Another Man’s Child. Anne Bennett

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       FOUR

      Six more weeks passed. Easter came and went and Celia turned eighteen and the relationship between Celia and Andy blossomed. Celia dreamed of Andy almost every night and woke with a smile on her face and at odd moments throughout the day his face would float into her mind and a warm glow would fill her being. Celia often wondered if she was falling in love with Andy, but she wasn’t sure. She thought it odd that, though it was the thing often sung about and written about and all, no one explained how you would feel and it wasn’t a question you could ask of anyone, least of all Norah. But Celia was well aware that life without Andy would be much bleaker and lonelier and more especially so when Norah sailed for America when she imagined it might be harder to see him as often.

      She trembled when she imagined her father’s rage when he found out about their relationship and yet he had to know because she hated meeting Andy in secret. In fact she seldom met him at all in the week for they both had jobs to do and their absence would be noticed, but every Saturday she and Norah would make for the town with the list of things their mother wanted and always meet Andy on a similar errand for the Fitzgeralds and they would take a turn about the town together and, though Norah was there too, she often would take an interest in a shop window or have a chat with some of her old friends and let them wander off together.

      Andy was always grateful at her doing this, though he too hated the subterfuge and from the first had wanted to call on Celia’s father and ask for his permission to walk out with her, but Norah and Celia had begged him not to. But as each day passed, Celia was becoming more and more important to him and he had seen the love light in her eyes when she looked at him, though he had never touched her, much as he wanted to, for he couldn’t bring himself to until it was known to her family.

      But, oh, how he longed to hold her hand as they walked the town, or take her in a tight embrace and give her a kiss – not a proper kiss for he imagined that would frighten the life out of her – but just to put his lips on her little rosebud mouth would do for now. The dance that she came to with Norah every week, when she danced virtually every dance with him, was the only time he could legitimately hold her in his arms and it simply wasn’t enough any more.

      And that is what he told Celia that Saturday. ‘You mean one hell of a lot to me, Celia, and I want to declare that, not conduct some sort of hole-in-a-corner affair.’

      ‘And what if we tell my father and he forbids me to see you as well he might and you know that.’

      ‘Then you must talk to him,’ Andy said. ‘He will hardly prevent you from seeing me physically.’

      Celia had never seen her father raise his hand to any of them and even when he had a drink he was a happy drunk, not a violent or nasty one, and so she shook her head. ‘I think that highly unlikely.’

      ‘Well there you are then, and remember we’re doing nothing wrong and it would be better you tell him rather than he finds it out from someone else.’

      ‘Yes,’ Celia said, knowing Andy was right, and added, ‘Norah thinks it a wonder he hasn’t been told already.’

      And Norah was totally amazed because people must have seen them walking around the town on Saturday and at the dances. Tom might have had his eyes dazzled by Sinead McClusky, but there were plenty of others who would have seen the way Andy McCadden monopolised Celia and that she seemed to be agreeable to this. Then there was the way she lingered after Mass for a word or sometimes, if the girls were walking together, having been sent on ahead to prepare the breakfast, Andy would join them on the road, out of view of the church. Norah could see that the presence of Andy McCadden with the two Mulligan girls caused great curiosity from the people in the cottages they passed, though they were all greeted as normal, and then in their Sunday jaunts they often passed people on the road taking the air too and she couldn’t understand why no one seemingly had had a word with their parents about it.

      However, that day the girls hadn’t long reached the house when Dan arrived in a raging mood. He had been in the town himself, having wheel rims replaced on the cart, and he had gone into the pub for a pint while the job was done and what he had been told there had caused fury to rise in him so that for a few moments he saw black before his eyes. The poor carthorse, Bess, had never been driven home at such a speed and it didn’t do the new wheel trims on the cart any good either, rumbling so quickly over the rutted lane. However, Dan seemed not to care about that or anything else. СКАЧАТЬ