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‘I know what you’re thinking – how the divil did I get away with a heathen name like this in Ireland!’
Eyes fixed on his glass, he shook his head, still annoyed about her previous sarcasm. ‘I wasn’t even aware of your name.’
‘There’s me told then.’ She grinned, but was obviously stricken with embarrassment from the way she seized a cloth and began to polish a nonexistent smear on the mahogany counter.
‘Sorry … I just haven’t heard anyone mention it.’ Despite himself, he wanted to make her feel better, and asked, ‘What is it then?’
This appeared to restore her friendliness. ‘Aw, me and my big mouth – I could’ve got away with it. I’m not sure I want to tell you now.’ She tilted her head as if paying the matter great consideration, but this was merely play-acting. ‘Ah, go on then. It’s Boadicea Merrifield.’
Niall couldn’t help but be impressed. ‘That is a rum’n!’
She laughed gaily at his expression. ‘Don’t I know it – and all my father’s fault.’ Still only the two of them at the bar, she leaned both forearms on it and, without the slightest prompting, launched into the story of her life whilst Niall sipped his drink and listened.
Her father, a sergeant in the army and resolutely English, had fallen in love with a colleen whilst on duty in Ireland, and against natural disdain of its inhabitants had sought permission to marry her. This had been refused at first by her family, until he had become a convert. With Boadicea’s father often away for years at a time on foreign service, and her mother declining to go with him, she had been born and brought up amongst her mother’s kin. Hence the Irish accent. Up against them and the Church, her father had been forced to baptise his child Mary, but in his presence she continued to be Boadicea, and the brother who followed her, Arthur. Her name had caused all sorts of friction, and even without the nuns’ insistence on it she would have called herself plain Mary at school so as not to draw attention to herself. ‘Even when I came over here I got an awful lot of leg-pulling – ’tis a wonder I’m not walking round with one leg longer than the other, the amount I got. Not that I care. ’Twas the name my father chose for me and I’m sticking to it.’ Her smile showed that she was immensely fond of her father. ‘I rather like having a name that no one else has – well, not many, anyhow.’
‘So how come you are over here, then?’ asked Niall, having warmed to her again.
Her face clouded slightly and she tapped her short fingernails on the bar. ‘Oh, things …’
‘Are your parents still there?’
‘No, my mother died—’
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ His softly uttered sentiment was genuine; he knew what that felt like.
‘Thanks,’ she was equally sincere in her response, ‘but it’s been a good few years now. Anyway, with her gone, there was no reason for Dad to be in Ireland, what with all the back-biting he suffered. So he came back here with Arthur. He’d left the army by then, o’ course, though they did call him up to train the recruits during the war – I suppose you’d have been too young to see any fighting?’
Niall nodded quickly. Like many of his age, it was rather a sore point that he had not contributed.
She mimicked his nod. ‘Anyway, as I say, he and Arthur came back to live here. I stayed on for a while with Mammy’s folks, but I couldn’t get work, so that’s why I came over, and also to be nearer to Dad and me brother – although I’m not so near as I was, me being in York now and they in Manchester. I only get to visit them a couple of times a year.’ Seeming to think she had spoken long on herself, she smiled and asked ‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’
Immediately Niall shook his head, then looked awkward. ‘Well, I did have a brother, but we don’t see each other.’ Before she could ask why, he posed a query of his own. ‘Don’t you miss Ireland?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Her eye was momentarily wistful. ‘It’ll always be home.’
‘Whereabouts are you from?’
The wistfulness turned to impudence. ‘Would you be any wiser if I told ye?’
Niall felt his jaw twitch in irritation; she was doing it again. ‘I just meant what county.’
‘Mayo,’ she eventually revealed.
‘That’s where we’re from!’ exclaimed Niall.
Boadicea seemed to find this hilarious. ‘Sure, ye don’t sound like it!’
That really annoyed him, for he was immensely proud of his Irish heritage. But he kept his tone equable. ‘Aye, well, maybe that’s because we’ve been here sixty years.’
‘Nor do you look that old,’ came her teasing addition.
‘I meant my great-grandparents.’ He decided to end this humiliation there and then by tipping back his head, draining his glass and bidding the barmaid a curt farewell, leaving her smile fading to bewilderment.
‘Have you been upsetting my customers again, Miss Merrifield?’ quipped the landlady, a no-nonsense type of Yorkshire woman, having witnessed the terse departure, moving to stand beside her.
‘Heaven knows.’ Totally mystified, Boadicea shook her head. ‘And here’s me thinking I was giving him compliments. Sorry for losing you business, Mrs Langan.’
‘Nay,’ the woman’s tone was dismissive, ‘he’s only a one-pint Willie. It’ll hardly break the bank.’
Boadicea laughed at the terminology, and prepared to welcome the group of more amiable-looking customers who had just barged into the saloon, and from that instant was run off her feet for the rest of the night. Nevertheless, she was to remain disappointed over her miscommunication with the shy and handsome man with the serious face and the smile that came from nowhere. When he came in again she would have to apologise.
However, she was not to get the chance, for Niall had decided to abandon his foolish notion. Having emptied his conscience at confession on Saturday and been absolved for his lustful thoughts, he had assumed that to be the end of the matter. Had he not bumped into her in the street during the following week he doubted he would have seen the rude biddy ever again.
It was a somewhat embarrassing encounter. There had been a cattle market and, that Monday evening, the main route to his house was splattered with dung, the air rich with its scent. He had successfully evaded it so far, then had rounded the corner and encountered a great quantity on the pavement.
Too late to dodge this one, he was standing under a streetlamp and using the kerb to scrape it from his boot and so avoid taking it home, when someone said in a familiar Irish lilt: ‘Blasted nuisance, is it not?’
And he spun round to see Boadicea emerge into the pool of lamplight. The weather having turned cool again, she wore a long fitted coat with a golden fur collar that was almost the same shade as her hair. As wide as a shawl, it enveloped her shoulders, making her seem smaller, more vulnerable than the person who had issued such impudent banter last week.
‘Oh … hello,’ Niall muttered lamely, then went back to cleaning his boot.
Ignoring the hint, she explained her presence: ‘I just thought I’d nip to evening Mass before going to work.’
‘Right.’ Niall moved his head in acknowledgement.
Her smile was tentative, her voice soft and her breath visible on the cold evening air. ‘Ye haven’t been in to see us for a while …’
‘No.’ Niall felt ill at ease, wishing she would not watch as he dragged his boot along the kerb this way and that.
‘I’ve been hoping ye would, Mr …?’ Blue eyes fixed upon his face, she waited