The Four Streets

by Nadine Dorries

  Kathleen couldn’t tell who was screaming now, there was so much of it. She dragged Kitty out of the bed by her arms. Kitty was crying and wailing as she tried to lift Angela, who was yelling about being woken up as she was pulled from under Father James, out cold on the bed. Kathleen picked up Niamh and woke the boys in the next room and got them downstairs. Then they ran, carrying the half-asleep twins and Niamh between them, out of the front door and leaving all the doors open behind them, fleeing across the road into Jerry’s house.

  ‘Lock the door, lock the door,’ screamed Kathleen, when they got inside. ‘I’m going back to the club for the others, hold on till I get back, Kitty.’

  Kathleen was scared to death at what she had done to Father James. Had she killed him? If she hadn’t, surely to God, Tommy would.

  Just as she turned the corner at the top of the entry out onto the street, she saw the three of them dancing along. It was raining stair rods and yet they were laughing and singing without a care in the world, Maura linking arms with Tommy on one side and Jerry on the other. Kathleen almost fell to her knees with relief as she put her hand out and held onto the wall to support herself. She had run so hard, she could hardly breathe. Jerry saw her first, then all three of them stopped dancing and broke into a run.

  As soon as they got into Jerry’s house, Kathleen made Maura and Tommy sit down whilst she held onto Kitty and told them how she had just caught Father James in Kitty’s bedroom and what he was attempting to do.

  The impact of Kathleen’s news was so devastating that it was received in a shocked silence while it sank in. Maura clung to Tommy’s hand, both with the same thoughts racing between them. They needed to hold onto each other for strength.

  Kitty never spoke. The tears ran down her cheeks while she clung onto Maura, dreading that she might be rejected and shaken off. She felt a huge relief that Father James had been caught, but was sure that now she would be punished.

  Then Kathleen added very calmly, ‘And, God help me, I think I’ve killed him.’

  Jerry tapped Tommy on the shoulder, picked up the poker from his own fire and rushed ahead of Tommy through the door and across the road, into Kitty’s room. Jerry knew that he needed to keep control of the situation, while Tommy’s anger burst forth as they ran, not one word intelligible.

  ‘The fuckin’ kiddie-fiddling bastard fucking cunt face fucking…’

  His insults were in vain. When they reached Kitty’s room and switched on the light, there was no sign of Father James. Tommy ran into the boys’ room, but again there was nothing. Father James didn’t even have the decency to be lying on the bed, injured. He had slunk off into the cold, wet night.

  Jerry picked up from the bedroom floor the poker Kathleen had dropped, took it downstairs and put on the kettle.

  ‘What the feck are ye doing?’ said Tommy, already on his way out of the door.

  ‘The police can tell who has touched things, Tommy, so they can. Let me do the thinking, man, you go and see to Kitty,’ Jerry said.

  When the kettle boiled, he poured the hot water over the poker and scrubbed it with the scourer from the kitchen sink. Then he plunged it into the hottest part of the fire where it would remain red hot until the embers burnt down in the morning. Jerry was worried. How injured was the priest? How hard had Kathleen hit him? Father James was powerful. When it came to his word in law against Kathleen’s, an uneducated Irish immigrant, Father James would win every time.

  Tears, tea and recriminations were flowing in Jerry’s kitchen when he returned. Slowly and nervously Kitty told them everything. Jerry courteously stood in the background, facing the fire. Kitty’s story was almost too painful to listen to and his stomach was knotted. He could only think how he would feel if this was Nellie sitting here, recounting to them all a story of living hell.

  He turned round, about to suggest that he and Tommy go down to the police station, when he noticed that Tommy was no longer there. He felt a chill run down his spine. Tommy was no different from Jerry and Jerry knew exactly what he would want to do right now. He ran to the sink where the meat knife had been resting on the drainer ever since it had been used to cut up the lamb on Thursday. He didn’t need to ask where it was now.

  ‘Where the hell is Tommy, Maura?’

  She looked up at Jerry as though she had seen a ghost.

  ‘Tommy!’ she screamed, when she realized he was no longer at her side. She leapt up from the arm of Kitty’s chair and ran back into her own house. Jerry was right behind her.

  ‘He isn’t here, he’s gone!’ she said, as she came back down the stairs and went to grab a coat from the hooks on the back of the kitchen door.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Jerry, taking hold of her arm firmly and steering her down the path. ‘Go back in to Kitty; this is man’s work, leave this to us.’

  Maura shook in fear. ‘Jerry, what’s happening, I’m scared!’

  ‘Well, don’t be. This may be a test, Maura, but we will all pass it if we are strong. Go away now back indoors and look after Kitty, that’s ye job. The rest is ours.’

  Paddy’s son, little Paddy, stood at his bedroom window, half asleep and rubbing his eyes, and watched Jerry disappear down the entry. The rain hadn’t let up and there were no street lamps in the back alleyways. It was pitch black outside, but it was definitely Jerry.

  Little Paddy had been woken earlier by the screaming from next door. He was a light sleeper. When he first woke he had thought it was his da choking. He wondered where Jerry was going at this time of night before he took himself back into bed. He was asleep again within seconds.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was four in the morning before the two men returned.

  Maura had put Kitty to bed with Nellie, holding her in her arms as she rocked her to sleep. She was her mother and she needed to know what her daughter had been through, but there would be time for all that. Now, the poor child needed sleep. It still hadn’t dawned on Maura that Kitty was pregnant.

  Later, Maura and Kathleen sat by the fire in the kitchen, waiting. Kathleen did her best, but Maura was distraught and in shock. They both were. Kathleen had never before almost killed anyone and the realization was beginning to dawn on her of what she might have done.

  As they walked in through the back door, the men didn’t say a word to the anxious women.

  Jerry pulled out the copper boiler from the shed as he came through the yard and then shouted at Tommy to go into the outhouse, strip off naked and to throw his clothes out into the yard floor. Maura noticed blood on Tommy’s jacket, which he was unnaturally holding tightly closed across his chest. She put her hand to her mouth and stifled a scream. She was shaking uncontrollably and her legs could barely hold her up.

  Kathleen, no stranger to a crisis, flew into action. She dragged the mop bucket in from the outhouse, filled it with hot water and Aunt Sally liquid soap and then ran outside and doused the water over a naked Tommy who was shaking as much as Maura. He began rubbing blood off his body with the floorcloth that Kathleen gave him. Now was not a time for modesty.

  She fetched a clean sheet to wrap Tommy in and sent him indoors, then she washed down the outhouse and the yard, forcing the red rivulets down the drain with the yard brush. Jerry submerged part of Tommy’s jacket in the boiler as he scrubbed it down. If he fully washed it, someone would notice. He then put Tommy’s trousers and underclothes in the boiler, and his blood-soaked shirt on the fire. No one would notice a missing shirt even if it was his best.

  No one said a word, but the looks that passed between Maura and Tommy were agonizing. Both were incapable of speech. Maura stood and rubbed his arms vigorously through the sheet, in an attempt to warm him and halt his violent shivering. They had been ripped from their ordinary lives and plunged into hell within minutes and they were struggling to cope.

  Jerry unwrapped the blood-stained meat knife, which he had bundled in his own shirt, dropped it into the sink and poured boiling water over it. Then he threw his own shirt
straight onto the open fire in the range with Tommy’s.

  Filling the sink, he plunged his arms in and began scrubbing. Kathleen, having put everything back in order in the outhouse, helped him.

  ‘Thank the Holy Lord it’s raining hard,’ she whispered to Jerry. ‘The rain will have finished off washing the yard by daylight.’

  Kathleen was now calm. This was about strength in adversity. The four streets looking after their own. The crime was irrelevant. The poor would always look after each other; they had to; they had the strength of a judgmental society to beat. And now they had this – an evil that stalked their homes and threatened their children.

  ‘Give me ye boots,’ said Jerry to Tommy. He dunked both pairs into the boiler, by now bubbling furiously, and then laid them by the fire. It was a wet night. Of course the boots were wet.

  Kathleen opened the whiskey that had arrived yesterday morning, although it already felt like weeks ago, as so much had happened in a short space of time. They had been going to keep it for a Christmas treat.

  ‘Feck Christmas,’ muttered Kathleen, filling four mugs and pressing one into Maura’s hand.

  Jerry took his mug and looked up. ‘None of us will ever mention this night again,’ he said firmly. ‘We will not speak of it to anyone. Do we all understand?’

  Tommy, Maura and Kathleen nodded.

  ‘Tommy and Maura, away home now to bed. We will be safe as long as no one knows. Don’t be seen as you go. We will decide what is to be done with Kitty tomorrow, when we are calm and have all had some sleep.’

  Maura and Kathleen had no idea what had been done with Father James, but they knew better than to ask. They were all now shaking violently with shock, even Kathleen. Now that her jobs had been done and there was nothing to focus on, the trembling took its hold.

  Between chattering teeth, she said, ‘If you had just put the evil bastard in a room full of young mothers, he would have got his punishment.’

  ‘Sh, Mammy,’ said Jerry, who, despite his shaking, was thinking with absolute clarity.

  They each picked up their mugs and knocked the whiskey back, to stop the tremors before they parted from one another. Kathleen had filled the mugs to the brim and the amber liquid scalded as it slipped down, flooding them with warmth.

  Tommy and Maura staggered back into their own house, having first checked that the street was quiet, Tommy still wrapped in the sheet, carrying his soaking clothes, with Maura clinging onto his arm.

  The following morning, Alice woke early. As she came through the door into the kitchen, she saw the meat knife still on the draining rack. Thinking it best to put it away, she ran the knife under the tap and noticed a spot of blood on the end. She boiled the kettle and poured boiling water over it, then dried it and popped it in the knife drawer, before making herself a cup of tea.

  She had heard every word that had been spoken last night, but had lain in bed, still and quiet. To Alice, it was normal to observe events from a distance.

  The rooms upstairs were full of children sleeping, four girls top to tail in Nellie’s bed and two sets of twins on the floor. The air was heavy with night breath. Alice tiptoed over sleeping children and opened the window on her way down to let in some of the fresh damp morning air.

  Jerry was still sleeping off the Guinness and the whiskey when there was a knock on the front door. Alice took a breath, smoothed down her skirt and opened the door.

  ‘Morning, miss, can we ask you a few questions?’ enquired a young, fresh-faced policeman, one of two standing on the scrubbed doorstep.

  Alice looked him straight in the eye and answered as cool as a cucumber. She told the policeman how everyone had been at the wedding party, then come home and gone to bed at about two in the morning.

  ‘Was that just you, miss?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Alice calmly, ‘it was all of us.’ She reeled off the names of those living in Maura and Tommy’s house, as well as their own.

  She asked the constables why they were asking, but they wouldn’t tell her.

  She smiled sweetly, offered them a cup of tea she hoped they wouldn’t accept, which they didn’t, and then went back inside.

  The policemen – Howard, originally from Wales, and Simon, a little older and second generation from Belfast – marked both house numbers in their little black book with the words ‘alibi for all occupants’ and went on their way. The lady in the house was English. She had a very nice accent. One of those proper types, upright and honest. ‘Definitely not a bog jumper and obviously telling the truth,’ said Howard, as they walked away. He didn’t notice Simon flinch at his words as he snapped his notebook shut.

  When they went down the other side of the road and came to Maura and Tommy’s door, they didn’t even bother to knock.

  ‘Leave that one,’ said Simon. ‘They came home with number forty-two.’ If they were friends of the well-spoken lady, they were probably proper English types too.

  ‘You sure?’ asked the new and very keen Howard.

  It was almost time for a brew and Simon wanted to get inside the car and head back to the station.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Simon replied. ‘When you have been around as long as me, you get a nose for these things.’

  Inside the house, Alice was feeling an unfamiliar rush of excitement and pride. For the first time in her life, she felt as though she had fulfilled a purpose. She was now relevant, important even. Her moment had come and, without conscious pre-thought or planning, she had risen to the occasion and shone. Even she knew that.

  Jerry and Kathleen had looked after Alice. They had been good to her. Over time she had learnt the significance of her differences from most other people and had begun to realize that, as someone who lived on the four streets in the home that she did, she was very lucky indeed. For the first time in her life this had been her big chance to do something for someone else. Kathleen’s ways had rubbed off on her. She wasn’t going to let them down.

  Every member in every household on the four streets gathered round their small black and white television sets that evening, from the youngest to the oldest, and watched the report of the gruesome murder of a priest in Liverpool. They listened in silence as the solemn newsreader described how he had been found on the path to the Priory with a stab wound in his chest and a significant body part dismembered, which had been found later in the day, mauled by a cat, ten yards away in the graveyard. No murder weapon had been found and the police had no clues.

  ‘The local community has been paralysed by the news, because the priest was a well-known figure around Liverpool. He had a particular calling to aid children who were suffering in poor communities, as demonstrated by his work at local schools and the children’s hospital.’

  On Monday morning, while Kathleen had her cup of tea with the Granada TV rentals man and sliced him a piece of fruit loaf with the meat knife, he told her all the fanciful theories that were flying around the four streets about who had done for Father James. Naturally, not one of them included Maura and Tommy’s house, where the Father had been treated like a saint. Or their own house, where the Father never came. They were all safe in their secret. And a secret it would remain, she hoped.

  Meanwhile, over at the school, the police were talking to the children in the morning assembly, asking questions about Father James.

  ‘Did any of you see anything unusual on the night Father James was murdered?’ asked Howard of the rows of children sitting cross-legged on the wooden parquet floor in front of him.

  A complete dead end to their inquiries had driven him, under pressure from their Chief Superintendent, to try a more novel approach to gathering information.

  Simon had moaned and groaned and resisted as much as possible. He was not keen on change. He also felt embarrassed. Sister Evangelista was openly crying. Simon had been taught by the nuns when he himself was a boy. He didn’t like to see women weep. Nuns were a special breed of women, so he hated that even more.

  Howar
d had considered this a smart idea when he first thought of it; at the very least it would look good when he reported back to the Super and help him on his race to become a sergeant. But now that he was here, standing in front of so many sombre faces, he wished he was anywhere else.

  One little boy was wriggling and enthusiastically thrust up his hand.

  Nondescript, slightly dirty, wearing a sleeveless pullover with no shirt underneath, despite the cold, and with a huge hole in the front, with what looked like half a ball of wool unravelled and hanging down in long loose threads exposing his skin underneath, he had been squirming on the floor since the police officers walked in. The tide mark across his neck was as black as the leather on his shoes, which were three sizes too big and only just still attached to the soles.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Simon disdainfully, ‘he saw Donald Duck going into mass.’

  ‘I did, I did!’ shouted little Paddy, punching the air with his hand excitedly – innocently trying to curry favour with Sister Evangelista, who scared him so much he would do anything to be in her good books. ‘I saw Uncle Jerry running up the back entry in the middle of the night.’

  Simon and Howard both stared at the scruffy boy, wriggling about on the floor with the unwashed hair and grubby face.

  ‘Paddy,’ said Sister Evangelista in a stern voice, ‘the officers have no time for your nonsense. Shut up, boy, and sit straight in your line.’

  By the time she had reached the word ‘line’, Sister Evangelista was almost screaming. Sister Evangelista had no time for dirty children and must have told Peggy a hundred times, cleanliness was next to godliness. The boy smelt and had head lice, and she had no patience with him whatsoever.

  The shock and horror of Father James’s death had affected them all. The unanswered questions, along with revulsion at the manner of it, had set their nerves on edge.