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,
