Free The Disenchanted Widow by Christina McKenna Page B

enough, so ye are. If them boys die—and Sands is gonna die any day now, by the looks of it—all hell’s gonna break loose.”
    Bessie, quick as ever to reach for the low-hanging fruit, moved swiftly to clinch the deal. “So glad you see it that way, Augustus. How does five pounds for the month sound?”
    “Aye, that’ll be grand,” he said, the words coming out and the cake going in on a tide of butter-melting surrender. Overwhelmed at hearing his first name from the lips of such a sophisticated city woman as Mrs. Hailstone, the mechanic-soon-to-be-landlord had agreed to the ridiculously low sum without a moment’s hesitation.
    “Excellent!” she said again, reaching into her handbag for one of Gusty’s fivers from his “lost” wallet. She felt bad about the deceit, but desperate times meant desperate measures—for now, anyway. She slid the banknote across to him. “It’s always better to have a house occupied, I feel. Deters thieves, don’t you know. And I’ll take very good care of your aunt’s things. You’ll have noworries on that score. How much do I owe you for the fan belt, by the way?”
    “It would usually be the ten pound, but the five’ll do it. I’ll not charge ye for the time, ’cos I don’t like tae see a wommin like yerself stuck, so-a don’t.”
    “That’s good of you, Augustus. How can I thank you?” She had a fair idea as to how the mechanic might like his generosity rewarded. She caught the flicker of hope behind his big glasses. What was it people said about eternal hope and the human breast?
    “D’ye mind if I ask ye something, Mrs. Hailstone?”
    “No, go ahead.”
    “Where would…where would Mister Hailstone be?”
    “In heaven, I hope,” said Bessie, adopting what she felt was a passable imitation of sadness: head tilted, eyes cast down.
    “I’m very sorry tae hear that.” The mechanic’s heart fluttered in expectation, shifted up a gear. “What way—”
    “Still, such is life,” Bessie cut in, fetching his remaining fiver and handing it over. “As I say, it’s terribly considerate of you to help us out.”
    That evening at supper, Bessie broke the news to Herkie.
    “Och, Ma, I don’t wanna stay here a month.” He was sitting at one end of the kitchen table, slurping from a glass of milk and cramming a fairy cake into his gob.
    Bessie sat opposite, one hand under her chin, the other resting on the stork-patterned tablecloth, holding the ever-present fag.
    “Well, I’ve decided, son, and that’s that . I’ve gotta get us some money for our passage to yer Uncle Bert in Hackney. Mr. Grant’s givin’ us this place for nothing—”
    “Och, Ma, thought we were goin’ tae Amerikay tae see the Statue of Liberry?”
    “He doesn’t know that he’s givin’ it for nothing, and he won’t if we play our cards right. And ye can give over ’bout the Statue of bloody Liberry for now.”
    “But, Ma, it’s borin ’ in this oul’ place. I wanna go back till Belfast.”
    Herkie was missing the toys he’d had to leave behind and his friend Seanie McSwiney. He and Seanie would regularly clod stones at army jeeps. They dreamed of one day knocking a soldier out stone cold and making off with his automatic rifle.
    He wanted to be a soldier when he grew up and often fantasized about lying in position on a rooftop, picking off unsuspecting pedestrians as they trod the city streets—especially men wearing donkey jackets and flat caps, and who talked with a fag in their mouth, because his father had worn a donkey jacket and a flat cap to cover his bald spot and kept a fag in his gob even when he was screaming at him and his ma.
    “I know, son. I’m bored, too, but it’s only for a wee while.”
    Through the cloud of cigarette smoke, Bessie eyed him dotingly: the only good thing that had come of her marriage. She loved her son dearly, in spite of everything, and hoped he wouldn’t turn out like his da. But, for now, she fattened him up with her own