpable wave of anger that emanated from Ellen’s womenfolk, rippling like magma along the pew, but they had voiced no comment until now, when, in the privacy of their home, they gave vent to their revulsion, protesting vociferously about the priest’s request.

‘I don’t care if they are repentant!’ raged Harriet to the throng of grief-stricken relatives, friends and neighbours crammed alongside that monstrous sideboard on borrowed chairs, who sipped respectfully from their glasses of sherry, the plates of ham sandwiches and fruit cake barely touched. ‘I’d kill them myself if I had them here before me!’ Agitated fingers picked at a black-edged handkerchief, seeking a patch that was not sodden. In the puffy face, her eyes were as dull and empty as stones, but her angular jaw oozed resentment. ‘I mean, one of them landed on his bloody head, for Christ’s sake! How come he walks away scot-free, and poor Nell …?’ Faced with her sister’s bereaved children seated all forlorn in black, her nasal anguish was to terminate in a fresh bout of sobbing.

‘Murderers,’ denounced a red-eyed Nora, her own voice leaden and morose. ‘That’s what they are. God might forgive them, I never will.’ There was a combined rumble of agreement from the gathering.

Two more of Ellen’s sisters, Mary and Kate, continued to sob quietly, their husbands offering awkward condolence, their movements stiff and unaccustomed to these black suits and starched collars. Distant relations of Niall were here too, and his friend Reilly, whom he hardly ever saw, had hurried to his side with characteristic loyalty, but these were outnumbered by the Beasty followers.

One of the neighbours, Mrs Dunphy, sighed pityingly and shook her head. ‘Eh, two in one year, Nora.’

‘At least there was nobody at fault in poor Eve’s case,’ sniffled Dolly, blowing her nose for the umpteenth time, her eyes similarly lifeless. ‘I mean, it was terrible to lose her but there’s not much you can do against a disease, is there? But there’s plenty can be done about those buggers – I’m sorry to swear but that’s what they are! And how Father Finnegan can even ask us to forgive them – they deserve hanging!’ There were more murmurs of agreement and more tears.

Then she and everyone else looked to Niall for similar declaration. Soused in guilt as he was for the many times he had imagined his wife dead, the best he could deliver was a shuddering sigh and a shake of head.

Taking this to indicate that the widower was too choked by grief for words, the tearful women rallied to him, reached out supportive hands, assuring him they would be here to assist in his hour of need and ever after.

‘Don’t you worry, lad,’ murmured Nora in stalwart tone. ‘We’ll always be here.’

You would think that something like that would turn one’s routine on its head, thought Niall, but no. Weeks after the mourners had taken home their chairs, here he was doing exactly the same things at the same hour, amongst the same people, albeit one less of them. And the strange thing about it was, he still expected her to be here when he came home on an evening.

The routine might be the same but life was not – how could it be, burdened as he was by such tremendous remorse? Never in his selfish imaginings had he stopped to think what Ellen’s death would do to her offspring. But he did now. If he had been left prostrate at the age of twenty by the loss of his mother, what agony must such little children feel? Even though they had gone back to school the day after the funeral, and were once again to be seen playing their childish games in the street, the devastation they had suffered could so easily be resurrected, tears never far from the surface. One might have expected little Batty to be worst hit, he being witness to his mother’s death; and perhaps this was true, for no one could see into another’s head. Yet the five-year-old seemed to have suffered few ill effects. No, it was Brian and Juggy who were most clingy, the latter seemingly terrified to let Niall out of her sight, lest her one remaining parent not return.

For the third time that week he heard footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder to find himself shadowed. With a doomed sigh, he stalled and waited for his younger daughter to catch up. Scolding her gently, he told her to go home and get ready for class, and remained there for a moment to make sure she obeyed, casting a stern expression in response to the beseeching one that she threw over her shoulder.

Whilst he stood watching, another figure came out with a bag in her hand, crouched towards the child and spoke gently for a mere second, before running up the street to accost the father. Having been about to turn away, Niall gave another inward sigh and waited for Gloria, trying to avoid looking at those breasts that appeared to have no synchronisation as they bounced this way and that beneath the floral pinafore.

‘Me mam says I have to bring you these to have with your break, Niall!’ Earnest of face, failing to hide her admiration of him, Gloria pressed the paper bag in his hand; it contained two buns. ‘I made them meself,’ she lisped through toothless gums.

With his smiling nod of gratitude, she hovered for a second, then, with a last adoring look, turned and ran back down the street. Upon reaching her doorstep she turned to fling a last gaze at him, but by this time another neighbour had accosted Niall to donate yet another gift, and, robbed of his smile, Gloria turned sadly indoors.

‘Here, take these with you, love,’ whispered old Mrs Powers, the skin of her hand paper thin and displaying a network of veins as she donated a small package. ‘Two rashers of bacon – you’ve got a stove in your hut, haven’t you?’

Niall replaced the cap he had just tipped. ‘Aye, I’m grateful of it an’ all, what with these nippy mornings.’ Gracing her with a polite smile, he took off his haversack and inserted the package, and even though his needs had been well provided by Nora, he told the donor, ‘I’ll have them for me dinner. Thank you very much, it’s very kind of you.’

‘It’s no more than you’ve been towards me, dear.’ With a beneficent nod, old Mrs Powers backed indoors – only to be replaced by her neighbour, Mrs Whelan, who had come out to collect her milk from the step.

This time, though, there was only verbal contribution. ‘Eh, how’s them poor little mites of yours, Mr Doran?’ No one looked their best in a morning, but Mrs Whelan’s appearance would not improve during the day, the worry of her husband’s constant unemployment adding years to her scraggy features. ‘I wish there was some way I could help …’

‘There’s nowt much anybody can do, love – but thanks.’ Niall gave a tight smile, his eyes straying to check on Juggy, as he itched to be off.

‘I know,’ sighed Mrs Whelan, ‘but I just wish I could make it right for you. You’ve done so much for us over this past year. I’d never make ends meet without all them rabbits and coal you’ve given us—’

‘Ooh, keep it under your hat, love!’ he said hastily, ‘or I’ll be losing my job.’ By rights everything on the line, whether it be a few lumps of coal or a rabbit caught in a snare, belonged to the LNER. A soul of great integrity, Niall would steal from none, but in this case he had no regret: what loss was a few bits of coal to a huge railway company? And what was moral about a soldier who had fought for his country being subjected to the means test?

Tipping his hat to Mrs Whelan, and checking that Juggy had finally gone indoors, he resumed his eager stride. However inhospitable the conditions, he had become glad of his work, for it took him away from that pain-filled mien and that of her siblings; for the daytime at least.

But it would always be waiting for him when he got home.

‘I don’t know how I’d cope without you, Nora,’ he informed his mother-in-law, having arrived home after dark on that same day, to an ordered house, a nourishing meal on the table, and his offspring washed and ready for bed, he himself now sated. ‘I’m really grateful for you looking after them so well.’

Her hawkish face calm, yet still etched with the pain of losing too many children, Nora waved aside her role as she supervised the reluctant exodus to bed, then removed Niall’s empty plate. ‘It keeps me busy. Anyhow, I’ve got Hat and Dolly to help.’

Niall acknowledged this too as he accepted a cup of tea from the latter. ‘I know how hard it must have been for you all.’ Any denigrating opinion he might have of them was swept aside; no one could have been kinder to him.

‘It’s the least we can do for our Ellen’s husband,’ replied Harriet, touching his shoulder.

Niall felt himself blushing and thanked God they could not peer into his soul. But he simply nodded and to cover his awkwardness said, ‘Mrs Powers gave me some bacon as I was on me way to work this morning, and Gloria ran after me with a couple of buns.’

Dolly smirked. ‘You’ll be needing a new set of teeth then.’

‘She’s only trying to help,’ said her mother, more generously. ‘I’ve been glad of her and Mrs Lavelle meself, I can tell you.’

Niall agreed that everyone had been so good, many of the neighbours continuing to play their part in helping the bereaved husband, running after him in the street to offer some little bit of comfort. ‘But I wish they’d just leave off a bit now—’ He broke off abruptly as there came a tap, and the face of yet another neighbour appeared round the door.

‘I’ve not come to bother you, Mrs Beasty.’ In respectful manner, the monkey-like Mrs Hutchinson set a tin of peaches on the table. ‘I’ve just brought you these from town. It’s nice to have a little treat through the week, isn’t it?’

Niall saw his mother-in-law’s jaw twitch in anger. And though she managed to contain it under a veil of politeness, as she thanked the woman for her thoughtfulness, Mrs Hutchinson was sufficiently intimidated by that steely-eyed face to remove herself from it within seconds. ‘Well, let me know if you need anything else, dear!’

Immediately the door closed, Nora said of the peach tin – the kind that Ellen had gone to purchase on the day of her death – ‘Stick ’em in the cupboard, Dolly! I couldn’t stomach the blasted things if I was starving.’ Her tone was one of deep loathing. ‘You can’t say anything when they’re only showing concern but, by God, I don’t know how I stopped meself from crowning her with it.’

Niall’s eyes followed Dolly as she relegated the peaches to the back of a cupboard, his voice hollow. ‘Aye, I were just about to say, when she came in, I wish they’d just leave me to get on with it now. Every time I open the front door I can feel their eyes on me, brimming with pity.’

The women agreed that it was the same for them, Dolly voicing what all had experienced. ‘Whenever you see any of them gathered together they clam up – you can tell they’ve been talking about Nell.’

‘People love a tragedy,’ pronounced Nora, her eye and tone become bitter.

‘They make me sick,’ seethed Harriet, revisited by her own grief. ‘Acting all teary and concerned – it’s not their tragedy it’s ours.’

Niall chewed his lip, noting how quickly they turned, how they hated to be on the receiving end of the gossip. So did he.

‘And the worst thing is,’ declared Nora mournfully, ‘they’ll have got over it in a few weeks. We never will.’

Dreading Christmas, Niall found it even worse when it finally arrived not crisp and white but wet and miserable. Telling himself it was for the children’s sake, he tried to make the best of an overcast celebration, scrimped on his own pleasures to take them all to a pantomime, and to buy each the type of present they would normally not receive. Yet, at the end of a very testing day, there remained an empty bed and a sobering indictment: no gift he had bestowed could replace their mother.

The winter months of 1935 were tough. Battling his way up the line through flurries of January snow, he had never felt so desolate. The wolf was obviously finding it arduous too in these foot-high drifts, for the vulpine spoor that defaced the pristine blanket led investigators not to a savaged sheep but to the remains of tinier mammals. Despite these giveaway tracks, the predator continued to remain at large. Wishing he too was a lesser beast, so as not to think and to feel emotion, Niall tried to inject himself with hope; told himself that spring was just around the corner.

But even after the upland streams and tributaries had thawed and their icy contents came tumbling down from the hills to swell the Ouse and Foss and threaten the city, before mercifully receding, Niall was to remain swamped in desolation.

Is this it? he was often to ask during the months after Ellen’s funeral. Was this what he had wished upon himself? Why, he was even worse off than before. At least he had had a wife to cuddle up to on a night. However much she might nag him over his shortcomings, Ellen had been good at heart, knitting him jumpers and socks, making sure he was warm and well fed before setting off to work on winter mornings, treating him to his favourite sweets whenever she went into town. How could he have been so lacking in imagination, so perverse as to think he would not miss her as much as anyone else in this house? Steeped in melancholia, for months he had crucified himself over his last words to her. He had told her to bugger off, and she had. For good. And all over a tin of bloody peaches! Grief superseded by anger, he raged at the stupidity of it all. I told her I’d go for them! Why does she never listen? And then the anger had reverted to misery, for that was another thing: the habit of referring to her in the present tense; expecting her still to be there when he got home on a night, waiting to take his coat and to rub his cold hands with her warm ones, to steer him towards the fire …

But he had imagined her dead and now he had got his just deserts. Life held no further pleasure than to see his children become adults, and marry, and hopefully make better decisions than he himself had done. And isn’t that sufficiently worthwhile, a sudden, inner voice demanded at his lowest ebb. At least you can help to guide them, make up for your failure as a husband. And there would be grandchildren. Yes, yes, of course there were things that were still meaningful. And thereupon the tide of self-pity began to recede. Never even to contemplate re-marriage, Niall decided then that, with his mother-in-law willing to cook and to wash and to lay out his clean underwear for him, his children would be enough; must be enough. Accordingly, from that point of catharsis, it was to Nora he handed his wage packet, and she who took over from Ellen in the running of his life.

4

Despite the apparent return to normality, both for Niall and those who lived alongside him, there remained an air of emptiness in the house, and the women could not help but feel how unsatisfactory this was for a man.