The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  Ye have to write back soon and let me know what ye think.

  In the meantime, if the sisters are amenable, I will travel to see the home as soon as ye let me know. Rosie has agreed to deliver her baby in the Abbey and then we can take our Kitty out of there and back home to Liverpool.

  I think it is our only choice, Maura. Maeve says not to worry about the money. We can all work the hundred and fifty pounds between us, so we can. We will all chip in.

  Write back to me quickly, Maura. I need to move fast if the sisters are agreeable to taking Kitty in so early. There is one other thing, and that is that the events leading up to our holiday are common news around here. Everyone I have met in the village has asked me for the smallest detail.

  I am beyond shame, Maura, but even I blushed when the spinster at Carey’s corner asked me how big was the langer they found in the graveyard and God alone knows, she must be ninety.

  We are going to have to be as secretive moving Kitty from here to Galway as we were bringing her here. Also, Maura, we shall have to hide her name and give her a new one, just to be on the safe side. You never know.

  The home is run by the sisters themselves and until her confinement Kitty would need to work in a laundry they run at the Abbey. Kitty has never been idle and I am sure that if she is doing something useful, she will feel the days pass more quickly. The sisters are well used to pregnant women and will keep a good eye on her.

  Anyway, Maura, Maeve, Liam and everyone here sends their love and best regards to Tommy and the children.

  Let me know if everything is all right across the road. Brigid is keeping an eye on Alice for me. I will write to Alice next but you know what it is like, I am just a bit worried about her being on her own all day, with her not long being better. Call me a witch, if ye like, but I am not convinced that someone can alter so much so quickly and I am a bit worried that she may have a relapse.

  Write back soon, Maura, love, please.

  Lots of love,

  Kathleen

  15

  MOLLY THOUGHT SHE would sleep on what Daisy had told her. After all, Molly had known Tommy and Maura since the day they arrived on the four streets, when Maura was six months’ pregnant with Kitty. Molly had always admired Maura. She was a worker, that was for sure.

  Molly was so shocked at Daisy’s revelations, she inhaled a sultana from her fruit scone. What a palaver all that had been, thought Molly, as she pulled on her housecoat over her flannelette nightdress to walk downstairs.

  It was four o’clock in the morning and, abandoning sleep, she decided to make a cup of tea as she placed the kettle onto the range and lit a candle. She didn’t want to switch the main light on, in case Annie O’Prey woke and saw the light in the backyard. Molly nursed a mild disdain for Annie, who felt the need to tell Molly and anyone else who would listen all of her business.

  ‘That woman leaks like a colander,’ Molly had told her husband on a daily basis many years earlier, when he was still alive.

  Molly maintained a level of one-upmanship, simply by withholding information from the inquisitive Annie.

  Whilst Molly sat in her candlelit kitchen, in her hairnet and slippers, surrounded by a haze of blue smoke from her second Woodbine, burning in the ashtray next to her as she munched on a slice of fruit cake between puffs, she chuckled as she imagined the look on Annie’s face if she had a notion of what Molly knew following her chat with Daisy..

  Just at that moment, Tiger leapt in through the open kitchen window, making Molly jump with fright. He dropped a half-dead mouse at her feet. She never knew these days what the Siamese cat was going to bring in next.

  In order to hold the squealing creature in place, he placed his paw on top of its tail and, as it wriggled and squeaked, he looked up at Molly, seeking her praise.

  ‘Who’s a clever boy now then,’ she said.

  The cat stretched his neck upwards in pleasure as Molly stroked his ears. He purred and arched his back, releasing his pressure on the mouse, which seized its chance and flew under the press.

  Molly smiled. She had a new-found affection for the cat. Since the day he had walked in and dropped the priest’s langer on the mat half an hour after the murder became news, Molly had become a minor celebrity on the four streets. It had all begun when she had bent down with a bit of newspaper to pick up the bloody bit of flesh from the kitchen floor. She might have been a widow for a good few years but she wasn’t senile, she knew exactly what the cat had brought home.

  There hadn’t been a day since when someone or other hadn’t begged her to relay every gory detail of the whole sorry event.

  Molly secretly enjoyed the attention, but what she enjoyed most was Annie’s jealousy at Molly’s new-found celebrity status.

  ‘I have to hurry along now, Tiger, lots to do today,’ said Molly, as the cat brushed up against her legs, stretching his head to fit snugly inside her cupped hand.

  She had made her decision. It wasn’t yet five, but she would need to do a bit of baking and start her polishing early. Molly was expecting important visitors. It would be a very busy day indeed.

  It was Harry who took the letters to Maura in the kitchen.

  Gentle, kind Harry. He was so excited that he almost opened them himself.

  Kitty and Nellie had been away for just over a week and Harry missed them both every day.

  Kitty was more like a mammy to Harry than a sister but as the eldest boy, of both sets of twins, he also felt like a big brother to Kitty. He felt that it was his job to look after her, especially since she had come out of hospital following the awful car accident when she and Nellie had been run down by Callum’s car. Callum had tried to blame the fact that Liverpool was still covered in snow in March.

  They all knew it was because Callum couldn’t drive and the car was stolen.

  Harry was growing up rapidly. A serious little man, he knew well the meaning of responsibility and manners. Tommy had taught him almost every day, just by being Tommy.

  Each Sunday, as they attended mass together, Tommy would walk on the outside of the pavement and encourage the four boys to do the same, ensuring that Maura and the girls were on their inside.

  ‘Manners maketh man, Harry, or that’s what they say and I don’t think it can be far wrong.’

  ‘Why do we have to be on the outside, Da?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Well, son, it’s so that when a horse and carriage come along and send up a wave of dirty water, it hits us and not your mammy or the girls, so it doesn’t.’

  ‘But, Da, the only horse and carriage is the rag-and-bone man and he doesn’t work on a Sunday.’ Harry liked to be precise.

  ‘Yes, son, but it’s manners and so we just do it.’

  ‘But why, Da, if there’s no horses and carriages? I don’t get it.’

  ‘Harry, ye will get a lashing from yer mam’s tongue soon if ye don’t stop talking.’

  Harry was good at his manners. At school he would knock over chairs and children in his rush to open the classroom door for the sisters and the teachers, and he always carried a school bag home for one of the girls.

  He also knew the meaning of chivalry. Harry was a reader. He couldn’t devour enough books from the school library. It was in his nature to worry about Kitty and Nellie being so far away. Although neither Maura nor Tommy would answer his questions, he knew the trip had something to do with whatever it was that had happened. They all knew something was wrong.

  And Nellie, well, Harry just loved Nellie and had done since she was a baby. He had always felt that it was his job to look out for Nellie on the four streets. Harry missed Nellie a lot.

  The day that Callum’s car had hit both of the girls at the top of Nelson Street, Harry had been one of the first at the scene and he had truly felt as though he would die with worry when they were taken to hospital.

  And now here they both were, off in Ireland, and he found himself wondering every day, were they both all right?

  ‘The post has come, Mammy, sha
ll I open them for ye?’ said Harry expectantly now.

  Maura smiled and kissed her serious prince on the top of his head.

  ‘If ye don’t mind, Harry, I will read them when ye have all gone to school and then tonight, when we aren’t so rushed and yer da is home from the docks, we will all sit down and read them together. What do ye think about that?’

  Harry had known it was worth a chance, but he hadn’t for a moment thought he would have any luck.

  He laughed. ‘Aw, rubbish,’ he said, as Maura rubbed his hair.

  ‘Go on, ye cheeky scoundrel,’ she said. ‘More like an old man than a boy in yer ways, going on a hundred, ye are. How many books is it ye have read this week then, eh?’

  Angela burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Letters, letters, let me see, let me see,’ she squealed, running over to Maura and trying to grab them out of her hand.

  ‘Get away with ye, ye cheeky article. I’ll give ye a slap on the legs if ye so much as touch those envelopes without my say-so.’

  Maura snatched the letters back from Angela and tucked them into her apron pocket. She missed Kitty so much. Angela was more of a handful and a hindrance than she was a help.

  Tommy had left for work half an hour since. He had helped her to get the boys up and organized before the men had called for him and he had the fire lit in the range at six o’clock.

  ‘I don’t know how I would manage if ye weren’t such a good man, Tommy Doherty,’ Maura had said, as she kissed him goodbye that morning.

  Tommy slapped her backside. ‘Good in many ways, eh?’ he roared. He grabbed Maura’s hand and pulled her in to him for a hug. The children had yet to charge down the stairs. ‘An early night for us, eh, queen?’ he whispered cheekily, as his hands roamed across her backside.

  Maura pulled away. ‘God, what are ye like? Do ye think of nothin’ else? I swear to God, ye cannot be pulling your weight down on the docks, ye have far too much energy left!’

  Despite her protestations, Maura was smiling. Not as much as Tommy, however, who would make a point of letting the fellas know, when they knocked on, that he was on a promise for the night.

  It singled him out, made him different from those who had to plead for sex. Tommy loved to make the others jealous by bragging about his good fortune, in having a willing wife even though that was something she would never in a million years disclose to any other woman on the streets. There was no credibility to be gained in not making your man beg.

  Things were slowly returning to normal. The shock of Kitty’s absence had diminished slightly, now that the parting was over. Tommy thought about his princess all the time, but his memory conjured up images and memories of his Kitty before, his happy Kitty. Not Kitty as she was today.

  Once the children had left for school, Maura hurried through the morning chores, wasting no time. Her desire to carve herself a peaceful hour to read and digest the letters slowly was uppermost in her mind. They were burning a hole, calling to her from the depths of her pocket, the unfamiliar sound of the flimsy, pale blue paper crinkling as she worked.

  She found herself extra chores, as though to punish herself and make herself wait, unsure whether she should be excited or nervous about the contents. She cleaned the splashes from the kitchen window and wiped over the skirting boards with the floor cloth. She mopped the floor, scrubbed the table and changed the bedding on the cot.

  Maura regarded the arrival of the letters in the same way she would a visitor to the house.

  The hour she stole to read them was her guilty pleasure and it must be deserved. She had to have earned it. The kitchen must be spick and span.

  Once the chores were finished, she put the baby down for her mid-morning nap, stoked up the fire, made herself a pot of tea for a cuppa and sat in the comfy chair. Still, teasing herself, she looked around and surveyed her handiwork, delaying the opening by a further tantalizing minute. Then, satisfied that she had truly earned her break, she opened both of her letters.

  Maura turned to Kitty’s first. When she read the last few lines, where Kitty said she was desperate for home, her heart leapt.

  Maura wanted her back, too. The fact that Kitty felt she might be back in just two weeks was wonderful indeed. As Maura folded the letter again and painstakingly slid it back inside its pale blue envelope, she crossed herself and looked up at her statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantel-shelf above the range

  ‘Please, let it be,’ she whispered.

  Maura then opened Kathleen’s letter, slipping the knife under the gummed flap, and realized she was holding her breath. She knew that if Kathleen had written, she would have significant news.

  As soon as she had finished reading the letter, she cried.

  It held nothing but bad news. Months not weeks without her daughter. The need to find a hundred and fifty pounds, and the impending moment when she would have to tell Tommy that Kitty wouldn’t be coming back any time soon.

  A desperate sadness washed over Maura.

  There was Kitty, looking forward to returning home with all her tales and presents, and Kathleen pointing out that there was no possible way, for all their sakes, that she could before her baby was born.

  Maura knew, if the police knocked on the door and someone cracked, Tommy would end up swinging from the gallows. The thought sent the fear of God through her. God alone knew what would happen to them all. And what of their friends who had helped them? Jerry and Kathleen, Brigid and Sean?

  She had dreamt of Bernadette last night and although she could not remember the details, she had woken with a feeling of cold dread in the pit of her stomach. Tommy’s morning playfulness had banished the fear left behind by the dream, but now that she had stopped working and rested, it washed over her once again.

  She had prayed that Kathleen’s letter would tell her the Epsom salts and the gin had worked, and that Kitty had started, once she reached Ireland. God knows, she had given her enough. Girls that age were sensitive. It was easy to lose a baby at such a young age, surely? These were the desperate thoughts Maura had harboured all day, every day, whilst she waited for a letter from Kathleen.

  Maura’s back door opened suddenly and in scuttled Peggy.

  There was no privacy on the four streets. No one ever closed their doors and no one ever knocked, either.

  ‘Oh, queen, what’s up?’ said Peggy, flopping down into the chair opposite Maura.

  It was known as the ‘not so comfy’ chair, because some of the springs under the cushion were broken, and others had been unhooked and stretched to fill in the gaps. It was the chair Maura often sat in, being lighter than Tommy.

  There was a strong possibility that Peggy would sink between the springs and struggle to rise again. She could be in for the day.

  Peggy reached over, which, given the size of her belly, was an impressive act in itself, to take one of Maura’s hands in her own, while eyeing up the pot of tea and the brack, cooling on the wooden draining board.

  ‘Come on, queen, tell me, so. What on God’s earth is wrong with ye?’

  Peggy had only popped in for a cuppa. She had just enough coal left for two nights, until Paddy was paid on Friday and was, as needs must, economical with the range.

  Maura had given up trying to tell her how to manage.

  Peggy felt it was her right that she and Paddy each smoked twenty a day and had one or two extra drinks in the club on a Saturday night. Maura had told her so often that she needed to save for a rainy day and how to cope on the family budget.

  Peggy was the last person Maura wanted to see, but she would never make her unwelcome. Neighbours on the streets were all as close as family. You couldn’t choose your family and when you were an Irish immigrant, your friends and neighbours either. You got on with it and mostly loved them anyway.

  Maura wondered if the chair cushion would smell when Peggy left.

  She knew it would.

  As Peggy leant over towards Maura, an unpleasant odour wafted across from the top of
her apron. Maura was used to this. It didn’t make her baulk. Back home, baths were looked on as a treat but Maura was very aware that in Liverpool her countrymen were called the dirty Irish.

  If anything, her irritation with Peggy was not because of her smell, or her dirty habits, or her lack of housekeeping. It was the fact that every time the welfare officer, the school nurse or the Prudential man knocked on Peggy’s door, she reinforced this prejudice and that annoyed the hell out of Maura. Now she could see that the dull, dark hair wound round Peggy’s curlers was covered in the telling white flecks of lice eggs.

  As soon as she had heard the latch lift on the back gate, Maura had shoved both letters deep into her apron pocket and out of sight.

  ‘Oh, nothing really, Peggy,’ she replied now with more chirpiness than she felt. ‘I had a letter from Kitty on her holiday with Kathleen and, you know, I just miss her.’

  Peggy sympathized. ‘Who can ye trust to run a message now? Boys are useless, and she was grand with the washing and cleaning and looking after the babies. I would miss her too.’

  Maura almost laughed out loud at Peggy’s ability to talk the talk, as if she ever cleaned. Maura’s missing Kitty had nothing to do with what she did in the house or how she helped with the kids.

  It was the fact that she couldn’t reach out and wrap her arms round her. She missed Kitty’s gentle little voice and for so long she had missed her laughter.

  ‘I thought she might be so taken with the farm, she would look down on us lot and not want to return home.’

  ‘Of course she wants to come home,’ said Peggy. ‘You and Tommy are her mammy and daddy, so ye are, that’s where every girl wants to be. The farm might be fabulous, but there’s no place like ye own bed, no matter how many kids and bugs ye share it with.’

  Maura shuddered. There were no bugs in any of her beds.

  She put the kettle on to freshen up the mash of tea.