The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  He was wrong. Daisy saw everything.

  As she nestled into her pillow and closed her eyes, Daisy heard his footsteps climbing the wooden stairs, slowly and heavily, towards her room on the top floor. The bishop was so fat, he struggled up the four flights, but Daisy knew he was coming to her and with every step she flinched.

  She had thought that maybe, tonight, she would be safe.

  As always, he sat on the edge of her bed whilst he struggled to catch his breath and, once recovered, he began to speak.

  ‘Girl, the police will be here tomorrow and I am going to tell them that you are simple, do ye understand?’

  Daisy nodded, but she didn’t speak. She never spoke when he was in her room and he never called her Daisy, always ‘girl’.

  ‘If they ask you questions, girl, questions such as, has anything been removed from the Priory, you say no, nothing has. Do you understand?’

  Daisy nodded.

  ‘And if they ask you did any men ever visit the Priory you say no. Do ye understand that?’

  Again, Daisy nodded.

  ‘And as Father James told you, girl, it would be a grave sin to tell anyone what takes place in this room, even the police. You know that, don’t you, girl?’

  The bishop stopped talking and looked at her for a long, long time, as though a battle raged inside his head. Then, with a look of anguish, he pushed back the blankets covering Daisy, just as he always did.

  7

  AS TOMMY OPENED the back gate he could see Maura through the kitchen window, standing at the sink; on her face she wore a tense and warning expression. His heart sank. Something was wrong.

  The first thing he saw as he came in the back door was Howard and Simon, sitting at his kitchen table, each with an enamel mug of tea.

  ‘Evening, Mr Doherty,’ said Howard, as Tommy removed his jacket and hung it on the back of the kitchen door.

  Tommy didn’t speak but touched the peak of his cap in acknowledgment and looked over at Maura.

  ‘That cuppa for me, love? What can I do for ye, gents?’ With a smile that took every effort, he looked at both men and beamed.

  When Tommy finally closed the front door on Howard and Simon, he and Maura peeped through the parlour window nets and waited for them to drive away.

  A group of children had gathered around the car. Howard and Simon stopped and spoke to Little Paddy. Tommy watched as Howard raised his hand, waved a greeting and exchanged pleasantries with Molly Barrett, who was standing on her front step, hairnet in place and arms folded, chatting to Annie O’Prey.

  As Maura and Tommy looked up and down the road, net curtains furiously twitched back at them.

  ‘Look at that hard-faced Deirdre knocking on Sheila’s door,’ hissed Maura to Tommy. ‘When did you ever see that slattern out on the front street pretending to look for her kids? They wander loose and free from dawn to dusk, without a crust in their belly, and suddenly she’s all Mary good-wife, finding any excuse to see why the coppers are at our house. The nosy fecking bitch.’

  ‘Hush,’ Tommy replied. ‘Don’t let the children hear ye. We did all right. They have bloody nothing. I gave exactly the same story I have before. They have nothing, Maura.’

  He put his arm round Maura’s shoulder.

  Deep inside, he was truly worried as they observed their neighbours, people he thought of as his friends, openly gossiping in the street. He no longer felt safe.

  There had to be a reason the police had called again at Tommy’s house. Something had put a spring in their step and a note of confidence in their voices, leading them straight to his door.

  Maura knew Tommy was trying to protect her, but she was too canny to be fooled. She had to act fast. They had to spirit Kitty away from here and as quickly as possible.

  Maura returned to the kitchen, wrote Kathleen a note and called Harry down the stairs to take the message across the road right away.

  Maura didn’t want to be seen outdoors. She knew she wouldn’t make it far before a nosy neighbour called her across for an inquisition.

  She could hear Peggy already shouting over the back wall, ‘What did the police want, Maura? Getting mighty friendly with you and Tommy, they are now,’ as she walked back into her own house. Peggy was a harmless friend, but Maura knew that even her idle gossip could be dangerous.

  Later that evening, Jerry stepped into Maura’s kitchen, just as she put the bread dough onto the side of the range to rise. Tommy had settled down in front of the television and opened the paper on his lap for a night-time read. He had decided it was time to make an effort. Having learnt to read only a few years ago, he didn’t want to forget. It was one of the few things he had in his life to be proud of.

  He leant forward and shifted the cinders around in the fire with the poker as he motioned to Jerry to sit in the chair opposite.

  ‘Hello, Jerry, what’s brought ye over here, mate? Has Alice whipped ye with her tongue then?’

  Tommy began to giggle. He always laughed at his own jokes before anyone else did.

  In months gone by, Jerry would have burst in through their kitchen door, cracking his own jokes as he came. But that was before.

  When Kathleen had told Jerry Maura wanted him to pop over to the house, his heart had sunk. He felt sick and couldn’t eat his supper. As soon as it was dark, he made his way down the entry to number nineteen. The sooner he knew what was wrong, the better. There had been too many nasty surprises of late. Kathleen promised she would follow him a few minutes later.

  ‘Hello, Tommy.’ Jerry lowered himself into the chair and held both of his hands out in front of him to warm before the embers, which had begun to glow with the heat. ‘Apparently, Maura wants to talk to me.’ Jerry rubbed his dry, crackling hands together, looking from one to the other.

  Tommy looked surprised and glanced over at Maura as she took down from the press the tea caddy and the best, large, earthenware, blue-striped cups.

  ‘Well, ’tis a mystery to me, Jer. Maura, do we want to talk to Jerry?’ he said.

  Tommy tilted his head to one side as he spoke, as though trying to see around Maura, to pick up a clue from her face.

  ‘Aye, we do, but both of ye just sit while I make us a cuppa, and wait for Kathleen. We need to talk.’

  Maura still hadn’t turned round to face Tommy. She didn’t dare. Without realizing it, she was allowing time for Jerry’s presence to settle in the room.

  ‘Well, this sounds serious altogether,’ said Tommy, standing up and tipping the last of the coke from the scuttle onto the fire.

  Maura felt calmer than she had earlier. Jerry was like a brother to her. In fact, he was closer than her own brother. She genuinely loved Jerry. They both did. Just by being here he had made the atmosphere lighter. She was glad she had asked Kathleen to send him over.

  For a few moments, in hushed and whispered tones, the two men talked about the visit from the police.

  ‘It is all just guesswork, Tommy,’ said Jerry, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, as if in prayer. ‘No one saw us, no one was there, we are safe. You can’t hang a man on the back of guesswork.’

  Jerry had spoken the word no one else dared to. Hanging.

  ‘No one would think hanging good enough for the murder of a priest, Jerry,’ said Tommy, his eyes filling with tears of fear.

  Jerry saw the distress on Maura’s face. There was a moment of silence, until Jerry deftly moved on to a lighter subject, one guaranteed to alter the mood of the room. Football.

  Tommy handed Jerry the Echo. The Liverpool football team manager, Bill Shankly, was all the talk in the football world.

  ‘He’s a Scot, a Celt. He will never stop being a problem for Everton, mark my words,’ said Tommy.

  ‘Aye, so everyone says,’ Jerry replied.

  Maura was pleased they were discussing football. She loved to hear the two of them natter. It made her feel warm inside. If Tommy was happy chatting football, she was happy. That was h
ow it worked with them both. Maura took as much pleasure from Tommy’s enjoyment as he did from hers.

  It worked both ways. Each felt the other’s pain and pleasure.

  Or so Maura had thought.

  The depth to which each had sunk into their own private world following the priest’s murder had surprised her and added to the trauma. At the time when she needed Tommy the most, they had been the least able to communicate.

  Touch, not talk.

  Neither wanting to hear the other’s opinion.

  No analysis. The answers to unspoken questions burnt inside them, too painful to articulate. The knowledge and silence creating a vacuum.

  But they had survived the first shock. The aftermath. The adjustment. Now they had to survive the second tsunami. As it rolled towards their kitchen, Maura took one of the hard-backed chairs from the table and dragged it over to the fire.

  Jerry and Tommy looked at Maura. She was behaving strangely. Both felt their hearts sink as they waited for her to speak and they jumped when Kathleen burst in through the door.

  ‘Thought it less obvious if we walked over separately,’ said Kathleen. ‘Molly Barrett’s curtains have been twitching like a feckin’ ferret all day. What did they want, Maura, what did the police have to say?’

  ‘All the same questions we have been asked before,’ said Tommy. ‘They have nothing new.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maura, feeling much stronger now that Kathleen had arrived. ‘I have to tell ye something and, Tommy, ye must not kick off, because Kathleen has the answer to the problem and I need ye to be strong. We all do, especially Kitty.’

  Tommy’s eyebrows knitted together. He lifted his backside up from the chair ever so slightly and, picking up the dark-green, flattened cushion on which he sat, slipped his newspaper underneath, for reading later.

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Tommy.

  ‘I knew it,’ Jerry said. ‘As soon as Kathleen said you wanted me over here, I knew something was wrong.’

  Tommy was suddenly fearful. He felt the change in the atmosphere and wanted time to stand still. He didn’t think he could cope with anything else on top of all that had happened. Things were improving. Moving forward. Getting better. Why couldn’t it stay that way?

  He felt resentment brewing inside towards Maura. A feeling that was a stranger to the man who thought no ill of anyone.

  He didn’t want Maura to speak.

  The coke in the fire was by now a red glow. They waited.

  Maura took a deep breath. She spoke the words.

  ‘Kitty is pregnant with the priest’s child.’

  She had said it. The words were huge, the biggest she had ever spoken, filling the room and polluting the air they breathed.

  Before Tommy or Jerry could react she added, ‘Before either of you think of gobbing off with an opinion, hear what Kathleen has to say, because she has more sense than all of us put together, so she does.’

  Tommy couldn’t have given an opinion. He was in shock. His bottom jaw had dropped and there it remained, gawping. Jerry rubbed his hands through his hair and was the first to speak.

  ‘The fecking bastard. He’s still here tormenting us. The fecking bastard.’

  Maura didn’t know where she found her strength. It came from nowhere and surged up in her. As she began to speak, she hardly recognized her own voice.

  ‘Before either of you say another thing, I have children upstairs, and the baby is asleep and I will not let her be woken. They are not going to hear either of you raise your voices and they are not going to know what is going on, just because neither of you two can control yourselves. Do you both understand?’

  For a split second, Tommy wasn’t quite sure what had shocked him most. The news that Kitty was carrying the dead priest’s child, or the fact that Maura was laying down the law when, as Kitty’s father, he was more than entitled to kick off. He instantly understood why Maura had asked Jerry to come over.

  ‘Whilst Kathleen explains, I will take some money from the bread bin and buy four bottles of Guinness from the Anchor. Not a word until I get back. I want no argument over this, it is too important.’

  Neither man spoke. Jerry watched Maura as she put on her coat and fastened her headscarf over her curlers. The back-door latch clicked shut and Jerry listened to her feet tip-tapping over the yard.

  Not for the first time, he admired her. She would fight for her family and here she was, laying the law down in her own kitchen to calm the two men she was closest to.

  Tommy tipped his head backwards, stared at the ceiling and let out a large sigh.

  His eyes focused on a stain that spread outwards from the light bulb in the centre. Within a dark-brown outline, shaped like a perfect cloud on a summer’s day. The type you see drawn in the children’s books from which Kitty had taught Tommy to read.

  He remembered the first book they had read together. Janet and John. When he had told his five-year-old princess that he had never really attended school and had spent all of his childhood with his father, helping him with the horses, she had set her goal: to teach Tommy everything the sisters had taught her at school.

  ‘Come on, Da, up,’ she used to say to him when it was time for her to go to bed.

  They had decided that it would be their secret. Sometimes, if he was tired after a hard day, he would make an excuse but she would stand there, one hand on her little hip and the other pointing up the stairs, her face set into what Tommy called her school-marm expression.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, Da, up you come right now,’ she would say and it was all he could do not to burst out laughing. She was the image of Maura.

  Sometimes he fell asleep on the bed next to her as they practised their letters. One memorable night, he opened one eye and saw her serious little face right next to his as she pulled the blanket over him, clambered back into the bed and, putting her little arms around his neck, fell fast asleep.

  His first-born. His princess. His favourite.

  Kathleen, who had not wanted to intrude on his personal grief, began to speak, softly.

  ‘Tommy, we have to move her away from here. Her belly is trouble, a straight link in time to the priest. Two major events in one street would have to be connected. It is another reason for the police to visit your house. I don’t know what has brought them here today, but I have a feeling that I just have to get her away. I have already rung home. I’m taking her and Nellie to Ireland for a break while we try to figure out what to do, but I do know this, Tommy: no one around here must have even the slightest notion that the child is pregnant.’

  He still couldn’t speak. His child was pregnant with the child of a man he had murdered with his own hands. How much worse could it be?

  He made no attempt to halt the tears. He didn’t care that he was breaking the unspoken code that real men didn’t cry.

  Jerry didn’t speak. He offered no words of comfort. To do so would be to acknowledge Tommy’s distress. Jerry had shed many tears of his own and knew that the best thing to do was to let Tommy cry them out.

  It seemed only moments before Maura arrived back in the kitchen and was handing each of them a bottle of Guinness.

  With a nod of appreciation to Maura for the bottle, Jerry asked Kathleen, ‘When are you leaving, Mammy?’

  ‘Tomorrow night, Jer. Well, at three in the morning, when it is at its darkest. We will leave the street without anyone seeing us go.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Maura almost shouted. ‘I thought we were planning for the school holidays?’

  Kathleen continued, ‘Once we have left, you have to put the story about that my sister is ill. I had to rush back home and the girls came with me to help. I’ve made enough phone calls from the Anchor and given that story to Bill on the bar. I also used the phone tonight and told them we were leaving soon. I called Maeve the other day when I already knew in my mind what I was planning and she knows what’s what.

  ‘We have family in Ireland we can trust, Tommy, we all do. The streets here are
on fire with the chinwagging and we need to be out of it. If we aren’t here, we can be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. If they see us all leaving together with bags in hand, moving off for a sudden holiday, the gossip will run riot around the four streets and might reach as far as the police station.’

  They were silent with shock at what Kathleen had planned. Each raised their bottle at exactly the same moment and took a long gulp of the Guinness.

  But Kathleen hadn’t finished; there was more.

  ‘Now, Maura, we have to put on the act of our very lives, like we have nothing to hide and the fact that we have gone away is just a coincidence. Bring all the girls in tomorrow, even Peggy. Let’s have a hair night. We need everyone to think all is fine and dandy in the Doherty house and that we haven’t a care in the world. Don’t even tell Kitty that she is being taken the following morning. The less she knows, the better.’

  The following evening, after a few knocks of mops on kitchen walls, Sheila arrived in Maura’s kitchen and transformed it into a hairdressing salon. Nellie had her hair washed, with her long locks tied tightly in rags ripped from an old nappy, which the following morning would leave her a head adorned with beautiful red ringlets.

  Brigid had brought with her a jam tart she had made to accompany the copious cups of tea, as well as a baby tucked inside a blanket sling tied across her chest.

  In her bag she had a pair of eyebrow tweezers and a jar of Pond’s cold cream. This she had smeared thickly over everyone’s eyebrows, in preparation for her session of plucking and shaping.

  Peggy had settled herself by the fire with a packet of ciggies and an ashtray.

  The kitchen was a buzz of activity as Kathleen, Kitty and Brigid took it in turns to have their hair washed over the kitchen sink by Alice as Sheila set about transforming them all into visions of beauty.

  Nellie and Kitty were enjoying the excitement. Hair nights in the kitchen happened about once a month, in one house or another. It was the only time Peggy ever washed her hair. Very few could afford a hairdresser and Sheila was a dab hand with a pair of scissors. The shillings she earned from her scissor skills made a difference to her life. Sheila also owned a rubber hose, which divided in the middle and connected to the kitchen taps, just as they did in the hairdresser’s. They all loved the atmosphere of the girls’ night in. For the first time in weeks, Kitty laughed at Peggy who grumbled and shuffled as usual as she came in through Maura’s back door.