The Fifteen Streets

by Catherine Cookson

  He was whistling as he walked up the backyard, but stopped before he entered the house; his mother wouldn’t have whistling in the house, it was unlucky. She was standing by the table, and before her, on the mat, stood his father and Dominic with their bait tins still in their hands. Shane’s lower lip was thrust out, and he was saying, ‘The swine should be crucified!’

  ‘What’s up?’ asked John, loosening his muffler.

  ‘It’s Nancy,’ said Mary Ellen, looking down at her feet.

  ‘Nancy? What’s wrong with her?’ John took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves before reaching for the kettle from the hob.

  ‘She’s going to have a bairn.’

  John’s hands stayed in mid-air. ‘She’s going to what!’ His brows met over the exclamation.

  ‘It’s true. Hannah’s had her to the doctor. She’s nearly out of her mind.’

  Turning slowly, John looked from his father to Dominic, and back to his mother again. Nancy Kelly going to have a bairn! It was utterly incredible. He thought of her face as it really was without the veil of his pity covering it . . . the loose, repulsive mouth, the beady eyes, and the pushed-in nose. How could any man touch her, unless he too ‘wasn’t all there’.

  Mary Ellen was saying, ‘And the funny thing is, she’s gone . . . odder’—she couldn’t say ‘brazen’ to the men—‘I can’t keep her out of the house.’

  Although Mary Ellen was filled with pity for Hannah and the girl, she had found the day trying beyond description, for when Nancy wasn’t standing leaning against the stanchion of her own front door, staring across the street towards the house, she was knocking at either the back or the front door. Mary Ellen felt she could not say anything to Hannah as yet, for Hannah was distraught, not only with her daughter going to have a child, but at the change in her. It was as if now, with life moving within her, some part of Nancy had become activated into normality . . . a crude and shocking normality to the women, for she seemed proud of her achievement and was determined to show it to her world. Subconsciously through the years, she must have taken in, with perhaps a feeling of envy, the arrogance of the pregnant women standing at their doors, their arms folded across the bulks of moving life. And she may have laughed unknowingly at their jokes as they patted the tiny flutterings of their aprons, saying with raw wit the old, threadworn joke, ‘Lie down, yer father’s not workin’!’

  Whatever had happened, she was now . . . brazened, and Mary Ellen’s pity was turning to irritation.

  Dominic sat down by the fire—he hadn’t spoken—and Shane and John still stood regarding Mary Ellen.

  ‘This’ll send the little bantam clean off his head.’ It was Shane who spoke, and he was referring to Joe.

  As Mary Ellen was about to make some reply, the back door opened and Nancy sidled in.

  ‘Look, Nancy!’ Mary Ellen exclaimed sharply; ‘get yourself away home.’

  But Nancy, who never to Mary Ellen’s knowledge had disobeyed a command in her life, simply ignored her. Instead, she came well into the kitchen and stood looking from one to the other of the men. They all stared at her, Dominic out of the corner of his eye. And when Nancy met his gaze, she flung herself round from him, showing him her back, like a child in the huff, and amidst silence, she walked towards John, and smiled her grotesque smile as she placed her hand on his sleeve.

  ‘John.’

  Tears almost came into John’s eyes as he looked at her: God, but it was awful! Yet above his pity there arose a feeling of revulsion against her. Some subtle change in her was making itself felt—she was no longer the child.

  She said again, ‘John;’ and he was about to say something to her when his head was jerked up by the sound of choking.

  It was Dominic; he had risen from his chair, his body quivering with waves of shut-in laughter. Mary Ellen and Shane were staring at him. He lumbered past them and threw himself on to the couch, where he sat leaning back, facing them, his face working with glee.

  Staring wide-eyed and questioningly at her son’s contorted face, Mary Ellen was wondering what in the name of God had come over him.

  Suddenly Dominic could control himself no longer, and his laughter filled the house. Bellow rolled on top of bellow. But as he rocked himself back and forth his eyes never left John’s, and the implication was lost on none of them. He waved a helpless hand, encompassing Nancy and John. And John’s voice rose above Dominic’s laughter, almost deafening them, as he cried, ‘You bloody swine!’

  With one movement he flung Nancy aside and sprang for Dominic. At the same moment, Shane and Mary Ellen threw themselves on him. Dominic got up, his laughter gone now: ‘Let him fight, the dirty bastard! Come on!’ He tore off his coat and made for the back door.

  John’s rage sent Shane and Mary Ellen spinning away from him, and he was after Dominic; but as he crossed the step, Dominic’s fist shot out and caught him full in the face: yet so little did it affect John in his rage, it could have been Katie’s hand.

  After the light of the kitchen, the backyard appeared black, and for a time they struck at each other blindly. But soon their fists met the other’s body with quickening and sickening thuds.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop them!’ Mary Ellen cried to Shane. She tried to push past him into the yard, but he barred her way, saying, ‘Let them have it out.’

  ‘No! No! He’ll kill him. John’ll kill him! For God’s sake stop them!’

  A small crowd was now gathering at the yard door, and the windows on the far side of the back lane were being thrown up—the cry had gone round, ‘The O’Briens are at it.’

  The one showing the least concern was Nancy; she stood against the kitchen table her arms folded on her stomach and a silly smile flicking her face.

  The sight of her thus was too much for Mary Ellen. She darted back into the kitchen, and taking Nancy by the shoulders, pushed her through the front room and out into the street shouting, ‘Go on! Go on, you young trollop, you! And don’t darken these doors again!’

  Back in the kitchen she tried once more to push past Shane; for blood was flowing freely now. It was running from John’s mouth and from Dominic’s eyebrow, and their shirts were wet with it.

  Peggy Flaherty’s voice came from the upstairs window, crying, ‘Stop it! Stop it, you lads! Stop it, the pair of you. John, where’s your sense gone? Do you want to break your mother’s heart? Behave like a gentleman, can’t you! Oh, if only Mr Flaherty was alive!’

  Mary Ellen, through Shane’s arm, could see the dark bulk of Peggy hanging half out of the window.

  Peggy cried down to her: ‘Mary Ellen, are you there? Will I throw some slops over them?’

  Mary Ellen made no answer, for she was now staring at the lass from next door. Christine had come into the suffused light, paused for a moment near the battling figures, then walked right between them.

  John’s fist was travelling towards Dominic’s body, and Mary Ellen closed her eyes tightly, for the girl’s face, as she confronted John, was in line with it.

  Only the sound of gasping breaths came to Mary Ellen. She opened her eyes slowly, and they were apart, with the girl standing untouched between them.

  Christine lifted her hands and pushed John towards the kitchen door, where Mary Ellen pulled him over the threshold.

  Then Christine turned to Dominic. He was leaning against the washhouse wall now, wiping his face with his shirt sleeve. He paused and looked at her, and said pointedly, ‘This is one time I’m fighting in the right.’

  ‘Fighting was never in the right.’

  ‘No? Huh!’—he spat out some blood, then went on wiping his face—‘not even when your wonderful John gives Nancy Kelly a bairn?’

  There was a rustle among the crowd about the yard door. The whispers linked, forming a wave; then broke again, as one person after another darted away into the blackness . . . John O’Brien had given Nancy Kelly a bairn!

  When John at last arrived at their meeting place, Mary wasn’t there, and his feelings became
a mixture of sick disappointment and relief . . . relief because of the uncertainty of her reaction when she saw his face. She would, he knew, be full of sympathy, but would she think that he was indeed one of the ‘Fighting O’Briens’, fighting for fighting’s sake?—he’d be unable to explain why he had fought. So he walked towards her house, keeping on the far side of the road, and when he came opposite the gate he stood well back in the shadow of a hedge, and waited, wondering what construction she had put on his non-appearance.

  The house was lit up, and occasionally a shadow darkened the blinds, but the shadow could have belonged to anyone.

  How long he stood there he did not know, but a clock somewhere in the distance, struck the hour, and he guessed it was nine o’clock. And as he was making up his mind to move away, the front door opened, and she was there, silhouetted against the light. But not alone; a man was with her, and from his thinness, John knew him to be Culbert.

  John’s nerves tensed as he watched them standing talking, and his teeth grated when he saw Culbert’s hand take hers. But she remained still and Culbert moved away, and the door was closed.

  After standing for a while longer, John walked slowly away. He was cold, and his eye was paining, and the whole of his face was stiff and sore. Now the import of Dominic’s wild laughter rose to the fore of his mind again; and with it came a paralysing sense of fear. Fear was the least of John’s emotions—he could not remember ever having known real fear; he had been scared, but being scared had no connection with this weakening feeling of fear. What if it got around, what Dominic had suggested? God! he couldn’t stand it. Anyway, people wouldn’t believe it. Him take Nancy Kelly! . . . But wouldn’t they? The lot around the fifteen streets would accuse Jesus Christ himself of it, if they were in the mood to do so. At times, it would appear they were utterly devoid of reason or sense, the rumours they believed and passed on.

  As he neared the corner of Fadden Street, the huddled darker blur standing out against the wall told him the men were there. It was usual for them to gather at the corner and crack, and it was their voices which generally proclaimed them. But tonight they were quiet. And as he passed them he knew a mounting of his fear, which almost reached the point of terror when he realised the rumour was already let loose.

  A figure stepped from the group and walked for a few steps by his side, then stopped. John stopped too, and the two men peered at each other.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ said Joe Kelly.

  John did not answer him, for the fear was drying his mouth. He waited, and Joe seemed to be waiting too.

  Then Joe brought out thickly, ‘What have you got to say?’

  ‘What about?’ John parried.

  ‘Come off it, you know bloody fine!’

  John made a desperate effort to bring reason and calmness to the fore: ‘Look, Joe,’ he appealed to the little man, whose face, even through the darkness, conveyed its trouble to him, ‘do you, for a moment, think I would do such a thing? For God’s sake, man, have some sense! Nancy’s always made a set for me because I’ve been kind to her . . . What do you think I am? I mean no offence, Joe, but I’m not that hard up for a woman.’

  ‘Then why did you take her up the country?’

  ‘Take her up the country? Me?’

  ‘Aye, you! And give her money . . . You might be big, John O’Brien, but I’m going to kick the guts out of you!’

  Before Joe could spring to carry out his intention, John’s hands gripped his shoulders and pinned him against the wall, while he kept his body bent out of reach of Joe’s legs.

  ‘Listen here, Joe Kelly: if there’s any guts to be kicked out, I can do a bit of it myself. But before we start that, let’s get this straight. The whole thing’s a pack of damned lies from beginning to end. You bring me the one that saw me up the country with Nancy; and let’s get Nancy herself and ask her.’

  ‘That’s the ticket,’ said a voice from the group of men; ‘give him a fair crack o’ the whip. I told you you were up the pole to believe it. Now, if it had been the other big sod . . .’

  Another voice was added to that of the first: ‘Aye, Joe . . . Ask your lass, and get Bella Flabbygob to face him and tell him herself.’

  Joe’s writhing body was stilled. ‘All right then,’ he growled. ‘If you’ve got the face, come and clear yourself.’

  John, walking swiftly and tensely by Joe’s side, said, ‘I don’t need to have any face, I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of.’

  Thrusting open his back door, Joe cried to the startled Hannah, ‘Get her up!’

  After one bewildered glance towards John, Hannah went into the bedroom, and in a few minutes returned, pushing Nancy, half awake, before her.

  Nancy had a coat about her shoulders, and her long, thick legs stuck out, like mottled props, below her short nightgown. Her feet were bare and not very clean, and the whole picture of her was revolting to John . . . That anyone should imagine he could touch a thing like this! The thought made him angry, and momentarily banished his fear. He confronted Nancy.

  ‘Look, Nancy. Have I ever taken you up the country?’

  Still only half awake, she blinked at him.

  ‘Have I?’ he persisted.

  ‘No, John.’

  John cast a quick glance at Joe.

  ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘have I ever given you money?’

  She blinked again. She was a child once more; her newfound self was lost in bewilderment and sleep. ‘Yes,’ she answered simply.

  Joe scraped his feet on the floor as John said, ‘Listen carefully now. When did I give you the money?’

  She thought a while, then said, ‘Up Simonside.’

  They all stood silent. Simonside was the country. It was the place for lovers and courting. Hannah drew in her breath, and Joe bit out, ‘Want to know any more?’

  ‘Yes. How much did I give you?’ John bent towards Nancy.

  ‘Threepence.’

  ‘And what did I give it to you for?’

  ‘For being a good girl.’

  Joe snorted and John turned on him. ‘I know the night I gave it to her. I met her crying under the arches. Annie had left her in the market and she hadn’t her tram fare. She was afraid to stand outside the bar, and I put her on the tram, and’—the face of Bella Bradley peering at him came back to John—‘Bella Bradley was on that tram. It was her who put this into your head.’

  ‘I’ve no use for that ’un,’ Joe said, indicating Bella with a lift of his eyes towards the ceiling, ‘but she said she saw you coming down the Simonside bank with her.’

  ‘How the hell could she,’ burst out John, ‘if she was in the tram and it black dark!’

  Joe had no answer to this. He turned from John to Nancy, his look indicating his detestation. Then he flung a question at her that made Hannah cry out and John wince.

  Nancy stared back at her father, unmoved by the question itself. She was wide awake now, and she wriggled and flung her head to the side with a new defiance. As Joe, all restraint gone, went to hit her, she screamed and jumped aside like a grotesque animal.

  Hannah caught her husband’s arm, crying, ‘Leave her be, man!’

  Then Joe, Hannah and John were struck speechless, for Nancy, standing in the corner, her coat lying at her feet, her long neck thrust forward, was yelling at Joe: ‘Leave me alone . . . see, you! You hit me if you dare, see! I’m gonna have a bairn, I am, an’ be married . . . Yes, I am. I’m gonna be married when the bairn’s born I am.’ She tugged her tight nightgown back and forward around her hips, then turned her face towards John: ‘Aren’t I, John?’

  John stood gazing at her; he was dumb and sick. Had she remained the half imbecile child he could have dealt with her, but this new Nancy, full of craft and cunning, filled him with horror. When she came boldly towards him, her hand outstretched, he yelled at her, ‘Take your hands off me!’ and like someone possessed, he rushed from the house and started to run, with Joe’s voice bellowing after him, ‘You won’t get off with
it like that!’

  10

  Mary Llewellyn

  Her home had always appeared a place of warmth and comfort to Mary, but not up to now had she looked upon it as one of the tentacles of her mother’s possessiveness. Mary knew that, in her gentle way, her mother clung like a leech and sucked at one’s individuality; and one of her sucking tentacles was the creating of comfort . . . good food, warmth, even the seductive fire in one’s bedroom.