Ruby said, ‘The books, at home, at Doohoma, the books had a Ballyford stamp in them, that is why? She took them with her?’
‘Probably,’ said Charles.
Ruby’s hair lifted up into the wind and blew around her face.
‘Is that why Mrs McKinnon came to find me?’
‘As soon as we found out Iona was dead, we sent for you. It took the clerk six years to discover that Iona had once lived at Ballyford. He only found out by chance. He never gave up on you, Ruby. He told me that you never left his thoughts. And, thank God you didn’t, because otherwise, you would not be here now.’
Later, when she looked back on that moment, Ruby didn’t know how she found the courage to take his hand in hers. It was almost as if her hand had acted of its own will. She pressed their palms together, hers small and white, dwarfed by his. For a long, long moment they looked at each other, eyes locked in meaning and hearts beating in unison. His words, when they came, took him as much as Ruby by surprise.
‘Since I first saw you on the steps, you have never left my thoughts. Yours is the first name to enter my mind each morning and the last to leave at night. You have bewitched me, Ruby. I must seem like a very old man to you, but right now there is only one person in my life I could be persuaded to live for, and that is you.’
Ruby’s heart pounded in her chest. She found that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.
‘You and I, we’re equals. We both have nothing and no one. We’ve both lost those we love and are both connected to Ballyford. Maybe this needed to happen, for things to be right, maybe this was where I needed to be.’
‘I don’t think we can count a fire and two deaths as benefits,’ said Ruby. She had picked up a small twig from the beach with her free hand and was writing something in the sand.
‘No, I wasn’t saying that, Ruby. What I meant was that however it happened, here is where we are. I have nothing left and neither do you. All we have is what remains of Ballyford. It belongs to you as much as it does to me. It’s ours Ruby, and my heart, that is all yours too.’
Charles placed his arm around Ruby as he spoke and pulled her towards him. Two hours ago, he wanted to drown in the ocean. Now, he was looking at Ruby and knew that he was going to kiss her. He felt as if he was soaring.
Ruby was greedy. She had never been kissed before and as his mouth closed over her own, she knew at once that she never wanted anyone but Charles to kiss her again.
They both yearned in the aftermath of death. They ached for a love which was life affirming and real. As she pulled Charles towards her, eagerly, he whispered into the ear he was kissing, ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
‘It is, it is,’ she gasped back.
‘Ruby, this won’t be easy,’ he said as his hands caressed her back and slid down her sides and along her thighs. He wanted to touch every part of her soft skin, to know all of her at once. As his thumbs circled her breasts and his teeth sank into her neck, he felt her rise and arch against him. She was urging him along, impatient for something she had never known. As he undid the buttons on the front of her dress, he felt the heat of her skin escape and for a moment, he looked down as she lay on the sand, trembling, afraid of what came next but imploring him with her eyes. Her head was giddy, he felt half drunk but his mouth, his teeth, they searched and aroused her further as she felt her abdomen tighten in response. Ruby’s lips sought his eagerly. They clung to him, demanding and urging him on. As she held him to her, she saw the look of astonishment in his eyes and she smiled at the sound of his groan. She felt as though she were in a state of bliss, overwhelmed by a barrage of new sensations that assailed every part of her body. Her eyes closed and her lips parted as she moaned helplessly and as Charles looked down on her now naked body, he thought he had never seen a woman as beautiful. His own need consumed him as, unable to wait, he slowly entered her.
Her response was to arch against him as she shuddered violently and gasped as the tremors swamped her and left her unable to speak. Charles moved deeper into her and with the rhythm of the waves he lost himself, all he could hear was Ruby sobbing with pleasure beneath him. Ruby felt as though she would die and climb to heaven. Never had she known such a deep intensity of emotion. As he cried out, she wrapped her arms around him. It felt as though he were falling, falling deeper into her, but she caught him, wanting him to know that she was still there, and always would be there, supporting him, forever more.
*
Charles was deep in thought as they walked back to the castle.
‘What do we tell them? What will Mrs McKinnon say?’ Ruby asked.
‘We cannot tell them anything, or we will scandalize the entire Atlantic coast. We will have to wait a whole year Ruby and until then, it will have to remain our secret. Can you wait that long. Will you trust me, Ruby Flynn?’
As they walked hand in hand up the path to Ballyford, where they would have to part and live as near strangers, a master and his servant, the tide returned and washed the name, which Ruby had carved into the sand with her stick, clean away.
Eilinora had worked her magic. Taken by the tide, she had finally gone.
Epilogue
Ruby
I can hear them laughing down on the shore, Charles and the boys, and Lottie is with them, carrying her and Danny’s new baby daughter in her arms.
I am in the study and their laughter drifts in through the open window. I can see fishing boats and the ocean. My view of the beach is blocked by the rhododendrons, but hearing their squeals of pleasure is enough to make me smile too.
But someone has to work. If Charles can sneak outdoors with our two boys, he will jump at the chance and so they are off, leaving me shouting after them, but it is no use. They outnumber me and besides, they know I am helpless when it comes to saying no, they have me wrapped around their little fingers, the three of them.
I can’t say I really mind, ’tis a true joy, watching them, like now through the open window walking back up the drive.
The lorry collecting the last load of bottles of Ballyford spring water has just left for Cobh.
Oh, how everyone laughed at me when I suggested we could restore Ballyford’s fortunes by selling bottled water. Especially Lottie. It was something Charles had said when he offered me a glass of water in his study and it had played on my mind ever since. I swear that the water from our streams has fabulous restorative properties. If I could, I would bottle it and sell it.
‘You can’t sell the water God put into the mountain spring!’ That’s what everyone said.
And now, here we are, exporting over ten thousand bottles a year to New York and sure, the Americans can’t get enough of it. I have new equipment being delivered from England soon, which will seal the bottles and save the lads having to do it by hand. When that happens, we can produce more and export more. The English aren’t as keen yet, but they will follow. They say England is ten years behind America, I can wait. I designed the label on the bottle myself and even drew the picture of the castle and the words Ballyford, Irish Spring Water around it.
I have also had the nursery wing knocked down. There are thirty-six rooms in the castle. Why there needed to be a wing so far away that the children cannot be heard, I have no idea. I want to hear my children and I want others to hear them too.
When our first son, Owen, was born, I am sure Charles didn’t sleep for six months. For the first three, the baby slept in our room and every time I woke, Charles was sitting up in bed, looking at him. By the time Eamonn arrived, he had relaxed. He carried Eamonn into Owen’s bedroom and introduced him to his brand new baby brother. I have never seen a grown man shed so many tears.
We persuaded Mr and Mrs McKinnon to stay. They have their own house on the estate. Mr McKinnon’s pigs won best of breed at Galway and we have orders for bacon pouring in. We can barely supply the demand from England fast enough. The McKinnons are like grandparents to the boys and we see them almost every day.
Rory Doyle is miss
ing, a rich man. His mother finally died of a broken heart. We did the best we could for her. Charles had a soft spot for her kindness when he had been a boy and he would never have blamed her for the behaviour of her son. He shared her sorrow. Betrayal is a difficult pain to bear.
Lottie and I tracked down Maria who became the new cook and Lottie took over as housekeeper, once we had persuaded Mrs McKinnon that it was time for her to enjoy her retirement. I can tell you, giving birth to Owen and Eamonn was an easier job than that. Betsy and her Jimmy, they are expecting a new baby any day now and Mary, she is still in the kitchen, but she is special to us and we treat her as one of the family and she loves to do nothing more than accompany me to Galway when I get the chance to visit the shops. Jack is running the bottling and he now lives in the cottage next door to Amy’s mother. We are happy. We have our roles and we know what they are. We have all been through enough together to enjoy every day to the full and not one of us wants to look back. Not ever. The past is behind us. We speak only of the future, even Jack.
Tomorrow, Charles and I are leaving the boys with Lottie and we are driving out to Doohoma.
We will walk up the cliff to my parents’ house and picnic on the rock, facing Blacksod Bay, then we will walk down to visit Con and Susan and their boys and Sister Francis will join us for the day. I will have told Charles the news by then as we look out over the deep water my father and brother fished on. I shall do it when we are sitting on the rock where I myself spent hours as a girl. I will tell Charles. I think our daughter is on her way and we shall name her Iona.
~
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Acknowledgements
About Nadine Dorries
Also by Nadine Dorries
About the Four Streets Trilogy
An invitation from the publisher
Preview
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1950S LIVERPOOL
In the tight-knit Irish Catholic community of the Four Streets, two girls are growing up.
One is motherless – and hated by the cold woman who is determined to take her dead mother’s place. The other is hiding a dreadful secret which she dare not let slip to anyone, lest it rips the heart out of the community.
What can the people of the Four Streets do when a betrayal at the very heart of their world comes to light?
Can’t wait? Buy it here now!
1
Let me take you by the hand and lead you up from the Mersey River – to the four streets, and the houses stained black from soot and a pea-soup smog, which, when winter beckons, rubs itself up against the doors and windows, slips in through the cracks and into the lungs of gurgling babies and toothless grannies.
In May 1941, Hitler bombed Liverpool for seven consecutive nights.
All four streets survived, which was nothing short of a miracle.
Home to an Irish-Catholic immigrant community, they lay in close proximity to where the homes of families far less fortunate had once stood. Life on the streets around the docks was about hard work and survival.
Children ran free, unchecked from dawn until dusk, whilst mothers, wearing long, wraparound aprons and hair curlers, nattered on front steps and cast a distracted eye on little ones charging up and around, swallowing down the Mersey mist.
They galloped with wooden floor mops between legs, transformed into imaginary warhorses. Dustbin lids became shields and metal colanders, helmets, as they clattered and charged along back alleyways in full knowledge that, at the end of the day, they would be beaten with the smelly mop end.
The women gossiped over backyard walls, especially on wash day, whilst they fed wet clothes through a mangle and then hung them on the line to dry.
In winter, the clothes would be brought in, frozen and as stiff as boards, to defrost and dry overnight on a wooden clothes maiden placed in front of the dying embers of the fire.
Such was the order of life on the four streets. All day long housewives complained about their lot but they got on with it. Through a depression, war, illness and poverty they had never missed a beat. No one ever thought it would alter. Their way of life was constant and familiar, as it had been as long as anyone could remember. When little boys grew up, they replaced their warhorses for cranes and, just like their da, became dockers. Little girls grew up and married them, replacing toy dolls with real babies. Neighbours in Liverpool had taken the place of family in Ireland and the community was emotionally self-supporting.
But this was the fifties. The country had picked itself up from the ravages of war and had completed the process of dusting itself down. Every single day something new and never before seen arrived in the shops, from Mars bars to Hoovers. No one knew what exciting product would appear next. Liverpool was steaming towards the sixties and the Mersey beat. Times were about to change and the future hung heavy in the air.
It smelt of concrete new towns and Giro cheques.
The economic ebb and flow of daily life on the streets was dominated by the sound of cargo ships blowing their horns as they came into the docks angrily demanding to be unloaded. A call for the tugs meant money in the bread bin, which was where every family kept their money. An empty bread bin meant a hungry home.
The main source of income for each household came from the labour of the men who lived on the four streets. Liverpool stevedores were hard men, but the bosses who ran the Mersey Dock Company were harder. Wages were suppressed at a level that kept families hungry and men keen for work. It was a tough life for all. Childhood was short as everyone pulled their weight to live hand to mouth, day to day.
Each house in the four streets was identical to the next: two up, two down, with an outhouse toilet in the small square backyard. Upstairs at the top of the landing, a new enamel bath, courtesy of the Liverpool Corporation, stood exposed under the eaves. The water to the bath was supplied via rudimentary plumbing in the form of two pipes that passed through the landing roof into the loft and attached straight to the water tanks.
Although some homes had discarded kitchen ranges for electric cookers, and back boilers for the new immersion heaters, those on the four streets enjoyed no such newfangled innovations. The open range remained, doubling as a back boiler and a cooker.
Running past the back gate to each house was a cobbled alleyway known as ‘the entry’, which was odd as it was in fact ‘the exit’. People only very occasionally entered by the front door, and they always left by the back, although nobody remembered how the habit had begun. No one ever locked their doors; they didn’t need to.
The entry was a playground to the street children as well as the large brown river rats that grew fat on the spewing contents of the metal bins overturned by hungry dogs and cats.
At the top of the four streets lay a grassed-over square of common land known as the green, which in school holidays hosted the longest ever football matches, sometimes lasting for days on end. Rival teams were formed from each of the four streets and were in perpetual competition. Matches would begin with a nominated goal counter, who at the end of each day would collapse in his bed, exhausted and mucky, with the score scrawled on a precious scrap of paper tucked under his pillow, ready to resume playing the following day.
St Mary’s church, which stood at the end of Nelson Street, was visited at least once a day by every woman on the four streets. No one missed mass. The priests were hugely influential amongst the community and combined the role of law keepers, teachers and saviours of souls.
No two front doors in close proximity were painted the same colour. Black followed blue, followed brown followed green. On almost every window in every house hung a set of net curtains, each with a lace pattern different from any other window in the street. E
ven in homes that could boast nothing in terms of material wealth, individuality fought to be expressed and admired.
Aside from the practical function of the nets, their existence played a significant role within the community. The degree of their whiteness and cleanliness invited verbal judgment to be passed upon the woman responsible. They had to. Women needed a yardstick by which to measure one another’s competence as wives and mothers. Men didn’t wash nets. That was women’s work. Men were judged only on the number of sons they spawned. For women, it was the nets. A barometer and a source of gossip, which was essential. Gossip was the light relief between household chores. Football for men. Gossip for women. Religion for all.
Maura and Tommy Doherty lived in Nelson Street. Although they had a brood of children, they continued to breed, and were passionate, loving and caring neighbours to everyone in the streets. Tommy was short and muscular. If he hadn’t been a docker, putting in ten hours a day of hard manual labour, he would have been short and fat. He was bald on top and sported a Friar Tuck band of hair around the back and over his ears. As a result, he was very attached to his cap, which he wore indoors and out, rain or shine. Not one of his children had ever seen him without it, except when he slept. If Maura hadn’t insisted he remove his cap before he got into bed, often flicking it off herself, he would have worn it there too. Tommy had vivid, twinkling blue eyes, the kind that can only come from Irish roots, and his eyes reflected his personality, mischievous and kind. He was a proud and devoted husband and father, and was possibly one of the few da’s on the streets never to lay a finger on any of his children, a fact that bore testament to his temperament. All he desired in life was peace and quiet.
Ruby Flynn Page 27