As Alice walked up the stairs ahead of him, she realized this must be the last time. She would have slept with two men in two days, which was a recipe for disaster. As Jerry undid the buttons on the back of her dress and slipped his hands inside and cupped her breasts, she closed her eyes as a thrill of wickedness shot through her. She imagined it was Sean not Jerry who was caressing her. She focused her mind on Jerry’s hands, which became Sean’s, and the pleasure she felt as they roamed.
She either had to stop seeing Sean, or leave Jerry, she knew that, but for now, she would enjoy tonight knowing that when the morning came, she would have no idea which one she would choose.
The following morning, Harry popped his head round the kitchen door. ‘I’ve left the babby in the pram by the outhouse, Auntie Alice.’
‘Thank you, Harry,’ Alice replied quickly, so that he could hear her before he closed the door.
From the sink, Alice watched Harry, serious little Harry, with his purposeful walk and his head slightly bent. As he reached the pram, he straightened his cap and then lifted his green canvas army bag from the pram apron. He gave the pram handlebars a quick wiggle and slipped though the gate. As he closed the gate behind him, he saw Alice at the sink and gave her a smile before the latch clicked.
The Silver Cross pram bounced up and down in a gentle rhythm famous for sending babies to sleep within seconds.
The baby must be restless, thought Alice. She looked at Joseph, who had drifted back to sleep a half-hour since, and slipped into the yard. She pulled back the fly net and there was the baby with eyes wide open, blowing bubbles.
‘You little tinker,’ said Alice, smiling. ‘Your mammy will be back later. Back to sleep now, or I’ll be having a word with your daddy when he gets home from work. I have things to do today, miss.’
At that moment, Mrs Keating walked in through the gate, followed by a young woman Alice had never seen before.
‘Morning, Alice,’ said Mrs Keating, ‘this is my niece from Cork, Finoula. She is staying with me while she writes after jobs. She’s trying for work looking after babies, so she is, and I thought that, as Maura is away, she could get some practice in with the babby and could be a grand help to ye, an’ all?’
Alice noticed that Finoula’s hair was an unusual colour for an Irish girl. It was strawberry blonde, instead of flaming red or black. There were usually no in betweens; the Irish were one or the other.
‘Well, that would be fine by me and I’m sure Maura wouldn’t mind,’ said Alice. ‘But we are expecting Maura back tonight and I’m sure she will want the baby all to herself. You know what Maura is like. Would you like a cup of tea?’
For the first time in her life, Alice reached for the mop and banged on the kitchen wall for Peggy to come and join them. A visitor to the street was news.
Alice was becoming more Irish by the day.
Within half an hour, the kitchen was full. It was hard for Alice to concentrate on what the women were saying and she was glad that the conversation focused on Finoula, who was answering a barrage of questions about the news in Ireland.
Peggy had knocked on for Sheila and Deirdre. Alice began to understand that it was a very different gathering without Kathleen and Maura.
Her thoughts were wandering above the babble, not to last night with Jerry, but to the hotel, with Sean. As she remembered every second, a thrill of intense excitement shot through the pit of her stomach.
Where was Sean now? she wondered. Was he at work?
Brigid arrived at the back door with Mrs McGuire. Alice’s heart sank. She had been avoiding them, not wanting to face either wife or mother.
The women round the table chorused, ‘Brigid, Mrs McGuire, come on in, sit down for a cuppa.’
Alice felt resentful. She couldn’t help it. She was uncomfortable with people treating her kitchen as though it were their own.
Peggy jumped up. ‘I’ll go and fetch a couple of chairs from mine,’ she said. Then, ‘Holy Mary,’ she shouted from the yard, ‘there are so many prams out here, I can hardly get back to me own house.’
‘Shall I put the kettle back on, Alice?’ asked Sheila, who didn’t feel entirely comfortable doing so without asking first. She wouldn’t have thought twice had Kathleen been there.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Alice, dragging her thoughts away from Sean. She could not erase him from her mind and she could not for the life of her stop thinking about their lovemaking. Was it really so different from what had happened with Jerry last night, she asked herself? No, it wasn’t. And then, with the force of a train, it hit her.
She enjoyed sex with both men, but only one man dominated her thoughts to the point of distraction.
She was in love. She must be.
The laughter and the babble of the women faded. She had never felt like this before. She had thought of Jerry constantly, from the day she met him, but not like this. That was an obsession. This was love. There was an enormous difference. This made her feel happy and joyous, while her obsession with Jerry had made her reclusive and anxious, devious and mean. She had been cruel to Nellie and resentful, and she had made Jerry’s life a misery.
God, I was a sick person, Alice thought to herself and, for a second, the sadness of the life she had led, and the person she had been, clouded her thoughts of Sean.
What am I going to do? she asked herself. What a bloody mess. What is the right thing to do?
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ said Finoula, sitting next to her.
‘Oh, gosh. You don’t want to know what my thoughts are,’ laughed Alice. ‘Even I can’t work them out.’
She heard the dock klaxon sound as she finished washing the kitchen floor.
Jerry was working an extra half-shift, because the bar was full. Ships were waiting for a pilot to bring them into a berth. The pressure was on to unload as quickly as possible.
Finoula had taken both the baby and Joseph back to Mrs Keating’s in the same pram. She had offered to feed them and take them for a walk. Alice was grateful for the break.
She loved her freedom and she wanted, more than anything, to be alone with her thoughts. To have space to dwell and think, without any interruption, about Sean and the time they had spent together.
At what point had she fallen in love with him? She had no idea, but she did know that, right now, her heart ached to see him.
As though she had willed him into her presence, the back door opened and Sean walked in. He looked round the kitchen. ‘Are ye alone?’ he asked.
‘I am, yes.’
Within seconds they were in each other’s arms. Within minutes, Sean had lifted her skirt up to her waist, and his hands, wild to feel every inch of her, were all over her body, down the tops of her stockings, across her back and over her breasts, seemingly at the same time. As he entered her, he had only one reckless thought: that he desperately, beyond any notion of reason, wanted either Brigid or Jerry to walk in at that very moment and catch them both – just as he claimed Alice as his very own.
There was no school for little Paddy. It wasn’t his turn for the shoes. He was watching The Flowerpot Men on the black-and-white television when Peggy shouted to him, ‘Paddy, go and get my kitchen chairs, there are two of them in Alice’s backyard next to the gate. Go on now, do as I say.’
Little Paddy groaned.
Scamp sat up and looked at Little Paddy keenly, wagging his tail.
He placed his paw on Paddy’s back and whined.
‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ said Little Paddy, jumping up. ‘Mam, I have no shoes to put on, so how can I?’ he grumbled.
‘Here, put my slippers on,’ said Peggy, slapping margarine on the bread and then scraping it off again, for the meat paste sandwiches they would have for their lunch. Little Paddy wasn’t the only one not at school; there were four of them watching TV, but he was the only one that Peggy and Big Paddy ever sent to run a message.
Peggy kicked off her slippers, the only footwear she possessed, and slid them across the flo
or to Little Paddy.
‘Here ye are,’ she said. ‘Butties ready when ye come in with the chairs.’
The damp slippers were dirty and even Little Paddy could tell that they stank. He screwed up his face as he slipped them onto his feet.
Scamp ran ahead of him to Alice’s back door. Scamp loved Kathleen, who, like Brigid, always saved him stock bones and strips of bacon rind.
Little Paddy found the chairs next to the outhouse and began to carry them both to the gate.
‘Come on, Scamp,’ he said.
Scamp stood with his back to Little Paddy, looking up at the closed back door, wagging his tail furiously.
‘Come on, Scamp,’ shouted Little Paddy again, this time impatiently. It had been raining and the damp was soaking through the holes in Peggy’s slippers, making his feet cold and wet.
He put down one of the chairs as he lifted the gate latch. Pulling the gate wide open, he leant against it as he attempted to pick up the chair and struggle through.
‘Scamp,’ he shouted again, angrily. The chairs were difficult to carry and he didn’t want to have to put them down again.
Little Paddy looked up towards the kitchen window, to see if anyone had noticed him taking the chairs.
What he saw made him so scared, his knees felt weak.
Little Paddy went white and hissed under his breath as loudly as he could, ‘Scamp, get here now, ye fecking eejit dog.’
Just at that moment, Scamp, growing impatient, scratched at the back door and barked loudly.
Paddy looked back to the window, but no one indoors had heard. Paddy saw that Alice’s breasts were bare and that she was pulling her dress back over her shoulders. And Sean McGuire was helping her.
‘Oh, fecking hell, I’m dead,’ groaned Little Paddy, putting his hand over his eyes.
21
IT WAS ALMOST midnight when Maura and Kathleen turned the corner of Nelson Street. They froze with astonishment at the sight that greeted them.
There was not a family in bed on any of the four streets.
Every parlour light was switched on. Front doors stood partially open, as light bled out onto the pavement. Children and women stood in the shadows, in huddles, whispering, and the men, having hurriedly left the lock-in at the pub, stood silently at the opposite end of the street, pint glasses still in hand.
As Maura and Kathleen stepped into the circle of street light, everyone turned to look at them. For a moment, frantic, panicky thoughts whirled through Maura’s brain. She imagined her neighbours knew the truth about Kitty and were waiting for her, to scold and shout at her, to wag their fingers and to chase her off the street.
‘Where have you taken your whore daughter then, eh? What have you done with her? Ye all so high and mighty and ye can’t even teach yer own daughter to keep her knickers up.’
Kathleen took Nellie’s hand and gently drew her close. Kathleen sensed danger and death running hand in hand, wild on the wind.
Maura’s panic gave way to alarm when she spotted a large Black Maria police van outside Molly Barrett’s house. Three more blue and white panda cars were parked in front of the Black Maria. A man with a camera in his hand stood on the opposite pavement.
‘Hiya, love,’ he shouted. ‘Do you live on this street?’
‘Yes, we do,’ replied Kathleen. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s been a second murder,’ said the man casually. ‘An old woman, apparently, who lives in that house.’ He pointed towards Molly’s. ‘She was found only a couple of hours ago. Do you know what her name was?’
Stunned into silence, neither Kathleen nor Maura could speak.
The man with the camera carried on. ‘Seems like we’ve got a madman living around the dock streets. That’s two murders. I’m from the Echo, queen. Anything you can tell me about the old woman?’ He took his pencil from behind his ear and his notepad out of his pocket, conveying an air of expectancy.
At that moment, Harry and Little Paddy, with Scamp at his heels, came running up the street, wearing their pyjamas.
Maura said, ‘My God, it’s nearly midnight and Harry is not in his bed, and look at Little Paddy’s nose.’
Kathleen slipped Maura a sideways glance. There had been a second murder on their own street and yet Maura was more worried about the fact that Harry was still awake and Little Paddy had been neglected.
Kathleen realized Maura’s reaction was odd and inappropriate. She needed to move her indoors.
‘How could any of the kids sleep?’ she said, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘With a spotlight rigged up outside Molly’s front door, how could anyone sleep?’
‘Mam, Mam,’ yelled Harry, throwing his arms round Maura. ‘Molly is dead, her head has been smashed in. Annie O’Prey found her. Molly had been missing all day until Annie found her in the outhouse.’
The man from the Echo wrote down every word.
‘Me ma says we aren’t safe in our beds tonight, Auntie Maura,’ said Little Paddy.
The end of his nose was cased in many days’ worth of hard dried snot. Maura made a mental note to take him into her kitchen and soften it overnight with Vaseline, then she would help him clean it off in the morning.
Molly was dead. The street was in chaos and yet Maura fixed her attention on the things that kept her sane and grounded. The trivia of domestic life.
In the seconds that followed, an ambulance almost knocked them over.
‘Molly might be alive,’ said Maura, nudging Kathleen.
The man from the Echo dispelled that notion in a flash of the light bulb on his camera. ‘Nah, that’s the body trolley,’ he said, matter-of-factly.
More adults moved out into the pool of light and joined the children, carrying cups of tea, smoking cigarettes and wearing their nightclothes. The boldest came first, with others following nervously, taking their cue.
An hour earlier, the entire street had been alerted by Annie’s screams when she had found Molly. Anyone who hadn’t heard Annie would have been woken by the sirens, not fifteen minutes later, as they fired down the street, announcing the arrival of the police. But by that time everyone already knew, on the four streets and far beyond.
A row of heads in curlers and hairnets began to line both sides of Nelson Street in a guard of honour. The lit upstairs windows filled with the faces of smaller children, not allowed out into the misty night air.
Silence fell upon the crowd as neighbours ceased talking in order to show their respect to Molly.
As the ambulance departed, a new feeling of fear descended upon the inhabitants.
Molly had been bludgeoned to death. Old fat Molly who made cakes and gossiped.
As the ambulance trundled down the Dock Road towards town and the siren faded into the distance, taking Molly further from the place where she had spent every day of her life, the women began to cry. The first and the loudest was Peggy. Then others followed suit until the air became choked with the wailing of frightened women.
Tommy and Jerry were walking up the street towards Kathleen, Maura and Nellie.
‘Two murders, Tommy,’ said Sheila to Tommy, as he passed. ‘Are any of us safe in our beds, eh?’
Tommy couldn’t answer. He touched his cap and walked steadily towards Maura, whose dark eyes radiated fear.
The only sound he could hear was that of Molly’s cat, Tiger, howling on the back-entry wall.
22
THE TACITURN NUNS led a sobbing Kitty upstairs to a room in the eaves. The floorboards were bare and each wall was lined with a row of wooden-framed beds. Upon each lay an uncomfortable looking ticking-covered horsehair mattresses.
On one of the beds lay a dark blue pair of long shorts, a dark blue top and a white apron.
‘Put the clothes on, please, Cissy,’ said a novice.
‘I don’t want to,’ sobbed Kitty. ‘I want to see my mammy.’
‘You don’t have that choice, I’m afraid.’
Kitty noticed that Sister Celia carried her leather bag. Kit
ty didn’t want anyone else touching her precious belongings and so she leant down to take the bag from her.
‘Ah, not so fast, thank you,’ said Sister Celia. ‘We take this. You can have it back on the day your family collect you. You are very lucky, young lady. If it weren’t for the midwife, you might never see them again.’
Kitty was speechless. No one had ever spoken to or looked at her with such unkindness.
Sister Celia continued, ‘There are rules here. You will speak to no one, ever. Do you understand?’ Kitty could not believe what she was hearing. ‘No one. Not a soul. We don’t want the poor girls who won’t be leaving to be upset by your good fortune in having the midwife as your relative. No one here is allowed to speak. Do you understand that? We have penitents here who will have no one to collect them. They atone for their sin fully and so we don’t want them upset, now, do we? Do we?’
Sister Celia shouted and Kitty visibly jumped. ‘Now, get those clothes on and we will take you over to the laundry.’
The nuns stood and watched her. Kitty stared back, waiting for them to move away and allow her some privacy. They didn’t budge.
‘Hurry up. Have you something different from the rest of us, Cissy?’ Sister Celia sneered. ‘Pity you weren’t so shy when you were dropping your knickers for your five minutes of fun, eh? Not so shy then, were you? Get dressed.’
Kitty moved over to the bed. With her face burning and tears streaming, she removed her own clothes and put on the blue calico outfit that had been laid out for her.
The nun snatched Kitty’s clothes from her aggressively as Kitty held them out in her shaking arms. To Kitty’s utter horror, Sister Celia turned Kitty’s still-warm knickers inside out and, holding them almost at the end of her nose, inspected them through her thick wire spectacles, squinting as she did so. She sniffed the gusset and, looking up at Kitty with a smirk on her face, she hissed, ‘You dirty sinning whore. Not your fault, eh? Well, we’ve heard all that before and these knickers tell us differently, eh?’
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