The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  Mrs McGuire watched the taxi pull up outside the window and asked the waiter to bring another tray of tea for Mary and Alice.

  ‘Well, hello there, and how is the little man?’

  Mrs McGuire stood up, to take the baby from Mary.

  ‘He is grand, so he is, and so are we,’ said Mary, grinning.

  ‘Well, that’s the first time I have seen a smile on your face for some weeks. So the visit must have been worthwhile then?’

  ‘It was, Mammy. We have the name of the girl and the name of a midwife in Dublin who sent her with her family to the Abbey. All we need to do is travel to Dublin, find the midwife and then we will have the address of where the girl lives. It has all been much easier than I thought. I’m famished. Are those cakes for us?’

  Mrs McGuire smiled. Tea and cake. Always her daughter’s favourite. There wasn’t a problem in the world that she and her Mary couldn’t solve, over a cuppa and an almond tart.

  ‘They are delicious fancies, so they are. Tuck in, Mary. And you, Alice. Sit down now while ye tell me, what was the Abbey like? Was it nice to see the Reverend Mother again? I bet she and Sister Celia made a great fuss of this little fella, didn’t they just?’

  Mary and Alice exchanged a glance that Mrs McGuire missed as she lifted the baby into the air and bounced him up and down in her arms, making cooing and gurgling baby noises at him.

  ‘I will speak to Porick. He and his da will take us to Dublin to see the midwife. What hospital’s she at, then? What is her name?’

  Two waiters began to offload the contents of a trolley onto the low table, placing teacups and saucers in front of them. Alice felt as though they were taking forever, deliberately hovering, to eavesdrop on their conversation. The clinking of the china and the babbling of Mrs McGuire’s chatter grated. She willed the waiters to hurry and felt her heart beating faster in panic. Her mouth became dry. The sooner she did it, the better.

  ‘Mrs McGuire,’ said Alice.

  She hadn’t realized that it would come out as a dry croak. Mrs McGuire didn’t hear.

  Alice tried again. ‘Mrs McGuire, Mary.’ She reached out and touched Mary’s arm, to attract her attention. ‘I know who the girl is. I know the name on the contract and, Mrs McGuire, so do you.’

  Mary and Mrs McGuire stared at Alice, waiting for her to continue.

  ‘Is this why you have been acting strange since we left the convent?’ asked Mary. ‘Who is she then?’

  Alice stared Mrs McGuire straight in the face.

  ‘It’s Kitty Doherty, Mrs McGuire, Maura and Tommy’s daughter.’

  ‘My God, no,’ Mrs McGuire replied.

  ‘Well, Mammy, is that not good? It saves us the visit to the midwife. We can go straight to wherever the girl lives,’ said Mary, sounding encouraged. But now, for reasons beyond her understanding, the atmosphere tightened as hope took flight.

  Mrs McGuire looked pale. ‘Kitty’s mammy, Maura, was one of Brigid’s best friends. They live on the four streets. But I am afraid I have bad news for you both. Kitty Doherty is dead.’

  ‘What do you mean, dead? She can’t be.’

  Alice felt as though she had been hit. Tears sprang to her eyes and, for no apparent reason, an image of Bernadette, Maura’s closest friend, leapt into her mind. Bernadette, whom Alice had usurped before her body was even cold in her grave, was here, in her mind’s eye.

  Alice spoke again. ‘How do you know she is dead, anyway? I’m sure you must be wrong. Kitty is only, what, fifteen at the most? She can’t be dead.’

  ‘She is. She drowned in the river near Kathleen’s farm on the Ballymara Road, about six months ago. By my reckoning, if she is his mother, it must have happened only days after she gave birth to this little fella, although no one knows about him and that’s for sure.’

  Mrs McGuire blessed herself as she laid the baby over her shoulder, hugging him tight.

  Quietly, her voice loaded with sorrow, Alice asked, ‘How do you know all this, Mrs McGuire?’

  ‘Because today I visited the woman who is truly married to my son, the woman who carries my family name and who is the mother of my Sean’s children. I didn’t visit my friends. I travelled to see my daughter-in-law, Brigid, and she told me. She was at the wake in Liverpool. She rushed to the side of her friend as soon as she heard the news.’

  Mary picked up the teapot and stared at her mother. The consequences of what she had just said sank in. The baby’s mother was dead and no one knew who the father was.

  Mrs McGuire took control.

  ‘We will set off for Liverpool in the morning, Mary. The doctor said we needed a family member for a match, did he not? Well, Maura is this little fella’s grandmother and Tommy is his grandad, and their children, Kitty’s brothers and sisters, are his family too, and nicer people you could not meet. Maura is from Killhooney Bay and Tommy, well now, he is from Cork. And you, Alice, can come with us. Maybe ye would like to see your own little lad, while we are there.’

  Now it was Alice’s turn to cry.

  Mrs McGuire slid the cup of tea that Mary had poured across the low table towards Alice, and handed the baby to Mary.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ she said, passing a cup to Mary and lighting herself a cigarette.

  She felt compelled, always, to make Alice suffer for what she had done to her family, but, being a kind woman at heart, she felt bad afterwards.

  Leaning back in the chair and taking a deep pull on her cigarette, she thought through what tomorrow would now hold. We will have to leave early, she thought. I have tonight. I have this one night finally to get even with Maisie.

  While she pondered, she looked across the road and watched Mr O’Hara as he locked up the butcher’s shop. It was why she had chosen this table. She and Maisie used to stare at this very table and imagine which cakes they would order, when they were ladies, taking afternoon tea in the hotel.

  She was meeting him again, tonight, at O’Connolly’s pub.

  The lives, and the demands, of the younger generation were exhausting her. She was too involved. They were far too dependent upon her. Most of the time, she didn’t mind at all. But the arrival of Sean, with Alice, in America had altered things. He had let her down, broken her heart. Mary’s willingness to be complicit in their deceit had surprised her. The disappointment she felt in her son, for leaving his wife and daughters, never faded.

  She had spent too long being a hands-on grandmother and, in the process, had lost much of her own life. Tonight, she would take some of that back. She would be daring, do something that no respectable woman, at sixty years of age, would even consider. If her friends in the village knew what she was planning, they would disown her.

  To hell with them, she thought. Just one night, that’s all I want. Just one. I want to remember the last time I ever slept with a man. I want to grow old, thinking: that was it. It was him. It was there and it was then and I loved it.

  She looked at her daughter and at her fake daughter-in-law. Mary was tucking the blanket around the baby in the carrycot.

  ‘Right, Mammy. I’m off to pack. Alice, are you OK?’

  Alice looked anything but OK.

  Mrs McGuire answered for her.

  ‘She has to face her own healthy little boy, Mary, and the women she deserted and the families she destroyed and the stepdaughter she left distraught and stunned into silence by her own grief when Kitty died. Where was Alice then? Why shouldn’t she be all right? I hear Alice has always been good at getting her own way, so she shouldn’t worry. Liverpool will be a breeze, won’t it, Alice?’

  ‘Mammy, enough, stop. You are only acting like this because Sean isn’t here.’

  Mary was shocked at the way her mother was behaving. Mary didn’t like what Sean and Alice had done any more than her mother did. Every time she attended mass she prayed for their forgiveness, and she saw her job as acting as referee, to keep the peace as far as that was possible. It had been Mary’s idea to bring Alice along. It was an act designed to involve
her and make her feel part of the family.

  ‘I for one am very glad you are here with us, Alice.’ Mary threw a look to Mrs McGuire that said, stop, now.

  Alice didn’t bother to say anything. She thought of the fifty thousand dollars she had drawn from her bank account and had used to line her suitcase. Sean had entrusted her with the money that Henry had paid them for the house. She didn’t have to return to America at all, nor put up with the likes of Mrs McGuire, nor Sean’s demands for another baby. Fifty thousand dollars was a huge sum of money. With that amount she could be set for life in England. Even as she had placed the bundles in her suitcase, she had failed to acknowledge to herself that this was her intention all along.

  As the lift door closed on Mrs McGuire, Alice whispered, ‘Go to hell, you witch.’

  That night, as Alice lay in bed, she hatched her plan. There was no court that would refuse a mother custody of her child. She would return to England with Mary and then claim back her son. Mrs McGuire might be no Kathleen and Sean no Jerry, but Alice had burnt her boats. She knew that neither Kathleen nor Jerry would ever want to know her again. She was alone now. She would take Joseph away and the two of them would find a little house, over the water in Birkenhead, or one of those nice suburbs, and they would live a quiet, gentle life, just Alice and her boy.

  He already had her drink waiting when she arrived at O’Connolly’s.

  He was sitting at the corner table, as far away as possible from the toilets and the jukebox. For the first time since they were kids, she thought he looked nervous.

  ‘I got ye a gin and orange squash, the same as before. Is that all right, now?’

  He had stood up to greet her and removed his cap as she approached the table. Waiting for her reply, he stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, rolled up his cap and stuffed it deep down into his pocket. His black waistcoat strained against buttons that threatened to pop. The thought crossed her mind that it had been many a year since he had last worn it.

  ‘Aye, that’s grand, thanks. If you don’t mind me saying, I need that right now and another to follow, after the day I have had.’

  He picked up his Guinness. ‘Aye, well, for a long time now mine has been much the same as every other day. There are never any surprises for me. It does always come as a great shock, I suppose, when a customer dies and hasn’t paid their bill, but that is as bad as it gets.’

  They both burst out laughing. She realized it wasn’t something she did very often any more. Laugh. She was often concerned, busy, useful, needed, but not for herself, always for someone else. As their laughter abated, she looked into his eyes. She didn’t see a sixty-year-old face, laughing back at her. She saw the face of over forty years ago, just the same. Unaltered. Hidden by extra weight and some wrinkles, it might have been, but she looked through that to the boy she had known before.

  Be bold. Be bold. The words raced through her mind as they weighed each other up.

  He still has nice eyes, she thought.

  She has the figure of a woman half her age, he thought.

  She knew he would be shy. He would have no idea of her wild thoughts or crazy intentions. If she weren’t bold, she would lose her nerve and change her mind.

  Be bold.

  She leant across the table to say the most daringly outrageous words she had ever uttered, but, even as she began to speak, she had no idea what those words would be.

  He surprised her and spoke first.

  ‘Ye are a sight for sore eyes and one that hasn’t left my mind for these forty years gone, now, do ye know that?’

  ‘But you married Maisie,’ she replied, very matter-of-fact.

  ‘Aye, ’tis true and, sure, I was the father of a child that grew in the womb for two years. I was a stupid fool, easily led, and what lad isn’t? But I will tell ye this: there was only one woman I wanted to marry and, God knows, I paid the price for my mistake every day for years. God rest her soul. She couldn’t help it but, sure, nothing good comes from trickery, now does it, and so I feel no guilt.’

  Mrs McGuire’s heart was beating like the wings of a captive bird. ‘No, I suppose not. I couldn’t forgive ye for years.’

  ‘Sure, didn’t I know that. Ye bought yer meat in Castlefeale. Now that’s a woman with a grudge, I’d say.’

  Mrs McGuire turned round to look towards the bar and saw that, as she had guessed, they were under close scrutiny from Mrs O’Connolly, who repeatedly wiped the same section of the counter.

  She turned back to face him. Be bold. She took a deep breath. This would be it. Her chance.

  ‘Do ye have any gin at home? Because if ye do, why don’t we pop back there for a drink, without Mrs O’Connolly watching? We can catch up on some of the fun we missed out on, forty years ago.’

  It took him what felt like forever to respond. ‘Jesus Christ, I missed out altogether all these years, didn’t I just?’

  Less than five minutes later, they sneaked in through his back door, giggling like a pair of errant teenagers. Thirty minutes later, they were in his bed.

  At four in the morning as he lay next to her, gently snoring, she thought to herself, so this was it. It was here.

  She gazed out of the window and listened to the rain gently fall, as it so often did. The window was open wide. She grinned to herself and thought, Holy Mother, I hope next door didn’t hear me. But instead of feeling washed in shame, she felt exhilarated and half hoped that the neighbours, the miserable, God-fearing, mass-four-times-a-day O’Byrnes, had heard her after all.

  She looked at the outline of his body, older and heavier but still fit and healthy, and thought to herself, I want a life of no surprises. I’m not going back to America. From now on, I’m going to squeeze two days into each one, to make up for lost time.

  He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over him.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘It was real, then. I thought maybe I had been dreaming.’

  She smiled. Be bold.

  ‘How about I don’t go back to America, but stay here in the village? Would ye like that? Would ye like more nights like this?’

  He reached up and pulled her down to him. ‘No, I’m not dreaming, that’s for sure I’m in fecking heaven.’

  She laughed, as she hadn’t done in a very long time. She felt like a girl. It was as though her wrinkles and her age were nothing to him. As she spoke she stroked the base of his neck and traced around the outline of his lips.

  ‘It’ll be a shock for them all, but, God, who helped me when I had my kids? No one. ’Tis time they learnt to manage without me. God knows, for sure, I’ll be dead in ten years or so. I haven’t much time left.’

  And they made love again. Not as they would have done as teenagers, but gently and slowly, with a passion so intense that she knew she could never handle the sadness of knowing when it was to be the last time.

  23

  HARRIET KNELT AT the foot of the headstone with a bunch of floppy-headed, deep-burgundy roses, which she had cut from the Priory garden just that morning. Annie O’Prey had wrapped wet newspaper round the base of the stems to keep them fresh but now that Harriet was at the graveside, she felt silly. Despite that, she was glad of the five minutes to sit down. The following day was the Rose Queen competition and parade, the first of what Harriet hoped would become a regular grand day of festivities, for everyone who lived on the four streets.

  ‘Do you know, Anthony, no one who lives here has ever had a holiday. The Rose Queen fête is something for everyone to look forward to and to plan for. And it is great fun for the kids.’

  ‘You are right, Harriet, and you always are.’ Anthony had smiled. ‘Just don’t overwhelm yourself. It is a massive undertaking, if you don’t have enough help.’

  Even Harriet had been amazed at how many women had stepped forward to volunteer their services. Lots had their own ideas and Harriet had relished every minute of taking on the role of event co-ordinator.

  This was the last quiet moment she would have until it wa
s all over, so it seemed as good a time as any to pay her visit to Bernadette.

  Annie had told her, ‘There’s an old pickling jar on Bernadette’s grave. Brigid put it there. She was always leaving flowers. She thought none of us knew it was her but we knew, all right. I don’t think it has cracked. You can put some water in from the fountain.’

  ‘Do Jerry and Nellie visit the grave, Annie?’

  ‘Oh Jesus, now, Jerry is there all the time. He always was, even when he was married to Alice. I shouldn’t think she knew but, God only knows, I cannot even tell you the number of times I have seen that man standing there.’

  ‘He must have loved her very much,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Loved her? Well now, listen while I tell ye. If I lived to be a hundred, never in all my life will I have known two people who loved each other as much as they did. It was as if the sky had fallen down, the day she died. Oh God, now you’ve set me off.’

  And here Harriet was, at the grave of a woman people still spoke of as if she had died just yesterday and who appeared to have been one of the nicest women ever to have lived.

  ‘These are for you, Bernadette,’ Harriet whispered, as she placed the roses in the jar and looked carefully around to see if anyone was listening.

  Kneeling back on her heels, she sat still for a moment and gradually became aware of the noise around her. Traffic passed by on the road, the cranes were lifting their loads down on the docks, tugs were tooting angry horns, and yet she felt as though she were in an oasis of peace and tranquillity.

  Tentatively, she began. ‘I just wanted you to know that I think the world of Nellie and I know she is hurting. Nana Kathleen is just the greatest woman, Bernadette, and everyone does their best, but I think you know that Nellie and I have a special bond. We are a similar age, you and I, Bernadette, and I think Nellie knows that. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I will do my utmost for your little girl. My eye will always be on your Nellie and my heart will always be full of care for her.’