Saveloys. Oh, how she loved the way that word rolled off the tongue.
Was there ever a more exotic word?
‘In Liverpool, I often pop to the chippy for saveloys,’ she would say to her neighbours.
‘God in heaven, s-a-v-e-l-o-y-s. What would they be?’ her neighbours would demand to know.
As it was a Friday night, the chip shop was busy and Mrs McGuire felt mildly irritated as she noticed that the queue was almost to the shop door. Taking her place at the end, she stepped into the brightly lit shop full of hot steam and chatter and untied her headscarf to shake away the surface water. As she fixed it back into place with a knot under her chin, she keenly looked around her to see who else could afford to be in the queue.
Some of the women whose families she knew from back home shouted out greetings.
‘Is Sean fighting again tonight, Mrs McGuire? He’s on a winning streak, so he is, we will all be putting money on him soon.’
The fish and chip shop was a luxury and Mrs McGuire was surprised to see so many people there. Some of these women have more money than sense, she thought to herself.
‘No, not tonight,’ she replied. ‘He’s running short of lads willing to take him on. It’s a practice night tonight, so don’t waste ye money, he will definitely beat himself.’
She wiped a circle in the steam on the window so she could peer out into the street. The sulphur-yellow street lights had transformed the dirty wet black pavements to the colour of golden marmalade.
She heard the familiar ding-ding of the bell on the bus across the street and her inbred nosiness made her squint to see if she knew anyone alighting.
She recognized Sean instantly. Of course she did. She was his mother and there were very few men in Liverpool as tall or as well built as Sean.
She watched his athletic leap from the platform of the still-moving bus and thought, typical Sean, always in a hurry. As he swung down from the pole and landed on the pavement, he reached up to help someone else down. It looked like a woman, but Mrs McGuire couldn’t really see. She leant forward, with her face almost pressed against the window, and wiped furiously at the greasy glass until it squeaked.
‘What you want, lady?’ Johnny Chan shouted. It was the third time he had asked for her order.
Flustered, Mrs McGuire reached into the basket and handed him the pudding basin with the enamel pan lid for the peas. ‘Three fried fish, three saveloys, five peas and five chips, please, Johnny.’
She stepped back over to the window to see the back of the bus disappear down the road, but there was no sign of her son.
With the parcel of fish and chips safely wrapped up in newspaper, and resting on top of her pudding basin, she hurried back towards Nelson Street.
As she neared the top of the entry, Little Paddy flew out of the newsagent’s, with his da’s ciggies in his hands, and crashed straight into Mrs McGuire, almost knocking the basket straight out of her hand.
‘Sorry, Mrs McGuire,’ Little Paddy apologized, as he ran past.
‘Gosh, Paddy, ye are in a dreadful hurry,’ she shouted. ‘Look where ye are going! Ye nearly knocked me off my feet.’
If Little Paddy looked where he was going, his da would accuse him of dawdling and give him a belt. He hated it if there were lots of people in the shop. It made his breath short with anxiety and then he couldn’t run as fast as he wanted.
Only yards away, Sean and Alice stood in the middle of the entry, each fully aware they were playing with fire. The knowledge thrilled them. All around they could hear the familiar sounds of domestic street life: dogs barking, babies crying, mothers shouting, outhouse toilets flushing.
The only illumination was from the moon and stars, plus the reflections on the pavements of light tumbling from kitchens or bedroom windows, across backyards and over the entry wall.
Occasionally a child ran across the entry, like a river rat darting from one backyard to the next, sent from a house without, to borrow from a house that had.
Light to dark. Yard to yard.
The same sounds repeated daily as they had been for generations.
Different children. Different dogs. Same cacophony of life.
Sean and Alice were startled as suddenly, out of the darkness, a young voice shouted, ‘Hiya, Sean, hiya, Alice,’ making them both jump out of their skins.
They stepped aside as Little Paddy rushed past and they stared aghast at his departing back. Alice came back to reality with a thud.
‘I have to leave now. Wait until you see me leave your house before you go in,’ she said, beginning to move away.
‘Monday,’ whispered Sean urgently, taking hold of her hand and pulling her back. ‘Say you will come again on Monday.’ He brushed the damp hair back from her face with his free hand.
‘I don’t know if I can. I can’t ask Brigid to look after Joseph again, can I?’
She looked down at her wet leather boot and kicked the cobblestones.
Scamp, Little Paddy’s skinny, shaggy-haired grey dog, ran past. He had been waiting loyally outside the newsagent’s for Little Paddy and had hung around, sniffing Mrs McGuire’s basket, until he realized no chips were flying his way.
Wherever Little Paddy went, Scamp went too.
Alice and Sean, searching for a reason to delay their parting, watched the departing dog until he was swallowed by the night.
Alice had made up her mind. ‘If Kathleen is back, then yes, I will,’ she whispered, looking into his eyes.
Sean pulled her in to him, gave her one deep, long kiss and then, shocked by his own boldness, stepped quickly back.
Alice lost her breath and thought she might faint. She had been kissed. Without trickery or plotting or devious manipulation. And, swaying, she laid a hand on Sean’s arm to steady herself.
Turning quickly, with her hands thrust deeply into her pockets, Alice walked away, looking back once at his grinning face. It was as though he now knew something he hadn’t before and whatever that knowledge was, it had made him very happy.
She couldn’t keep the grin from her own face and as she smiled back, she felt a heat slowly rise inside her, threatening to erupt into joyous and uncontrollable laughter.
And then, as the terrible fear of being caught once more took hold, she ran like the wind, in through Brigid’s back gate.
To Brigid. Sean’s wife. To collect her son.
Sean waited and watched. Suddenly, he wanted to tell everyone. He had fallen in love, with Alice.
The thought that she was running to his house to collect her baby from his wife did not make him feel in the least bit guilty.
Guilt and honour had been tackled and beaten by exhilaration and desire. The sense of peril made him feel alive and euphoric, just as he did in the seconds before he was about to step into the ring.
Now the thought that he would not see Alice until Monday made him groan.
How could he wait a whole forty-eight hours to talk to the woman whose passion for life matched his own?
It seemed like an eternity.
As she turned the corner into Sean’s backyard, Alice momentarily held onto the latch before she clicked the gate shut.
‘Oh my God, this is madness, you crazy woman,’ she whispered, leaning her forehead against the wet, cold, splintered wood.
She turned round to look in through the kitchen window and saw Brigid’s outline sway as she rocked Joseph in her arms. It was a touching scene. But all Alice could think of was how long it would be until Monday when she could see Brigid’s husband again.
Over at the Priory, Sister Evangelista had pulled her car right up to the front door. Switching off the engine, she took the crisp white linen handkerchief which lay on the passenger seat and blew her nose. Through the windscreen, she surveyed the Priory garden well lit by the almost full moon.
Her gaze wandered over the low wall towards the towering monuments and effigies standing in the graveyard. Unable to help herself, she took a moment and fixed her gaze upon the sp
ot where Father James had been found. Fog clung to the gravestone, creating an eerie scene.
The bishop had become concerned by the number of people calling at the Priory to speak to Daisy and had dispatched Sister Evangelista, at this ungodly time of night, to move her across the road into the convent.
The police had said that they would be at the Priory tomorrow morning to interview Daisy.
The bishop had wanted to know why.
‘I cannot be sure, Father,’ Sister Evangelista told him, ‘but I am almost certain it has something to do with Molly Barrett. She’s been spending a great deal of time at the Priory. It cannot be a coincidence, surely?’
‘What did the stupid fecking girl tell the woman?’ he roared. His temper terrified Sister Evangelista.
She didn’t like the way the bishop was speaking to her. They were co-conspirators, both doing their best to cover up the evil work Father James had been engaged in under their very noses. Did the bishop not know that Sister Evangelista was in turmoil? She had loved Father James, whom she thought the most perfect of men. She was struggling, finding it all so difficult. When she wasn’t dealing with this mess, she was deep in prayer, asking the Lord to give her the strength she needed to cope. The bishop’s bad temper was the last straw.
She had cause to spend a great deal of time on the phone to him recently. Her conscience would not let her stray too far into the reaches of fantasy, but of this she was certain: Kitty Doherty had disappeared, allegedly for a holiday. In all her years, the furthest she had ever known a Doherty to venture from the four streets had been to the Formby pine dunes on the church charabanc, to celebrate the Coronation.
She was also certain the girl was pregnant and there was a murdered priest, with the devil’s own work hiding in his desk and cupboards, who had been in and out of the Doherty house like a demon’s whisper.
All of this, she had discussed with the bishop.
‘I have prayed long and hard, Father, and I am very sure that all of this information would help the police. The Lord knows, it is weighing me down badly.’
The bishop was none too happy with this suggestion.
‘Sister, we had a bad man as our priest in your church. Do ye know how much damage would be done to the authority of the churches across Liverpool, if not the whole British Isles, should this information become public knowledge? At the very least, the church would be boarded up, and the convent and the school closed. Is that what we want to happen? And as for what Rome might decide to do to us personally…’
‘But what about Kitty Doherty, Bishop?’
‘What about her, Sister? A sick child has been sent back home to Ireland for a holiday and a rest. God willing, she will return cured. Sister, ye will keep all of these fanciful notions inside your own head and ye and I, we will give thanks to God that he sent us, people he knows he can trust, to do the right thing. We have made the right decision to put our responsibilities first. Let the police do their job, we shall do ours.’
Sister Evangelista wasn’t at all sure that they were doing the right thing. Her heart was in conflict but, as usual, she replied obediently, ‘Yes, Father.’
The driveway flooded with light as the Priory door opened. There, framed in the doorway, was Daisy, with her bag, waiting to leave.
Daisy was happy that she would be sleeping at the convent and leaving the huge empty Priory, with its damp, black bricks, hugged by lichen and creeping ivy. The elusive whispers, which began as night fell, had always unsettled her and now Sister Evangelista would save her from it all.
The demons outside and in.
He had been told to ask for telephone extension twenty-four, which was the mortuary, and to say that he needed to speak to the technician about an inquest hearing in the morning.
The time and the place were always the same when one or other of the tight-knit circle needed to make contact with Austin.
Austin stood by the phone and waited for the call. This was the only place in the hospital where he was unlikely to be disturbed. The technician, always keen to leave before he should, at six-thirty, had no objection when Austin told him he would cover for him.
Stanley was in the porters’ lodge. He and Austin were both on the late shift and working until ten. Stanley worried Austin. He seemed unable to act as though nothing had occurred.
To carry on as normal.
‘Pull yerself together, man,’ Austin had told him only yesterday. ‘Have the bizzies been? Has anyone contacted us? Have we heard a thing? No, we haven’t, now shut yer gob and behave. Nothing has happened other than you looking and behaving as guilty as hell.’
Stanley was no fool and shot back at him, ‘Are you fucking joking? One of our own has been murdered in a graveyard, had his dick hacked off and fed to a cat. We have no idea who did it, he’s in our group and you say nothing has happened! How do we know that the person who murdered him isn’t coming for us? How do we know that the police won’t be led to us, when they are looking for whoever murdered the priest? How do we know that the priest didn’t keep all our photos in his stupid fucking Priory? Austin, you are fucking mental. We are in deep shit, mate, and you had better find out what the hell is going on or I’m off.’
But Austin was quite sure that the father wouldn’t have kept the photographs in the Priory. None of them kept anything at home. All their photographs were in the hospital, in a locker under the name John Smith. No one asked who John Smith was. No one ever needed to know.
The shrill ring of the phone bounced back off the cold mortuary tiles, filling the room and sounding much louder than it actually was.
The voice on the other end sounded troubled.
‘Is that ye, Austin? Are ye alone?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Austin replied.
‘The police are questioning the girl, Daisy, tomorrow.’
‘Are you fucking joking? Why?’
It was Daisy who let them into the Priory when members of the circle visited to drop off films or pictures, and the priest had even let Austin visit Daisy when she first arrived in Liverpool. Stanley only liked boys and Daisy had been almost too old for Austin, but he had used her for a year or so.
The Priory had been the best cover for them all. No one would have suspected a priest, or so they had thought.
Although he didn’t need to, he dropped his voice to a whisper.
‘Do the police have the pictures? Can we be identified? Do they know we let the priest into the hospital? Are you running?’ His questions chased one another down the line.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ the bishop replied. ‘How can I run? Do I not need to find out what is going on? They don’t have the pictures. I put them meself into the incinerator at the convent, with the help of the sister.’
Austin breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe.
‘In that case, why do the police want to interview the housekeeper?’
‘She apparently had a long chat to one of the neighbours, a Molly Barrett, from Nelson Street. The next day, the police were at her house for most of the day.’
‘Look, we didn’t murder the priest, I keep telling Stanley. That is what the police are looking for. A murderer. Not us.’
The mortuary door clicked open. Austin almost jumped out of his skin as Stanley stepped in.
‘Aye, but we don’t know who killed him. The sister has a notion the Doherty house is connected and the Kitty girl is pregnant. We don’t know if any of that is true. My worry is that their enquiries will lead them to us and the group.’
There was silence for a moment as Austin accepted a cigarette from Stanley and bent his head to take a light.
‘Well, you keep finding out what is happening and we will do our bit here. We need to make sure that we shut down any clues that may lead them to us, don’t we, Bishop?’
‘True enough,’ the bishop replied. ‘Now I have a plan to move the girl back to Dublin, out of the way as soon as possible and I need your help.’
As Sister Evangelista helped Daisy load
her bags into the car, she chatted to her about the police request to interview her.
‘Have ye any idea why, Daisy?’
‘I haven’t, Sister.’
‘Did ye say anything to Molly, when she visited, that might give ye a clue?’
But Daisy just stared vacantly out of the window and didn’t reply.
Alice saw Jerry first, before he saw her. He was sitting at Brigid’s table, tucking into a plate of food. He looked so natural, chatting to Brigid as she washed up at the sink, that a stranger looking in would have thought it was something Jerry did every night of his life. Joseph was now perched on his knee, trying to grab the fork before it reached Jerry’s mouth.
‘Oh Lordy, what are you doing here?’ Alice exclaimed, in a voice far too high-pitched. ‘I left a stew in the oven at home.’
Before Jerry could answer, she reached out for Joseph and turned to speak to Brigid. ‘Has he been good?’ she asked.
‘He’s been grand, no trouble at all,’ said Brigid, moving over to wipe the hands of her own tribe, who sat round the table.
‘Thank you, Brigid, you have been fantastic.’
‘I had baked a pie, but Mrs McGuire went off to the fish and chip shop. Jerry didn’t know if you had left anything for him, so I gave him the pie. Sean will no doubt have that as well as the fish and chips when he finally arrives home, being the greedy pig that he is now.’ Brigid was grinning. Jerry was still tucking into the pie.
Joseph was nestled against Alice’s chest, half asleep.
Two of Brigid’s babies were asleep in the pram, which was where they would stay until their elder sister was old enough to be transferred from her cot to a bed.
Everything is so normal, thought Alice, and yet only feet away I have just kissed your husband.
She wanted to laugh out loud.
‘How was the housekeeper?’ asked Jerry, who was genuinely interested.
‘Oh, well, not that great, I’m afraid. I would like to call again but we will see. It’s having the time. Not that easy at the moment.’
The Four Streets Saga Page 46