The Delaney Woman by Jeanette Baker Page B

lovely, too lovely to lie to.
    â€œYou’re welcome. I remember what it felt like after I’d left Dublin. If it hadn’t been for Maggie and Eileen I don’t know how I would have managed. Banburren is a lovely place but it’s a small town. Even though I had James, there wasn’t a great deal to do until I took a job. Now, with James gone, I’m even more grateful.”
    â€œWhat made you stay on?”
    Kate tilted her head and the shining mass of black hair swung across her cheek. “I don’t know, really. I had to finish the term and then I was offered another contract and I took it. One year turned into the next and here I am.”
    â€œYou’re very young and very attractive. No one like you stays in Banburren.”
    â€œYou’re here.”
    â€œBut I’ve no intention of staying.”
    Kate smiled. Her teeth were good, even and straight and very white. She was breathtaking. The question popped, unbidden, into Kellie’s mind. What would a woman like Kate, a woman who could have anyone, want with James Whelan, an IRA man from Banburren? She shook the thought away. There was no explaining love.
    It was the session that made the evening. They were a musical family. Maggie’s husband played the fiddle, Mary Catherine the whistle, and even Eileen was persuaded to hand her baby to her husband while she took up the bodhran. And of course there was Tom on the pipes. The music was sweet and slow and haunting, raucous and inspiring, soaring and swooning and rousing, breaking down inhibitions, lifting their spirits, drawing them together in a way that words could never do. When the last notes died away, Kellie was flushed and content and satisfied in a way she hadn’t been since she was a girl on her own at Queen’s.
    It was after eleven when the family, sated and filled with pudding and spirits, called an end to the evening. The Whelans, a small community in themselves, content in their togetherness and their culture, gathered their coats and their children, kissed each other goodbye and went their separate ways.
    Susan stood at the door, her trim figure framed in golden lamplight. “Goodbye,” she called out. “Hurry home or you’ll catch your death. It’s a cold one.”
    Kellie buried her nose in the fleece of her collar and stuffed her hands into her pockets. It was cold, a damp, bone-chilling cold that whistled in on the wind from countries far to the north. She’d forgotten that cold could be like this, a cold that froze lips and noses and caused the back of her teeth to ache. A hot bath would warm her, but in Ireland hot water was in short supply.
    Tom walked beside her with Heather in the middle. The two of them chatted back and forth with the ease of people comfortable with one another and the occasional silences that permeate a long acquaintance. Kellie recalled the feeling, wondered if she would ever know it again, shrugged off a twinge of self-pity and concentrated on ignoring the cold. She shivered. The streets of Banburren were empty at this time of night. It wasn’t so much an ominous feeling, more a lonely one as if the dark shops and quiet streets had been abandoned by their inhabitants.
    Tom had left the lamp on in the hallway and the small peat fire had taken the chill from the room. He kissed Heather good-night, reminded her to brush her teeth and watched her climb the stairs to her room.
    Kellie went immediately to the hearth, stripped off her gloves and held her hands over the flame. The shivering that had once been controllable and confined to her jaws and teeth spread throughout her body. The cold was painful.
    Tom came up behind her. “Are you all right?”
    She nodded and rubbed her arms.
    He took both of her hands in her own. “You’re freezing.”
    Again, she nodded.
    â€œKellie, you’re ill,” he said gently. “Come with me. I’ll get you to bed