The Four Streets

by Nadine Dorries

  When the police officers had told Sister they wanted to speak to the children at assembly, she had almost refused. She had barely slept, as confusing thoughts and questions to which she had no answer kept her awake well into the small hours.

  Simon and Howard looked at each other. ‘May we borrow your office, Sister?’ asked Howard, who was already motioning to Paddy to join him at the front.

  The children sat still and unspeaking as they watched the policemen hold open the large wooden and glass doors for Paddy to pass through from the hall on the way to Sister Evangelista’s office. There was no need for the teachers or nuns to remonstrate with those who wriggled as though they had ants in their pants. Everyone was silent and still as they stared at the departing backs of the tall policemen.

  Alice was taking her knitting out from behind the cushion on the comfy chair, which was where it lived, when she heard three loud, ominous knocks on the front door.

  The Granada man was packing away into his case his little black book and large grey bag of sixpences, and Kathleen was on her way to the sink with the cups and plates, when they all stopped dead in their tracks and stared towards the front door.

  ‘Blimey, that’s an important knock,’ said the Granada man. ‘It’ll be a vacuum cleaner salesman. I saw the Electrolux men on Vauxhall Road yesterday.’

  Kathleen and Alice looked at each other without a word. Alice slipped her knitting back behind the cushion and walked purposefully to the front door to open it. She was growing in confidence every day.

  Down on the docks, the men were unloading the merchant ship, the Cotopaxi, which had sailed in from Ecuador early that morning. As he was one of the shorter and tubbier men on the docks, Tommy’s feet had left the quay as he jumped up to catch a guide rope for a bag of jute, just above his head and out of his reach. Tommy travelled through the air for the twenty feet it took him to reach Jerry. It was time for their ciggie break and Tommy thought it was about time Jerry knew. As his feet touched the ground again, he looked up towards the jute sack and his eye was caught by two policemen talking to the guard at the top of the steps.

  He saw the guard point in their direction, as both policemen tipped their helmet peaks in a gesture of thanks and began to descend the steps.

  As Tommy landed, he pushed the rope into Jerry’s hand and squeezed it tight, pushing his nails into Jerry’s skin, forcing Jerry to look at him in surprise.

  ‘Let go of me hand, you homo,’ Jerry said in annoyance as he tried to take the rope from Tommy.

  ‘The fecking bizzies are coming down the steps, Jer,’ Tommy almost spat at him. ‘If it’s us they is after, neither of us say a fecking word. If we don’t say nothing, they don’t have nothing.’

  There was an urgency to Tommy’s voice. They both knew which was the guilty of the two, but Tommy also knew they would never let one another down.

  Jerry didn’t glance at the steps, but looked Tommy straight in the eye as he said, ‘Aye, right, to be sure I will say nothin’ now, neither of us, nothin’.’

  They took a long hard look at each other, as they heard Howard’s voice ring out behind them, ‘Oi, Jerry Deane, we want a word with you.’

  Jerry and Tommy clasped thumbs briefly, then Jerry let go of the rope and turned round.

  Alice walked up Brigie’s path with ease. Her heart no longer beat faster when she stepped out from her lonely world. She was still not one for small talk and she knew that no one would ever seek her out for a shopping trip to St John’s market, or indulge in baby chatter, but she did at least feel as though she was somewhere she belonged.

  Brigie had been pacing up and down the kitchen floor all morning with a teething baby daughter who screamed louder than the rest put together. She didn’t hear the back door open and could have dropped the baby when she saw Alice walk through it. Alice smiled conspiratorially in greeting, closed the door and then, from under her skirt, produced an almost empty whiskey bottle.

  Brigie walked over to the kettle. This was going to be interesting.

  Simon and Howard had pounded Jerry with repetitive questions for almost two hours, and yet he had remained silent.

  The police station, old, large and forbidding, with its distinctive blue light over the door, was in Whitechapel. The cells were small and noisy and, on a Saturday night, full to overflowing with the same prostitutes who had spent so many nights in the cells that they called Whitechapel station home.

  Jerry had been held in one such cell for four hours and, so far, hadn’t said a word. He was trying the patience of Howard and Simon, who decided to take a break.

  They took themselves off to the station canteen for a drink and a game of billiards, to help them decide what to do next. They were coming up against a brick wall. With the best will in the world, no judge was ever going to accept the word of a filthy, witless little boy who obviously wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box. And what did they have anyway? Under questioning in Sister Evangelista’s office, the kid had moved from having definitely seen his Uncle Jerry to possibly having seen his Uncle Jerry.

  They were holding Jerry in the cell on spurious grounds, but once they had him in the cell, he suddenly reeked of culpability for no other reason than he wouldn’t speak.

  ‘If he was innocent, he would talk and tell us why he was running down the entry,’ said Howard.

  Simon, who rarely got anything right, pulled on his cigarette and, as the smoke swirled around his face, replied, ‘Aye, I smell a stinking great rat all right. That man is as guilty as hell. The problem is, how? Why? What’s the motive? The Sister said he didn’t even go to the church.’

  ‘We need to at least pin a motive on him soon or we will have to let him walk,’ said Howard, who was not looking forward to the prospect.

  The Super had been delighted that at least they had someone in the cell to question for the mystery murder of the priest. Simon and Howard had been feeling pressure as if it was coming from someone much higher up in the force.

  ‘Let’s go back in,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s start the good cop, bad cop routine and see if that makes him start talking.’

  ‘We will,’ said Howard, ‘but I will tell you this: we may have no motive and we may have nothing other than that feckless kid but all the same, that man reeks of guilt.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time Tommy arrived home from work, the four streets were buzzing with the news that Jerry was being held by the police. It had been the longest day’s work while he had counted down the minutes until he could run back up the steps and confer with Maura and Kathleen. When Maura told him what Alice had done, he felt a shiver run down his spine – and then, ‘Jeez, Maura,’ he shouted, ‘why didn’t ye wait for me to get fecking home?’

  Tommy was having trouble weighing up the consequences of Alice’s actions. Maura had never known Tommy to swear as much as he had since the worst night of their lives; in fact she had heard him shout on only a handful of occasions during their married life. Maura needed reinforcements and sent Kitty across the road to fetch Kathleen and Alice.

  ‘Calm down, Tommy,’ said Kathleen with authority, as soon as she came in. ‘It’s a grand idea if Brigie and Sean will play along with Peggy and Paddy, but you need to get your head together and go and see Paddy. It will work only if ye all agree.’

  ‘Let me get this right,’ said Tommy. ‘Ye are all asking Sean, Paddy and meself to go down to the police station and say Jerry was sneaking down to Sean’s house for a card school and to drink up the wedding whiskey, whilst ye lot was asleep in ye beds?’

  Maura, Kathleen and Alice nodded. When it was put into Tommy’s words, coldly and with an edge of scorn, it didn’t sound so good.

  Tommy exploded. He and Jerry had a pact, to talk to no one.

  ‘Ye just couldn’t keep ye’s gobs shut, could ye,’ he shouted. ‘Me and Jer, tell no one, we decided. If we can keep it that way they have nothing and nowt, and youse have told the whole fecking four streets. I’m done for, Maura, I’m a
fecking goner now.’

  Tommy was losing control. Maura felt scared. Normally, Tommy was putty in her hands; she had never seen him like this before. His anger seemed to have erupted from nowhere. She felt the blood drain from her face as she began to think Alice had done something very, very stupid.

  Both sets of twins and Angela began to cry, setting Niamh off too. Kitty had no idea what was going on, but she gathered up the children and took them across the road to Nellie, who was sitting in front of the TV on her own. Joseph was already in bed.

  Kitty felt a pang of jealousy shoot through her. She had never in her life had a room to herself. As one of seven, she could only dream of such a luxury.

  Nellie had no idea what was going on either, but the whispering between Kathleen and Alice had set her on edge. She knew something was badly wrong.

  They had told her Jerry was helping the police, but Nellie couldn’t understand that. Helping them to do what?

  Nellie got up from her chair and took the biscuit tin out of the cupboard. She and Kitty gave a biscuit to each of the little ones to encourage them to stop crying. Kitty felt jealous again. The biscuit tin was rarely full in her house.

  When the children had calmed down, both girls sat in a comfy chair together, with their arms round each other. The rest of the Doherty brood sat on the mat and they all stared at the TV, which offered an escape from the frightening atmosphere around them. Nellie felt more settled than she had all evening, now that she was no longer alone, but in the company of her lifelong friends.

  Sean, who was over six feet tall, had had to remove his cap as he bent to enter Tommy’s kitchen. He was a mystery to every man on the street. Sean was as broad as he was tall, a fine specimen who spent his weekends at the boxing club. He worked on the docks by day and was in the boxing ring by night.

  ‘Ye can’t blame him,’ Tommy had once said to Maura. ‘If I had that many daughters, I’d be on a ship to Mexico, never mind the bloody boxing club.’

  Sean had a formidable reputation and it went back as far as his street-fighting days in Tipperary. The word on the four streets was that Sean had arrived in Liverpool whilst on the run from the Gardai for having nearly beaten a man to death in a Tipperary pub brawl. No one dare ask Sean if the rumour were true.

  ‘He beats the shite out of anyone who dares go near him in that ring,’ laughed Tommy, after he and Jerry had gone along to a match to support their friend, ‘the big man’.

  And yet he and Brigie had produced only daughters, and lots of them. Eight little red-headed females in one house. Sean was living proof of the street folklore that it was the women who decided the sex of the baby. Unless, of course, she produced boys – and then it was all down to the virility of the man.

  Sean hadn’t liked what Brigie had told him about Alice’s visit earlier in the day. It had perturbed him greatly.

  Sean liked to take his wash-down upstairs at the press. The first thing he did every night, when he came home, was to carry his jug upstairs and strip off.

  Every one of his daughters had been conceived during the end-of-day wash-down. Brigie looked at the other men on the streets and, with the exception of Jerry who was known for his good looks, she knew how lucky she was in Sean.

  She didn’t like the number of young girls who hung around the boxing club, and she was no fool. As exhausted as she frequently was, she kept her man happy and paid for it with a lifetime of pregnancy and breastfeeding.

  Tonight, whilst Sean was washing down, Brigie had stopped downstairs. He thought over what she had told him and remembered times that Father James had visited his own house. Images flashed into his mind of the Father holding his daughters in his arms. He had often fleetingly questioned why Father James called round to the house so often.

  Sean had no idea what had happened on that night or why Jerry was being questioned. He only knew what Alice was asking him to do. There were plenty on the four streets who revered Father James.

  Sean told Brigie it was very important to keep her mouth shut. Some would find what they were doing difficult to understand.

  ‘If I do what Alice has asked, Brigie, we need to keep safe.’

  Brigie didn’t need to be told. The people she lived amongst were as good as her family, but she knew that many were devastated by Father James’s death. The Dohertys and the Deanes were good people. She would tell no one.

  When Sean stepped into the kitchen, Paddy was already there. The women had left and the men sat down.

  The women had talked Tommy round and, the more they had talked, the more he realized their plot made good sense. They were in greater danger without an alibi for Jerry. They needed to source one quickly, get him out of the police station and safely home as soon as possible. They needed help from their friends.

  The kettle began to whistle on the range and, as Tommy stood to take it off and mash some tea, Paddy roared, ‘Feckin’ hell, imagine that, lads, no women and just us men living in one house now, how grand would that be, eh?’

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, all three burst out laughing.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to bed with you, Paddy,’ said Tommy, carrying a pot of tea over to the table. ‘Ye snore.’

  They laughed again and the atmosphere lightened momentarily.

  ‘Now, lads, you don’t need details, trust me, but Jer needs our help and we all need to be singing out of the same bloody hymn book to do that. Are ye with me?’

  Sean and Paddy picked up their tea and looked at each other. They had both moved onto the four streets at around the same time and between the two families they had attended too many baptisms to count. They had both clasped their arms together and held Jerry upright underneath Bernadette’s dead body as she lay in her coffin on the day they buried her. One of Sean’s daughters was running around the street right now in Angela’s old shoes, and the two girls were best friends.

  Sean took both sets of Tommy’s twins down to the boxing club with him on a regular basis and they had all pooled their resources together on many an occasion to make sure the kids were fed. When Paddy had run out of money before the end of the week, Jerry had often slipped him half a crown.

  It didn’t matter what Jerry had done. They were his mates and they would do whatever was needed, regardless of the danger to themselves.

  ‘I’m in,’ said Sean.

  Paddy felt guilty as he looked at his two friends and drank his tea. Peggy had told him what little Paddy had done and big Paddy had taken his slipper to him. He wouldn’t open his mouth again, the stupid little fecker. Too much like his mother at times. Spoke rubbish before putting his brain in gear.

  He had been home for a full half-hour before Peggy told him what had happened, and the stupid woman had told the lad to hide in the outhouse, out of his da’s way.

  It took Paddy a full minute for what Peggy was telling him to sink in.

  ‘He did what?’ Paddy roared. ‘He did what? Are ye telling me Jer is sat in a police cell, being questioned about the priest’s murder, because that gobshite of a kid wanted to look clever?’

  Shame and anger convulsed Paddy in equal measure. The men had talked about nothing else on the docks other than how ridiculous the police were. They had laughed at the ridiculous notion that Jerry could have anything to do with it.

  ‘Stupid feckers, the bizzies are. Jer didn’t even go to fuckin’ mass since the day he buried Bernadette,’ Brian, his gang mate, had said. ‘He’s even married a Protestant. God knows when the last time was that Jer even spoke to the priest. What a fuckin’ laugh it is.’

  Paddy ran up the stairs as quickly as a man could run who smoked forty a day and had worked nine hours straight. There was no sign of his son.

  He ran back through the kitchen, picked up his slipper from in front of the fire and went out into the yard. Now he could hear little Paddy whimpering in the outhouse.

  Maura could hear the shouts in her own yard as she took down the washing. She stopped unpegging and held onto the lin
e with her eyes closed. Neither Maura nor Tommy ever hit their kids and it made her feel sick to hear poor little Paddy’s pathetic pleas for Paddy to leave him alone.

  ‘No, Da, don’t hit me with the slipper,’ he screeched, as the outhouse door flung open.

  It was too late; his pleas were followed up by loud thwacks, screams and even louder crying. Paddy must have slapped his son at least a dozen times. Maura heard him swear as the slipper flew out of his hand, but that didn’t stop him; he then resorted to his fists. The guilt she felt at hearing little Paddy take a beating made her stomach turn sour. Maura loved little Paddy. She often fed him at her own table and had deloused his hair as often as she had the twins. He was one of life’s innocents and he never failed to make them all laugh with his antics. ‘What has little Paddy done today then,’ she would ask her boys at some stage of the evening. She often pulled him to her for a quick hug each time he said ‘I wish I lived with ye, Maura.’ She wished he did too. Never more than today.

  Maura wanted to lean over the wall and plead with Paddy to stop, but she didn’t dare. The four streets survived in harmony on the basis of unwritten rules and one of them was: you never interfered or stuck your nose in when it hadn’t been asked for.

  ‘I’m in,’ said Paddy, relieved to have the opportunity to compensate for the perceived stupidity of little Paddy.

  Jerry had been in the police station for eight hours and the police were getting nowhere.

  Howard and Simon should have gone home three hours since, but they didn’t want to leave this to anyone else. Neither could say why, they had no evidence other than a witness statement from a ten-year-old, but both knew they were on to something.

  Their trained noses could smell it. They could taste it. The aroma of guilt filled the station. It was at its strongest in the cell in which they held Jerry and yet they didn’t have a single fact to go on.

  ‘Maybe we should let him go, put a watch on him and call it a night,’ said Howard, who was imagining his tea, which was always on the table at six-thirty sharp, sitting there congealing.