Free Reach for Tomorrow by Rita Bradshaw Page A

hobnailed boots leaving deep indentations in the snow which was already an inch or two thick.  
    He took a couple of short cuts down the back lanes before he reached the alleyway that led through into Mapel Avenue, and as he neared the corner he saw two figures alight from a tram - a rotund man and small woman - who then preceded him into Chapel Lane. The couple were walking quickly, the woman holding on to the man’s arm as she picked her way through the snow, and as Davey was in no hurry to overtake them he followed some twenty or so yards behind, aware the snow was coming down thicker than ever.  
    At some point - probably when he stopped to tie his bootlace - he lost them altogether in the swirling white cloud in front of him, but because they were still at the forefront of his mind he gave more than a cursory glance at the couple standing close to the wall of a house halfway down Chapel Lane as he passed. He couldn’t see the woman - the man’s back was obscuring her from view - but it was the unmistakable intent of the man and the intimacy of the entwined couple that caused Davey’s head to swivel. They appeared to be fully clothed but what they were about was obvious, and then, at the same time that he recognized the man was Shane McLinnie, he heard him groan a name, her name, and caught just a glimpse of the small figure clasped in McLinnie’s arms.  
    He stopped, he couldn’t help it, and then he walked on quickly into the silent world ahead of him which almost immediately swallowed him up with blank anonymity.  
    Rosie . Rosie. His guts were twisting and he had the feeling he was shrinking, reducing down to a little speck of nothing. How could he have got it so wrong? How could he? And Shane McLinnie of all people? Didn’t she know what he was like? Couldn’t she see he was the scum of the earth?  
    He found he was swearing in his mind as he marched along, the profanities helping to burn up the sick churning that had stripped away all his manliness and brought a humiliation so deep that he didn’t think he’d ever rise up out of it. And to think he’d refused Jenny Rowand when she’d offered it on a plate! And Hilda Casey, she’d been giving him the eye for months, along with her sister. But he’d had it in his mind to keep himself. Keep himself . He laughed deep in his throat, the sound bitter and low. Man, how they’d all laugh if they knew. Aye, they’d have a field day at his expense and love every minute of it.  
    He had passed the promenade at Seaburn, bare and desolate in the winter night and not at all like the bustling place of the summer months, when large numbers of bulky canvas tents were stored there and rented out to sun-seekers for the day, and walked on through the open fields past Whitburn Bay and into Whitburn itself, before reason asserted itself. His mam would be worried. He stood in the shadow of the gable end of a house and adjusted the muffler more securely round his neck as the wind blew the snow in mad flurries. Even if she assumed he’d stayed on extra he was never this late, he’d better get back.  
    It was gone eight o’clock before he caught sight of the sails of Fulwell Mill, and another ten minutes after that before he entered the back lane of Crown Street and then the communal yard that number eleven shared with the two houses either side of it. He noticed a piece of rag had been tied round the tap in an effort to keep it from freezing up. That’d be Mr Riley, he did the same every night and every morning it was frozen solid.  
    When he pushed open the back door Davey was immediately aware something was wrong. For one thing there was no evening smell of cooking coming from the blackleaded range and the fire was low, and for another Mrs Riley was sitting in his mother’s chair to the right of the bread oven and she had been crying.  
    ‘Oh, lad, lad.’ Mrs Riley sprang up at the sight of him, her hands going out towards him and her head bobbing.