Ruby Flynn

by Nadine Dorries

  It was a kiss that was so daring, Bernadette often recounted it to her friends.

  ‘Sure, he was so bold I had no idea what was coming and when he kissed me, I lost me breath and almost fainted, so I did.’

  It was very different from what Jerry told his friends. ‘She was so keen, she couldn’t keep her hands off me and begged me for another, in front of everyone and in broad daylight too. I thought we was going to be arrested right there.’

  If Bernadette heard him, it would be followed by squeals and play fighting. No one ever knew which version was true and no one cared. Their storytelling infused everyone with warmth and laughter.

  When they finally parted, Jerry went straight to his aunt’s house, deposited his bag and, after a quick greeting, took himself straight down the steps at the end of the street to the docks. Dock work was casual. He would walk the entire length of the waterfront and visit every dock if he needed to in order to be taken on. He now had a new imperative, a spring in his step. A reason to find work and good, well-paid work.

  As he ran down the steps whistling, he couldn’t get Bernadette out of his mind. For what felt like every moment until the weekend, he relived each second of their conversation. In bed, in the minutes before sleep, he relived their kiss as his stomach churned at the excitement and expectation of another. Might there be more? Could this be possible? Could life really be that good? Could Jerry, a farmer’s son from Mayo, really be this lucky?

  He was. They met almost every night until the day they married, even if it meant Jerry had to walk to the hotel when Bernadette had only her break time free. He would stand at the staff entrance until she could slip out, just for a snatched kiss, to reassure himself she was happy. On her day off she would run down to the docks and spend it at his auntie’s house on the street, enjoying the comfort of having a place where she could spend her time and wait for Jerry to finish work. On Sundays they would attend mass at St Mary’s church together and walk along the shore as far as Waterloo.

  They were blissfully in love and, after nearly a year of steady work, Jerry asked Bernadette to marry him. He popped the question in the café at the Pier Head where they had their first proper date. Bernadette could not have been happier. He even got down on one knee as the customers and staff cheered and clapped. They both cried a little as an elderly man from Eire came up to them on his way out of the café and pressed a brown ten-shilling note into Jerry’s palm as he left.

  ‘For the babby when it comes,’ he said, and winked as he left.

  They both thought they would burst with joy. But this did not distract them from the plans they had. Jerry and Bernadette spent a great deal of time mapping out their future. When Jerry’s aunt suddenly died, it was a shock to everyone, but luckily, shortly after Jerry had moved in with his aunt, she had put his name on the rent book, which meant that he could remain in the house without question. The houses on the streets had transferred from one generation to the next in this manner ever since the first wave of immigrants had flooded through the gates of Clarence dock during the potato famine.

  However, the pressure was too great for Jerry and Bernadette to put off the wedding until after the full twelve-month mourning period. Bernadette was helping Jerry to cook and clean and look after the house, and not being able to run up the stairs was driving them both mad with desire. But Bernadette was a good Catholic girl and she was taking no chances with sex before marriage. No shotgun wedding for her. Suddenly, being alone in each other’s company in the close proximity of a bedroom was becoming an almost unbearable temptation. Bernadette would never stay overnight and the pressure built to an almost unbearable pitch.

  ‘Just stay tonight,’ Jerry begged, one Sunday night as Bernadette was leaving. ‘Please,’ he murmured into her ear in the midst of a very passionate kiss. ‘I promise I will be good and ye will still be a virgin in the morning.’

  ‘Not at all!’ replied Bernadette forcefully. ‘Are ye crazy? Can ye imagine what they will be saying here in the streets tomorrow when they see me leaving in the morning?’

  Her resolve did indeed drive Jerry crazy. He wanted to put his fist through the wall, but he also knew she was right. They were married within three months.

  During those three months Bernadette got to know everyone on the four streets as well as she did her neighbours back home. Bernadette and Maura came from the same village, Killhooney, and had known each other since Bernadette was a baby. You didn’t need to travel far in Liverpool before you met someone from back home. The two women became special friends, which extended to Tommy and Maura’s children, especially their eldest daughter, Kitty, who spent as much time with Jerry and Bernadette as she did in her own house.

  Although Maura was older, she and Bernadette had attended the same school, knew the same families and had a shared history. Their deep yearning for home had drawn them together from the first day Bernadette had arrived in the street. Maura was daily homesick. Both their families came from the sod houses, close to the coast. Every day they talked about how there was no better view of the Atlantic than that from the cliffs overlooking Blacksod Bay. No better dancing at a ceilidh than that to be had at the inn. No better fish to be tasted than salmon poached from the Morhaun River or fish from the Carrowbay Loch. They had so much to talk about and their conversations about home acted as a salve to Maura’s always aching heart.

  Neither mentioned the poverty, the lack of shoes, the rain, the hunger or the wet ceilings. The sun always shone on Mayo when it came to the reminiscing.

  Bernadette spent hours talking about her work to Maura, who loved to hear the chambermaids’ tales about the guests staying in the hotel. Stuck in a life that would never alter, Maura found every detail fascinating, from what the ladies wore to the staff-room gossip, especially about the head housekeeper, Alice Tanner, who had worked at the hotel since she was fifteen and who was legendary for never having taken a day off or having had a visitor since Bernadette arrived.

  ‘Sure, that Alice is a mean one altogether!’ Bernadette would exclaim, at least once a week, as she flounced into Maura’s kitchen. ‘I cannot wait until Jerry and I are married and I can give in me notice. She would drive a saint to drink. I have never given out like some of the others, Maura, but God help me, I will one day soon.’

  Maura was all ears.

  ‘She knew Jerry was coming to the staff entrance for me last night and she deliberately sent me off on a wild-goose chase across the hotel to make me late for him. Out of my half-hour break I got ten minutes with him. Jeez, that Alice Tanner is a spiteful bitch. She never sets foot outside of the hotel, and no one ever comes to see her. She’s just wicked jealous, so she is, and here’s me, always protecting her from the others. So help me God, I cannot any more, the witch.’

  Maura loved these days. She would make Bernadette a cup of tea, sit at the kitchen table and listen to her talk for hours on end. The most interesting conversation Maura ever had with the other women on the four streets was how to keep your milk from drying up when you had half a dozen kids to run after, with not enough food to go round for everyone, and how many black eyes there were in English potatoes. Bernadette’s chatter was a ray of sunshine.

  Just talking to Maura would calm Bernadette down and they would move onto the more interesting gossip, such as the wedding that took place at the hotel on the Saturday. Maura could not believe the things they did with a salmon at the Grand and who knew people ate lobsters?

  Everyone on the four streets looked forward to Jerry and Bernadette’s wedding with huge excitement. There was something special about them both. They were always laughing and making everyone else laugh either with them or at them.

  There was no salmon or lobster to be had at the Irish centre, but the Guinness flowed as fast as the laughter was loud.

  The wedding reception had been in full swing for just a few hours when Jerry dragged Bernadette away to carry her over the threshold. The gentle ribbing from their family and friends carried them down the
street as they ran giggling to number forty-two.

  ‘What in God’s name will they all think?’ protested Bernadette, tripping on her new heels. ‘Running away to me marriage bed and not staying until the end.’

  Jerry’s response was to scoop her up and sprint with her across his arms the rest of the way. A Lord Lochinvar stealing away his princess.

  The river was black and still. Watching and listening. Holding onto what it knew… and their shrieks and squeals of laughter echoed out across the water and were surely absorbed into eternity. They were, after all, the happiest couple to have ever run along the river’s bank.

  The wedding reception carried on way into the early hours, long after their marriage had been consummated a number of times.

  In the early hours of the morning, spent and exhausted, Jerry and Bernadette made plans for the future yet again. They knew they were special. They knew they were different. They knew that the brightest future awaited them.

  They also knew they were lucky to have a house of their own, even one owned by the Liverpool Corporation. It was the norm for young couples to begin their married life by moving in with their parents. Bernadette and Jerry were a novelty. Jerry’s aunt had been barren, and had lavished her attention on her immaculate home, on the rugs she had been able to buy at the docks and the nice chest of drawers from Blackler’s department store. Although slightly fancy and dated for Bernadette, with far too many fringes around cushions, lampshades and curtains, it was still the best-furnished and decorated house on the street.

  Bernadette strove to be different. From the day they married, she learnt how to sew and cook, acquiring any little skill she could master to keep them one step ahead. Life had yet to wear Bernadette down, to disillusion her, to possess her womb. She embodied the arrogance of youth, combined with a hungry, impatient aspiration for a better life away from the four streets, although she and Jerry were yet to work out how it would be achieved. Even when there were only two of them, a docker’s wage merely covered the bills and provided food, with just a little left over. Most couples in the streets had at least six children, which made life much harder than it should have been.

  The neighbours nicknamed her ‘Silver Heels’, so grand were her dreams. Bernadette was aware that she had almost set herself apart from the community by talking about the future she wanted. If she hadn’t been so popular, she might easily have succeeded in this. But how could anyone dislike Bernadette and Jerry? They were so in love, so idealistic, so happy.

  A natural good neighbour, she always helped her friends. Whether it was to take a crying baby into her house to give a mother in the street some time off, or buying a few sweets for the children on the green. She attended mass every day and never gossiped – her heart was pure.

  ‘Bernadette, ye are too good for this world, so ye is, sure ye must be an angel come to spy on us,’ said Maura, who said she sinned so often she needed to go to mass twice a day. ‘Feck knows, if ye are, I’ll never get through them pearly gates now, no matter how many times I go to confession. I don’t confess everything, ye know!’ Maura would exclaim in mock indignation every time Bernadette refused to join in the gossip or say anything unkind about another woman in the streets.

  Bernadette was godmother to the Doherty twins, which made her broody for her own, but with an iron will she maintained her plan to have everything in her house perfect and some money saved before a baby arrived. And besides, she and Jerry loved their Saturday nights out, and their short trips back to Ireland to visit their families and to take home presents. The young married couple with no babies and a bit of money were accorded a similar status as the film stars of the day. They knew that once babies arrived, all that would stop.

  Jerry was so content that he could find nothing to complain about, no matter how hard he tried. Whereas many men feared going home on a Friday night after they had drunk half of their pay packet, Jerry ran home to his wife. He took a great deal of ribbing from the other dockers, but they all wanted to be him. Why wouldn’t they? He never stopped grinning. He and Bernadette were the only couple on the streets never to be heard having a row.

  The fact that they didn’t have a baby straight away was the subject of daily gossip amongst the women.

  ‘He must be jumping off at Edge Hill,’ was a theory thrown over garden walls by women with a dozen children each.

  Edge Hill was a train station just a few minutes outside Lime Street station in Liverpool city centre, and ‘jumping off at Edge Hill’ was the colloquialism used for the withdrawal method of contraception favoured by the Pope. Not that the Pope ever had to use it, despite being such an expert. It was highly unreliable; even more so when practised by dockers who selfishly, after a few rum toddies, forgot to jump off and went all the way to Lime Street.

  Jerry never forgot. Life to him and Bernadette was about careful planning and being responsible. They were going to get on in life and nothing, but nothing, was going to be left to chance.

  When Bernadette finally became pregnant, there was no one on the four streets who was not caught up in the joy of the news. Babies were not an uncommon occurrence on the streets, but the arrival of Bernadette and Jerry’s first baby had everyone excited.

  ‘That child will be surely blessed when it comes,’ said Maura. ‘Was there ever a child more wanted or which could bring more joy?’ No one could answer that question. It was as though Bernadette was the only woman ever to have been pregnant.

  Bernadette had broken the news to Jerry whilst they were in Ireland visiting her family. They were standing on the cliff at Killhooney, overlooking the inky depths of Blacksod Bay. Jerry had almost fainted and had to sit down.

  ‘Oh my God, Bernadette, are we to be a mammy and a daddy?’ He took off his cap and rubbed his hair before putting it back on. Bernadette tucked her calf-length skirt in behind her knees as she sank to the ground to sit next to him.

  ‘We are that,’ she replied, looking shocked, and then they both began to laugh and cry at the same time. They kissed and hugged each other as the sea roared with laughter all around them. That night, the villagers attended the ceilidh in the pub arranged with an hour’s notice and, pregnant or not, Bernadette danced into the small hours.

  When the time came for the baby to be born, news had spread fast that Bernadette was in labour and that she and Jerry were at the hospital. Already the women were falling over themselves to help. They let themselves into the house by the back door, cleaned it from top to bottom despite the fact that it was unnecessary, stocked up the fire ready for a match to be thrown on and left a stew on the side of the range. Bernadette was one of their own, a young woman from the bogs in search of a better life. Disappointment would certainly be just round the corner but, until it came, she had friends and the four streets to count on. Whilst the women were being good neighbours and dusting down her new cot, Nellie Deane made her entrance into the world.

  Jerry had been absolutely convinced that Bernadette had been carrying a boy, and the fact that it turned out to be a girl threw him, but only for the few seconds it took him to fall madly in love with his new baby daughter.

  For hours, he had nervously paced up and down, waiting. There were no mobile phones then and although there was a public payphone in the hospital entrance, no one they knew could afford a telephone. All communication was by word of mouth or letter. Everyone knew it would be over a week before their relatives in Ireland received the news announcing that Nellie had arrived.

  Jerry was beside himself with excitement. Their new baby’s birth was the manifestation of his and Bernadette’s life plan. He had the perfect wife in Bernadette, and at last he would have the perfect baby. For months he had told everyone he was going to have a boy. That was all forgotten now.

  ‘Jeez, I knew from the day she told me she was pregnant it would be a baby girl,’ said Jerry in a very matter-of-fact way to the midwife. ‘I have always wanted a beautiful daughter.’

  ‘Oh my,’ laughed Bernadette, ‘have ye in
deed, is that why ye have been saying for seven months ye can’t wait to get him to the football, was that our little girl ye was talking about then?’

  Moments after she had given birth, they were both laughing together. He and his Bernadette, with her long red hair and bright blue Irish eyes, had spoken in detail about this day ever since they had first known she was pregnant. Not a drink had passed Jerry’s lips from that time, as they had saved every penny to buy a cot and turn the second bedroom into a nursery fit for their child. They had managed to completely refurnish and decorate their home. Each time a room was finished, almost forty couples traipsed through the rooms to ooh and aah. Bernadette was meticulous. She fought the dock dust and smog hand to hand; the windows shone, the nets gleamed and pride reflected from her white windowsills.

  Once Bernadette had been cleaned up, Jerry was allowed into the labour ward. He had paced the corridors the entire length of the hospital during the birth, desperate for it to be over so that he could be allowed back at Bernadette’s side. No father was allowed in a delivery room in the nineteen- fifties. The baby business was women’s work. He held his precious bundle in his huge muscular arms, more used to lifting cargo than babies, and could barely see her little face through his tears. Being careful to protect their tiny, fragile scrap, he turned towards his wife and their eyes met.

  ‘She looks like ye,’ whispered Jerry. His voice was thick with emotion as the tears trickled down his cheeks. ‘She is the most beautiful baby in the whole world.’

  Before Bernadette could protest, she gave in and didn’t argue. Was there ever a man who could love his new daughter more? Let him think what he wants, she thought.

  ‘Ye will have your lad next,’ she said with a smile and such confidence, he believed her without question.

  She smiled up at him tenderly, her love for this man who was different from all others pouring out despite her exhaustion. He leant over and kissed her dry lips, thinking that he had never seen his wife as lovely as she looked right now, after twenty-four hours of hard labour and no sleep. His tears wet her face and as she laid a hand on the side of his cheek, she kissed them away and tasted the salt on her lips. Between kisses, they were quietly sobbing and laughing at the same time, flooded with the love their new baby had brought to them as her gift. Jerry hitched the newborn up so that she was wedged between them both and they each gave a nervous laugh as they leant down and kissed her too. The three of them, wrapped in one warm embrace, filled with the smell of the newborn. They were both high on the miracle of life.