his bereavement – he had made an announcement that he wouldn’t be over the next night, would just grab a quick bite at home as he was going to meet a friend from work. Niall recalled how he had offered to accompany his brother, for he felt like a night out himself, but had been met by a hasty refusal, Sean explaining that his workmate was not the sort to welcome such an intrusion. Niall had put little significance on this at the time, for past experience had shown that Sean’s choice of friends was not his. But now, with his glass of Guinness only half drained, he abandoned it, wiping the froth from his long upper lip and casting aside the newspaper as he went to join the suspicious tribe by the window.
The front room was strong with cocoa, emanating from Harriet and Dolly, whose clothes and hair – even their skin – seemed impregnated by the factory in which both worked. The grey head with its severe parting, and hair tied in a bun, moved aside so that Niall could take her place.
‘Now will you go after him?’ bawled an impatient Nora, once he had seen for himself.
Far from being cowed, he responded with sour amazement. ‘Don’t me legs carry me enough miles a day?’ But even as he said it he knew he would cave in for the sake of a quiet life, as he always did against this unforgiving wall of women.
Still, he vacillated, unwilling to do their underhand bidding, yet inquisitive to know himself. ‘Well, I might just go …’
‘Can I go with you, Daddy?’ Unnoticed, six-year-old Judith had followed him in here and, fond of such cloak-and-dagger shenanigans, dragged at his legs and tilted her face at him pleadingly. ‘Aw, can I?’
‘Eh, Juggy Doran, what are you doing creeping up behind me? You’re as bad as this lot!’ Much as he joked, he did not care for the example being set for her. ‘You should be out playing on a lovely night like this.’
‘Go on!’ nagged Ellen with a helpful push. ‘You’ll lose him.’
Niall was still looking down with fondness at Juggy, whose warm little body was clinging to his thigh. This morning she had sported a neat bow in her long, dark brown hair, but the latter was now tousled from play, and the ribbon dangled loosely about her face as she tried to seduce him with those shining blue eyes. ‘Please! I want to hear about your wolf.’
‘I should be glad somebody does!’ growled her father. Judged on this unsmiling appearance Niall could have been a wolf himself – sharp of feature, keen and intelligent of eye, his dark, wiry hair grizzled around the temples, at thirty-three in his prime, lean and raw-boned and rather menacing. In nature he was quite the reverse. Not exactly a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and as far from being meek and mild as one could be, he was nevertheless as moral a fellow as ever stood, anything untoward or underhand offending him deeply, and he was not averse to using his fists in defence of those values. However, this side of his character was never visited upon his womenfolk, whose every whim he chose to grant in order to enjoy the quiet life he yearned. All in all a soft-hearted soul, especially at the hands of his children, Niall would take much goading before his teeth were bared. Yet here now before him was the one thing guaranteed to raise his hackles, and it was his brother who provided it.
‘For heaven’s sake, will you stop faffing and get after him – please!’ This addendum was swiftly issued, for Nora knew him well enough to know that he did not respond to bullying. But she could not hide her exasperation and, unlike her son-in-law’s, Nora Beasty’s appearance was not so deceptive. With those cold grey eyes, she looked as if she’d enjoy torturing people and, by God, Niall knew if he didn’t do as she wanted now she’d make his life a misery for weeks in all manner of small ways.
But it was from a sense of curiosity rather than obeying Nora that he finally agreed to act, and, with a gasp of aggravation, also to take Juggy with him. ‘Flamin’ ’eck, if it means I’ll get some blasted peace, all right I’ll go!’ Juggy laughed in triumph. ‘But keep your gob shut,’ he warned her. ‘We don’t want Uncle Sean thinking we’re after him.’ Even if we are, he fumed to himself. Still in his grubby shirtsleeves, he hauled his grinning little daughter by the hand and left.
Outside, he paused only to sling Juggy onto his shoulders, then set off after his brother. She was a delicate, gangly creature, and no more than a featherweight to bear. On consideration he was glad to have her with him for it might look less suspicious. If Sean should turn and confront his pursuer the latter could always say he was only taking his child somewhere – though why he should lie when Sean was obviously the one at fault … However, he had not been found guilty yet and must be granted the benefit of the doubt.
Employing the bat his father had painstakingly carved for him, Dominic was now involved in a game of cricket with a dozen other raggle-taggle young residents of this slightly impoverished but happy area, his smaller brothers hovering in the avid hope they might be allowed to run after the ball. So concentrated, none of them noticed as their father went by with their sister on his shoulders.
‘Ooh, just the very fellow!’ old Mrs Powers accosted him as he was passing her open doorway. Mr Doran was a man who kept himself to himself, but knowing him to be charitable too, she entreated him, ‘Could you just give us a hand to get a lid off, if you’re not in too much of a rush?’
Unable to ignore the elderly widow’s smiling plea, the chivalrous Niall turned to follow her lame figure indoors, only remembering he had Juggy on his shoulders when she yelled in alarm, and ducking swiftly to avoid injuring her.
With the lid removed, and the old lady’s thanks ringing in his ears, Niall did not tarry but called over his shoulder, ‘You’re all right, love!’ Then he hurried to regain surveillance of his brother, who had now turned a corner, the bony little buttocks grinding his shoulders as he jogged.
Thenceforth, he loped along Walmgate in the manner of the wolf that he had seen crossing the railway line that morning, occasionally responding to his daughter’s questions about his encounter with it, though his mind was on other things now.
Well, Sean wasn’t going to play billiards, that was for sure. He was travelling in the wrong direction. Still, Niall conceded that the local billiard hall was not the only one in York, and to be fair to his brother he tried his best to keep an open mind as, with the ancient limestone bar to his rear, he shadowed him towards town.
A tram came gliding past, the odd motor car, and argumentative voices from the Chinese laundry, but apart from these intrusions the way was quiet. If not for the task in hand it would have been a very pleasant walk. This evening, with its occupants basking peacefully in the sunshine – gentle old Irish grandmothers in black dresses, shawls and bonnets, seated upon chairs on the pavement and puffing on their clay pipes – it might be hard for a stranger to imagine that he was in one of the roughest quarters of York. Contained on two sides, the east and the south, by a medieval limestone wall, the rest of the area was enclosed by the River Foss, as it snaked its way to meet the Ouse at Castle Mills; the road that Niall trod was its main artery, a network of veins to either side.
Notwithstanding the garish posters daubed on every space, the odd smashed windowpane and derelict property, Walmgate itself did not look particularly rough. In fact many of its structures were immensely graceful, and it boasted a fine array of shops. Even the dosshouse looked genteel nowadays, the dirty crumbling stucco Niall remembered from his youth having been removed to expose fifteen-century timbers, and the gaps between them whitewashed. But Niall kenned that, with a few drinks down them, those same old grandmothers who waved to him so benignly might be tearing out each other’s hair, and their sons trading blows. Likewise, behind those Victorian establishments with their sedate awnings to ward off the sun, and the symmetrical Georgian façades, at the other end of those narrow, urine-reeking alleys that ran between them were the most appalling courtyard slums.
However, of late there had been a definite change in the air. Along his way, Niall was pleased to note that a few of the worst offenders had gone, others in the process of being razed too, though the awful smell of their midden privies lingered on, overpowering the more pleasing aroma of fish and chips. Such dwellings had been there since he was a boy – his father and mother had said the same – and he would be glad when all were finally eradicated. How sad that it had taken a world