Emma’s eyes filled up. She fumbled for her handkerchief and blew her nose, striving to curb her emotions. ‘You’re so good, Blackie. I don’t know why you do so much for me.’
‘Because I care about ye, Emma, and the wee one. Somebody’s got to look out for ye both in this hard world, I am thinking,’ he remarked softly, his affection reflected in his bright black eyes.
‘You might regret it later. I mean, regret putting your name on the birth certificate.’
Blackie laughed dismissively. ‘I never regret anything I be doing, mavourneen mine. I’ve found regrets to be a sinful waste of time.’
A brief smile touched Emma’s lips. She knew it was fruitless to attempt to dissuade him once his mind was made up. He, too, could be very stubborn. She stared into the fire reflectively. ‘I must keep the birth certificate in a safe place. Locked up. Laura must never see it,’ she said. Her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible.
Blackie was not certain he had heard correctly. He leaned forward and asked, ‘What was that?’
She gave him the benefit of a long knowing look. ‘I said, Laura must never see the birth certificate. Because your name will be on it.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ exclaimed Blackie. ‘But she shouldn’t see it, for the simple reason that she’d know then ye are single, and that the babe’s illegitimate. Did I not tell Laura ye were married to a sailor called Winston Harte? Pack of lies I told that poor girl. Ye are forgetting things, Emma.’ He sighed heavily. ‘That’s the trouble with lying.’
Emma flushed. ‘They were only white lies. I told them for the baby’s sake, and you agreed all along that I was right,’ she retorted fiercely. ‘And I’m not forgetting anything. I was only thinking that I must protect you. And I don’t want Laura to be hurt. She would be, if she saw your name on the birth certificate. She might believe you really were the father.’
‘So what?’ Blackie demanded, further bewildered.
‘Laura loves you, Blackie.’
‘Loves me! Laura! That’s a lot of cod’s wallop, mavourneen.’ He burst out laughing and shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Hell could freeze over before Laura would look at me twice. I don’t have to tell ye that she’s a staunch Roman Catholic, and devout, and she knows I’m lapsed. Come on, Emma. That’s a daft idea. Loves me, indeed! On the heads of the Blessed Saints I do swear ye have lost ye mind.’
Emma threw him a fond but impatient look. ‘You are a great fool, Blackie O’Neill. You can’t see what’s staring you in the face. Of course she loves you. Very much.’
‘Did she tell ye that?’ he cried, his glance quizzical.
‘No, she didn’t. But I know she does.’ Observing his sceptical expression, Emma added vehemently, ‘I just know, deep down inside, that she does!’
Blackie could not help laughing again. ‘Ye are very imaginative, Emma. Sure and ye are. I don’t believe it at all, at all.’
Emma shrugged resignedly. ‘You don’t have to, but it’s true,’ she asserted strongly. ‘I can tell by the way she looks at you, and talks about you sometimes. I bet if you asked her, she’d marry you.’
Blackie was stunned. A peculiar look settled on his face, one Emma could not read. Emma said hurriedly, ‘You mustn’t tell her I’ve said anything, though. She’d be upset if she thought we’d been talking about her, behind her back. And anyway, she’s never actually told me she loves you. That’s just my opinion.’
Still Blackie did not answer. Emma rose and went over to him. She touched his massive shoulder lightly and he looked up at her, his eyes suddenly twinkling. ‘Promise me you won’t mention it to Laura, Blackie. Please.’
‘I promise I won’t mention it to a living breathing soul,’ he said, patting the small hand resting on his shoulder. Satisfied that he would keep his word, Emma nodded and glided into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got to start preparing things for tea,’ she called over her shoulder.
‘Aye, mavourneen,’ he said, and threw another log on the fire. Blackie settled comfortably in the wing chair and lit a cigarette, chuckling to himself from time to time, vastly amused at Emma’s words and not at all convinced of their veracity. ’Tis romantic girlish notions Emma is harbouring, he thought, and drew deeply on his Woodbine. Nonetheless, he discovered she had given him something disturbing to think about. He sat dwelling on the possibility of Laura loving him; an idea that previously had never entered his mind and one so stagering he was shaken. Slowly, numerous things Laura had said and done in the past few years came back to him with vividness; things he had considered irrelevant but which now assumed significance in the light of Emma’s comments. Was Emma correct in her conjectures about Laura’s involvement with him? For the life of him he did not know. Yet Emma was nobody’s fool. She was perceptive and, in fact, he had often been startled at her insight into people. Bemused, he ruminated on Laura Spencer and he discovered he found it quite difficult to gauge the depth and extent of his own feelings for her. Oh, he loved her. There was no doubt about that. It was virtually impossible not to love that gentle and tenderhearted girl. But how did he love her? Was he in love with her? Did he want her for his wife, as the mother of his children? Did he want to share the rest of his life, and his bed, with her? Was it she who was the object of his masculine desire and passion? He shook his head, nonplussed, unable to isolate and understand his true feelings for Laura. And what about Emma? He loved her, too. He had always believed this had been merely a fraternal interest; now he wondered if he had unconsciously deluded himself. He remembered the night in the Mucky Duck when he had asked her to marry him, out of a sense of protectiveness; yet that night he had seen that she was a highly alluring young woman. Blackie found he was jolted into annoyance with himself. Could it be, was it conceivable, that he actually loved Emma in the way a virile man loves a woman, with all his heart and his very soul? He strove to examine, with objectivity, his emotional involvement with both girls, only to find that he was even more perplexed and confused than ever, on the horns of a dilemma. How can a man love two women at the same time? he asked himself with mounting irritation. He ran his hand through his hair distractedly. This is a fine kettle of fish, Blackie O’Neill, he said to himself. The gaze in his black and brilliant eyes was inward and contemplative, as he endeavoured to answer these disquieting questions which Emma’s conversation had posed. But the answers eluded him maddeningly, and they would continue to do so for some considerable length of time.
The main street of Fairley village was deserted, it being two o’clock on Sunday afternoon. It was a cool April day and, as was normal at this time of year, the sky was heavy with cinereous clouds that rolled in a gathering mass along the crest of those black implacable moors which stretched in eerie silence towards the smudged horizon. The watery sun had retreated hours ago and the village looked inhospitable, the grey stone walls and slate rooftops of the cottages fusing into the forbidding semi-industrial landscape, an unrelieved etching of monotones beneath that sullen metallic sky. The wind blowing in from the nearby limestone dale country was tinged with North Sea rain and a shower was imminent. It had already poured earlier, and the roofs and cobblestones held a silvery sheen that was glassy and stark in the dismal environment.
To Emma, climbing the steep hill, the village appeared smaller than she remembered, oddly diminished, but she had broader comparisons to draw upon now, and she recognized that her eyes had become accustomed to the imposing buildings of Leeds,