The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  He was as keen as the women to know what had happened. He also knew the best place to find out was to get himself to number nineteen as quickly as possible and inveigle Maura into giving him the unfiltered version.

  Maura had missed the six o’clock mass and was in the process of wiping the dust from her windowsills for the second time that day. Cleanliness was next to godliness. She felt guilty at having attended a Protestant wedding and missing mass. She knew that Father James wouldn’t be able to keep away and that she would see him walking through her back door at any minute, now that evening prayers were over.

  The Father often liked to visit Maura’s house, which annoyed Tommy.

  ‘Jaysus, Maura, we get more visits from the Father than the whorehouse gets from a sailor,’ he liked to complain. ‘Everyone will be thinking we are the biggest sinners in Liverpool.’

  ‘Go wash yer mouth, ye heathen, ye,’ she would shout, as she flicked him with a rolled-up tea towel.

  Tommy had learnt from bitter experience not to say a word against Father James. The tea towel hurt. As he walked out of the house, sulking, he shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’m away to the outhouse for a shite. Maybe ye can leave me be in peace in there, eh?’

  Tommy didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the prestige or the feeling of self-worth and status that being popular with the priest gave Maura. She liked the fact that the others saw him tripping in and out of her back door; it made them jealous, so she thought. Maura wouldn’t have a word said against Father James. It was her dream that one day Harry would become a priest or Kitty enter the convent.

  Father James was a disciplinarian who brooked no dissent from his flock. Jerry’s marriage in a register office to a Protestant had been undertaken in defiance of the Church and God. The Father had a sinner in the midst of his flock and he wasn’t happy. It was the first step on a road that could lead a community into ruin and it had to be stopped in its tracks.

  Sure enough, an hour later, as Maura was washing the dishes, after what felt like the feeding of the five thousand in her kitchen, she heard the click of the gate latch and through the window saw Father James’s hat, darker than the night sky, loom towards her up the back path.

  ‘Come along in, Father,’ said Maura, ‘and have some tea. Tommy,’ she shouted upstairs, ‘Father James is here.’

  As he took off his cape and placed it over the back of the kitchen chair, Maura noted that, yet again, the Father’s cassock was dirty with what looked like soup stains down his front and he never looked as though he had managed to shave as well as he should have, with clumps of whiskers around his mouth clinging onto the remnants of food he had eaten that day. He always left on his ostentatious hat. Father James thought it gave him an air of authority, especially with the children.

  Tommy was tucking in Harry, who hadn’t been sleeping so well. His asthma had been worse than usual that evening, as it always was when there was an unloading of stone on the Herculaneum dock.

  ‘Night, night, little fella,’ said Tommy, as Harry finally closed his eyes and Tommy could creep down the stairs.

  ‘Jaysus, Maura, it took me half an hour to get him off, what are ye doing shouting like the foghorn up the stairs?’ said Tommy, as he entered the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Maura gave him a look that told Tommy to shut up quickly, just as he saw Father James out of the corner of his eye, standing by the back door.

  ‘Oh hello, Father, how are ye, ’tis a pleasure as always, are ye staying for a cuppa tea?’ Despite the resentment Tommy felt at once again finding the priest in his kitchen, no one observing would have guessed that Father James wasn’t Tommy’s favourite person.

  Everyone had to be courteous and grateful to the Fathers. They were the community pillars of truth, morality and discipline. When times were desperate, they provided food from the sisters, or sometimes clothes from a big house in town. Almost every family in the street had, at one time or another, found itself knocking on the Priory door on a dark and cold winter’s night, looking for help in the form of food or coal. The Fathers and their housekeeper were the last port in a sea of poverty. Their authority came from God, not the City Corporation offices or the government. They were the mortal representatives of God’s voice on earth and no other office could match that.

  ‘I am indeed, Tommy; I have come by, though, to hear about how the sinful service that calls itself a wedding went today and which you yourself and Maura took part in.’

  Maura wasn’t expecting that and looked quite crestfallen.

  Tommy left Maura and Father James to it as they took a tray of tea and fruit loaf into the front room. He made his excuses and sat at the kitchen table to do his pools and read the Liverpool Echo. He lit his Capstan Full Strength ciggie, put on the radio, stoked the fire and poured his own tea. He grinned as he cut himself a slice of fruit loaf; Maura had made it that morning by soaking overnight in cold sweet tea a large pocketful of sultanas that had been Tommy’s share from a chest that had split the day before. Tommy often joked that he could fit a small baby into one of his jacket pockets, but promised he never would.

  Just the one tall lamp, with a large red lampshade, was lit in the corner by the table. It had seen better days but despite its shabbiness, along with the glow from the fire, it bathed the kitchen in a warm light. Tommy inhaled deeply on his cigarette. Everything was all right in his world. Wasn’t this just the best bit of the day? His family were well and asleep on full bellies, a blessing in itself and not something that could be said for every child on the four streets. Each one tucked up in their beds, dreaming their own dreams. He looked down at his paper and heard the murmur of Maura’s and the priest’s voices.

  Father James was the only person who was ever taken into the front room. In Maura’s eyes, the kitchen wasn’t good enough for someone of Father James’s standing and importance. Father James was the ‘other man’ in Maura’s life, the only person towards whom Tommy felt any resentment. It was a sin he couldn’t take to confession and so it festered and rotted in his gut.

  He knew that the Father and Maura talked about the oldest twins becoming altar boys and entering the priesthood, and that they did it behind his back. As God was Tommy’s judge, that would never happen. Maura would witness the wrong side of Tommy’s temper if she ever tried to overstep her matriarchal mark to pull that one off. Being the mother of a priest brought with it a sense of pride and an elevated standing in the community. Tommy knew this was something Maura craved and would seek through the advancement of at least one of their sons to the priesthood.

  ‘Even a worm can turn,’ whispered Tommy to himself. He had rehearsed the words in his head ready for the argument that would come one day soon. He knew everyone thought he was a pushover but he also knew the boundaries he would allow himself to be pushed to. Even a worm can turn.

  He sighed and leant back in the kitchen chair as Maura walked into the kitchen. Tommy looked up with an element of surprise and, thinking he might have left via the front door, asked, ‘Has the Father gone?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Maura. ‘He’s gone up the stairs to bless the kids whilst they are sleeping. He’s a bit mad that none of them were at mass this weekend. I asked you not to stop them going, Tommy,’ she half hissed.

  ‘Aye, well, did ye tell him that football’s a religion too, so it is?’ said Tommy, through his chuckles. He had beaten the priest. One up to Tommy.

  ‘Hush yer mouth,’ she hissed. ‘He may hear ye.’

  Tommy leant over and turned up the volume on the radio and, as he did so, winked at Maura and they both giggled. She moved over to the sink where the bowl of cold greasy water awaited her with a knitted dishcloth floating on the top. It would have never entered Tommy’s mind to wash the dishes. That was women’s work and the dividing line was strong and well understood. Maura plunged her red, weather-chapped hands into the bowl and carried on where she had left off with the dishes. Whilst she waited for Father James to come back down the stairs and into the kitchen, s
he and Tommy chatted in the same relaxed way about the travails of their family life, as they had every night since the day they had married.

  Kitty was exhausted and had fallen asleep as soon as her head had hit the pillow. She shared a large bed with her sister, Angela. The boys were behind the curtain and also shared a bed. She had heard her da comforting Harry and sitting with him, having put a towel over Harry’s head and made him breathe over a bowl of steaming, medicinal-smelling water, and then that was it; she went out like a light. She sometimes thought that being the eldest, and a girl, was a curse. She had spent the day looking after her four younger brothers and her younger sister, and she had looked after Nellie too. But she hadn’t minded looking after Nellie.

  ‘Sure, Mammy, Nellie was a dream altogether,’ she had told Maura when her parents returned from their exciting excursion into town.

  Nellie was a good kid who did everything she was asked as soon as Kitty asked it. She never cried or whined, unlike Kitty’s younger sister. Kitty would rather have a dozen Nellies than one crying, whinging Angela, any day. Since she had been able, Kitty had helped her mother with childcare as soon as she was big enough to carry a child on her own small hip. She accepted that she was the working, practical appendage to her mother’s ever-productive womb and that was her lot in life. At such a young age, she not only knew what her future would hold, she was already an expert at it.

  When she looked back, she couldn’t remember how it had begun. She didn’t know what had woken her. Was it a noise or simply a sense that there was an alien presence in the room? She turned over onto her side to make herself more comfortable and to move their Angela’s feet out of her back. Even when she was asleep, Angela could be difficult. Kitty had to put Angela next to the wall to sleep. She cried if she was on the outside because she was scared, and would lie next to Kitty and spend her nights kicking, or crying out and waking up the others.

  Kitty opened her eyes slowly, taking in the familiar shadows in the room but aware something wasn’t quite right. She froze as she saw black skirts swish across in front of her face and then let out a startled gasp. He very swiftly clamped his hand firmly over her mouth.

  ‘Hush now, Kitty, ’tis only I. Don’t make a noise and wake the others.’

  As he moved his hand away from her mouth, Kitty realized she couldn’t make a sound. She had been about to say sorry after she had gasped, but there was something unnatural about how hard his hand had pressed on her mouth. She could smell the stale tobacco on his stained fingers and an acrid aroma of unwashedness that had rubbed off his hand onto the skin under her nose. She could taste blood on her inner lip where his hand had so suddenly slammed on her mouth. Her heart was banging against her chest wall so loud she could hear it. Could Angela hear it?

  She had known Father James all her life. He had christened her and taken her first Holy Communion, but he had never before touched her, other than to lay his hand on top of her head. She was confused and afraid. Waking up to find him standing by her bed was not a normal occurrence. She could hear music from the radio and her parents laughing downstairs. If Father James was in her bedroom, her parents must surely know. Why weren’t they in here too? Why was Father James alone? Why had he banged her on her mouth and nearly stopped her breathing? What was she supposed to say or do?

  Questions chased each other and, trapped, ran wild in her head. But she didn’t speak or move. He had told her not to make a noise. Kitty did as she was told. Father James was an authority that even her parents obeyed; she wouldn’t dare make a noise.

  She lay with her eyes wide open, looking at his face and wondering what on earth she should say. She had no idea how old he was. Much older, she guessed, than her parents. His hair was grey all around the sides, and she knew, from the increasingly rare occasions he took his hat off, that he was bald on top. She hated his scary hat, which made him look like the pictures she had seen in school of Guy Fawkes. She could see the dark hairs erupting out of the end of his nose and protruding in huge bushes from both of his ears as though they were trying to escape, screaming in terror, from the unnatural thoughts inside his brain. His skin was pale, with a dark shadow where he had shaved, and the wide brim of his hat meant that when his head was bent down, as it was now, his face was in total darkness. She couldn’t see anything of his expression, except the gleaming whites of his eyes.

  There was silence while he stood leaning slightly over her, staring intently at the outline of her thin body under the pink cotton candlewick bedspread. She noticed that he seemed agitated, pressing his knees into the side of the mattress, pushing his weight onto the bed and grabbing hold of the headboard with one hand to steady himself. He thrust his hand through a fold in his black skirt and Kitty immediately screwed her eyes shut. This was very out of the ordinary. The black material of his skirt was brushing against her arm and she wanted to lash out and knock it away. His knees, pressing into her mattress, were less than a finger’s width from pinning down her arm. He hadn’t told her not to look, but she knew she didn’t want to see what he was doing right now.

  What was wrong? Why was he here? Why had her parents sent him upstairs to her? Did they think something was wrong? What were her parents doing laughing whilst he was here scaring the life half out of her? She wanted to shout loudly, ‘Mammy, Daddy!’

  She had never wanted to be close to them as much as she did right now, not even on the odd occasion when she had awoken in the night with a high temperature, shivering and shaking, feeling so ill that she couldn’t stay in her bed and needed to be with her mammy. On those nights she would wander into the kitchen half crying and flushed with sickness. Within seconds Tommy would scoop her onto his knee and hug her, making soothing sounds, whilst Maura fetched a bowl of tepid water and a flannel, and sponged down her limbs with long strokes. Both of her parents concerned, both flapping, emitting soothing noises until the temperature finally subsided. She would spend the rest of the night fitfully sleeping, watched over by one or the other, no more than a hand’s reach away. She wanted her mammy desperately now, in the same needy way, even though she wasn’t sick.

  But she knew that if she woke the kids for nothing, she would probably be in trouble. She lay with her eyes squeezed tight shut as she heard his breathing become rasping and rapid.

  ‘Hush now, Kitty, you good child,’ he said breathlessly and gratefully.

  She hadn’t spoken or made a sound, she had nothing to say. Why was he hushing her? She lay deathly still and didn’t move a muscle. She heard the muffled friction of his vestments rhythmically moving and she could feel the mattress slightly shifting under her. What in God’s name was he doing? He would wake Angela and the boys. Why was he making that noise?

  She opened her eyes, to tell him in a whisper that he would disturb the others because the mattress was shaking, and to ask him to stop doing whatever it was he was doing. She was ready to call her mammy right now. In her role of junior carer of the little ones, she had the confidence to call for help. Not because she was frightened, or because she felt as though the precious space of their bedroom was invaded and no longer safe. Not because the inside of her lip was bleeding, or because she felt scared and violated, but because this was now breaking their carefully managed routine of domesticity. The little ones were her responsibility and were about to have their sleep disturbed, and that now gave her the confidence to shout for her mammy in the presence of the priest. They wouldn’t tell her off, because she was just doing her job in looking out for the others. Father James didn’t have children, he didn’t understand. Her parents would know she wasn’t being disrespectful to the priest.

  As she opened her eyes and turned her head to shout for her mammy and daddy, his ejaculation left him, like an opaque milky fountain, and hit her full in the face.

  And then again. And again. Again.

  He was still holding onto the headboard as he slumped forward and let out a low groan. She gasped in horror. The bitter smell of his close proximity robbed her of
her ability to inhale. He was leaning so far over the bed that he was less than six inches away from her face. She stared in transfixed terror, her mind screaming a rejection of what she was seeing, as the final flow of his exudate slowly oozed out onto the end of his langer and formed into a threatening drop. Her fingers clenched the bedsheets tightly. She was too terrified to raise her hand to her face.

  He gave a last irregular gasp and spat out the word, ‘Feck,’ as, spent, he leant more heavily on his knees into the mattress. Less than an inch from her face, the last milky drop dribbled slowly and clumsily, still attached by a thread of slime, onto her chin and slithered down onto her neck. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and swallowed her breath in gulps, as she fought off the instinct to scream repeatedly and loudly, and to prevent the contents of her stomach from discharging themselves onto the bed.

  She couldn’t scream. She had to protect the others from the badness in the room. They were safe whilst they were asleep.

  She could feel his sperm, now cold, slowly crawling down her nose and cheek. She felt her fringe, wet and sticky, clinging to her forehead. Her stomach leapt in revulsion as a puddle halted its downward journey and settled in the dipped valley of her cushioned, clenched lips. She could faintly taste salt, seeping through her teeth and onto her tongue.

  Helpless, trapped, terrified, she felt as though she was about to choke. She could not breathe and although she would rather die than open her lips, a low cry, beyond her control, escaped her. Shocked, at first she wondered whether the sound had come from him, then recognized it was coming from somewhere within herself. She fought to stop, but was driven by fear. Surely she was ensnared in a nightmare; this couldn’t be happening. She was terrified he would now ask her a question and she would have to open her mouth to speak. All she could think, as she cried, was, Oh God, please let this end and take him away.

  She longed for Angela to let out one of the noisy, tortured cries she sometimes did in the night, as though she had been poked unexpectedly with a sharp stick. This quite often brought her mammy running up the stairs to check she was all right. The boys were so used to Angela’s noises that they slept through, but Angela always woke Kitty or her mother, and either one or the other went to her side, checking her to make sure she hadn’t woken herself. Please scream now, Angela, Kitty silently begged.