In an act of defiance and with a determination somehow to leave her mark on the kitchen before she exited, Maura stormed over to the range and reached up to the mantelpiece.
‘The Virgin Mother doesn’t put her back on us,’ said Maura, as she turned the statue round. ‘She keeps an eye on what we’re up to.’ Then she flounced out of the kitchen.
Confused, Alice looked up at the statue and at the door Maura had just slammed behind her. It is true, she thought somewhat ironically, the Irish are mad.
It was after a particularly bad second winter alone, with Nellie now toddling around the house, that Jerry asked Alice to marry him. He hadn’t planned to and for days afterwards he regretted what he had done, but there was no way out of it. He had committed a mortal sin. He had made his bed and now he had to lie in it.
Two weeks earlier, measles had swept the streets and Nellie had been ill for the entire time. Jerry had barely coped. Maura was at her wits’ end, with her own seven children all down with the same illness, including Kitty, who was usually like a second mother and a second pair of hands for Maura.
It was the first time Nellie had been ill and despite Maura’s protestations that she could handle one more sick child, Jerry wanted his Nellie to have all of his attention. He took the whole week off work and didn’t go down to the docks once. It was Tommy who kept both houses fed that week.
Jerry hadn’t seen much of Alice while Nellie was ill, although it was the one time he could really have done with her help. He wondered where she was and why she hadn’t called in, but he was too busy nursing Nellie to think too much about anything, other than keeping her temperature and her food down.
It had never once occurred to him to ask Alice to marry him. He didn’t think about it even for a second, not even when he hit his lowest point, boiling Nellie’s vomit-soaked sheets in the copper boiler in the yard, with the cold rain pouring down the back of his neck and the steam from the boiler scalding his face. Not even when he cried again and his tears ran into the trickles of steam on his cheeks.
Definitely not then, because that was when he thought he heard Bernadette say his name. As he looked up, he saw her through the steam at the kitchen window, like he used to. She was standing at the sink, smiling out at him. Definitely not then, because that was one of the few moments he felt Bernadette was somewhere near, when he needed her, when he knew he wasn’t alone. One of the very few moments he allowed himself to think about who and what he had lost and lived without, when he let her memory roam free. And he was filled with shame at how angry those moments made him feel, the fury rising like acid in his throat.
It happened on a Saturday night. Jerry had invited Alice to the Irish centre, something he now did on a regular basis as a way of saying thank you. He didn’t really know what else to do. Even though he’d worked out she didn’t have much of a social life, he told himself that she appeared to enjoy herself and the odd glass of Guinness, so it usually turned out well enough.
The dockers worked hard, their wives struggled to manage every day, but it was all made bearable by the fun they had down the club on a Saturday night. They spent the first half of their week talking about the previous Saturday and the second looking forward to the next. So special were Saturday nights that it was the only night of the week the headscarves came off, the curlers came out and the Coty cherry-red lipstick was taken off the top of the mantelpiece, where it stood all week like an ornament, and was applied carefully in front of the mirror that hung above. Lipstick cost money. Nothing that cost money was hidden away. A lipstick was a possession to be admired and it remained on parade, ready to hand, to apply at a moment’s notice. Maura dusted her lipstick, along with the pot dogs. The family lived hard during the week but there was no better fun to be had than in the Irish centre, or in the Grafton rooms on a Saturday night.
There was a comedian over from Dublin that night to do a turn and a band from Sligo playing afterwards, which everyone on the docks had been talking about for weeks. Jerry knew the craic would be good and he would be able to have a few drinks himself and relax, not something he did often. It didn’t really worry him that Alice was intense and slow to laugh, that she never spoke to Nellie, that she avoided any intimate contact with him and was the coldest fish he had ever met. He didn’t care. He just liked to have the company. Another human being to relate to. Someone to keep him talking about little things and stop him thinking and remembering.
The women in the street reminded him every day. They knocked on his window as they walked past and shouted to him, ‘On me way to mass, Jerry, and I’ll light a candle for the angel Bernadette when I’m there, so I will.’
He would stand and look through the nets as the women’s shadows passed by, and feel nothing. He hadn’t been to mass since the day of the funeral. He never opened the door to the priest and he hadn’t prayed a word since the day Bernadette died.
The women on the street mentioned Bernadette every single time they saw him. They spoke to him with manufactured expressions of acute pain etched on their faces.
‘Oh God, ye look like a man broken with tears,’ said Molly Barrett, as he bumped into her in the entry. He had no words to reply with, as she dragged on her ciggie and went on her way. He knew she meant well.
Mrs McGinty would touch his forearm and look at the floor as though suffering an attack of acute colic before squeezing out a tear and saying, ‘God, I imagine the pain, Jerry, is more than ye can bear, Jer, ye must weep ye’self to sleep every night, ye poor, poor man, and how is the poor wee motherless babby?’
The past two weeks had been tough. He was haunted by the fact that people kept telling him he couldn’t manage, that he needed help, that he shouldn’t have to cope. He knew people frowned at the thought of him bringing up Nellie on his own. As he walked out of a shop one day with Nellie in his arms, struggling to carry his bag, he heard the greengrocer whisper to the next customer, who nodded in agreement, ‘It’s unnatural, so it is, he won’t keep that up for long.’
He realized he needed Alice’s help. Alice never mentioned his pain. She never spoke of Bernadette, ever. He had heard her mention Bernadette’s name only on her first visit. With Alice, he hid. She was a life after death.
He drank too much that night. Alice didn’t like to socialize and, although she hadn’t ever said so to him, she made it known. It wasn’t that she was rude to people, she was just quiet. She never asked a question and never fully answered one, either. And she was asked a lot of questions. No one on the four streets knew where Alice had sprung from. Some of the women, especially Maura, knew what her game was, but there was nothing they could do. Alice gave them no ammunition to use against her. She didn’t engage or converse. She knew their game, too.
Jerry had to sit on a table for two with Alice, not on a big circular table for twenty as he had with his Bernadette. The nights at the Irish centre with Bernadette had been some of the best in his life, full of dancing and laughter. Bernadette would often run down to the centre first when he was getting changed after work, or watching the footie, and he often tried to stop her.
‘Jerry,’ she would protest, ‘we have no babbies, we aren’t as busy as the others. I like to keep a seat for everyone at the big table.’ And that is what she did and everyone knew she would.
‘Keep me seat on Sat’dy night, our Bernadette,’ neighbours would shout to her, during the week. ‘We’ll be counting on ye, Bernadette, me corns won’t take the pressure stood.’
It was just one of the little things she used to do that made her, a new wife, one of the community, from the day she arrived on the four streets.
Alice had no intention of saving seats for anyone. God, how she hated the Irish centre and everyone in it. She hid it well, but not enough to join in.
‘Are ye not good enough to sit with us then, ye two?’ the odd person would say, as they passed by their table.
People were trying to be welcoming and willing to have Alice on their table for Jerry’s sake. Jerry
hadn’t told them that Alice was a Proddie, but they had all guessed. Everyone had wondered whether she was part of an Orange Lodge and would be out on the march in July. But, as it was, they saw her going into Jerry’s house just as the big march was taking two hours to pass through the city and so they knew Jerry was safe on that score. It was the nineteen-fifties, but in Liverpool it was as if the battle of the Boyne was only last week.
Some of Jerry’s friends would be more insistent, trying to get them to bring their drinks over and join them on their table. Jerry wanted nothing more. But always, the answer was no. Alice would shake her head, look down into her Guinness, smile sweetly and appear shy.
She wanted to reply, ‘No, you aren’t good enough to sit with us, never mind us with you.’
God, how she hated Guinness too. Alice looked around the club on this particular Saturday and tried to hide her discomfort at the cigarette smoke stinging her eyes. When would he realize he needed her? When could she stop pretending to like this foul drink?
Alice had reached a wall. She had no experience of romance and no idea of what to do to take her plan to another level. For the first time since she had left home, she was lost for ideas.
Alice was the only person in the club who didn’t laugh at the comedian. The only woman not to dance to the band. Jerry, a fun-lover, who had spent most of his life laughing, recognized that he wasn’t enjoying himself. In fact, he didn’t even feel comfortable. He and Alice had run out of things to say half an hour ago. He had managed through the measles without help and, sure, hadn’t he come out of the other side all right? The house might be a mess today, but Nellie was better and had wanted for nothing. Measles killed toddlers, but not his Nellie. He had passed the biggest test of a single father, one many women struggled with.
Time to stop this, he thought to himself. I will not ask Alice to come any more and in future will come here on my own and sit with the others.
Jerry was feeling stronger. It was almost two years since Bernadette had died. He could do this alone now. He took a deep sigh. He had just taken the first decision of his own in two years and he felt good. Empowered. He was going to get a grip, take control of his own life and look forwards for him and Nellie. It was time to make a visit home and take Nellie to see her family and the farm he grew up on. His mammy had written to say Joe had been ill, and Jerry was keen to visit him. He would arrange that tomorrow.
He looked at Alice, knowing she was about to become a thing of the past, and he felt lighter at that thought. No sense of loss, just relief.
A minute later, Alice took a very huge risk and slipped her hand on top of Jerry’s while he sat and laughed at the comedian. As she lifted her own to put it on top of his, it shook. Her mouth was dry, and she was breathless. This was the most daring thing she had ever done in her life. The comedian sounded louder than he actually was and as she looked around, no one was looking at them. Everyone was laughing loudly and hysterically. It was a good moment.
She had no idea what he would do in response. She was terrified, but knew that, as he had already drunk a fair quantity of Guinness, now was as good a time as any. She had seen the look on his face, the expression in his eye when he had looked at her a moment ago. It was as though he had stepped back. She saw in his eyes the slight flicker of a decision and his body language spoke volumes, as he leant back in his chair and sighed. For the first time, she felt as though she was losing control. She had slipped backwards in the flash of a second and she knew that she had nothing to offer that couldn’t easily be supplied by any other woman. A woman he could easily pay a few bob a week to and who would look after Nellie in her own home. Her capital was shrinking. His gratitude diminishing. She had to think fast.
She didn’t look at him, as she felt the dark hair on the back of his hand bristle against her palm. Her heart was beating too fast; she couldn’t catch her breath and she didn’t dare look up.
She heard him say, ‘Alice,’ but she still couldn’t look.
He said her name again. ‘Alice, Queen.’ This time she made herself look him straight in the eye with a bold stare.
‘Would ye like another drink?’ he asked, not knowing what else to say. He thought initially her hand on the back of his was to catch his attention above the noise. It was only when he saw the look in her eye that he realized he was wrong. Something else was going on with Alice.
She felt a small self-satisfied warmth with the sense that she had just taken a gigantic step. Emboldened, she radiated a new self-confidence.
The Guinness and Alice’s hand on his were confusing Jerry. He was a sucker for human contact and had missed that a great deal over the last two years. When he looked at Alice, she smiled sweetly. That was hard for Jerry. He was still vulnerable and loved a woman’s company. It was so long since he had had sex, he couldn’t remember what it would be like to have a woman in bed next to him.
Hand on hand… skin on skin… limb on limb.
The thought of moving on from Alice to a future on his own flitted away, as quickly as it had arrived.
He turned over Alice’s hand and laid his strong, brown docker’s palm on top of hers. Her pale white fingers and delicate nails were almost half the size of his. He gently lifted both their hands to face upwards, still joined, palm to palm, as if in prayer, as he stared at them both. Jerry was lost in the moment of fusion. It had been so long.
There was no real beauty in Alice, no vibrancy, no passion. He couldn’t compare her to Bernadette. Chalk and cheese. It was futile to compare any woman to Bernadette; she would fail miserably. After Bernadette, one woman was as good or as bad as another but only one woman was cooking his meals, cleaning his house from time to time and had her hand on his.
The band would play until two in the morning but it was now midnight and, much to Alice’s relief, Jerry stood to leave.
‘Come on, Queen,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’
He had no thought other than that this was a new and strange situation, and he didn’t for one moment want Maura or anyone else for that matter to see him and Alice holding hands. They would want to know what was going on and he had no idea himself. Five minutes ago he had decided it was time to move on from Alice, now here he was holding her hand. How had that happened?
Halfway to the bus stop, Alice slipped her hand into his again and held it.
‘Jerry, can we go back to the house tonight for a drink?’ she whispered. She did her very best to appear seductive although this was so new to her that she had never even been kissed.
Jerry was thrown. They had not done this before. Through the fog of Guinness he tried to recall what time the last bus was and whether she would make it home if they went to his house first. Nellie was sleeping at Maura and Tommy’s where all the children were being looked after by Mrs Keating’s daughter, so he had no reason not to leave the house later and walk her to the bus stop.
‘Sure, but the last bus goes in an hour,’ said Jerry.
She kept her hand in his and turned to walk back towards the house, pulling him round to follow her. There had been no conversation as to what was to happen – there never was much conversation between them – but Jerry didn’t argue with the fact that they were deviating from their normal routine. He was too far gone. It was the Guinness holding Alice’s hand, not Jerry.
She thought she knew what was coming. They would sit down and have a cup of tea and chat about how difficult Jerry was finding things. He would tell her that she had become the centre of his universe and that he couldn’t manage without her, he needed her. That he was beginning to love the times she came round, their walks and occasional evenings out. He would tell her he loved her more than anything in the world. That he admired her cultured ways and wanted to move away from the docks, to make a fresh start together in America or somewhere better than the four streets. Maybe he thought about New York where Alice had always dreamt of living, amongst more ambitious people.
Alice had talked to Jerry about going into insurance and she
was sure he was clever enough to get a job at the Royal Liverpool. They had been advertising this week and Jerry had a nice hand for writing. He would tell her he was going to take her advice and apply for jobs, and he would finish his little speech by getting down on one knee and asking her, would she marry him? This was in the world according to Alice. This was her plan.
Alice knew she might have to try to seduce Jerry. This was something she had only ever imagined, but it didn’t matter, she would manage. She had overheard enough conversations amongst chambermaids to know what they got up to and wasn’t she better than any of them? There were ways to avoid getting pregnant and she would use them. She might have to do this thing with Jerry to get him to propose. She had worked hard to get to this point and she wasn’t going to let the time pass any longer. He was an honourable man. Once he had laid with her, he would propose. It couldn’t go wrong and if an Irish slut from the bogs like Bernadette could manage it, then so could she.
Jerry’s ideas were different. He had two bottles of Guinness in his free hand. He thought they would have a drink, and then he would take her for the bus or if they had missed the last one, he would walk with her down towards town to hail a cab. Then he would be up, bright and early, to play the ritual Sunday game of footie with Tommy and the other men and lads on the green, whilst Kitty looked after Nellie. He would then go to Maura’s house for the usual big Sunday roast. Nellie loved nothing more than sitting in Maura’s kitchen, eating her dinner in the company of seven other children. It was the one meal of the week when they pushed the boat out. Jerry always gave Maura money to contribute. He and Tommy earned the same wage. Jerry’s had to keep two people. Tommy’s had to stretch to nine, and it wasn’t easy.
The Four Streets Saga Page 9