The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  Although the lead had crumbled away into dust in their hands, it had kept them busy for days. But although the lead hadn’t held firm, both Howard and Simon felt that nothing was quite as it appeared.

  ‘I can smell a great big dirty rat,’ Howard said. ‘I just can’t bloody see it yet, that’s all.’

  The superintendent had begun breathing down their necks with threats of demotion and castration if they did not solve the case. It was now time to begin turning over even the very smallest stones.

  The bishop had led them both into the study and dispatched Daisy to the kitchen to fetch a tray of tea.

  Howard had no idea where to begin without causing offence. As he took his notebook and pencil from the inside pocket of his jacket, he cast his eye around, looking for an object of interest in order to stimulate a casual conversation.

  But the study was deadly dull with no ornamentation to elicit his admiration nor painting to be commented upon. Heavy drapes hung across the windows as a mark of respect and the only light shone from a standard lamp in the corner, throwing eerie, creeping shadows onto the high ceiling and the tobacco-stained walls.

  The murky-brown sofa and chair had seen better days and, apart from a small table in front of the sofa, the only other piece of furniture, in one corner, was the priest’s large dark wooden desk, with one tall hard-backed chair behind it and two smaller chairs opposite.

  Tall dark-oak bookcases partly lined the walls, the books appearing not to have been read for many years.

  Only a circular dark-burgundy rug with a deep-grey fringe provided any colour. Howard sighed. The room depressed him. There was something on the edge of the aroma, in the smell of musty old books and forgotten sermons, that made him feel intensely uncomfortable. Having been keen to gain entry into the Priory, he now couldn’t wait to get out.

  Howard ran his finger irritably around his collar, easing it away from his neck.

  ‘May I look through the father’s desk, Bishop, whilst we wait for the tea?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, Detective Inspector,’ said the bishop, ‘but I am afraid it is quite empty. We removed all the private papers yesterday.’

  ‘Really?’ said Howard, with a note of surprise in his voice.

  Simon raised his eyebrows. Howard’s intuition was kicking in. ‘What private papers?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, there were his sermon notes going back over some years and he had kept all his prayer requests and mass cards and his confirmation lesson notes.’

  Howard immediately felt stupid.

  ‘And what about his bedroom, his clothes and personal possessions?’

  ‘Clothes?’ The bishop stood before Howard, looking slightly confused, his brow deeply furrowed. Howard reddened immediately, feeling stupid and keener than ever to leave.

  ‘The only personal possessions in his room were his watch and personal bible, with his coat and hat and a few other personal books. They were dispatched today, to his sister in America.’

  ‘That parcel will be a bundle of laughs to open,’ said Howard under his breath as he turned away.

  Daisy tapped on the door and, once the bishop had shouted for her to enter, crossed the floor with the tray of tea.

  Howard felt the familiar feeling of despair. They were heading nowhere fast, again.

  The priest walks home from a wedding, is murdered and dismembered in the graveyard, and they don’t have a bloody clue why or how. He felt his promotion slipping further and further away.

  As Daisy handed the cups round, Simon tried to engage her in conversation.

  ‘Have you worked here long, miss?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Daisy, ‘nearly twenty years now.’

  ‘That’s a long time,’ said Howard, smiling at her. ‘I don’t suppose you saw anything unusual on the night the father was murdered that you think we should know about, did you?’

  Daisy looked at Howard with some intensity, as was her way. This was different from any question the sister had asked her and one she had to think about. Was there anything she thought they should know about? Well, maybe there was. Maybe she had seen something and it was nothing to do with what happened inside the Priory and so she wouldn’t be in any trouble if she mentioned it.

  Would she? Should she?

  While she pondered Daisy continued to stare at Howard, as though her eyes were boring into his very soul. He felt disconcerted and, with an embarrassed cough, sat up straight in the chair, struggling to balance his cup and saucer. He wasn’t used to saucers. He wasn’t used to a cup that had retained a handle.

  ‘The girl is simple.’ The bishop’s voice sliced through the loaded silence. ‘Very simple. Back to the kitchen now, please, girl.’

  She would have to be, to work here, Howard thought, looking around at the dreary room, slightly relieved that Daisy had stopped staring at him.

  Within an hour, Howard and Simon had jumped back into the police car and were heading off down the gravel drive. As they turned left towards the four streets, Simon banged the dashboard.

  ‘God, it’s doing my fucking head in. I know there is summat we are missing, like it is just there, out of our reach, and yet we can’t get a handle on any of it.’

  Howard was silent, deep in thought. As he shifted up a gear, he turned back down the Dock Road into town and, looking into the rear-view mirror, he replied, ‘We just keep shaking the tree, Simon, or, better still, let Molly Barrett do it for us. That nosy old woman is better than a dozen detectives on that street. If there is something to know, she will lead us to it, I promise you. We need to give her a little encouragement, sit back and wait.’

  Annie O’Prey had finished brushing her step and wondered why Molly had been a no-show. Although their front doors were only two feet apart from each other, Annie turned back inside and walked through her house, out of the back door, putting her broom away in the outhouse, then walked through her back yard, into the entry and in thorough Molly’s back gate.

  The front door was never used for the purpose that it was intended.

  Molly was in the kitchen, baking.

  ‘The priest is dead, Molly. He won’t be wanting those scones where he’s gone,’ said Annie in a superior tone, as she folded her arms and sniffed her disapproval of a woman trying to cheat the inevitable reckoning at the pearly gates. Annie felt pleased with herself, having found a weakness and scored a point. Annie was on top.

  Molly neither acknowledged Annie’s presence, nor looked up from her task.

  ‘I thought I would bake some for Daisy. I’m neither stupid nor senile, Annie,’ she replied. ‘I doubt a priest whose langer me cat brought home would be wanting a fresh scone.’

  She mentally relished the put-down.

  ‘I’ve always sent her a few in the batch I made for the priest. Daisy and I are good friends and now that a little time has passed, I thought I might as well pay her a visit, just to see how she is getting along. She has no friends as such and, God knows, it took her ten years before she even began to speak to me and I’m the easiest person in the world to get along with.’

  Annie raised her eyebrows heavenwards. Only that morning, she had felt the need to discuss Molly’s new-found self-importance with Frank, from the fish shop.

  ‘God, that fat lump gets on me nerves something wicked, so she does. Thinks she’s very important now that she’s having cups of tea in the parlour with the bizzies. Such an interfering busybody she is herself an’ all.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her, then,’ said Frank. ‘Leave the woman to her own devices.’

  Both Frank and Annie knew that would never happen. Molly and Annie were best friends who complained about each other so often, it was as if they were sisters.

  ‘There you go, Annie, that’s a nice bit of fish,’ said Frank, handing her the damp and neatly folded newspaper package. ‘Give the skin to Molly’s cat, keep him happy and away from my front door, for feck’s sake. It’s a jungle out there on your streets.’

  Annie blessed Frank
with smile as she left to impart to Molly the gossip she had gathered from the fish-shop queue. All animosity towards her neighbour was forgotten in a flash of her naked gums.

  Daisy looked out of the large sash window as she made the bishop’s bed to see Alice walking with the pram down to the bottom of Nelson Street, and Molly walking up towards the church with a basket in her hand, covered with a tea towel. She hoped Molly would be heading to the Priory and, when she turned the corner into the drive, Daisy’s heart skipped a beat.

  She hadn’t seen Molly since the Sunday before the priest died.

  Daisy’s head was hurting with all the things she had seen and heard, and now that the bishop was on his way back to Dublin, she hoped that Sister Evangelista would let her stay at the convent until the father’s replacement arrived. Sister had told Daisy to call into the convent after she had cleaned the Priory, but for now she would stop and have a cup of tea with Molly.

  Daisy had a visitor. At last, someone she could talk to about all the things burning in her brain.

  12

  ALICE AND JOSEPH were on their way to Brigid and Sean’s house.

  Brigid was sitting in front of the range with her youngest lying across her lap, about to have her nappy changed.

  ‘Hello, come in, come and sit down, and how’s our baby Joseph this morning?’ Brigid cheerfully greeted Alice. ‘Has the tooth come through that was giving him hell yesterday?’

  ‘Morning, Brigid, no, it hasn’t and I really wish it would. He hardly slept last night and his cheeks are burning up like mad,’ said Alice, lifting Joseph out of his pram.

  ‘Have ye any Disprin?’ Brigid asked Alice.

  She didn’t look up as she deftly removed the pink-topped nappy pin from the white towelling nappy worn by her scrap of a red-headed daughter. Brigid was house-proud. The whiteness of her nappies, as they blew in the breeze, was a source of joy to her. She had seen too many grey nappies blowing on lines around her and had vowed that hers would always be the whitest in the entry.

  As soon as the dust from a load at the docks blew up and across the four streets, she was the only mother to dash straight outside to pull her nappies off the line and dry them indoors.

  ‘No, I haven’t used anything, to be honest. Kathleen usually deals with most of this. I am really not sure what to do.’

  ‘Hang on, give me five minutes and I’ll get him one, I’ve plenty. I will just change this little madam’s nappy.’

  Alice thought how much the red-headed baby reminded her of a skinned rabbit. The soaking wet nappy had filled the room with the heavy smell of ammonia.

  To Alice’s horror, Brigid now folded the nappy over and wiped it across her own face, rubbing down the side of her nose before holding her hair back to wipe her forehead and under her chin. Then she rubbed it across her cheeks and over her closed eyes.

  ‘Oh, my giddy aunt,’ squealed Alice. ‘Why the hell did you just do that, with that stinking-wet nappy? The wee has been on that all night!’

  Brigid laughed. ‘Exactly, and it’s all nicely concentrated. There’s a reason why we Liverpool girls have the best complexions in England, Alice. A wipe-over with the first wet nappy of the morning is the only beauty regime we need.’

  ‘What, you do that every morning?’ Alice found it difficult to hide her revulsion.

  ‘Alice, I have a brood of daughters and an endless supply of wet nappies. I have been doing it for years and so does every woman on the four streets and across the whole of Liverpool. Sean tells me the sailors all say the same thing, that there are no women in the world with skin as soft as that of Liverpool women. They say the sailors are so captivated by it, they sing sad songs about Liverpool girls as they leave port, so they do, and happy ones when they sail back in.’

  Alice had to admit it. The women who never seemed to wash, and smelt none too pleasant, always had lovely complexions.

  Many of the women on the four streets had lost most of their teeth and those they retained were black and crumbling, but their skin remained beautiful. You could even tell that Annie O’Prey had once had nice skin.

  ‘Jeez, Alice, where have ye been living all of ye life?’ said Brigid, laughing.

  With expert deftness, she picked up the baby and handed her straight to Alice, who was so shocked she almost dropped her. How did she explain to Brigid that she had never even held baby Joseph until he was three months old?

  But Brigid hadn’t noticed and was still talking as she pulled back the curtain across her kitchen press to look for a Disprin.

  Alice stood with the baby in her outstretched arms begging for her not to move or make a sound.

  ‘Was there anything else ye needed?’ said Brigid as she rooted around in her cupboard.

  ‘No, nothing, I just thought I would pop in to say hello and to say that we would love to come again to the club with you and Sean, if you are ever going on a Saturday night again.’

  Alice didn’t take her eyes off the baby while she spoke.

  ‘Wasn’t it a grand night!’

  ‘It was, yes, we loved it and Angela was great about minding Joseph. Jerry gave her sixpence when we got back.’

  ‘God, I would have to pay someone a fortune to mind mine, so I would. We have so many, we have to wait until Sean’s mammy is here, but she isn’t going back for a few weeks so we can do it again. Will ye stay for a cuppa? Sure, go on, ye only have the one little fella to look after, ye have time.’

  Alice was happy to stay for a while. She wanted to ask Brigid questions about Sean and their plans for America. Her golden opportunity came just as Sean’s mammy walked in the back door.

  ‘Oh, hello, Alice, how lovely to see ye. Are ye stopping for a cuppa?’ Mrs McGuire said, before she had even taken her coat off.

  Sean’s mother was half the size of her son and a fine-looking woman. On her visit from her village just outside of Galway, she had adopted the Liverpool custom of leaving her curlers in underneath a hairnet. It was not something she did back at home, where they didn’t bother with the curlers. A headscarf was good enough.

  But now Mrs McGuire was looking worried.

  ‘Brigid, Caoimhe does not like that school, I’m telling ye, she does not. I almost had to push her through the door. If ye ask me, the nuns in Liverpool are different altogether from the nuns in Ireland.’

  Brigid said, ‘I know, Mrs McGuire, but what can I do? The nuns say she will get used to it soon enough.’

  Mrs McGuire was having none of it.

  ‘Aye, she might that, but if you ask me, those nuns are too cruel. One of them slapped her across her little legs because she was crying for me. Dragged her in through the door by her arm, the sister did. She doesn’t get that at home, Brigid, so why should she have to take it at school? Broke my heart, so it did, to leave her at the gate. Why won’t the nuns let us into the yard to say goodbye? Cruel, so it is.’

  Brigid was only half listening as she mixed a spoon of molasses into Joseph’s bottle and handed it back to Alice, full of the dark liquid.

  ‘Here, give that to Joseph,’ she said, wiping the bottle with a tea towel.

  ‘I will, thanks, but what on earth is in it?’ asked Alice, as she smelt the teat of the bottle.

  ‘It’s a bit of molasses, nicked from one of the tankers, mixed with a little warm water and a dissolved Disprin, mixed in with Joseph’s milk to take the pain out of his teeth. He’ll have a lovely morning nap after that.’

  Alice nervously tipped the bottle and put it into Joseph’s mouth. His eyes opened as wide as saucers when he took the first mouthful.

  ‘See, they love it,’ said Brigid. ‘Kathleen will have a jar of molasses in the cupboard; just a spoon and he will be fine, but only a little. You can mix it in with the milk once a day, but be careful he doesn’t get used to it now and want it all the time. The tankers don’t come in every day and we have to take it in turns as to who gets the drippings from the loadings.’

  ‘My God, that is the first time he has smiled in
days,’ said Alice, sitting down on the chair to nurse Joseph, who was sucking so furiously that she was afraid to break his stride.

  She was also watching Sean’s mammy, and waiting for an opportunity to talk to her about America. She leapt in almost straight away.

  ‘So, do you get to visit your daughter in America, Mrs McGuire?’

  ‘I do, Alice, and sure ’tis a wonderful place altogether. They pay for my fare to go and beg me to live there with them, but sure I can’t, unless Sean and Brigid decide to go too. I can’t leave them behind with all these babies to look after on their own, can I?’

  Searching for the molasses had given Brigid an excuse to tidy out the press and wipe out the drawers. She gave Alice a sideways look as she emptied out the contents onto the kitchen table and wiped down the shelves. She had noticed Alice and Sean were in animated conversation about America on Saturday night. The conversation had made Brigid uncomfortable and she didn’t want Alice starting to talk about it again to Sean’s mammy.

  ‘I have a mammy too, Alice,’ said Brigid haughtily. ‘And I have an opinion, and I’m afraid America is not for me and Mrs McGuire knows that. If the boot was on the other foot, you wouldn’t want me to be dragging Sean away over to America and leaving ye all alone, now would ye, Mrs McGuire?’

  The temperature in the room had noticeably dropped and Alice stood to take her leave. She was amazed by Brigid’s lack of ambition and thought how much she wished she could change places with her. She would even have a dozen kids if it meant getting away from Liverpool and on a boat to America.

  Later that evening, Sean won three matches in a row. It had been a good fight and he had pocketed seven pounds and ten shillings from each match. More than he took in a week’s wages on the docks.

  He was doing better than he had ever dared to hope and his savings were mounting up.

  This was a relief. He had to train hard and, what with his job, it meant he was hardly ever at home. Boxing was a means to an end. He didn’t enjoy working on the docks, but at least with the boxing he fought for the money and it was his. He wasn’t lining the pockets of the thieving bastards over at the Mersey Dock Company.