The Girl From Seaforth Sands Read Online Free Page B

put up a hand, stroking the rich, golden-brown hair back off her forehead and giving Bill the benefit of a teasing, provocative glance. She remembered Abe telling her once that it had been a teasing glance from her big blue eyes that had first caught his attention and his interest. ‘I thought all Keagans were bad through and through in your wife’s book,’ she added.
    Bill took off his cap and began to turn it round and round in his hands. There was a flush on his weather-beaten cheeks, but presently he looked up and grinned sheepishly at her. ‘You mustn’t mind Mrs Logan,’ he said softly. ‘It’s just her way. Me wife’s a good woman you know, Mrs Keagan, none better, even if her mind is a trifle set. Her old mam made all her children take the pledge when they were six or seven and taught them that pleasure of any sort was sinful. Mrs Logan knows better than that now, of course, but it’s coloured the way she looks at life.’ He sighed, giving Suzie a straight look out of his round, golden-brown eyes. ‘Many’s the time I’ve told her to be more tolerant and I know she does her best, but it’s uphill work when you’ve had narrowness and self-righteousness preached at you since you was a kid.’
    ‘Aye and I know she’s been good to our Paddy often enough,’ Suzie agreed, remembering the times her son had been fed by Isobel Logan. ‘As for yourself, Mr Logan, you know how grateful we arefor the fish. I won’t deny if it wasn’t for that we wouldn’t always make ends meet. I does me best, but I find it hard to hold on to a good job even when I manage to get one. It’s ’cos I mainly goes for cleaning or domestic work of some sort, where there’s women in charge. Me old ma-in-law says I should tie back me hair and tek good care not to look too pretty, but . . . well, I say self-respect’s worth a bob or two.’
    It was an invitation to Bill Logan to tell her that she was a good-looking woman, that other women would obviously be jealous of her, not want to employ her, but Bill did not respond in the way Suzie had hoped he would. Instead, he just nodded briefly as the tram drew to a shuddering halt and got to his feet. ‘Don’t you go worrying over such things,’ he said. ‘No point. As for the bits o’ fish an’ that, what’s that to a feller in my trade?’ He began to make his way down the tram, speaking to her over his shoulder as he did so. ‘I’m gerrin’ off here so’s I can go to me aunt’s house for half an hour, to see that she’s all right and have a jangle. Goodnight, Mrs Keagan.’
    Suzie smiled to herself as Bill Logan disembarked and the tram began to move once more. She guessed he would go to his aunt’s house and chat and drink tea until not even the most suspicious would smell beer on his breath. Bill Logan was far too canny a man to make bullets for his wife to fire at him. Far too nice a man, Suzie’s thoughts continued, for such a straight-backed, tight-mouthed wife. But he and Isobel must have been married for thirty years and a woman could change a good deal in that time; as, indeed, could a man. The girl that Bill Logan had fallen in love with could have been gay andamusing, but thirty years of bringing up kids and making every penny do the work of two could change anyone. Suzie knew it was changing her. There had been a time when her main aim in life had been to have fun and to get herself a decent man who would take her away from the miserable court off the Scotland Road where she had been born and brought up. Then she had met Abe and he had taken her back to the neat house in Seaforth and introduced her to his family, told her all about their boat, their trade. She had seen at once that marriage to Abe was bettering herself, especially when they had moved into a terraced house of their own and begun to furnish it nicely, to plan their future lives together.
    They had wanted children and, although Suzie had been no fonder of housework then than she was now, at