The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Yeah, me da told me. The O’Prey boys were always jumping on and off it before they went down. It never saved them,’ said Little Paddy, feeling very clever indeed to have been able to impart this information to Harry, who was the cleverest boy in the class. Little Paddy jumped up and stood on top of the stone.

  ‘But I suppose it’s hard to balance, when yer hands are full of a tray of barm cakes you’ve just robbed out of the back of the bread van.’ Little Paddy hopped from foot to foot, as though testing how difficult it would be to balance on the stone.

  Harry smiled as he remembered the O’Prey boys, the overindulged sons of Annie, who lived across the road. They had been a great double act. What couldn’t be sourced from the docks when it was needed, the O’Preys would acquire. From a pair of communion shoes, to a wedding dress or even a wheelchair, for a small fee the boys could be depended upon to provide anything within reason, or even without, for anyone on the four streets. They thieved to order and were paying the price at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

  ‘D’you wanna know my secret, or not?’ Little Paddy was becoming disappointed with Harry’s apparent lack of interest.

  ‘Paddy, ye always have a secret. Does gossip just fall out of the sky and land in your kitchen?’ Harry replied, exasperated but interested, despite his determination not to be.

  Harry was still in shock at having discovered Little Paddy had known all along that big Sean, who was married to Brigid, and Alice, who was married to Jerry, had been blatantly carrying on right under everyone’s noses. To add insult to injury, his mammy, Peggy, had even seen them running away together the night before Christmas Eve, when everyone else had been watching the school nativity play. Gossip about the runaway lovers raged through the four streets, and everyone buzzed to distraction, all over Christmas.

  Harry’s mammy, Maura, had been mad about Peggy’s role in this and had given out something wicked to Harry’s saintly da, Tommy.

  ‘Gossip carts itself to that woman’s door, so it does, because it knows it will get a good hearing and then a good spreading after.’

  Tommy had looked across the table at Harry and winked whilst Maura ranted. It was taking her some time to adjust to the fact that Peggy had known – long before even Maura herself or Jerry’s mother Kathleen – about the devastation that had torn apart the lives of Maura’s closest friends. This was a thing of shame. Both Maura and Kathleen would have difficulty holding their heads up amongst their neighbours for some time to come. Their credibility as the wisest, holiest women on the four streets had been shot to bits. And who would now visit Kathleen to have their tea leaves read, when she couldn’t even foretell the catastrophe that was occurring under her very nose, in her own home?

  Maura was not happy.

  ‘To think, the shame for Kathleen, with Alice married to her own son and living under the same roof, and neither she nor Jerry had a clue. Can ye imagine the lies, and the stealth? God, what a wicked woman that Alice surely was. The cut of her. Didn’t I say so all along? Was I not the one who was never happy with such a union? Didn’t I say this would happen, eh? Eh?’

  Maura banged her rolling pin on the wooden table and then waved it at Tommy. Flour flew from the end, dusting Maura and transforming her raven hair in metal curlers into an even, rolling, snowcapped range.

  Tommy didn’t dare say that, since the day both of them had been witnesses at Alice and Jerry’s wedding, Maura had never even intimated that Alice would have an affair with Sean, the husband of another of Maura’s closest friends on the street, and then have the audacity to run away to America with him. When Maura was in this mood, there was only one thing to say and do.

  ‘Aye, Maura, ye did sure enough,’ he said, nodding sagely.

  ‘Did Jer never so much as say anything to give yer a clue as to what was going on? Did he not? He must have said something, Tommy. How could yer miss summat like that? Was Sean not acting different, like? Holy Mother, Sean was one of yer mates and he has run off with yer best mate’s wife. Ye work with them both all day, every day, and yer never knew a thing. Jaysus, Tommy, ye are a useless lump sometimes.’

  Tommy, the meekest of men, forgot his own rules of engagement and took mild exception to this latest criticism.

  ‘Me? For feck’s sake, Maura, Kathleen runs an industry reading the bleeding tea leaves every Friday and she read fecking Alice’s every week. If she couldn’t see it coming, how did ye expect me to? On the docks we don’t talk about such things as women. We talk about the horses and football, so don’t blame me.’

  ‘Bleedin’ football and horses, when there is really important stuff going on under yer very nose. Ye amaze me, Tommy Doherty, ye really do, so.’

  Maura undid her apron, throwing it onto the table. Then she flounced out of the back door, crossing the road to Jerry’s house to speak to Kathleen. There, once again she would offer solace and comfort, in the midst of the shameful tragedy that had befallen both of their houses.

  ‘Put the boxty in the oven,’ she had thrown over her shoulder as she left. ‘Do ye think ye can manage that? Have ye brain enough, eh, Tommy?’

  Maura hadn’t waited for a reply. As the back door slammed, Tommy turned to Harry, who throughout his exchange with Maura had been watching his da intently.

  Watching and learning.

  ‘Always agree with women, Harry, ’tis the only way to a quiet life.’

  And with that, relieved that Maura had left to vent her irritation elsewhere, Tommy extracted a pencil stub from behind his ear and continued to mark out his horses in the Daily Post for the two-thirty at Aintree.

  ‘Put the boxty in the oven, lad,’ he said as he shifted his cap back into place. ‘I’m fancying “Living Doll”, a nice little three-year-old filly at seven to one. What do you think, Harry?’

  Slamming the oven door shut, Harry rushed to sit next to Tommy to continue his education in how to be a man, whilst his twin brother, Declan, ran round the green, kicking a ball and pretending to be Roger Hunt.

  Scamp, Little Paddy’s scruffy, grey-haired mongrel, ran across the green towards the boys and flopped down into the snow at their feet, grinning proudly. From his jaws hung the carcass of a steaming-hot chicken, one leg hung by a sinew, dripping hot chicken juices onto Harry’s shoe.

  ‘Fecking hell, where has he nicked that from?’ said Little Paddy as both boys stared at the dog, their own mouths watering.

  In truth, Little Paddy was acting. On the four streets, no one locked their doors. The always hungry and artful Scamp had returned home, on more than one occasion, carrying a joint of hot meat. Just last week, Peggy had snatched a shoulder of lamb from his jaws, rinsed it under the tap and then thrown it in to the pot with their own meagre meal, a blind stew, which until that moment had comprised of potatoes and vegetables. Once the stolen shoulder of lamb was in the pot, all evidence of Scamp’s kill was concealed and they were safe from any neighbor who chose to burst through the back door yelling, ‘Have you seen me joint?’ Which was exactly what did happen only moments later.

  ‘That’ll do nicely and, ye lot, keep yer gobs shut,’ Peggy had said to her wide-eyed children, once the kitchen had returned to normal, as she dried her hands on her apron, which had been in desperate need of a wash for almost a month.

  The boys only occasionally saw a roast chicken on Sunday and not always then, either. Quite often a Sunday roast would be without meat of any description. Instead it would consist of two types of potatoes, roast and mash, with mashed swede and carrots, topped with a great deal of fatty gravy. This was made with dripping and surplus meat fat left from previous meals that had been saved in an enamel bowl. Amazingly, here was Scamp, with half a steaming chicken in his mouth. As good a piece of meat as either had ever eaten on Christmas Day.

  Both boys were by now salivating as they wondered who on earth on the four streets could afford to cook a chicken on a Tuesday.

  ‘Maybe we should run home, before whoever it does belong to runs down the street, looking for i
t. I’ll get the belt from me da, without wanting another from somebody else an’ all,’ said Little Paddy as he looked up and down the street nervously. But there was no sign of anyone.

  Harry felt sorry for Little Paddy. Tommy had never so much as raised his voice to any of his children. They often heard Big Paddy next door laying into his kids and Harry knew it pained Tommy. But there were rules of survival on the four streets and one was that when it came to matters of children being disciplined, you didn’t interfere.

  One evening, Little Paddy’s cries were so loud that Harry had begged his da to save his friend.

  ‘Da can’t, Harry,’ Maura had said, pulling him to her and giving him an almighty hug, while she shielded his ears with her hands. ‘We can’t interfere. It’s the law.’

  Little Paddy, made nervous by the arrival of Scamp and the stolen chicken, was now becoming impatient with Harry. ‘Do you want to know a secret or not?’ he demanded, hands on his hips.

  Harry’s stomach was rumbling at the sight and smell of the chicken and his attention had wandered from Little Paddy’s secret. Always mild-mannered, unusually for him, he was not in the best of moods today. He didn’t really want to know. He was more interested in reading than in gossip. School didn’t begin for another week and he had read every book he had been allowed to bring home for the holidays. Without another world to disappear into, he felt adrift.

  Tommy had promised that tomorrow he would take him into town on the bus, to the second-hand bookshop on Bold Street, to see whether there was anything suitable for him. The new library, being built alongside a new children’s nursery on the bombed-out wasteland, was only halfway through construction. Harry was possibly the only child on the four streets to have lost sleep with excitement at the thought of having an endless supply of books at hand and no longer having to beg them from the sisters, or explain why he wanted something other than the bible or a prayer book.

  ‘Make sure you choose the biggest book they have, if they are all the same price. It will last longer,’ Maura had said when Tommy had made the suggestion early that morning.

  Maura had never read a book in her life.

  Neither Harry nor Tommy commented, but Harry saw the little smile reach the corner of his da’s mouth as, once again, he gave Harry that wink. The wink that told Harry: they were united, father and son. A team. Together.

  Paddy had persuaded Harry to watch him playing footie on the green with his brothers and the rest of the local boys. Harry’s asthma meant that he couldn’t join in, but he enjoyed watching. Harry looked up at Little Paddy and nodded.

  ‘Go on then. You look as though you will explode if I don’t listen to whatever gossip it is ye have now. Although God knows, Paddy, it always gets you into trouble with ye da and I have no notion how it is ye get to know all these things.

  Little Paddy needed no further encouragement. He was now unstoppable. He jumped from foot to foot on top of the stone and spoke at double his natural speed.

  ‘There’s a new priest arriving at the Priory. His name is Father Anthony and he has said that he is going to get to the bottom of who killed Father James, so help him, God.’

  Little Paddy roared the ‘so help him, God’ bit, and raised his fist to the sky and dropped his voice an octave to mimic an older man.

  Little Paddy continued, ‘Mammy went to the Angelus mass last night at St Oswald’s and she heard it herself from Annie O’Prey. Sister Evangelista has asked Annie to give the Priory a good dusting before they arrive and to be the new cleaner, now that Daisy has gone. She’s to help the new father’s sister, Harriet, who is coming to look after him and protect him from murderers. Annie is taking over from Daisy, so she is, and she’s right pleased about it, too. And there’s more. They think Daisy has gone missing, so she has, and never got off the boat in Dublin, or met her brother.’

  Harry was now impressed. This was serious news, but he also knew his mother’s chagrin at Peggy’s having heard first would know no end, especially as it concerned the arrival of the new priest.

  His mother was always the first with gossip from the church, her being so holy. Before the murder of Father James, followed by Kitty leaving so suddenly to visit Ireland on her far-too-long-for-Harry’s-liking holiday, his mammy had never missed the Angelus. With her being the most religious mother in the street, she would surely have had that gossip first.

  Twilight was falling. Both boys lapsed into silence as they looked across the misty graveyard towards the Priory. Harry felt an icy shiver run down his back as the lights in an upstairs window flicked on and then off again, as the night closed in.

  Downstairs, in the Priory basement kitchen, Annie O’Prey was almost on the edge of hysteria. Sister Evangelista was trying her best to calm her down.

  ‘Jaysus, it was there, so it was, on the kitchen table. I went upstairs for no longer than five minutes to light the fire in the study. I came back down and the chicken was gone. What am I to do if I have no food ready for the new father and his sister? What kind of welcome to the streets would that be, now?’

  Sister Evangelista was relieved that a new priest was arriving and that his spinster sister was accompanying him to act as his housekeeper. They had left Dublin that morning and were expecting to be welcomed with a quiet supper at the Priory, with a full meal at the convent with the sisters the following night.

  Sister Evangelista had been glued to the phone since Christmas Eve. As yet, she had told only the few nuns she could trust that the previous housekeeper, Daisy, had failed to meet her family at the port in Dublin. Daisy’s brother and his wife were convinced that Daisy had never boarded the boat at Liverpool. But Sister Evangelista knew better. Miss Devlin, a teacher at the school as well as a good friend to the convent and to Daisy, had put her on the boat herself. She had even asked two elderly ladies to look after her, until they berthed in Dublin, so they knew she had caught the ferry. Neither of them had a good Christmas, worrying about Daisy’s whereabouts.

  What was more, the bishop had been less than sympathetic. He had even shouted at Sister Evangelista down the phone and since then she had refused to talk to him again.

  ‘Take a hold of yourself, Sister, you are like a hysterical farm girl from the country,’ he had said. ‘Take charge of your senses and stop yerself from turning everything into a crisis, when none exists, will ye? I am fair exhausted with the carryings-on at St Mary’s. Father Anthony and his sister will arrive shortly, so just leave it all to him. And remember, ye tell him nothing of what ye found in the Priory, before Father James was murdered by whoever it was who savaged the poor man, do ye hear me?’

  She had heard him all right. Having discovered in the Priory, following his death, the father’s dirty secret and a heap of filthy photographs of young children, she wasn’t so sure she would describe him as a poor man any longer. She had also heard the bishop singing a different tune altogether regarding the arrival of Father Anthony, who had been sent directly to Liverpool from Rome via Dublin.

  The Pope was none too keen on his priests being murdered and their private parts dismembered. So the Vatican had taken Father James’s replacement out of the hands of the bishop, who had been incensed from the minute he was told the news.

  ‘Apparently, Father Anthony has been at the Vatican for a number of years and is very well known and trusted. Seems to me the Pope knows exactly what he’s doing and, regardless of what the bishop says, I am mightily grateful for the Vatican’s intervention,’ Sister Evangelista had told Miss Devlin, the teacher at the school.

  Sister Evangelista had been made very angry by the bishop’s tone. There had been two murders, not one: Father James and their neighbour, Molly Barrett, who had been found in her own outhouse with her head caved in. Sister Evangelista had had to beg the bishop to visit Liverpool and take some responsibility, but had been bitterly disappointed. He had been no help at all, leaving Sister Evangelista to deal with the police single-handed. It was not until she found the disgusting photographs in Father
James’s desk that the bishop had bothered to visit the Priory. As she had confided to Miss Devlin, this was all very strange behaviour indeed.

  ‘Sure, he was never away from the Priory when the father was alive. Now that he is dead and we need the bishop’s assistance, I’m having to beg. That is a sad situation altogether.’

  Miss Devlin had agreed, but the bishop had been put there for one purpose only, to be obeyed, and neither of them felt inclined to challenge his authority.

  Sister Evangelista once again felt a familiar sense of helplessness and isolation. Father James’s housekeeper, Daisy, was missing and the bishop just couldn’t care a jot. And after all the trouble she had taken to follow his precise instructions for Daisy’s safe journey to Dublin.

  So much had happened in the aftermath of the two murders that Sister Evangelista had found herself struggling yet again. When she heard that Father Anthony and his sister Harriet would be arriving to lead the church, she had dropped to her knees in relief to give thanks to God.

  Another welcome pair of shoulders to carry the burden of upholding the authority of the Church in the parish of a murdered priest.

  The devil had brazenly strutted down their streets and Sister Evangelista was convinced that she was possibly the only person in the whole world who knew why.

  Maura let herself in through Nana Kathleen’s back door, to find Nellie washing the dishes, Kathleen rolling out her boxty on the kitchen table and Joseph snoozing in his pushchair.

  Maura smiled at Nellie, the child whose birth had taken the life of Bernadette, Nellie’s mother and Maura’s best friend, and who was up to her elbows in soapsuds.

  ‘You all right then, Nellie?’ Maura asked.

  ‘That poor Nellie,’ Maura had said to Tommy in bed only the night before. ‘First her mammy dies and then her stepmother runs away with the father of one of her best friends, leaving the little lad behind for her and Nana Kathleen to look after. What child deserves that, eh, Tommy? What next? Nothing, God willing, because that child can’t take much more. She has lost enough.’