The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘You want to watch that when you light up,’ said Kathleen. ‘Lacquer is flammable, you know.’

  ‘Flammable, what’s that?’ said Peggy. ‘I use Get Set from Woolworth’s. It’s the best and costs nearly a shilling a tin. Does the job, though. My hair won’t be going anywhere now and it lasts a whole two weeks each time it’s done. Jesus, it’s fecking itchy, though. Thanks be to God for knitting needles.’

  Tommy took another half-ciggie from behind his ear and lit up to join Kathleen. He put his arm across his Maura’s shoulders and hugged her to him.

  In the past few weeks, they had a newfound closeness, brought about by the realization of how near they had come to the edge of disaster.

  Neither would speak of the days when they had almost torn each other apart with blame and hatred. They did not acknowledge that Maura had entered her own temporary world of madness. Tommy, struggling with his own grief, had had to hide the tablets the doctor had given her, as he feared she would wake in the night and swallow the whole bottle. A shiver ran down his spine when he thought of how close they had come to falling apart. Looking at his neighbours all around him today, he knew, without doubt, how they had been saved. If it hadn’t been for Harry needing the hospital that night, God alone knows where they would be by now.

  Extinguishing cigarettes on the pavement under their heels, they walked into the church where Nellie and the Doherty girls stood at the back, near to the font, in all their lilac fluff and finery, waiting for the bride.

  ‘Not so comfortable with all these bizzies about, are you, Jer,’ Tommy whispered to Jerry.

  ‘’Tis a great day for robbers today,’ said Jerry, ‘the lucky bastards.’

  Jerry had said as much to Nellie that morning over breakfast.

  ‘They will all be here in the four streets today, every copper in Liverpool. There will be great pickings over at Seaforth on the docks when they know the coast is clear.’

  ‘Eh, pack it in, walls have ears,’ said Nana Kathleen, smacking Jerry across his cap with the tea towel and nodding furiously towards Nellie.

  ‘Eat that breakfast. Ye can go nowhere on an empty stomach,’ Kathleen had said to Nellie early that morning. Nellie had spent the entire night in yellow sponge curlers and had hardly slept a wink.

  ‘I’m putting those curlers in a parcel to Maeve,’ Kathleen had said as she removed them that morning.

  Kathleen sent a parcel from Liverpool back to the farm in Ballymara about once a month, as did anyone in Liverpool who could afford the postage home. In County Mayo, the shops carried very little of interest, their stocks being related directly to the need to survive rather than to entertain or amuse.

  Nellie had spent more hours than she could count in the post office queue, holding oddly shaped brown-paper packages tied up with string, ready to be weighed and posted by sea mail to Mayo.

  ‘They are no use here. Curlers to sleep in, my backside. What’s wrong with just leaving them in all day for decoration? Who would want to sleep in curlers? Curlers are meant to be worn, not slept in.’

  The parcel to be sent home lived in a drawer in the press and its contents grew each week.

  Only yesterday Nellie had taken a peep at this month’s parcel: Ladybird baby vests for someone in the village back home, Vitapointe hair conditioner and a bottle of Coty L’Aimant perfume for Auntie Maeve’s birthday, all these lay on the brown-paper sheets, waiting to be posted.

  Now, as Kathleen had scooped up the curlers and thrown them into the press drawer, Nellie found she was not sad to see the back of them.

  ‘Howard has no fecking idea that the fruit in his wedding cake came from a sack off the back of the Cotopaxi when it berthed six weeks ago. Sandra Dever doesn’t get her fruit or sugar from anywhere else. It’s always knock-off.’

  Both men sniggered and then Tommy stopped. He always felt guilty when he laughed, feeling he shouldn’t. After what had happened to Kitty, laughing must be wrong. He had never, ever wanted to laugh again. It had only been in the past few months that he had wanted to live.

  ‘Howard is all right,’ said Jerry. ‘It’s that Simon who gets to me. When they were questioning us, I always got the impression that he knew exactly what had happened and that, for some reason, he wasn’t letting on.’

  ‘That was just yer imagination, Jer. He couldn’t have known. How could he? No one saw us.’

  Tommy’s heart lightened as soon as he saw his girls in church, a cluster of lilac-dipped angels, smiling at him – even Angela. Before Kitty had died, she could rarely raise a smile and she certainly hadn’t done so since. Now she stood at the font in her white-satin, T-bar shoes, hopping from foot to foot, beaming.

  ‘Da, hurry up,’ she said impatiently. ‘The bride is arriving soon. Move, move, Da.’

  ‘I’m not budging until I get a kiss first,’ said Tommy, placing his hands on his hips.

  The girls laughed and clamoured, more eager to be rid of their embarrassing father than in need of a kiss. He placed a kiss on each of his girls’ foreheads as Jerry did the same to his Nellie.

  ‘You all right, Nellie?’ asked Jerry, thinking his heart would burst with pride. His little girl was growing through her own personal heartache with dignity, and growing more like her mammy every day with her red ringlets tumbling down over her shoulders.

  Nellie grinned up at him. ‘I am, Da, but get lost.’

  She playfully punched her da in the stomach. Jerry, pretending to be winded, laughed and followed Tommy into the nave.

  As he moved down the aisle, a thought struck Tommy.

  ‘Angela gets more like Kitty every day,’ he said to Jerry.

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing myself,’ said Jerry, patting his mate on the back as they dipped on one knee, blessed themselves and slipped along the pew, taking their seats next to Maura and Kathleen.

  Jerry didn’t like being in church. It made him uncomfortable and, already, his collar was beginning to make his neck itch. Since the death of his first wife, Bernadette, he had attended only the christenings and communions he could not avoid. Today he had no choice, as Nellie was a bridesmaid. He would be forced to sit and witness another couple take their vows at exactly the same altar where he and Bernadette had knelt all those years ago. Her coffin had lain in front of that same altar a few short years later.

  He now struggled to recall those years with the clarity he would like. This often made him panic, feeling that she was fading, which would mean that she was leaving them for good.

  It was the same church, the same time of day, the same sunshine. The same people bearing witness. The people of the four streets.

  The same shimmering silver ribbon of river flowed past only yards away. Every heart was filled with gladness, just as each had been for Jerry and his beautiful bride, Bernadette.

  Jerry and Tommy both knelt in prayer: Tommy, because Maura had prodded him; Jerry, because, for the first time he could remember, he felt compelled to give thanks for Nellie and his mother, Kathleen.

  He had lost his Bernadette in childbirth. His wife Alice had run away to America and left him for another docker on the four streets, a man who was supposed to have been his mucker. But he had his mam and his Nellie, both loyal and faithful, and he wanted God to leave them with him forever. For that, he knew, he should pray and ask him for his forgiveness, because sitting next to him was his best mate, Tommy, who had lost his daughter, Kitty. And there was Jerry, with his Nellie, alive and laughing at the back of the church. There, but for the grace of God, thought Jerry as he prayed.

  A frisson of excitement swept through the congregation and, without anyone having to turn round or guess, they were all aware that the bride had arrived.

  The organ struck up the bridal march and, as everyone stood, the procession began.

  Kathleen linked Maura’s arm with hers as they left the church, blinking in the bright sunlight. During those first awful weeks Kathleen had felt as though it was her job to prop Maura up. Now, it had become a
habit. A physical reaction to Maura’s weakness. She had become a human crutch.

  The churchyard filled with the sound of cheers and children squealing as they pushed past each other.

  ‘Well, isn’t that just a grand sight,’ said Kathleen, smiling at Nellie and Maura’s daughters. The three girls, holding Alison’s bridal train high off the cobbled path, were giggling and ducking as their school friends showered them with confetti.

  As they walked on to the Irish centre, Kathleen shouted out to Maura and Tommy’s twin boys, ‘Run on ahead, lads, and keep our table. Run now, fast.’

  Peggy had caught up with them whilst her silent husband, Paddy, fell into step alongside Tommy and Jerry.

  ‘Aye, keep ours too,’ said Peggy to her son, Little Paddy, giving him a cuff across the shoulder. He ran off to join Harry. ‘There’s nothing going to stand between me and that buffet today,’ she said, ‘and I want a good seat now ’cause I’m in for the night.’

  ‘Will ye be taking to the dance floor tonight, Peggy?’ asked Kathleen, squeezing Maura’s arm gently.

  Maura smiled. Making Maura smile was something Kathleen knew she could sometimes still make happen and it gave her enormous pleasure. There had been times when Kathleen had wondered whether she would ever see her friend smile again.

  ‘I’ll be dancing, all right, so I will,’ replied Peggy. ‘Michael Kenny is putting soap flakes on the floor tonight so we can dance a little faster. I can’t wait! Jer, I’ll be coming after ye for a spin as Paddy here, he’s feckin’ useless.’

  Tommy and Jerry exchanged glances of dismay. Jerry couldn’t think of anything worse than being forced to jitterbug with the neighbour named by the local kids as ‘Smelly Peggy’.

  ‘I have a spare pair of bloomers in me handbag just in case,’ said Peggy to Maura without a hint of embarrassment. ‘Don’t want the same thing happening as last time.’

  As they all walked on up the hill engrossed in the midst of comfortable chatter, no one dared ask what that was. All of them were talking, except for Big Paddy, who chain-smoked but never spoke a word. It was impossible to walk and talk at the same time when your lungs provided only enough oxygen for one function or the other.

  The bridal retinue stood on the path, posing for the photographer. The tall arched church door provided the backdrop for the former Miss Devlin and her new husband, Howard.

  As Nellie watched the departing backs of her da and Nana Kathleen walking up the brow, she felt both alone and very grown up to have been left behind with the wedding party. The girls were bouncing up and down with excitement.

  ‘Would ye look at them flowers,’ said Angela yet again, plunging her bouquet straight into her face and inhaling the fragrance. ‘Have ye ever smelt anything as wonderful as that?’

  Angela spun round and stuck her posy straight into Nellie’s face. Nellie’s posy was exactly the same and smelt just the same. Nellie fell about laughing as Angela began sneezing repeatedly.

  ‘Girls, girls,’ said Miss Devlin. ‘Stand still for the photographer now.’

  Nellie thought she had never seen anyone look as beautiful as her favourite teacher did today.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Devlin,’ she said, running up to the bride and grabbing her hand. With her face infused with pride and happiness, she grinned up at Miss Devlin, who slipped her arm across Nellie’s shoulder.

  Click, click, snapped the camera shutters.

  ‘Smile, girls,’ said the photographer.

  Click, click. A black-and-white moment, captured forever.

  ‘Look towards me, ladies. Kiss the bride, Howard. Go on, yer allowed, she’s yer missus now.’

  Nellie and the bridesmaids blushed and giggled at the photographer’s friendly taunts. They could hardly believe that Howard was actually going to kiss Miss Devlin, their teacher, right there in front of them, in broad daylight, yet he did just that.

  While Howard kissed his blushing bride, Nellie noticed a police car pull up alongside the bridal car that was parked at the church gates.

  ‘Where’s Harriet?’ said Alison, scanning the churchyard, then spotting Harriet modestly standing back from the main party. ‘Harriet, come here. I’m not having my photographs without you in them, so I’m not.’

  Harriet walked up to Nellie and, standing alongside her, placed her hand lightly on her shoulder, whispering in a confidential, girls-together way that made Nellie feel as though she wanted to burst with a sense of belonging and pride.

  ‘There are police cars everywhere, Nellie. I’ve never been to a wedding like this before and that’s for sure.’

  Nellie smiled up at her. It was not so long ago there were police cars everywhere on the four streets, every day.

  ‘We are used to that around here,’ said Nellie in a very matter-of-fact, grown-up kind of way. ‘It’s how Miss Devlin and Howard met.’ Nellie was displaying her life-before-Harriet credentials, her subtext being, not in an unkind way, we have known her longer than you.

  Harriet smiled down. She knew exactly what Nellie was doing.

  ‘Well, ’tis just a delight that everything has gone so well now. Don’t you think, Nellie? A wedding without a hitch, I think we could safely say.’

  Nellie laughed with pleasure. Harriet, a woman of indeterminate age, who was beautiful, travelled, clever and was the sister of the priest, was talking to Nellie as though she were her equal.

  ‘Yes, who would have dreamt that,’ Nellie said.

  She raised her gloved hand and returned her da’s wave as he turned on his heel and, for a moment, walked up the brow backwards to check up on his not-so-little-any-more girl.

  ‘But Miss Devlin is special, so she is. She can do anything. There not being a hitch was how it was always going to be. God, she would have let out a roar if anything had gone wrong, so she would.’

  As Nellie spoke, she noticed there was something unusual about the police car which had drawn up by the church gate. Rather than the usual blue-and-white panda, it was black and the officer who stepped out of it wore a flat-peaked cap with a very impressive wide black-and-white chequered band around the middle, not a domed helmet like most of the policemen around.

  He began talking to people in the street and casually walked over to some of the officers.

  Others, who obviously should have been elsewhere, such as on Seaforth docks, and not at the wedding, slunk back to their cars and began to slowly melt away.

  ‘Ooh, who is this?’ asked Harriet, following Nellie’s gaze.

  ‘I’ve no idea at all,’ said Nellie. ‘I’ve never seen a police car like that on the streets since the night Molly was murdered.’

  She whispered the last few words. It felt inappropriate to talk out loud about a murder whilst smiling for the camera at a wedding.

  ‘Howard, have you got a minute, lad?’

  One of the officers called out this most ridiculous-sounding question to Howard, beckoning him away from Alison, his bride of only minutes. Her smile slipped from her face as fast as her new husband’s hand slid out of hers.

  ‘Howard, what is it?’ Alison asked. Her feminine antennae were up.

  ‘Can’t be anything to do with me, love. I’m off for a fortnight now,’ Howard called over his shoulder. ‘Back in a second. I will just see what it is. Smile for the camera, girls.’

  His size twelve feet crunched on the gravel of the church path. Nellie realized that you could hear it very clearly because, suddenly, everyone else was quiet. The wedding scene stood in freeze frame. Only Howard was moving and the air filled with an intense expectation.

  Alison was the first to break the silence in an attempt to mask the sudden absence of her husband.

  ‘Harriet, what can it be?’ she said, putting out her hand to her friend, who moved from Nellie’s side to Alison’s. Nellie stepped closer in and tucked herself under Alison’s arm.

  Alison called to Sister Evangelista, who stood at the end of the drive, close to the important-looking policeman.

  ‘Who ar
e they?’ she asked.

  Since Sister Evangelista had been talking to Annie O’Prey at the gate when Alison had called her, it was a fair assumption that she would have heard every word that had been spoken.

  ‘I have no idea, Alison. They asked Mrs Keating if they could speak to Howard. Annie O’Prey butted in and told them he was getting wed today, but apparently the man said it couldn’t wait, and he had to speak to him now.’

  As Sister Evangelista finished speaking, Howard was seen talking to the man with the black-and-white chequered band on his hat and frowning.

  Howard began to walk back down the path with the important-looking officer, both heading towards Simon, who had moved over to the gravestones without anyone noticing. Simon looked even more concerned than Howard.

  ‘What is it, Howard?’ said Alison as they both walked past her towards Simon. Alison sounded agitated. This was not part of her carefully orchestrated wedding-day plan.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Harriet.

  She had never seen so many men in uniform in one place before in her life. She felt her face flush; she had never known such excitement occur in one day.

  The man in the peaked cap put his hand on Simon’s elbow and led him to the back door of the large Black Maria police car, its windows blacked out. Nellie could see that there was someone sitting in the back, but she couldn’t see who.

  ‘Alison,’ said Howard, shouting back down the path, ‘love, they have some news and they are going to need to talk to you.’

  ‘Me?’ said Alison, sounding both disbelieving and disappointed all at the same time. ‘Why me?’

  Suddenly the back door of the car opened and Alison gasped.

  ‘Daisy?’ Alison almost screamed her name.

  Click, click, snapped the shutters. Click, click.

  Wearing the pillbox hat they had presented to her at the Christmas play, and which Maggie had found on a hook in Sister Theresa’s section of the linen cupboard, Daisy half raised her hand in a nervous wave to Miss Devlin.