The Four Streets Read online

  None of the women were strangers to death from childbirth; Bernadette wasn’t the first woman on the four streets to meet her maker that way. But Bernadette had done something different: she had chosen the hospital over a home delivery.

  ‘I’m taking no chances,’ she had told her neighbours. ‘It’s all the rage with the fancy women,’ she had declared, laughing her decision off when the others asked why a home birth wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Ooh, get you, Silver Heels,’ they had all teased her.

  But Bernadette hadn’t cared; she thought no ill of anyone for laughing at her. She had just wanted the best for her baby. None of the other women had a clue what plans they had in store for their child’s future, and for Bernadette a hospital birth would lay down the first marker of change. It would be the first of many steps she wanted to put in place to break with the past. Their child would not be living its life on the four streets, but she couldn’t share that desire with anyone. Never mind the fact that she knew, Bernadette just knew, that life for her baby would be very different from that of any of her neighbours’ children.

  They heard the horses’ hooves before the gleaming black and glass hearse reached the top of the road. The first thing they saw were the white bouncing feather plumes attached to the horses’ brow bands as they came into sight and turned the corner. Bernadette was coming home, back to the door of her proud, pristine house for one last time. She was coming to say one last goodbye to them all.

  The men removed their caps and, casting their eyes downwards, clutched them to their chests. The women held each other’s hands along the row, like children in a playground, and sobbed. Squeezing each other’s hands tightly, they were holding one another up. The sudden emotion that had flooded the silence of the street as Bernadette had turned the corner was in danger of knocking them over, of taking one of them down. The shock of knowing that she was only feet away from them, that they could reach out and touch her coffin if they so tried, had brought up sharp the reality of her loss. There but for the grace of God could go any one of them. Most of them had at least half a dozen children each. At the rate they turned out babies, on any week Bernadette’s fate could be theirs.

  At the top of the dock steps, they heard the slow, steady ascent of footsteps as, one after another, dockers appeared and removed their cloth caps as they gathered along the top, stood in silence and watched.

  As the carriage horses slowed to a standstill, everyone’s eyes were on the house as Jerry’s front door opened. For a few moments there was nothing. Not a sound. It looked as though the door was going to close again without Jerry coming out; then suddenly he stepped out with his baby cradled in his arms. For a second, he held onto the door frame, then looked down as his foot came off the front step and he stood in the street.

  Hardly anyone other than Maura and Tommy had seen Jerry since Bernadette’s death. The neighbours had been in and out of the house but it was Jerry’s parents, who had got straight onto the ferry as soon as they heard the news, who had sat and talked with neighbours for hours, entertaining in true Irish tradition. No one had paid their last respects at the house and left without a glass of Irish whiskey and a sandwich in their insides.

  Jerry had lost a great deal of weight and seemed ten years older than his age. His face looked grey and lined, and his red eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark circles from lack of sleep and continuous crying.

  ‘Have ye ever seen a man so heartbroken?’ Peggy could be heard to whisper.

  She said that at every funeral of every widow, and it could have been the case; however, on this day, it was a fact. The truth. A statement exaggerated in a way only the passionate Irish could manage. Truly, had anyone ever seen a man more bereft or heartbroken?

  Jerry’s mother and father stood one each side of him and, without touching, were providing the invisible support to keep him upright. They were coping and giving no sign of being under stress themselves. Jerry’s mother, Kathleen, the true matriarch of the family, was doing what all mothers do, being strong for her boy. No one could have mistaken Kathleen for anything other than an Irish mother. Fair, fat and looking like fifty. Her once light strawberry-blonde hair was partly grey and fresh out of rollers. Her eyes were also heavy but shone with a determination to get her son through this awful day in one piece.

  Behind them came Bernadette’s brothers. As soon as they had heard the news, they had packed up and made their way straight to Liverpool, just as they knew their mammy and daddy, who had both passed away, would have wanted them to do. The landlord at the Anchor pub on the Dock Road had rung the owner of the pub in Bangornevin, who had sent out a cellar boy on a donkey to the pub in Killhooney Bay, where there was no phone, who had sent out Celia, their cleaner, who was related to Bernadette’s brother’s wife, to break the news. The Irish mule telegraph. Both families had all arrived by coincidence in Liverpool on the same boat three days later.

  In the meantime, whilst Jerry had waited for family help to arrive, Maura had kept him fed, watered and sane, but only just.

  Each morning when he woke he felt a huge shock as the realization washed over him that Bernadette was dead. In the first few seconds as sleep half left him, he would reach out to scoop her into his arms; sometimes he would smile to himself, believing her still to be there. Every day since their wedding, he had woken as the happiest of men. But now, leaden dismay slowly descended upon him as it filtered through the haziness of sleep until suddenly, as though he had been slapped on the face, his eyes opened and the adrenaline kicked in, ready to help his body handle the shock, as fresh every day as it had been on the first.

  It began with a hint. A small clue. A question. An odd pain between his ribs. A feeling that all might not be quite right and then, with a rush, the thought, she’s gone, would flood in so quickly that even the adrenaline had no ability to protect him from the sudden pain and outpouring of tears.

  If it weren’t for Maura and Tommy, he would never have got out of bed in the morning. One or the other was always there, shouting up the stairs, telling him the kettle was on and the fire was lit or there was a stew or a pie on the table. How did they manage to smile and laugh as they did, as though nothing had happened? Had they cared nothing for Bernadette? Did they not understand his agony?

  The hospital had insisted on Nellie remaining there until Kathleen arrived. ‘Ye cannot be dealing with managing a first newborn now, in the midst of all ye grief,’ the Irish ward sister had told him kindly. ‘I do know what I’m talking about. Now, get yer mammy and daddy over and come back to the hospital, and by then baby Nellie will be settled on a bottle and ye can take her home.’

  Jerry felt as though the hospital were kidnapping his baby. No. No. No. The words screamed in his mind. This is not what Bernadette wanted. This is not what she had planned.

  ‘Now come along,’ the sister said kindly but firmly. ‘If Bernadette were here, both of them would have been with us for a week. Nothing is different for the baby.’

  And so he had returned home alone. He had walked the full length of the city back to the four streets, unaware of where he was going. Unable to see through his tears. Unable to comprehend what was happening. She had been dead for only an hour and here he was, out on the street alone.

  When he had spotted the blood pouring onto the floor, he had slowly stood up and, disbelieving, taken the three steps from the chair to his wife.

  ‘Bernadette,’ he whispered. ‘Bernadette, what’s wrong with ye?’

  Only minutes before they had been kissing, crying and laughing, and now she lay deathly silent with a complexion of sallow wax beaded with clammy cold perspiration. He reached down and took her hand to shake her awake but dropped it just as quickly as the wet, unnatural iciness seeped from her fingers into his.

  He ran into the corridor screaming for the midwife. In what seemed like seconds, it was as though all of hell had broken free. They no longer cared whether or not he could hold a baby’s head properly as they had done only minu
tes earlier, as he was yelled at to take Nellie and to get out of the labour room.

  Doctors in white coats stampeded down the corridor, with nurses running after them, pushing metal trolleys, their shoes on the floor sounding like waves of angry thunder coming towards him. He saw his beautiful wife thrust out of the room on a gurney and he wanted to shout at the doctors to be careful as it smashed against the side of the narrow corridor, leaving black rubber skid marks on the pastel wall as hospital staff became clumsy in their haste. Bernadette was as white as the sheet upon which she lay, with her long red hair splayed over the pillow, as the nurses, with panic running alongside, yelled at people to get out of the way.

  It was too late. Within six minutes, she had haemorrhaged to death.

  And at that very moment, as the last breath left her body, Bernadette heard their baby cry for the very first time… as though Nellie knew and were calling her back.

  As Jerry left the hospital, the only lucid thought he had was to get to Maura’s house. When he got to the back gate, he staggered and almost fell through into the safety net of their yard. Maura ran out of the back door, wiping her hands on her apron, imploring him to tell her what was wrong as, not knowing why, she began to cry herself, fearing the very worst, which transpired to be worse than even she, in those few seconds, had imagined.

  On the second day, Maura and Tommy left yet another meal on Jerry’s kitchen table. He didn’t want to go back to their house. He couldn’t face leaving his own or having to speak to anyone – he felt an inner resentment at their ability to carry on as though the most tragic, world-stopping event had not occurred. He wanted to scream and shout at them: ‘Don’t you both know she is dead? How can you both be so heartless? How can you just carry on with your lives as if nothing has happened?’

  But he couldn’t shout that, because they were there, at the beginning and the end of every day, acting normally, giving him quiet and unobtrusive support as though nothing had really altered, as though life must go on just as it had before. Except he knew that could never be the case.

  He fell into step behind the funeral cortège, with Nellie in his arms. ‘Here’s yer mammy,’ he whispered into the side of her face as he lifted her up onto his shoulder. With one hand on the back of her head and the other across her back, he cradled her to him. He was the only person who felt Nellie should be at the funeral. Every other woman on the four streets thought it was wrong and that a funeral was no place for a week-old baby. She shouldn’t even breathe fresh air until she was a fortnight old, or so the mantra went.

  He wouldn’t give in. Nellie was Bernadette’s daughter. She had been the most important person in their lives whilst she had been growing in Bernadette’s womb. To Jerry, for Nellie not to be there was as odd as it was to the other women that she was. Nellie was going, in his arms, and that was all there was to it.

  Bernadette was now only two feet away from them both. He wanted to rip open the wicker casket in which she lay and touch her. He wanted to stroke her hair, to look at her. He wanted to join her, to lie down next to her. He wanted to die and to be with her. He knew that in less than an hour she would be underground. Somewhere he and Nellie could never reach her, buried beneath the dirt, in the eternal darkness.

  Tommy was at his side, and behind him four other men from the street who were acting as pall-bearers. He was about to carry his wife for the last time. The moment was coming when she wouldn’t be there any longer, when his mind would have to let go and accept there was nothing else he could do for her. He had chosen flowers for her grave, picked a dress from her wardrobe for her to be buried in, combed her hair when she lay in her casket.

  Every little thing he had done since the moment she had died was for her. He had given their baby her bottle, for her. He had cleaned the house, for her. ‘She would want me to keep the place clean, Jaysus, she would go mad if I didn’t,’ he said to Kathleen who was making a good job of cleaning up whilst he insisted on feeding the baby.

  He was about to take Bernadette in his arms for one last time and then she would be gone and there would be nothing left for him to do for her. He wouldn’t be carrying her as his bride, shrieking and laughing down the street. Not as the girl he sometimes playfully carried upstairs and threw on the bed with her squealing, ‘Put me down, put me down, you animal,’ as she pounded on his back, unable to squeal for long, laughing so hard she had no breath left for words. None of that would ever happen again. It was gone forever.

  He also knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that distraught with grief and desperation as he was, Bernadette would never forgive him if he didn’t look after their precious daughter with every bone in his body. Bernadette would never rest if Nellie wasn’t well loved and cared for by him and him alone. His life was to be a living nightmare as there was no escape for him. He could not die. He couldn’t follow Bernadette. He could not stay with her. He had no option. Here, looking after their child, was where he had to be. There would never be a way out.

  He knew this because he had dreamt it, as though Bernadette had lain next to him and whispered it with imperative urgency into his ear when he slept last night. The dream was so real, it had given him some comfort. It hadn’t taken away the pain, but he felt as though she were, somehow, somewhere near. When he woke, he thought he could smell her. The room felt as though she had just walked out and was standing at the top of the stairs. He was sure that if he shouted her name, she would shout back, ‘Yes, I’m here, Jer,’ with her tinkling laugh.

  Only in the dream, she hadn’t been laughing. She had been urgent, imploring, instructing him to take care of Nellie. He had felt her fingers intertwining with the hair on his chest. He had felt her leg cross over his as she kissed his ear and her free hand stroked his hair, just as she always had. She was loving him in his sleep and giving him a list of instructions. These instructions were about Nellie and, when he woke, he could remember every single one.

  The dream had given him purpose. He had been starving with grief and, in his sleep, Bernadette had fed him. That was his job now, to look after Nellie in the way Bernadette would have wanted. She was their legacy. This was his purpose. When he felt sorry for himself and trapped in a living nightmare, he would remember that dream.

  Nellie began to whimper against his chest.

  ‘It’s yer beautiful mammy, don’t cry,’ he croaked. His throat had closed; it was on fire, thick with distress. He could say no more. His legs felt like jelly and his arms began to shake. ‘Oh God, make me strong, let me cope,’ he quietly prayed. He looked up and could just make out all the familiar faces around him, down the street, at the top of the steps and on the green. Neighbours who had spent hours talking to Bernadette. She had been in every house and had dispensed her own kind words to almost everyone in front of him.

  For every woman who had cried tears of exhaustion, Bernadette had lent a hand.

  She had hugged away the fears of some of the wives and laughed with the men as easily as he did.

  His own eyes swam with tears to see so many people lining the street to say goodbye. As he looked towards the steps he saw the men from the dockyard lining the top together and, on the edge of the green, the shopkeepers and the ladies from Sunday school where Bernadette had helped with the classes. They all swam before him, blurred.

  He felt Kathleen’s hand in the small of his back, pressing gently as she stood behind him.

  ‘C’mon, lad,’ she whispered, ‘one foot in front of the other, steady now, you have the babe.’

  And as she nodded to Mr Clegg, the funeral director, who signalled to the horsemen, the wooden carriage wheels slowly inched forward, lurching to the left slightly, lifting from a groove in the cobbles and settling into the next, then lifting again, until the horses increased their speed to allow the wheels to glide over the top.

  As they moved down the street, the sobbing of the women could be heard, following them in waves, the slow repetitive peal of the death bells ushering them along.

  Jerry
had used the money saved for their future to buy his love a wicker casket and to use Clegg’s best horses and carriage.

  Bernadette had exchanged her silver heels for silver wheels.

  As the procession slowly moved towards the end of the street, those who were attending the requiem mass got up from the chairs and fell into a regimental order behind Jerry and his family. The sound of their footsteps took on the rhythm of an army of mourning soldiers, as they marched in time, as methodically as the horses’ funeral walk.

  Those still in their headscarves and nightdresses, battling to keep out the cold with their overcoats, watched as the last black mantilla turned the corner. And then silently, they watched some more, before, with heavy hearts, they took the chairs back inside.

  Jerry handed Nellie to Kathleen as he and Tommy moved towards the carriage. And now their friends would support him. The men he lived alongside and worked with every day of his life were about to help him to carry Bernadette in love and duty, and he needed them, as the tears poured down his face so hard he could barely see where he was going.

  ‘Hold up, mate,’ said Tommy, as he steered Jerry to the foot of the hearse. ‘We need to unload her.’

  Tommy used the language of the docks, as though the hearse were a ship. He was worried about Jerry’s ability to walk straight, having never seen a man cry like this before. None of them had. Jerry seemed to have lost all composure.

  ‘Me and Jerry will lift from the front, Seamus and Tommy Mac, get the end, Paddy and Kevin, move into the middle and bear the weight even. Now, steady, after three.’ Tommy was taking charge, his way of coping.

  Jerry began to shake. At first it was just his hands but as soon as he had handed Nellie over to his mother the shaking seized his whole body. When the men slipped the coffin along the waxed wooden runners, the shaking became violent, as he and Tommy lifted Bernadette up onto their shoulders, in unison and with the same control that they lifted heavy weights every day of their lives.