The Four Streets

by Nadine Dorries

  Just the one tall lamp, with a large red lampshade, was lit in the corner by the table. It had seen better days but despite its shabbiness, along with the glow from the fire, it bathed the kitchen in a warm light. Tommy inhaled deeply on his cigarette. Everything was all right in his world. Wasn’t this just the best bit of the day? His family were well and asleep on full bellies, a blessing in itself and not something that could be said for every child on the four streets. Each one tucked up in their beds, dreaming their own dreams. He looked down at his paper and heard the murmur of Maura’s and the priest’s voices.

  Father James was the only person who was ever taken into the front room. In Maura’s eyes, the kitchen wasn’t good enough for someone of Father James’s standing and importance. Father James was the ‘other man’ in Maura’s life, the only person towards whom Tommy felt any resentment. It was a sin he couldn’t take to confession and so it festered and rotted in his gut.

  He knew that the Father and Maura talked about the oldest twins becoming altar boys and entering the priesthood, and that they did it behind his back. As God was Tommy’s judge, that would never happen. Maura would witness the wrong side of Tommy’s temper if she ever tried to overstep her matriarchal mark to pull that one off. Being the mother of a priest brought with it a sense of pride and an elevated standing in the community. Tommy knew this was something Maura craved and would seek through the advancement of at least one of their sons to the priesthood.

  ‘Even a worm can turn,’ whispered Tommy to himself. He had rehearsed the words in his head ready for the argument that would come one day soon. He knew everyone thought he was a pushover but he also knew the boundaries he would allow himself to be pushed to. Even a worm can turn.

  He sighed and leant back in the kitchen chair as Maura walked into the kitchen. Tommy looked up with an element of surprise and, thinking he might have left via the front door, asked, ‘Has the Father gone?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Maura. ‘He’s gone up the stairs to bless the kids whilst they are sleeping. He’s a bit mad that none of them were at mass this weekend. I asked you not to stop them going, Tommy,’ she half hissed.

  ‘Aye, well, did ye tell him that football’s a religion too, so it is?’ said Tommy, through his chuckles. He had beaten the priest. One up to Tommy.

  ‘Hush yer mouth,’ she hissed. ‘He may hear ye.’

  Tommy leant over and turned up the volume on the radio and, as he did so, winked at Maura and they both giggled. She moved over to the sink where the bowl of cold greasy water awaited her with a knitted dishcloth floating on the top. It would have never entered Tommy’s mind to wash the dishes. That was women’s work and the dividing line was strong and well understood. Maura plunged her red, weather-chapped hands into the bowl and carried on where she had left off with the dishes. Whilst she waited for Father James to come back down the stairs and into the kitchen, she and Tommy chatted in the same relaxed way about the travails of their family life, as they had every night since the day they had married.

  Kitty was exhausted and had fallen asleep as soon as her head had hit the pillow. She shared a large bed with her sister, Angela. The boys were behind the curtain and also shared a bed. She had heard her da comforting Harry and sitting with him, having put a towel over Harry’s head and made him breathe over a bowl of steaming, medicinal-smelling water, and then that was it; she went out like a light. She sometimes thought that being the eldest, and a girl, was a curse. She had spent the day looking after her four younger brothers and her younger sister, and she had looked after Nellie too. But she hadn’t minded looking after Nellie.

  ‘Sure, Mammy, Nellie was a dream altogether,’ she had told Maura when her parents returned from their exciting excursion into town.

  Nellie was a good kid who did everything she was asked as soon as Kitty asked it. She never cried or whined, unlike Kitty’s younger sister. Kitty would rather have a dozen Nellies than one crying, whinging Angela, any day. Since she had been able, Kitty had helped her mother with childcare as soon as she was big enough to carry a child on her own small hip. She accepted that she was the working, practical appendage to her mother’s ever-productive womb and that was her lot in life. At such a young age, she not only knew what her future would hold, she was already an expert at it.

  When she looked back, she couldn’t remember how it had begun. She didn’t know what had woken her. Was it a noise or simply a sense that there was an alien presence in the room? She turned over onto her side to make herself more comfortable and to move their Angela’s feet out of her back. Even when she was asleep, Angela could be difficult. Kitty had to put Angela next to the wall to sleep. She cried if she was on the outside because she was scared, and would lie next to Kitty and spend her nights kicking, or crying out and waking up the others.

  Kitty opened her eyes slowly, taking in the familiar shadows in the room but aware something wasn’t quite right. She froze as she saw black skirts swish across in front of her face and then let out a startled gasp. He very swiftly clamped his hand firmly over her mouth.

  ‘Hush now, Kitty, ’tis only I. Don’t make a noise and wake the others.’

  As he moved his hand away from her mouth, Kitty realized she couldn’t make a sound. She had been about to say sorry after she had gasped, but there was something unnatural about how hard his hand had pressed on her mouth. She could smell the stale tobacco on his stained fingers and an acrid aroma of unwashedness that had rubbed off his hand onto the skin under her nose. She could taste blood on her inner lip where his hand had so suddenly slammed on her mouth. Her heart was banging against her chest wall so loud she could hear it. Could Angela hear it?

  She had known Father James all her life. He had christened her and taken her first Holy Communion, but he had never before touched her, other than to lay his hand on top of her head. She was confused and afraid. Waking up to find him standing by her bed was not a normal occurrence. She could hear music from the radio and her parents laughing downstairs. If Father James was in her bedroom, her parents must surely know. Why weren’t they in here too? Why was Father James alone? Why had he banged her on her mouth and nearly stopped her breathing? What was she supposed to say or do?

  Questions chased each other and, trapped, ran wild in her head. But she didn’t speak or move. He had told her not to make a noise. Kitty did as she was told. Father James was an authority that even her parents obeyed; she wouldn’t dare make a noise.

  She lay with her eyes wide open, looking at his face and wondering what on earth she should say. She had no idea how old he was. Much older, she guessed, than her parents. His hair was grey all around the sides, and she knew, from the increasingly rare occasions he took his hat off, that he was bald on top. She hated his scary hat, which made him look like the pictures she had seen in school of Guy Fawkes. She could see the dark hairs erupting out of the end of his nose and protruding in huge bushes from both of his ears as though they were trying to escape, screaming in terror, from the unnatural thoughts inside his brain. His skin was pale, with a dark shadow where he had shaved, and the wide brim of his hat meant that when his head was bent down, as it was now, his face was in total darkness. She couldn’t see anything of his expression, except the gleaming whites of his eyes.

  There was silence while he stood leaning slightly over her, staring intently at the outline of her thin body under the pink cotton candlewick bedspread. She noticed that he seemed agitated, pressing his knees into the side of the mattress, pushing his weight onto the bed and grabbing hold of the headboard with one hand to steady himself. He thrust his hand through a fold in his black skirt and Kitty immediately screwed her eyes shut. This was very out of the ordinary. The black material of his skirt was brushing against her arm and she wanted to lash out and knock it away. His knees, pressing into her mattress, were less than a finger’s width from pinning down her arm. He hadn’t told her not to look, but she knew she didn’t want to see what he was doing right now.

  What was wron
g? Why was he here? Why had her parents sent him upstairs to her? Did they think something was wrong? What were her parents doing laughing whilst he was here scaring the life half out of her? She wanted to shout loudly, ‘Mammy, Daddy!’

  She had never wanted to be close to them as much as she did right now, not even on the odd occasion when she had awoken in the night with a high temperature, shivering and shaking, feeling so ill that she couldn’t stay in her bed and needed to be with her mammy. On those nights she would wander into the kitchen half crying and flushed with sickness. Within seconds Tommy would scoop her onto his knee and hug her, making soothing sounds, whilst Maura fetched a bowl of tepid water and a flannel, and sponged down her limbs with long strokes. Both of her parents concerned, both flapping, emitting soothing noises until the temperature finally subsided. She would spend the rest of the night fitfully sleeping, watched over by one or the other, no more than a hand’s reach away. She wanted her mammy desperately now, in the same needy way, even though she wasn’t sick.

  But she knew that if she woke the kids for nothing, she would probably be in trouble. She lay with her eyes squeezed tight shut as she heard his breathing become rasping and rapid.

  ‘Hush now, Kitty, you good child,’ he said breathlessly and gratefully.

  She hadn’t spoken or made a sound, she had nothing to say. Why was he hushing her? She lay deathly still and didn’t move a muscle. She heard the muffled friction of his vestments rhythmically moving and she could feel the mattress slightly shifting under her. What in God’s name was he doing? He would wake Angela and the boys. Why was he making that noise?

  She opened her eyes, to tell him in a whisper that he would disturb the others because the mattress was shaking, and to ask him to stop doing whatever it was he was doing. She was ready to call her mammy right now. In her role of junior carer of the little ones, she had the confidence to call for help. Not because she was frightened, or because she felt as though the precious space of their bedroom was invaded and no longer safe. Not because the inside of her lip was bleeding, or because she felt scared and violated, but because this was now breaking their carefully managed routine of domesticity. The little ones were her responsibility and were about to have their sleep disturbed, and that now gave her the confidence to shout for her mammy in the presence of the priest. They wouldn’t tell her off, because she was just doing her job in looking out for the others. Father James didn’t have children, he didn’t understand. Her parents would know she wasn’t being disrespectful to the priest.

  As she opened her eyes and turned her head to shout for her mammy and daddy, his ejaculation left him, like an opaque milky fountain, and hit her full in the face.

  And then again. And again. Again.

  He was still holding onto the headboard as he slumped forward and let out a low groan. She gasped in horror. The bitter smell of his close proximity robbed her of her ability to inhale. He was leaning so far over the bed that he was less than six inches away from her face. She stared in transfixed terror, her mind screaming a rejection of what she was seeing, as the final flow of his exudate slowly oozed out onto the end of his langer and formed into a threatening drop. Her fingers clenched the bedsheets tightly. She was too terrified to raise her hand to her face.

  He gave a last irregular gasp and spat out the word, ‘Feck,’ as, spent, he leant more heavily on his knees into the mattress. Less than an inch from her face, the last milky drop dribbled slowly and clumsily, still attached by a thread of slime, onto her chin and slithered down onto her neck. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and swallowed her breath in gulps, as she fought off the instinct to scream repeatedly and loudly, and to prevent the contents of her stomach from discharging themselves onto the bed.

  She couldn’t scream. She had to protect the others from the badness in the room. They were safe whilst they were asleep.

  She could feel his sperm, now cold, slowly crawling down her nose and cheek. She felt her fringe, wet and sticky, clinging to her forehead. Her stomach leapt in revulsion as a puddle halted its downward journey and settled in the dipped valley of her cushioned, clenched lips. She could faintly taste salt, seeping through her teeth and onto her tongue.

  Helpless, trapped, terrified, she felt as though she was about to choke. She could not breathe and although she would rather die than open her lips, a low cry, beyond her control, escaped her. Shocked, at first she wondered whether the sound had come from him, then recognized it was coming from somewhere within herself. She fought to stop, but was driven by fear. Surely she was ensnared in a nightmare; this couldn’t be happening. She was terrified he would now ask her a question and she would have to open her mouth to speak. All she could think, as she cried, was, Oh God, please let this end and take him away.

  She longed for Angela to let out one of the noisy, tortured cries she sometimes did in the night, as though she had been poked unexpectedly with a sharp stick. This quite often brought her mammy running up the stairs to check she was all right. The boys were so used to Angela’s noises that they slept through, but Angela always woke Kitty or her mother, and either one or the other went to her side, checking her to make sure she hadn’t woken herself. Please scream now, Angela, Kitty silently begged.

  She kept her eyes firmly shut and played dead. Every muscle in her body was rigid and tightly sprung, ready to do battle if he touched her again. He didn’t say a word. She almost lashed out in terror at the pressure of his leg and let her breath out suddenly with shock as his hand came down to wipe her face and rub and rub at her skin, with what she assumed was his skirt, or maybe a handkerchief he kept somewhere in there, just for this occasion. She was pathetically grateful to him. Removing the slime was a huge relief.

  ‘Stay quiet now, Kitty, there’s a good girl,’ he whispered in a thick voice, as his breathing returned to normal. ‘Mammy and Daddy will be very angry with ye if ye say anything about this to anyone, even to them. They don’t want to hear a word of this, do ye understand what I’m sayin’, child?’

  He knew she was a child.

  ‘God will be very angry, and throw you into the fire and flames of hell and eternal damnation if ye so much as let the words pass ye lips and upset ye mammy and daddy. Do ye understand, Kitty?’

  She nodded. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

  ‘What ye have just done, Kitty, was very bad, a bad sin, ye have been a very bad girl.’

  She thought she had always been good. She strove to be a good girl. Why had she been bad? What had she done wrong?

  He had stopped talking. He was quiet, but he was still there, and although she could now hardly hear his breathing, she could sense him. She still didn’t open her eyes. And then she heard him whisper, asking God to forgive her for her sins and save her from the fire, and then, with a flourish of his vestments, he was gone.

  ‘I will be away now,’ shouted Father James, as he strode through the kitchen purposefully, on his way to the back door, his black cape billowing out behind him.

  ‘Ah, thank ye, Father, for blessing the kids,’ said Maura. ‘It is so kind of ye. I know they don’t always go to mass, but they are all good kids.’

  ‘Aye, they are that,’ he replied. ‘Don’t fret, Maura; if they miss a week I will always pop in. It’s no trouble, but they must make confession and communion now.’

  ‘Yes, Father, they will that,’ promised Maura to his departing back, as the door closed. She turned to Tommy. ‘Sure he was in a hurry tonight.’

  Tommy wasn’t listening, he was somewhere else. He put his hand out to Maura to hold hers and pulled her down onto his knee.

  ‘Ye know, Maura, as you and the Father were talking tonight, I was sat here, counting me blessings and thinking how lucky we are, ye know. Maybe seeing Jerry’s fall in fortune has made me think, but there was once a time, I am ashamed to say it, when I envied him, as he always had much more than we did. We are always struggling, but look at us now, eh? We are warm, I’ve good work, the kids are fed and all safe and asleep
in their beds, and they’ve even been blessed tonight. Life can’t get much better than that, now, can it?’

  Maura cupped her man’s face and they kissed tenderly. They were united in their love for each other and for their children, whom they adored and who were their pride and joy. They had little else, but it was enough.

  The room smelt funny. Kitty thought to herself that this wasn’t the first time the room had smelt like this. She had woken up on a number of occasions, feeling something sticky and itchy on her skin and smelling this smell. She had thought it was snot. She remembered waking with the itchiness and wiping it away with the back of her hand and the corner of the pillowcase.

  Kitty began to cry, quietly. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what had happened. She just knew it was something bad. With brothers to look after, she knew exactly what a langer looked like, but she had never seen a grown man’s before. Tommy was very careful to maintain dignity within the family and none of his children had ever seen him undressed. Something she had never before seen or encountered had been violently thrust upon her and rent her childhood apart.

  Father James, God’s voice on earth, had told her she would be thrown into the eternal flames if she told anyone what had just happened, but she wanted her mammy so badly. She could hear her parents laughing downstairs, all the familiar sounds of family. Security and safety in love. She wanted to run down the few stairs that separated them, the few yards of distance between her bed and the kitchen table. To be in the same warm, brightly lit, protected space they were. She wanted to wash the lingering smell from her cheek at the kitchen sink with the distinctive clean and antiseptic smell of the Wright’s Coal Tar soap, which lived in a broken grey saucer on the windowsill. She sobbed quietly until, once again, exhaustion claimed her.