The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  She lay with both hands on her belly, as though nursing a wound. She was unreachable.

  A few days later, once Jerry had returned to work, Nellie answered the front door, with Joseph in her arms. She had been kept off school for the week whilst they waited for Kathleen to return, and until Alice recovered a little from the shock of giving birth. Jerry had not explained this, but they both knew someone needed to be there to look after Alice, as much as Joseph. She knew that when she went back to school, if Nana Kathleen hadn’t yet managed to return, Maura was going to come in to help feed and change the baby, even though Jerry hadn’t managed to get Alice to agree to this yet. But even without Alice’s agreement, Maura had already been in once this morning, as had Noleen the midwife. They had all given Nellie so many instructions that her head felt as if it was going to collapse and fall off her shoulders.

  Julia, her classmate and friend from down the road, was going to pop in on the way home from school with her mammy, Brigie. Yesterday morning they had both arrived with a large, navy-blue, Silver Cross carriage pram, already made up with soft white flannel sheets and a net covering the opening of the hood.

  ‘The pram is still warm from the baby in number four, who’s been turned out into a pushchair to make way for Joseph,’ joked Brigie. ‘The little fella won’t know where he is when he wakes up!’

  There was a little hand-knitted teddy on the pillow, popped into the pram as it went down the street by one of the neighbours with a handwritten card. There were freshly baked scones in a bag with a little note from Mrs Keating and a hand-knitted white baby cardigan that Mrs O’Brien kept handy in the drawer for new arrivals on the four streets. Now that hers were all grown up and she had a bit more time on her hands, it was her job to knit the matinee coats. There was also a pile of pale-blue baby clothes and folded terry-towelling nappies, all of which had already been through a number of little boys in the street, washed and pressed ready for use, contributed to by almost every house.

  Finally, there was a triangular paper packet full of tea leaves. The four streets were never short of tea. At all times, in one of the backyards, kept dry in a coal house, there was always a wooden tea chest full of leaves, courtesy of a dock gang catching it off the back of a hull.

  A brown earthenware pot with the Pacific Steam Line logo embossed on the lid, wrapped up in newspaper, sat under the pram canopy. It was full of an Irish stew for the evening. There was also a loaf of bread and three sausage rolls, the pastry still hot, and three vanilla slices from the corner bakery.

  The pram contained all that was needed for a new baby, plus a feast. Nellie wasn’t aware of it, but there had been a collection of halfpennies down the road for the extra meat for the stew and the pastries. She certainly felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders with the new baby, but she knew she wasn’t on her own; there was an entire community to help and support her and her da.

  Later in life, as a young woman living amongst those who became obsessed with the material value of their house, car or next holiday, Nellie often looked back in wonder at the resourcefulness, compassion and love that existed in such a poor community, which had nothing to call its own. It didn’t often know how the next meal would arrive onto the table, but it took comfort and pride in knowing it had everything of any real value: family, good neighbourliness and friendship.

  As she opened the front door, thinking it would be one of the neighbours and grateful with expectation, her heart sank to see Father James standing on the step. She noticed his hands were empty.

  ‘Saints preserve and save us,’ he exclaimed when he saw the child straining with the effort of holding a baby. ‘Where’s ye heathen mammy?’

  Nellie had been told not to answer him, and so she didn’t. The priest knew her father was at work and launched into a tirade of instructions for Nellie.

  She caught bits about Alice needing to be ‘churched’.

  ‘The baby needs to be brought into the light and absolved of the original sin. Do ye hear me, Nellie? He needs to be brought up as a Catholic and not a Protestant, as your sinful self has been,’ he spluttered.

  Nellie didn’t reply.

  ‘Do ye not know your own mother would spin in her grave if she knew what the ways of your father have become, since the poor woman’s passing?’ he went on.

  Nellie stood and stared. The hallway of the house was long, narrow and dark. Although tiny, the baby weighed heavily in her arms. She looked over her shoulder to the door of the kitchen and waited, expecting Alice to come through it and save her from this angry priest. But nothing happened.

  She had struggled to open the door and not drop the precious baby, who needed her so badly. Closing it was easier. She shuffled forward and, without looking up at him, lifted her foot slightly and kicked the door shut in the priest’s face. As the door swung to, his shouting became louder, as though he thought the increased volume would prevent its closure, and the baby began to cry.

  Once the door had safely banged shut, she could see his shadow, still silhouetted through the two mottled sheets of opaque glass. His hat made his profile look more like that of a gangster than a priest. He wasn’t going to give up that easily although the closed door muffled the noise. She wished hard that he would just go away. She shuffled over to the foot of the stairs and sat herself down on the bottom step, taking care not to trip over the long shawl her father had brought home – it never failed to surprise her how much fell off the back of a seagoing liner – and had left out to be wrapped around the baby to keep him warm.

  As she lifted Joseph onto her knee and adjusted his position, he turned his head towards her chest, pecking frantically like a little bird in the nest looking for food. She had no idea what he was doing. Light and warmth flooded the hallway as Alice opened the kitchen door. Her footsteps sounded, slow and heavy, on the linoleum as she walked down the hallway.

  She made no mention of the priest as she handed Nellie a bottle and said, ‘Here, give him that. It will shut him up.’ She turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen and the warmth of its fire, closing the door behind her as she went.

  The previous evening, Nellie had sat and helped her father feed the baby when he got home from work. She had watched him change the disgusting nappy, full of his black and dark green meconium. She had held the baby’s head whilst her da splashed water on his bottom and she had shaken the Johnson’s talcum powder over him, creating a cloud that made them both splutter and laugh. She helped to fasten the nappy pin, terrified she might put it through his wiggly bits. Her father showed her how to put the back of her hand on the inside of the nappy, flat against Joseph’s abdomen, as a shield, to stop that happening. And Nellie had giggled as little Joseph decided, once again, to empty his bladder, which went straight into her father’s face as he bent to fold the new nappy over his son.

  How she wished her da was here now and not at work. How she wished Nana Kathleen would hurry back. She was still shaken from the priest’s visit. He had finally moved away from the door. She nervously put the teat of the bottle into Joseph’s tiny mouth. He helped her out by latching on immediately and suckled frantically while his wide-open eyes stared gratefully into hers.

  She was overcome with love for him. She knew Alice’s coldness better than anyone and that her job would be to protect him, whilst her da or Nana Kathleen couldn’t be there. She shifted her arm under Joseph’s back and brought her hand up to support his neck. As she cradled him in her arms, she whispered into the side of his face, ‘Don’t worry, Joseph, I will look after you.’ Her tears fell from her cheeks onto the floor. Lonely and lost, she never felt the ghostly arms slip gently around her shoulders, or the tender kiss on her own cheek, but she did suddenly feel much better.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a normal morning on the street. As Nellie crossed the road to ‘run a message’ to the shop on the corner, she heard Peggy shouting at the school welfare officer.

  ‘I have five feckin’ pair of shoes and ni
ne kids, would ye like to choose which feckin’ kids stay at home, come on then, come on in, will ye, King Solomon, and choose.’

  Peggy stood back and held the front door open, to usher the welfare officer into the house, at which point he banged his book shut and fled down the street. He was no stranger to being shouted at but Peggy scared him more than most.

  ‘Do ye think I want four feckin’ kids hangin’ round me neck all day, eh? You don’t come here, mister, and complain about my kids not being in school until you bring some feckin’ shoes with you. Can you ’ear me?’

  He was already gone, speeding away in his Morris Minor up the Vauxhall Road.

  ‘There, he won’t be back in a hurry,’ said Peggy to no one in particular, before she went back inside and carried on shouting, this time at the kids.

  He would be back, without the shoes. Peggy would shout at him, again. He would flee to his car, as always, and on it went, a well-rehearsed, recurring drama.

  ‘Jeez, can you hear Peggy giving out,’ said Maura to Kitty, who was on her way out of the door to school. ‘She will be giving this street a bad name, the way she’s carrying on, so she will. I’m going to ask Kathleen to talk to her.’ Kathleen was back and settled into number forty-two. Her son Liam and his wife Maeve were running the farm back home so Kathleen had decided to stay put in Liverpool, until her job of bringing up Nellie was done.

  Maura had made the same comment to Tommy the previous evening, although he didn’t appear to be convinced it was a good idea.

  ‘Why don’t you have a chat with her yourself?’ Tommy had said, thinking that it would surely be a useless exercise anyway. A letter from the Pope wouldn’t stop Peggy shouting.

  ‘Because I don’t want to fall out with me next-door neighbour and she has respect for Kathleen, her being older and all that,’ said Maura.

  ‘Maura, me love, our street is on the list for slum clearance, how much worse a name can we get than that, I ask ye?’ Tommy said reasonably.

  Maura had muttered on under her breath, that the only way she would be taken out of her house would be in a box, but Tommy had stopped listening. He was studying the form of the horses for the three-thirty at Kempton, his newspaper laid out on the kitchen table. The children were growing and the sanctuary of the outhouse was no longer his; there would always be one or the other knocking on the door for him to get out.

  Tommy didn’t really mind. He had never raised his voice to any of his offspring and they all regarded him as a big softie, compared to every other da on the street, other than Jerry. Their peers often felt the belt or the slipper. All Maura’s children knew how lucky they were to have such a gentle man as their da and he was adored by them all.

  Tommy took the pencil from behind his ear, ready to draw a circle round the name of his favourite filly, and became aware that someone was standing next to him. He looked up to see Kitty by his side.

  ‘Hello, Queen, where’s your mother?’ said Tommy, in sudden surprise.

  ‘She’s gone next door to see Kathleen,’ said Kitty, as she pulled out a chair and sat down at the table next to him.

  ‘Jaysus, thank God for that, I thought I’d gone deaf there for a minute, Kitty.’

  He looked sideways at Kitty and they both burst out laughing, something they used to do all the time, but getting a laugh out of Kitty these days was much harder work than it ever had been when she was little.

  Tommy folded the paper, a natural subconscious gesture, which he had no idea he was making, in order to show Kitty she had his full undivided attention.

  ‘Is everything all right, Queen?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, Da, not bad. I’m taking the kids out for a picnic to the Pier Head to see the ferry.’

  Kitty always spoke in the same tone these days. No ups or downs, no stream of chatter, interspersed with giggles. Tommy thought to himself that Kitty was like half the child she once was. A bright burning lamp turned down to dim. It was a long time now, years even, since he had seen the old Kitty.

  ‘Grand,’ said Tommy, ‘but have ye been afflicted with a blindness, Kitty? Have ye not noticed, it’s fecking freezing and there’s snow on the ground? What kind of picnic is that?’

  They laughed again as Kitty explained, ‘Da, there’s been snow for months. I’m going crazy being stuck indoors.’

  Then she became sombre, as she came to the real reason she had sought out Tommy, just as soon as she could get him on her own.

  ‘Da, will ye do me a favour?’ she said, quietly, glancing nervously over her shoulder and out of the kitchen window to see if Maura was returning.

  ‘Aye, Queen, what is it?’ He had already reopened the paper, but now looked up and closed it again. He could sense Kitty was about to ask him something serious.

  ‘I don’t want to be confirmed, Da. I don’t want to go to the Priory for me confirmation lessons and I’m too scared to tell me mam,’ she said in a rush.

  ‘Jaysus, Kitty,’ spluttered Tommy. ‘Why don’t ye ask me to tell her ye is joining the circus, it’d be easier.’

  ‘I know, Da, but I just don’t want to and I know she will give out so much.’

  Tommy smiled. This was the daughter Maura still hoped might one day become a nun. He was secretly pleased. It was the last thing he wanted for his precious Kitty.

  For a man who only ever wanted a quiet life, breaking this bombshell to Maura was not something he would look forward to, but he wouldn’t let his princess down.

  ‘Come here and give yer da a hug. I’ll find a way, Queen. I don’t know how right now, but I will do me best.’

  ‘Thanks, Da,’ said Kitty as she hugged him tight. She closed her eyes and wished she could be honest with him, but the shame wouldn’t let her.

  Nellie had arrived at the corner shop.

  ‘Two ounces of red cheese, please,’ she said as she handed the money over to Sadie, the shopkeeper, to ring into the till.

  ‘OK, Nellie love, here you go, and tell Nana Kathleen to grate it now, as it will go further. And don’t forget to let her know I will be over on Saturday morning for me tea leaves now, will yer, Queen?’

  Nellie loved the fact that everyone wanted to pass a message to Nana Kathleen, even the teachers at school. Nana Kathleen had become everything from a Sunday school teacher to a marriage guidance counsellor, and she was the fount of all knowledge. No one knew how she did it, but nothing got past Nana Kathleen and there wasn’t one bit of gossip she didn’t already know by the time she was told it. She wasn’t a gossip herself, but the keeper of all secrets. Nana Kathleen’s friendship with the Granada TV man was paying dividends. It was amazing the rewards she could reap, for nothing more than a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

  Kathleen read the tea leaves and her reading day was on a Saturday. The house became like Lime Street station as every woman from miles around came to have their tea leaves read. She sat at the head of the kitchen table whilst Nellie and Kitty made cups of tea and the women went in and out all morning.

  Her palm had to be crossed with silver, which meant everyone paid sixpence, and it was the sixpences that paid for the two bottles of Guinness. But if Nana Kathleen thought someone was stretched for the money, as they went to give her the sixpence, she would press an extra one back into their own palm so they came out sixpence up, as well as feeling better for hearing a bit of good news in the tea leaves.

  ‘Kathleen’s so good,’ said Brigie to Peggy, one morning as, having left Kathleen’s kitchen, they were walking down the entry to their own back doors. ‘How could anyone have known I had a letter from America last week? I’ve told no one and it’s been sat on the mantelpiece next to the telly since it arrived.’

  ‘Sure, it’s a mystery, so it is,’ said Peggy, ‘and no wonder she gives Father James short shrift, she wouldn’t want him spoiling our fun, now would she.’

  ‘I’m amazed Maura hasn’t kicked up, her being so religious an’ all that, but even she’s getting her tea leaves read, can ye imagine and their Kitty’s e
ven making the tea!’

  Both women roared with laughter on their way home, one thinking there was a windfall on its way, and another expecting a surprise visitor from overseas and a letter from a tall government building. No one ever questioned that there was never any bad news from Nana Kathleen on a Saturday morning. Bad news was as rare as Irish sunshine in Mayo on an April morning.

  Kitty ran up to Nellie, as she left the shop.

  ‘Nellie,’ she called, ‘let’s collect up Joseph and the kids and walk them down to the Pier Head and watch the ferries, do ya fancy that?’

  Nellie dashed back home with Kitty and began the process of packing Joseph into his pram for the trip. They were going to take Harry, but he had just fallen over on the entry cobbles and skinned the top of his knee. Maura was liberal with her brown iodine on cut knees and it smarted like nothing else.

  ‘Blow, blow, BLOW!’ they could hear her shouting, as far as three doors away, while she sloshed the pungent-smelling liquid onto Harry’s knee. It stung like hell, as his screams ripped the morning air.

  They collected Peggy’s latest baby, to pop into the Silver Cross with Joseph, and sat a couple of toddlers on the navy-blue apron. Another was so desperate to join in, she lay on the wire shopping tray underneath. There were six little ones from various houses on the streets, holding onto various parts of the chrome frame and the handles, all trotting along beside Kitty and Nellie. They looked like travellers moving a caravan to a new destination.

  Tucked down either side of the pillows to keep them warm were bottles of formula for the babies when they woke. Two empty glass pop bottles full of water were pushed down by the side of their legs for drinks for the other children during the day, along with a pack of Jacob’s cream crackers, sandwiched together with jam and wrapped up in greaseproof paper. The closest Liverpool had to a delicacy.