Winnie of the Waterfront Read Online Free Page A

who was in the playground, heard what was said and had immediately forbidden it.
    ‘Certainly not! Winnie might be hurt or one of you could be injured,’ she admonished in a shocked voice.

Chapter Three
    GRACE MALLOY FELT the bedclothes lifting as Trevor crept in beside her. As his ice-cold leg grazed against her she pulled away.
    ‘Keep away from me – you’re like a bloody iceberg!’ she muttered irritably. ‘When I told you to stop Winnie from crying I didn’t mean you had to sit by her bedside until she went back to sleep.’
    ‘She was having one of her nightmares so I took her downstairs for a while until she’d calmed down, so that she wouldn’t disturb you.’
    ‘Bigger fool you! Senseless, the way you pander to that kid. Make a right little martyr of her you do. That’s why the mardy little madam is such a pain in the arse and plays up so much. She knows she’s only got to open her gob and yell and you’ll be there to comfort her.’
    ‘I only wish there was more I could do to ease her pain and suffering,’ Trevor said wistfully. ‘It’s such a sad life for the poor little thing.’
    ‘It’ll be an even sadder life for you if you aren’t up in the morning for work. Lose that job and you won’t find another one in a hurry, especially one where you’re sitting on your backside all day, I can tell you. With this war on you’ll be shoved into a munitions factory and be on your feet all day.’
    ‘I’ll be up like a lark the minute the alarm goes off, and I’ll bring you up a cuppa before I go out,’ Trevor promised.
    ‘Well, make sure you put two sodding spoonfuls of sugar in it, not just one,’ Grace muttered as she turned her back on him and humped the bedclothes up around her shoulders.
    Within minutes, Trevor was asleep and snoring gently, but Grace now felt wide awake. She twisted and turned and thumped her pillow angrily, but sleep eluded her.
    The anger inside her was like a pain. She didn’t know which she found the hardest to contend with, her marriage to Trevor or the terrible burden that Winnie had turned out to be.
    She must have been mad to get married again at her age, she thought morosely, especially to a weedy specimen like Trevor Malloy. He was too much the perfect gentleman for her taste. Too eager to do the right thing and always trying to please everybody.
    Trevor wasn’t half the man her first husband had been. Michael O’Mara had been a rip-roaring Irishman, more often drunk than sober. Although he had a silver tongue and could charm the birds off the trees he’d fought anything that moved. He’d thought nothing of giving her a black eye, and then the next minute they’d be making love as if there had never been a harsh word between them.
    He’d been a hard worker; a docker who never had to stand around waiting for a gaffer to pick him out from the crowd. He’d decided for himself which gang he’d work for and he’d used his fist on any man who’d got in his way.
    He’d been a God-fearing man for all that. He never missed a Sunday Mass in his life and he made sure that all his family attended regularly as well. Father Patrick had loved him like a son, and, along with the rest of them, had shed tears at his funeral.
    No one in Luther Court could believe their ears when less than six months later she’d announced that she was going to marry Trevor Malloy. True, he was an Irishman from County Galway, and as staunch a Catholic as Michael O’Mara had been, but he was as different from her late husband as chalk was from cheese.
    Michael O’Mara had topped six feet in his socks. He’d been built like an ox with the broadest shoulders Grace had ever seen and he could bellow like a bull when his temper was roused. Trevor Malloy was as thin as a whippet. Tall and weedy, in fact, and he was so mild-mannered that he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He never raised his voice, never cursed or swore, and was not only as gentle as a lamb but as easy-going as one as