Read Online Rough Justice by Gilda O'Neill - Free Book Online

bend his ear.
    ‘I’m telling you, Bernie, I don’t like the way that that Stephen Flanagan looks at her. And I ask you, did you see him touch her just now? It’s disgusting, enough to make you feel sick. Man of his age. He’s old enough to be her father. No, I’ll change me mind over that one, he’s old enough to be her bloody grandfather.’
    ‘Don’t keep leading off, Sylv, he’s only doing what any other red-blooded man’d do if he was brave enough.’
    Sylvia blinked very slowly. ‘I beg your pardon, Bernard?’
    ‘’Cept me, of course, my little beloved. But while we’re at it, we’re not exactly the same age, now are we?’
    ‘You sound like Nell, but like I said to her: at least I’m a grown woman with a bit of understanding about the ways of the world. She’s so bloody innocent.’ Sylvia shook her head. ‘I just don’t like it. He’s got them two kids that are older than her, and a vacancy for a bloody skivvy to look after the three of them if you ask me.’
    ‘You worry too much, Sylv. You can see in the bloke’s face how taken he is with her. Leave ’em to it and it’ll all work out – it always does. And now,’ he said, pushing back his chair and standing up, ‘if you’ll excuse me, my little firecracker, I am off to have a word with the man himself.’
    Sylvia fussed around, straightening her husband’s already straight braces. ‘Bernie, you know I love you, you great big lump, but why, where that man’s concerned, do I get the feeling that there’s something you’d rather I didn’t know about him?’
    Having finished sorting out the drinks for the young medics – the who was going to pay for what, and the dealing politely and blushingly with their cheeky suggestions – Nell found herself urgently needing to wipe down the table where Stephen was now sitting with Bernie.
    ‘You were saying earlier?’ Nell said, withoutmaking eye contact with either of the men, her heart racing and her cheeks burning red.
    Stephen brushed the drips from his beery, salt and pepper moustache and stood up. ‘’Scuse me a minute, Bern.’
    He gestured for Nell to follow him to the other end of the bar, well away from where Sylvia was serving.
    ‘What I was saying was,’ he said, ‘was I wondered if you’d thought about what I asked you. You know, if you’d like to come and have a walk with me over Petticoat Lane next Sunday morning. I never mentioned it before, but there’s a bloke who’s got a greengrocer’s pitch for sale and I thought I might go and see how the stall’s doing. See, since I stopped going to Mass – you know, after my Violet upped and left – I never really saw the point about not working on a Sunday. So I might as well be earning as sitting indoors by myself all miserable, eh? Especially now there’s nothing doing down the docks for anyone again. And if it takes off, I might try my luck down the Mile End Waste with a weekday pitch and all. People always have to eat, so there should be a good couple of bob to be earned.’
    He glanced away from her, as if he didn’t want her to see his pain. ‘It’ll be good for me, take my mind off all the misery in my life.’
    Nell could feel her eyes prickling again. The poor man, how he must have suffered – must still be suffering.
    ‘What about your children?’ she said. ‘Couldn’tyou spend a bit more time with them during the week?’ She knew that was what she’d have wanted if she’d had a mum or dad of her own.
    He looked into her eyes. ‘The twins don’t need me no more, not in that way they don’t. They’re nineteen now.’
    ‘Nineteen?’ Nell was completely taken aback. She had imagined the twins to be little ones, like Sam, her favourite young boy back at the home. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might be even older than she was.
    Stephen caught the change in her tone. ‘I never see my other kids; they’d got lives of their own, or so they told me when they took off. The twins are my last two