The Four Streets Read online

  ‘Don’t panic, just breathe,’ she told herself, as she placed her scarf over her mouth to reduce the stench of cat pee and whatever else was making her gag. She heard muffled music coming from down the hall and then saw a faint light struggle to penetrate the darkness from under a door. Alice gingerly made her way towards the thin strip of light, step by step, one hand holding her scarf against her mouth and the other flat on the wall to feel her way along the hall corridor. Suddenly she stood on something that moved so swiftly from under her feet, it made her lose her balance. She put both her hands out to save herself, but to no avail, ending up face down in a new musky smell she recognized. Shaken and shocked, she picked herself up as the door tentatively opened and, to Alice’s huge relief, flooded the narrow hallway with light.

  ‘Hello, Alice,’ said Miss Griffiths, ‘My poor girl, I am so sorry, are you all right? Can I help you up? How lovely to see you, please come in.’

  Alice looked down at herself. She was covered in black dust, having fallen over a pile of coal outside the door. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and began to furiously brush herself down.

  ‘It is my fault,’ she said, seeing how much worse the rheumatics had made Miss Griffiths and how gnarled her hands were. ‘I will just put this back.’ She bent down and retrieved the coal scattered around the hallway.

  ‘I am relieved to see it’s you,’ said Miss Griffiths. ‘Some of my coal is stolen every day and I don’t ever get to the door in time to see who it is.’

  Alice wanted to ask why it was kept on the floor outside the door but the answer awaited her as she stepped inside.

  The room was hardly big enough for one person and Alice noticed that it was not as clean as Mrs Griffiths had kept her room at the hotel. Her housekeeper’s eye took in the dirt on the floor around her fireplace and the smoky grime on the mirror hung on the wall. Alice wondered how Miss Griffiths managed to cope as she noticed her hands were so bad that her fingers appeared to have closed over on themselves. A badly made bed occupied one corner; at its foot was a table with a pot, bowl and a matching jug. Another small table stood against a wall with wooden chairs on either side, the seat pads covered in green leather. On this table stood a radio playing classical music, a bowl of sugar, a brown teapot, a milk jug and a cup and saucer. Two red velvet armchairs flanked the small range in which a pathetic fire with the remains from a handful of coal smouldered. Against the opposite wall was a cupboard that obviously contained food. A chest of drawers stood to the side of the door and above it hung a picture that Alice thought she had once seen in one of the hotel bedrooms before it had been redecorated. The cold from outside had seeped into the room and the dwindling fire had allowed the damp to take hold. On a diminutive rug in front of the fire slept a ginger tomcat with a battle-chewed and bloody ear.

  Alice didn’t like being here. Miss Griffiths had been her superior. Never a personal word had passed between them. Their past conversations had been about bathrooms, sheets and chambermaids. Alice knew nothing about Miss Griffiths but, over a short period of time, she had watched the older woman’s hands turn out sideways to resemble a pair of fans and her back hunched, until she was so debilitated that she could no longer work.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea for your trouble?’ asked Miss Griffiths, as she struggled to take the envelope and the bag from Alice.

  If Alice felt awkward, Miss Griffiths felt diminished and embarrassed by Alice seeing her in this condition. Her job had been her world and she had been very professional, running a tight ship and managing the chambermaids as though she were a strict hospital matron. If only she had known, she was friendliness itself compared with Alice.

  ‘Er, no, thank you,’ said Alice. ‘I had better be getting the bus back now. We have a new girl arriving off the boat from the bogs this afternoon and, as you know, I need to be there to sort her out.’

  She had no idea what to say and took her leave within minutes, not noticing the look of acute disappointment in Miss Griffiths’ eyes. It would never have occurred to Alice that she was the only visitor Miss Griffiths had received in many months. It never crossed her mind to offer to carry in some coal, or ask if there was anything she could help with. It was now almost impossible for Miss Griffiths to pick up a cup and saucer, but she would never let anyone know that.

  Those thoughts still didn’t cross Alice’s mind when she heard three months later that Miss Griffiths had been found dead in her armchair, having died of dehydration and hypothermia. It was the constant wailing of the cat and the lack of coal to steal that had attracted the neighbour’s attention.

  Alice knew that if she didn’t act quickly, this could be her fate. She would become the next Miss Griffiths. She was prepared to do whatever it took to make sure that never happened to her. Come hell or high water, her future would be secure.

  Later that afternoon, at the end of their shift, the crew from the bus enjoyed their mug of tea in the Crosville hut down at the Pier Head. The conductor filled in his accident book and noted what had happened for his supervisor.

  ‘She was a fucking loony,’ said the conductor to the driver. ‘Posh gloves, but away with the fucking fairies, if you ask me, talking to herself out of the window. Not even so much as a flinch when the ticket machine caught her in the face.’

  ‘You’re the nutter,’ said the driver, ‘pulling the bleeding cord and then saying you didn’t.’

  They finished their break in an acrimonious silence, the conductor not wanting to mention the woman with long red hair that he thought he had seen jump onto the bus just before the bell rang, but was nowhere to be found afterwards.

  Chapter Five

  Over the next year and a half, Alice put her plan into action with great skill and single-minded determination. She was living a lie but she was excited and fired up by the fact that it was no effort whatsoever, and she could very easily see the results of her scheming slowly and steadily becoming her reward.

  She had hoped that the baby would travel back to Ireland with her grandparents or maybe even be popped into a convent. To her huge disappointment, she discovered on one of her first visits that the baby was going nowhere. It was a blow, but Alice even had a plan as to how to cope with Nellie. Week by week, she eased herself a little more into Jerry’s life and each week made it a little harder for him to manage without her help. Without his even realizing it, Jerry was slowly becoming dependent upon Alice.

  Alice was as cunning as she was cold. She paid her second visit almost a month after the first and then the next three weeks later. Each time she came with something delicious to leave behind and, by the third visit, she had begun to help with little things, like the ironing, or making a pie, with food she had taken from the hotel kitchen. This food was divided out amongst staff who worked at the hotel. For the lower grades, it was the leftovers from the table service; but for the more senior staff, it was a cut from the butcher’s and a share from the fresh fruit and veg delivery.

  Alice had never previously taken any, but now she pulled rank. She brought fresh beef and chicken to Jerry’s house and, having taken lessons from the hotel chef, could cook a decent stew. The chef made her the odd pie with buttery hand-rolled puff pastry and steaming gravy, which, delivered in a wicker basket wrapped up in a tea towel, lasted Jerry a few days. In return, Alice supplied the kitchen staff with bedding, blankets and pillows. The hotel trade was doing well in Liverpool and everyone had their cut.

  After the first six months, Jerry would arrive home some nights to find Alice in the kitchen cooking a meal. She always left straight away, insisting she didn’t want to encroach upon his time. This made him feel bad and he implored her to stay and eat with him. He had never invited her to the house, but she quickly worked out that the back door was never locked and took the daring step one day to let herself in.

  For Jerry, the pleasure of coming home to a clean house, with the range lit and a meal cooked, quickly surpassed his shock at finding a near stranger in his kitchen.
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  One day, when Jerry and Tommy were sitting on the dock wall having a ciggie break after unloading a hull, they began to talk about Alice.

  ‘She is a strange thing, this Alice,’ Jerry said to Tommy. ‘She seems to like helping out and I can’t work out what she wants in return because she won’t let me pay her nowt.’

  Eejit, thought Tommy, but kept his thoughts to himself. He wasn’t going to start a row with his best mate. He also wasn’t going to repeat to Maura what Jerry had just said, because she would kick off. Instead, Tommy made a few enquiries of his own.

  ‘Was she a friend of Bernadette, then?’ he asked, as subtly as a brick. ‘It’s just that I was wondering, like, why I never saw her before Bernadette passed away and, the thing is, I don’t remember her from the wedding, either.’

  ‘She was nursing her sick aunt in Macclesfield,’ said Jerry, who had already asked this question of Alice during one of their first meetings. He had tried to place her in his mind and tried to remember meeting her. He couldn’t. It was a mystery. He knew the name, he had heard Bernadette mention an Alice, but in what context he had no recollection. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it and, anyway, she was obviously just kind and trying to help.

  ‘I do feel a bit uncomfortable, so I do, just sometimes,’ said Jerry. ‘I mean, what would Bernadette say? But, Tommy, I swear to God, it’s nothing like that, I never so much as touched her or had a thought like that cross me mind. Anyway, as soon as I gets in, she leaves.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Tommy, nodding. Maura had mentioned that. ‘You know what I think, Jerry? I think she’s broody and it’s all about the babby. She has none of her own and I reckon she’s hanging around ’cause she has a nature for Nellie. Not having had a baby of their own by the time they are twenty-one does strange things to a woman’s brain, so it does, and the more time goes on the worse it gets. I don’t know how Bernadette stayed so normal, I don’t. Best thing to do is bang ’em up as much as ye can and as soon as possible and then ye can’t go wrong. It’s natural.’

  Having both spoken enough for working men, they sat on the wall in silence, looking down at their boots while they finished their ciggies. Jerry was lost in thought as to how things would have been different if he had led his life according to Tommy’s simple rules.

  One day, Jerry invited Alice to stop, spend the evening and eat with him and Nellie. He felt bad that she had arrived with a meal and wouldn’t take a penny off him.

  His mornings were always rushed. On his way to work he took Nellie down to Maura’s, with a basket full of nappies, and collected her on his way home. He often left the kitchen in a mess and felt horribly guilty at how much this nice, kind woman, who wouldn’t stay longer than five minutes once he and Nellie got in, did to help them. He felt he should do something in return. Initially, she refused every single time but then slowly she began to accept the occasional invitation, always manufacturing reasons as to why she couldn’t accept most times he asked.

  Over time, although he had never so much as touched her, Jerry realized that Alice was becoming a fixture in his life and that others would regard her as more than a friend. Alice was odd, he recognized that.

  Maura remembered the stories Bernadette had told her about Alice. Maura hated Alice, which made things difficult. Every time Jerry dropped Nellie off at Maura’s, he was assailed by a storm of questions. He assumed that Alice didn’t relate very well to Nellie because she didn’t want to step on Maura’s toes. Even he was aware that when Maura came into his house and Alice was there, the hostility between them froze the air within seconds. However, he knew that when Alice wasn’t around, life was just that bit harder.

  After about a year, he began to invite Alice to go with him to the Irish centre on a Saturday night, and on Sunday afternoons she would occasionally meet up with him, as he pushed Nellie around in her pram for a change of scenery. Jerry would do anything to keep moving and to blot Bernadette out of his mind. Thinking about her wasn’t the source of comfort he once thought it would be; it was torturous and painful.

  As Alice became a regular feature at the house, Maura grew spitting mad. If she could have poisoned Alice and got away with it, she would have. One day, when Jerry wasn’t around, Maura decided to meet Alice on her own terms. When she saw Alice enter Jerry’s house via the entry, she followed her into the house and pretended to be shocked when she found Alice in the kitchen. Alice was so much at home that there wasn’t much acting involved in Maura’s being stunned.

  ‘Can I help ye?’ she said. ‘Are ye here for anything special? Only Jerry didn’t mention youse was comin’.’

  Alice knew she would have to deal with this one carefully. Maura might be bog Irish, but she could tell she was sharp.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ she responded, without a hint of friendliness in her voice. ‘I finished early at the hotel and thought I would pop down to help him out.’

  ‘Did you now,’ said Maura, instantly affronted and her temper rising. ‘Well, let me tell ye, miss, there are plenty of us here on this street to help out. Jerry doesn’t need a stranger to do it for him.’

  ‘Oh, I’m no stranger, Maura,’ said Alice tartly. ‘In fact, Jerry is taking me to the Irish centre on Saturday night. So I am sure we can chat there, but for now, if you don’t mind, I have a meal to make.’

  Maura stared with envy at the meat Alice had unpacked from her basket. A dark piece of brisket sat on the table covered in a dark-veined, deep-yellow fat. Maura could never afford meat like that in her house. The two women looked each other in the eye. Maura had met her match. As she retreated from the kitchen, Maura spotted the statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantelpiece, facing the wall, as if in disgust. She immediately thought Alice had done it.

  In an act of defiance and with a determination somehow to leave her mark on the kitchen before she exited, Maura stormed over to the range and reached up to the mantelpiece.

  ‘The Virgin Mother doesn’t put her back on us,’ said Maura, as she turned the statue round. ‘She keeps an eye on what we’re up to.’ Then she flounced out of the kitchen.

  Confused, Alice looked up at the statue and at the door Maura had just slammed behind her. It is true, she thought somewhat ironically, the Irish are mad.

  It was after a particularly bad second winter alone, with Nellie now toddling around the house, that Jerry asked Alice to marry him. He hadn’t planned to and for days afterwards he regretted what he had done, but there was no way out of it. He had committed a mortal sin. He had made his bed and now he had to lie in it.

  Two weeks earlier, measles had swept the streets and Nellie had been ill for the entire time. Jerry had barely coped. Maura was at her wits’ end, with her own seven children all down with the same illness, including Kitty, who was usually like a second mother and a second pair of hands for Maura.

  It was the first time Nellie had been ill and despite Maura’s protestations that she could handle one more sick child, Jerry wanted his Nellie to have all of his attention. He took the whole week off work and didn’t go down to the docks once. It was Tommy who kept both houses fed that week.

  Jerry hadn’t seen much of Alice while Nellie was ill, although it was the one time he could really have done with her help. He wondered where she was and why she hadn’t called in, but he was too busy nursing Nellie to think too much about anything, other than keeping her temperature and her food down.

  It had never once occurred to him to ask Alice to marry him. He didn’t think about it even for a second, not even when he hit his lowest point, boiling Nellie’s vomit-soaked sheets in the copper boiler in the yard, with the cold rain pouring down the back of his neck and the steam from the boiler scalding his face. Not even when he cried again and his tears ran into the trickles of steam on his cheeks.

  Definitely not then, because that was when he thought he heard Bernadette say his name. As he looked up, he saw her through the steam at the kitchen window, like he used to. She was standing at the sink, smiling out at him. De
finitely not then, because that was one of the few moments he felt Bernadette was somewhere near, when he needed her, when he knew he wasn’t alone. One of the very few moments he allowed himself to think about who and what he had lost and lived without, when he let her memory roam free. And he was filled with shame at how angry those moments made him feel, the fury rising like acid in his throat.

  It happened on a Saturday night. Jerry had invited Alice to the Irish centre, something he now did on a regular basis as a way of saying thank you. He didn’t really know what else to do. Even though he’d worked out she didn’t have much of a social life, he told himself that she appeared to enjoy herself and the odd glass of Guinness, so it usually turned out well enough.

  The dockers worked hard, their wives struggled to manage every day, but it was all made bearable by the fun they had down the club on a Saturday night. They spent the first half of their week talking about the previous Saturday and the second looking forward to the next. So special were Saturday nights that it was the only night of the week the headscarves came off, the curlers came out and the Coty cherry-red lipstick was taken off the top of the mantelpiece, where it stood all week like an ornament, and was applied carefully in front of the mirror that hung above. Lipstick cost money. Nothing that cost money was hidden away. A lipstick was a possession to be admired and it remained on parade, ready to hand, to apply at a moment’s notice. Maura dusted her lipstick, along with the pot dogs. The family lived hard during the week but there was no better fun to be had than in the Irish centre, or in the Grafton rooms on a Saturday night.

  There was a comedian over from Dublin that night to do a turn and a band from Sligo playing afterwards, which everyone on the docks had been talking about for weeks. Jerry knew the craic would be good and he would be able to have a few drinks himself and relax, not something he did often. It didn’t really worry him that Alice was intense and slow to laugh, that she never spoke to Nellie, that she avoided any intimate contact with him and was the coldest fish he had ever met. He didn’t care. He just liked to have the company. Another human being to relate to. Someone to keep him talking about little things and stop him thinking and remembering.