The Children of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Her stepfather would miss a night or sometimes even two down at the pub and would sit Joe on his knee and, for a while, Lily dared to hope that things were improving. That there could be a future for her that didn’t involve being a crutch for her parents and the only person who stood between her siblings and the children’s home on Menlove Avenue or over in the convent itself.

  Lily studied Joe carefully as she fastened her thick stockings. He had been known to slip off the pot, spilling the contents all over the floorboards. Without a mirror, she used the almost toothless comb to calm her hair and then skilfully wound it into a bun as Katie now plonked herself on the pot and, slipping her thumb back in her mouth, appeared to fall asleep.

  ‘Katie, wake up,’ said Lily. ‘Come on, please, not today. I have to leave early. It’ll take me for ever to get to work in this.’

  Lily dressed in seconds. It was so bitterly cold, she’d wanted to keep her threadbare flannelette nightshirt on under her office clothes. She possessed two winter work outfits and it was only the most enormous row at home that had enabled this to happen.

  ‘Are you shivering, Lily?’ whispered Joe through his wheeze.

  ‘I am, it’s freezing. Come on, you. Enough. Let’s get you back under the blankets. Don’t you get out of the bed until the fire is going. I’ll go and warm some milk. Stay there, do you hear me?’

  Joe burrowed down under the blanket with a grin, glad to be back in the warmth.

  Lily opened the bedroom door and the blue smoke from the last of her mother’s cigarettes filled the air. The kettle whistled a welcome as she stepped into the kitchen.

  ‘Make the tea,’ barked her mother. ‘Use the leaves from last night.’

  Lily poured the boiling water and slipped out to the coal house, returning with a bottle of sterilized milk.

  ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ said her mother, casting a cursory glance as Lily poured the entire contents into the pan she had cleaned the night before.

  ‘Save me some for me tea,’ her mother said through a haze of cigarette smoke.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mam,’ said Lily as she shook the last drops into the pan. ‘I didn’t hear.’

  Her mother narrowed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

  Lily had heard her full well and she knew it. She’d bought the milk for Joe and Katie on her way home from work the previous evening and hidden it behind a coal sack. As far as she was concerned, it was for them. Not her mother, who lived her life sustained by nothing more than Guinness. She breathed a sigh of relief to discover that the bread she’d hidden at the back of the cupboard was still there. She crumbled it into the bowls.

  ‘A right Mary goodwife you think you are, don’t you,’ sneered her mother as the kids came in and picked up their bowls and took the spoons Lily held out to them.

  ‘Your stepfather has gone out to do a day’s work with nothing in his stomach. I didn’t know we had owt. It should have been him what had the milk.’

  Lily knew her stepfather would be back through the door within minutes, once he realized no one else was heading to the docks that morning. Taking nothing for herself and also off to do a day’s work, she lifted her coat from the nail on the back of the door, slipped it on and began fastening the buttons. The coat smelt strongly of cigarette smoke and refried lard.

  ‘I’m off to work now, Mam. I’ll be back at six thirty as usual. Shall I call into the shop for food with my pay, before I come home?’

  ‘No, you will not. Bring it straight here. They can have a pie from the van when I’ve counted it.’

  Lily made a mental note to collect the pies herself and pretend she had misunderstood. The kids would have nothing after their breakfast until she retuned home. Not unless Mrs McGuffy next door gave them a biscuit or two, as she often did.

  Fastening a headscarf under her chin, Lily bent down to kiss Joe. ‘You stay in here in front of the fire today, Joe. ’Tis too cold for you to go outside. Come straight home from school, Katie. Get back to Joe, don’t dawdle. Do you hear me?’

  ‘The state of you in yer fancy coat,’ sneered her mother as she dragged on her cigarette. ‘I could get a few bob for that, if the notion took me.’ It was a second-hand coat, acquired by Sister Therese for her star pupil. ‘Think you’re something in that, don’t you, eh? You know what they say, don’t you? Eh, you, miss.’ Lily’s mother stopped speaking just for a moment, to pass wind loudly. ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she said as she shifted in her seat and pulled on her cigarette. ‘First ciggie of the day, always gets me going.’ And as though nothing had happened, she continued, ‘They say pride comes before a fall and that’ll be you one day, miss. Flat on your face, you will be. You watch my words, And me, I can’t wait. Someone needs to teach you a lesson, Miss La-de-da Lily.’

  Lily stepped out on to the landing, inhaled the bracingly sharp icy air and closed the door gently behind her. Her own mother was jealous of her, she thought. She resented her. She hated her, even. Yes, that was it, she really hated her.

  Far more than Lily hated the sound of children playing. And that was a lot.

  4

  Sister Therese had found Lily her job. When she’d appealed to Mr and Mrs McConaghy she’d known exactly what she was doing and what buttons to press to achieve the desired result. It was a technique she had deployed time and time again and not a day passed without her giving thanks for good old Catholic guilt and the premise that all sinners were forgiven every indiscretion the moment they left the confessional. If they did exactly as the priest had instructed.

  Sister Therese and Father Brennan had a deal. ‘Oh, ’tis a great deal,’ she often said to him. She would tell him what penance she needed to be pressed upon whichever financially flourishing tradesman happened to be sitting in the confessional, and he would oblige. No one ran a community as efficiently as Sister Therese.

  Mr and Mrs McConaghy owned a business that was growing in profitability year on year. Their processing plant took raw jute from the docks and spun it into rope and, using a furnace and smelter, spun raw metal into brass wire. The plant was staffed by the steady flow of Irish labour that arrived in Liverpool; the men came straight from the Emerald Isle, through the dock gates and down into the hot bowels of the processing plant.

  The McConaghys attended St Chad’s once a day and twice on Sundays but had performed barely a single charitable act in their lives. They both knew it and felt it and their guilt grew as fast and as large as the company bank balance. This guilt was obvious to Sister Therese. It was as clear to see as the nervous tremble on their lips when they blessed themselves and bent a knee to the Holy Mother before they slipped into their pew. Sister Therese had observed similar behaviour many times among the better-off. They were conflicted. They veered between adoring the vast amounts of money they made in their processing plant and fearing that, if they didn’t take the right steps, their paths to heaven would be forever blocked by an impenetrable wall of fifty-pound notes. They were seeking a way to avoid eternal damnation.

  Father Brennan had already hinted at how their respective paths could be made clear. ‘Share the proceeds of your wealth,’ he had whispered through the mesh. He had instilled the fear of God into them and they’d both broken out in a cold sweat. ‘It is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,’ he’d continued, driving the point home. It was then up to Sister Therese to show them how.

  This she did by offering up a girl she described as ‘the most clever and gifted I have ever taught, a competitor to Einstein himself, so good is she at her figures’. And then she’d landed the killer blow. ‘As virtuous as any daughter would have been, had the good Lord seen fit to bless you with your own.’ They were done for.

  ‘She’s only half Irish, that I will admit,’ Sister Therese said. ‘Her mother is from Dublin – and not from the best area. But she is a grand girl of great religion and honesty and the good Lord, well now, he would just love the person who gave a poor gir
l like Lily a job in a nice warm office. Without a doubt, that is his very favourite type. Father Brennan and I have discussed this on many an occasion.’

  The double-act of Father Brennan and Sister Therese had triumphed yet again and they celebrated with a glass of Irish whiskey.

  ‘Make sure you negotiate a good deal for the girl,’ Father Brennan had said. ‘They are neither of them filled with the milk of human kindness. And childlessness has left her a bitter woman, though she dotes on that niece of hers, Amy. The one that never comes to Mass.’

  Sister Therese filled up Father Brennan’s glass. The supply of Irish whiskey at the priest’s house grew weekly as one or another Irish returnee to Liverpool dropped off an offering. It was not unusual for Father Brennan’s housekeeper to open the front door to six bottles of milk and one of whiskey. No one, no matter how hungry, dared to steal from the priest’s house.

  ‘Sure, but there is a reason why the good Lord left them childless and I’m thinking that they could be just the people to help Lily out. They both need salvation. Greed will be their eternal undoing before too long and I have just the way of letting them know that.’ She always spoke faster after a drink, and Father Brennan, being slightly deaf, had to follow her lips to understand what she was saying.

  He drank his whiskey and smiled. ‘That you do. There is no one quite like you, Sister Therese, for getting her own way. Be careful though. Someone needs to look after that tiny little fella, Joe. Both parents were in the Red Admiral the whole day yesterday. Sheila behind the bar told me as much at Mass. She said someone needs to be keeping an eye on the children and that Joe is not as good as he should be. He has the worst chest in Clare Cottages, apparently. But I told her not to be worrying and that we could manage it ourselves. We can, can’t we, Sister? All those children have been christened as Catholic, have they now?’

  ‘They have, Father.’

  ‘In that case, we don’t want the Corporation interfering, do we? We’d have no control over where the wee ones were put should they take them into care. ’Tis into our own home they must go should that happen. But there’s time for that yet. Let’s see what can be done. Have no fear of using the McConaghys. They will be grateful to have been diverted off the road to hell.’

  Sister Therese tipped up her glass and emptied it. She had never actually liked the taste of whiskey, but she did like the warm feeling that burnt beneath her breast and the sudden flush in her cheeks. And once she’d finished the first glass, she found herself looking forward to the second.

  Father Brennan emptied his own glass as his speech began to slur. ‘Grand. You know, I wish the good Lord would give me the power to close down the Red Admiral. If I could, I would, and that’s a fact. Alcohol has ruined the families around here. ’Tis the most wicked evil of all.’

  ‘’Tis that, Father,’ Sister Therese replied as her forlorn gaze rested on her empty glass.

  *

  Not a day went by when Mrs McConaghy didn’t wonder why she and Mr McConaghy had not been blessed with a child. In her heart, she suspected that it could be because they earned so much money and coveting was a terrible sin. She also knew that pride was a sin and she spent a lot of her non-working hours on her knees at the side of her bed, praying for forgiveness.

  Sister Therese had caught them in the church straight out of confession. ‘A hundred Hail Marys and be guided by Sister Therese,’ Father Brennan had said, and there she was, Sister Therese, standing by the church door. There was no way to escape her even if Mrs McConaghy had wanted to, and sure, was it not a coincidence that she was there by the door, straight after the father had spoken to her?

  The following day, Sister Therese walked up the steps of the processing plant and into the office. ‘Well, would you be looking at all this now,’ she said, almost before she was through the door. ‘The size of the place and all those people down those stairs, by the big furnace. Do they all work for you? Do they?’

  Half an hour later they were sitting in front of the office fire, heads bent towards each other, as Sister Therese discussed the terms of Lily’s employment.

  ‘God himself has put Lily on the path to your own door. I would be saying that was his very idea now. Would you not agree?’

  Mr and Mrs McConaghy nodded. It wouldn’t do to contradict the wisdom of a nun.

  ‘Imagine that? Ye see, there are people God really wants to have in heaven with him. Oh, no, is that custard slice for me? You shouldn’t have.’

  Sister Therese played them both like a finely tuned fiddle. Their lack of children set against the success of their business was the gossip of the workforce, and they knew it. By the time she’d tucked into a chocolate éclair as well as the custard slice and had downed a second pot of tea, the McConaghys felt rinsed with relief. Absolution had arrived on their doorstep. The process had been entirely painless. And it was cost neutral.

  ‘We will pay her a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, Sister. You don’t have to worry about that,’ said Mrs McConaghy, making sure that everything was well understood.

  ‘Oh, saints above, I don’t worry. ’Tis not I that worries. I am just a messenger for Father Brennan, ’tis he who is worried. Sure, I know you will. And I know you, Mrs McConaghy – Lily will have a lovely cake each morning, like the one you gave me, will she not?’

  Mrs McConaghy was speechless; she simply nodded her head.

  ‘And, as well as her pay, I know I can count on you to give the girl a good lunch too.’

  Again, Mrs McConaghy nodded dumbly.

  ‘Imagine, she will have a grand time in here.’ Sister Therese looked around the office. ‘And will she be sitting here now, in this nice chair in front of the fire?’ She’d jumped out of her seat and had her hands on the back of Mrs McConaghy’s tattered but beloved leather swivel chair. The problem with Sister Therese was that she never knew when she had won, when to call it a day and cut and run. She couldn’t stop herself.

  Mrs McConaghy took a protective step towards the chair and began to cut her off. She could see that if this progressed, Sister Therese would have them handing the business itself over to this gifted waif. ‘Well, actually, Sister...’ She didn’t make it past three words before Sister Therese continued, a little louder.

  ‘Do you know what I am going to do, Mrs McConaghy? I am going to bring Father Brennan down here himself, to show him what wonderful generous people ye have been and to ask him to offer up a prayer for your own reward in heaven and urge the good Lord to press the business into even greater prosperity. If that is at all possible now.’ She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He has a direct line, Father Brennan, as ye well know, straight to the Lord Almighty himself. ’Tis as clear as that phone on your desk, so it is.’

  Both Mr and Mrs McConaghy, equally perplexed, turned to look at the black Bakelite telephone on Mrs McConaghy’s desk, viewing it now in an entirely new light.

  ‘Would you be agreeable to that now?’

  ‘How could we not be?’ asked Mrs McConaghy. ‘We would love to see the father visit, wouldn’t we?’ She nudged her husband.

  ‘Oh, aye, of course we would.’

  In the weeks that followed, Sister Therese often commented to the other nuns at St Chad’s that Mrs McConaghy had been true to her word and that with the help of the Lord, she and Father Brennan had achieved a grand result.

  For his part, Mr McConaghy often commented to Mrs McConaghy that they’d been thoroughly charmed by a wily nun and that if he didn’t know better, he’d have said she’d cast a spell over them.

  Whatever the explanation, it was the McConaghys’ fear of the telephone that they had understood sat on Father Brennan’s desk – the one that didn’t connect to the exchange but rather had its own line all the way to heaven and the good Lord – that ensured they did for Lily exactly as they’d promised Sister Therese they would.

  Two days after Sister Therese’s visit, a thin and terrified Lily stepped through their office door on the arm of the pers
uasive sister. And from that day on, the McConaghys set about providing Lily with a sound training in bookkeeping, regular pay, a mid-morning fancy and a free lunch. Mrs McConaghy kept her swivel chair, however.

  Lily slipped most of the food she was given into the basket that she kept under the desk at her feet. At the end of her first week there, with her first pay packet, she bought a bright pink floral-patterned plastic birdcage cover from the market for threepence. She slit this across the middle, slipped it over the handle of her basket and tucked the elasticated edge around the woven rim. No one knew that, apart from her battered purse and a handkerchief, she carried nothing in the basket to work. But the journey home was a different matter. Every cake and treat put on her desk by Mrs McConaghy found its way into the basket and back home to Joe and her sister.

  The plastic birdcage cover was now three years old and Lily had become an old hand at her job. As the months and years had gone by, Mrs McConaghy had handed over more and more responsibility to Lily and did less and less herself. This was reflected in the size of Mrs McConaghy’s ever-expanding waistline. She had also grown increasingly fond of her young employee, becoming noticeably warmer hearted in the process.

  ‘Do you know, Lily, you are as thorough at the bookkeeping as I ever was myself,’ she had commented one day when Lily had been asked to stay behind for an extra hour to sort out the men’s pay.

  Lily made no reply. Much of her time in the first weeks in the office had been spent correcting Mrs McConaghy’s mistakes, not that she would ever have said so. The fact was, as she knew herself, she was practically running the business. Everything ran to order. Payments in, payments out. Hours clocked, wages paid. Goods measured in, bankers’ drafts out. Lily took pride in how, under her management, the business ran like clockwork.