Free A Village Deception (Turnham Malpas 15) by Rebecca Shaw Page B

‘One day I saw the light, as they say, and I realised that life didn’t
have
to be like this, that things could be better if only my dad made the effort. So I tried to reason with him, for my mother’s sake. I got knocked down for my pains and went to school the next day with a broken arm, in agony. The head teacher insisted that I went to the hospital and, when I turned up at home with my arm in plaster, he knocked me down again. For being soft, he said. That day, iron entered my soul and I vowed that, as soon as I could, I would leave home and damn the lot of ’em. So, just before my seventeenth birthday, I did just that, would you believe?’ He laughed, but it was bitter laughter, and it hurt Tamsin dreadfully.
    ‘Paddy! What on earth did you do at your age? How did you live? At sixteen?’
    ‘I stole our neighbour’s wage packet. I shouldn’t have done it, he was a decent man through and through.’
    ‘Paddy!’
    ‘I struggled on for years, from one job to another, thieving if necessary. I’m sorry, it’s not recent behaviour. But when there’s no food on the table one has to lower one’s standards and get some … somehow or other. Then I met Anna, the curate from the abbey, and she brought me here when she stood in for the rector. I didn’t do right by her but …’ Paddy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then I got lodgings with Greta and Vince, and a job at the big house courtesy of Mr Fitch. But still I couldn’t stop stealing.’
    ‘Paddy!’
    ‘Sorry, but I did. I was desperate. However, enough of my life history, it’s too sordid for your ears.’
    He stood up and looked down at her. At her red hair and green eyes. At the sad, sweet, caring expression on her face. At the light sprinkling of freckles on her forehead and cheeks.
    He liked her wholesomeness and the beauty of her spirit. And, at that moment, he lost his heart to her.
    But he wasn’t worthy of her, not when he thought about his past and the rotten tricks he’d done to stay alive. He’d drag her down, no doubt about it, they weren’t in the same class. ‘Better go. Thank you for tonight, your playing was beautiful. It goes right to the heart, sure it does, just like you.’ He was out of the house and running down the road to his lodgings with Vince and Greta before she could stop him.
    Tamsin watched him running away and, to her horror, knew for certain that he must be in love with her. But she must be mistaken, surely. Well, bad luck, Paddy, if you are. I’m not the marrying kind, we’re not right for each other. But the moment she thought that she regretted it, because there was a lightness of touch and a sincerity about him that impressed her.
    *
     
    Paddy ached with his love for Tamsin even as he drank the mug of Ovaltine so kindly prepared for him by Greta. ‘You’re quiet tonight, Paddy. Are you all right?’
    Paddy nodded. ‘The music was beautiful, wasn’t it?’ There was a yearning in his voice which Greta couldn’t ignore. ‘Yes. Beautiful. It makes you wish you could play like that yourself, it must be wonderful. Neither Vince nor me ever got a chance that way.’ As a sly afterthought, she asked, ‘Tamsin OK?’ Still, she wasn’t prepared for the light that glowed in Paddy’s eyes.
    ‘Yes, thanks. I made her a cup of tea, she was tired out.’ ‘I’m not surprised. Playing like that must take it out of her. I’m going up. Turn out the lights, please. Goodnight!’ Greta just hoped, as she climbed the stairs, that Paddy hadn’t fallen for Tamsin. It would never be right, her a Cambridge music scholar and him dragged out of an Irish bog by his own boot laces, a man of the soil and an ex-thief too; they’d nothing in common.
    Paddy acknowledged that too, but there was nothing to stop him dreaming. No one knew he dreamed of her but himself. He’d just have to pine away in his lonely bachelor bed for ever and a day. He sat up in bed with a start. He could buy one of those tapes she’d done in aid of the