The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  Kathleen put on her coat and took so long to say goodnight to everyone that it took her half an hour to get out of the door. As soon as she stepped out of the club onto the street, the heavens opened. Kathleen crossed herself and thanked God Nellie had got home with Joseph and Alice before the rain had begun, while cursing herself for having stopped so long and had the extra glass of Guinness.

  She pulled down her hat, tucking her hair tightly in, and then pulled up her collar to stop the water from running down her neck. With hands thrust deep into her pockets, she began to walk the half-mile home. There was no wind and the rain was heavy; the cobbles were black and drenched within minutes. Kathleen’s path home was lit by the yellow sulphur glow from the street lights reflected off the glistening black of the wet path.

  She could smell the river on the air as she lifted her head and breathed in. That mist has washed over Ireland on its way here, she thought, I can smell the peat bogs on the edge of it.

  She could hear the band playing a folk song from back home. It got her in the back of her throat when she recalled that it was a song Jerry and Bernadette had danced to at their wedding. They had all stood in a circle and clapped and cheered while the besotted couple, who couldn’t leave each other alone, danced and held hands. Tears began to escape from Kathleen’s eyes and mingled with the rain as she walked along.

  ‘God, I’m getting soft in the head as I get older, so I am,’ she said to herself, as she took a hankie out of her pocket and wiped her face.

  She missed Bernadette and thought to herself that, if things had been different, she and Bernadette would have been walking home together now, laughing and joking as they used to all the time. She knew her Jerry still went into the yard and talked to Bernadette. She smiled to herself as she thought, maybe she would give it a go and try it herself.

  ‘Bernadette, I need a bit of help,’ she said, into the wet night air. ‘I’m worried about Kitty and I’ve no idea what to do, perhaps ye can show me the way, my lovely?’

  Kathleen smiled. Holy Mother, she thought to herself, I’ve only had five glasses of Guinness and I’m as bad as me son. I’m losing me head already.

  Suddenly, Kathleen knew she wasn’t alone. She hadn’t imagined Bernadette gently slipping her arm through hers. Bernadette was walking beside her, but she wasn’t happy. Bernadette was urging Kathleen to hurry. Kathleen felt as though she were being implored and pushed to move faster and faster, as though she were being propelled along.

  ‘Oh my God, Bernadette,’ gasped Kathleen, ‘I’m an old woman, my lovely, I can’t catch me breath, slow down.’

  Kathleen felt as though she had been flung round the top corner of the entry when suddenly, blinking in the dark and through the pouring rain, she saw a man in a black hat and cape lift the latch to Maura and Tommy’s back gate. She stopped dead in shock.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, what’s going on?’ Kathleen whispered to Bernadette, but almost before the words left her mouth, she realized she was once again alone.

  The feeling of a presence, of someone she knew and loved being right with her and by her side, had gone, as had the intense feeling of urgency. She was now truly alone as she slowly walked down the entry and in through Maura’s gate.

  Kathleen didn’t rush, she was too afraid. Her limbs felt like lead and she wanted to move in the opposite direction. Her throat and mouth had become dry with fear and her heart was racing, as adrenaline surged through her veins. The penny had suddenly dropped.

  ‘Poor Kitty, the answer was under me very nose.’

  She lifted the latch and crept into the kitchen. The main light was off, but the lamp had been left on for Maura and Tommy returning. Kathleen noticed that the door at the bottom of the stairs was slightly open and off the latch.

  ‘Oh my Holy God, little Kitty,’ she whispered, feeling like screaming.

  She put her hand over her mouth, frozen to the spot. What should she do? Should she run back to the Irish centre? Should she wake Alice across the road to come? She heard a floorboard upstairs creak heavily and she knew she had no time. She looked frantically around the room for something to help her and picked up the poker, leaning up against the range. Far slower and quieter than the faintest heartbeat, she opened the door wide and crept very carefully up the stairs.

  He never saw her coming, so engrossed in his own lust that he didn’t hear a thing. Kathleen stood still for a moment to let her eyes adjust. The bedroom was pitch black and the only light reflected off the whitewashed wall. She could see his black shape in relief against it and hear Kitty whimpering in terror.

  ‘Please don’t, ye will wake Angela, please don’t do that again.’

  Kathleen felt as if she had no strength in her arm. The poker suddenly felt so heavy she thought she would drop it, but she knew what she had to do. As she raised the poker, she screamed to give herself strength. Just before it came down on the back of his head, he suddenly turned round and, for one second, looked at Kathleen with utter shock on his face before slumping across the bed.

  Kathleen couldn’t tell who was screaming now, there was so much of it. She dragged Kitty out of the bed by her arms. Kitty was crying and wailing as she tried to lift Angela, who was yelling about being woken up as she was pulled from under Father James, out cold on the bed. Kathleen picked up Niamh and woke the boys in the next room and got them downstairs. Then they ran, carrying the half-asleep twins and Niamh between them, out of the front door and leaving all the doors open behind them, fleeing across the road into Jerry’s house.

  ‘Lock the door, lock the door,’ screamed Kathleen, when they got inside. ‘I’m going back to the club for the others, hold on till I get back, Kitty.’

  Kathleen was scared to death at what she had done to Father James. Had she killed him? If she hadn’t, surely to God, Tommy would.

  Just as she turned the corner at the top of the entry out onto the street, she saw the three of them dancing along. It was raining stair rods and yet they were laughing and singing without a care in the world, Maura linking arms with Tommy on one side and Jerry on the other. Kathleen almost fell to her knees with relief as she put her hand out and held onto the wall to support herself. She had run so hard, she could hardly breathe. Jerry saw her first, then all three of them stopped dancing and broke into a run.

  As soon as they got into Jerry’s house, Kathleen made Maura and Tommy sit down whilst she held onto Kitty and told them how she had just caught Father James in Kitty’s bedroom and what he was attempting to do.

  The impact of Kathleen’s news was so devastating that it was received in a shocked silence while it sank in. Maura clung to Tommy’s hand, both with the same thoughts racing between them. They needed to hold onto each other for strength.

  Kitty never spoke. The tears ran down her cheeks while she clung onto Maura, dreading that she might be rejected and shaken off. She felt a huge relief that Father James had been caught, but was sure that now she would be punished.

  Then Kathleen added very calmly, ‘And, God help me, I think I’ve killed him.’

  Jerry tapped Tommy on the shoulder, picked up the poker from his own fire and rushed ahead of Tommy through the door and across the road, into Kitty’s room. Jerry knew that he needed to keep control of the situation, while Tommy’s anger burst forth as they ran, not one word intelligible.

  ‘The fuckin’ kiddie-fiddling bastard fucking cunt face fucking…’

  His insults were in vain. When they reached Kitty’s room and switched on the light, there was no sign of Father James. Tommy ran into the boys’ room, but again there was nothing. Father James didn’t even have the decency to be lying on the bed, injured. He had slunk off into the cold, wet night.

  Jerry picked up from the bedroom floor the poker Kathleen had dropped, took it downstairs and put on the kettle.

  ‘What the feck are ye doing?’ said Tommy, already on his way out of the door.

  ‘The police can tell who has touched things, Tommy, so they can. Let me do
the thinking, man, you go and see to Kitty,’ Jerry said.

  When the kettle boiled, he poured the hot water over the poker and scrubbed it with the scourer from the kitchen sink. Then he plunged it into the hottest part of the fire where it would remain red hot until the embers burnt down in the morning. Jerry was worried. How injured was the priest? How hard had Kathleen hit him? Father James was powerful. When it came to his word in law against Kathleen’s, an uneducated Irish immigrant, Father James would win every time.

  Tears, tea and recriminations were flowing in Jerry’s kitchen when he returned. Slowly and nervously Kitty told them everything. Jerry courteously stood in the background, facing the fire. Kitty’s story was almost too painful to listen to and his stomach was knotted. He could only think how he would feel if this was Nellie sitting here, recounting to them all a story of living hell.

  He turned round, about to suggest that he and Tommy go down to the police station, when he noticed that Tommy was no longer there. He felt a chill run down his spine. Tommy was no different from Jerry and Jerry knew exactly what he would want to do right now. He ran to the sink where the meat knife had been resting on the drainer ever since it had been used to cut up the lamb on Thursday. He didn’t need to ask where it was now.

  ‘Where the hell is Tommy, Maura?’

  She looked up at Jerry as though she had seen a ghost.

  ‘Tommy!’ she screamed, when she realized he was no longer at her side. She leapt up from the arm of Kitty’s chair and ran back into her own house. Jerry was right behind her.

  ‘He isn’t here, he’s gone!’ she said, as she came back down the stairs and went to grab a coat from the hooks on the back of the kitchen door.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Jerry, taking hold of her arm firmly and steering her down the path. ‘Go back in to Kitty; this is man’s work, leave this to us.’

  Maura shook in fear. ‘Jerry, what’s happening, I’m scared!’

  ‘Well, don’t be. This may be a test, Maura, but we will all pass it if we are strong. Go away now back indoors and look after Kitty, that’s ye job. The rest is ours.’

  Paddy’s son, little Paddy, stood at his bedroom window, half asleep and rubbing his eyes, and watched Jerry disappear down the entry. The rain hadn’t let up and there were no street lamps in the back alleyways. It was pitch black outside, but it was definitely Jerry.

  Little Paddy had been woken earlier by the screaming from next door. He was a light sleeper. When he first woke he had thought it was his da choking. He wondered where Jerry was going at this time of night before he took himself back into bed. He was asleep again within seconds.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was four in the morning before the two men returned.

  Maura had put Kitty to bed with Nellie, holding her in her arms as she rocked her to sleep. She was her mother and she needed to know what her daughter had been through, but there would be time for all that. Now, the poor child needed sleep. It still hadn’t dawned on Maura that Kitty was pregnant.

  Later, Maura and Kathleen sat by the fire in the kitchen, waiting. Kathleen did her best, but Maura was distraught and in shock. They both were. Kathleen had never before almost killed anyone and the realization was beginning to dawn on her of what she might have done.

  As they walked in through the back door, the men didn’t say a word to the anxious women.

  Jerry pulled out the copper boiler from the shed as he came through the yard and then shouted at Tommy to go into the outhouse, strip off naked and to throw his clothes out into the yard floor. Maura noticed blood on Tommy’s jacket, which he was unnaturally holding tightly closed across his chest. She put her hand to her mouth and stifled a scream. She was shaking uncontrollably and her legs could barely hold her up.

  Kathleen, no stranger to a crisis, flew into action. She dragged the mop bucket in from the outhouse, filled it with hot water and Aunt Sally liquid soap and then ran outside and doused the water over a naked Tommy who was shaking as much as Maura. He began rubbing blood off his body with the floorcloth that Kathleen gave him. Now was not a time for modesty.

  She fetched a clean sheet to wrap Tommy in and sent him indoors, then she washed down the outhouse and the yard, forcing the red rivulets down the drain with the yard brush. Jerry submerged part of Tommy’s jacket in the boiler as he scrubbed it down. If he fully washed it, someone would notice. He then put Tommy’s trousers and underclothes in the boiler, and his blood-soaked shirt on the fire. No one would notice a missing shirt even if it was his best.

  No one said a word, but the looks that passed between Maura and Tommy were agonizing. Both were incapable of speech. Maura stood and rubbed his arms vigorously through the sheet, in an attempt to warm him and halt his violent shivering. They had been ripped from their ordinary lives and plunged into hell within minutes and they were struggling to cope.

  Jerry unwrapped the blood-stained meat knife, which he had bundled in his own shirt, dropped it into the sink and poured boiling water over it. Then he threw his own shirt straight onto the open fire in the range with Tommy’s.

  Filling the sink, he plunged his arms in and began scrubbing. Kathleen, having put everything back in order in the outhouse, helped him.

  ‘Thank the Holy Lord it’s raining hard,’ she whispered to Jerry. ‘The rain will have finished off washing the yard by daylight.’

  Kathleen was now calm. This was about strength in adversity. The four streets looking after their own. The crime was irrelevant. The poor would always look after each other; they had to; they had the strength of a judgmental society to beat. And now they had this – an evil that stalked their homes and threatened their children.

  ‘Give me ye boots,’ said Jerry to Tommy. He dunked both pairs into the boiler, by now bubbling furiously, and then laid them by the fire. It was a wet night. Of course the boots were wet.

  Kathleen opened the whiskey that had arrived yesterday morning, although it already felt like weeks ago, as so much had happened in a short space of time. They had been going to keep it for a Christmas treat.

  ‘Feck Christmas,’ muttered Kathleen, filling four mugs and pressing one into Maura’s hand.

  Jerry took his mug and looked up. ‘None of us will ever mention this night again,’ he said firmly. ‘We will not speak of it to anyone. Do we all understand?’

  Tommy, Maura and Kathleen nodded.

  ‘Tommy and Maura, away home now to bed. We will be safe as long as no one knows. Don’t be seen as you go. We will decide what is to be done with Kitty tomorrow, when we are calm and have all had some sleep.’

  Maura and Kathleen had no idea what had been done with Father James, but they knew better than to ask. They were all now shaking violently with shock, even Kathleen. Now that her jobs had been done and there was nothing to focus on, the trembling took its hold.

  Between chattering teeth, she said, ‘If you had just put the evil bastard in a room full of young mothers, he would have got his punishment.’

  ‘Sh, Mammy,’ said Jerry, who, despite his shaking, was thinking with absolute clarity.

  They each picked up their mugs and knocked the whiskey back, to stop the tremors before they parted from one another. Kathleen had filled the mugs to the brim and the amber liquid scalded as it slipped down, flooding them with warmth.

  Tommy and Maura staggered back into their own house, having first checked that the street was quiet, Tommy still wrapped in the sheet, carrying his soaking clothes, with Maura clinging onto his arm.

  The following morning, Alice woke early. As she came through the door into the kitchen, she saw the meat knife still on the draining rack. Thinking it best to put it away, she ran the knife under the tap and noticed a spot of blood on the end. She boiled the kettle and poured boiling water over it, then dried it and popped it in the knife drawer, before making herself a cup of tea.

  She had heard every word that had been spoken last night, but had lain in bed, still and quiet. To Alice, it was normal to observe even
ts from a distance.

  The rooms upstairs were full of children sleeping, four girls top to tail in Nellie’s bed and two sets of twins on the floor. The air was heavy with night breath. Alice tiptoed over sleeping children and opened the window on her way down to let in some of the fresh damp morning air.

  Jerry was still sleeping off the Guinness and the whiskey when there was a knock on the front door. Alice took a breath, smoothed down her skirt and opened the door.

  ‘Morning, miss, can we ask you a few questions?’ enquired a young, fresh-faced policeman, one of two standing on the scrubbed doorstep.

  Alice looked him straight in the eye and answered as cool as a cucumber. She told the policeman how everyone had been at the wedding party, then come home and gone to bed at about two in the morning.

  ‘Was that just you, miss?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Alice calmly, ‘it was all of us.’ She reeled off the names of those living in Maura and Tommy’s house, as well as their own.

  She asked the constables why they were asking, but they wouldn’t tell her.

  She smiled sweetly, offered them a cup of tea she hoped they wouldn’t accept, which they didn’t, and then went back inside.

  The policemen – Howard, originally from Wales, and Simon, a little older and second generation from Belfast – marked both house numbers in their little black book with the words ‘alibi for all occupants’ and went on their way. The lady in the house was English. She had a very nice accent. One of those proper types, upright and honest. ‘Definitely not a bog jumper and obviously telling the truth,’ said Howard, as they walked away. He didn’t notice Simon flinch at his words as he snapped his notebook shut.

  When they went down the other side of the road and came to Maura and Tommy’s door, they didn’t even bother to knock.