The Ballymara Road (3 page)

‘
DO YOU WANT
to know a secret?’ Little Paddy whispered to his best friend Harry four days later, as they sat on the small squat lump of red sandstone known as the hopping stone, positioned on the edge of the green.

Snow had fallen heavily in Liverpool, on and off since before Christmas. Crystal-white pillows nestled on the lids of metal bins and windowsills while the cobbles lay buried under a glistening, dimpled blanket. Soot-stained bricks and chimneys that spewed acrid smoke had, for a short time only, taken on an aura of purity and cleanliness.

The boys were shivering on the cold, late December evening. Harry drew his thin coat tightly around him in a feeble attempt to shield himself from the brutal wind blowing up from the River Mersey.

Little Paddy didn’t own a coat. He shivered the hardest and the loudest. Harry had loaned him the overly long scarf, which Nana Kathleen in number forty-two had lovingly knitted him for Christmas, although now Harry wished he could have taken the scarf back from Little Paddy and wrapped it around his own exposed neck.

It was the school Christmas holidays and, although it was much warmer indoors, neither boy wanted to be inside a cramped two-up, two-down that was jam-packed full of siblings, babies and steaming nappies, drying on a washing pulley suspended from the kitchen ceiling.

Harry, the more sensible and sensitive of the two, shuffled on the cold stone, trying to secure a more comfortable position. Its carved surface was undulating, as though to actively discourage anyone from loitering around for long.

Harry ignored Paddy’s question and began to speak, more in an effort to distract his mind from the biting cold than from having anything interesting to say.

‘You know that if you’re running from the bizzies and you jumped onto this stone, the police couldn’t arrest ye until ye fell off? Did ye know that?’

Harry was right. The stone was no man’s land, a stubby oasis of temporary refuge on the four streets where petty pilfering was essential, in order to survive.

‘Yeah, me da told me. The O’Prey boys were always jumping on and off it before they went down. It never saved them,’ said Little Paddy, feeling very clever indeed to have been able to impart this information to Harry, who was the cleverest boy in the class. Little Paddy jumped up and stood on top of the stone.

‘But I suppose it’s hard to balance, when yer hands are full of a tray of barm cakes you’ve just robbed out of the back of the bread van.’ Little Paddy hopped from foot to foot, as though testing how difficult it would be to balance on the stone.

Harry smiled as he remembered the O’Prey boys, the overindulged sons of Annie, who lived across the road. They had been a great double act. What couldn’t be sourced from the docks when it was needed, the O’Preys would acquire. From a pair of communion shoes, to a wedding dress or even a wheelchair, for a small fee the boys could be depended upon to provide anything within reason, or even without, for anyone on the four streets. They thieved to order and were paying the price at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

‘D’you wanna know my secret, or not?’ Little Paddy was becoming disappointed with Harry’s apparent lack of interest.

‘Paddy, ye always have a secret. Does gossip just fall out of the sky and land in your kitchen?’ Harry replied, exasperated but interested, despite his determination not to be.

Harry was still in shock at having discovered Little Paddy had known all along that big Sean, who was married to Brigid, and Alice, who was married to Jerry, had been blatantly carrying on right under everyone’s noses. To add insult to injury, his mammy, Peggy, had even seen them running away together the night before Christmas Eve, when everyone else had been watching the school nativity play. Gossip about the runaway lovers raged through the four streets, and everyone buzzed to distraction, all over Christmas.

Harry’s mammy, Maura, had been mad about Peggy’s role in this and had given out something wicked to Harry’s saintly da, Tommy.

‘Gossip carts itself to that woman’s door, so it does, because it knows it will get a good hearing and then a good spreading after.’

Tommy had looked across the table at Harry and winked whilst Maura ranted. It was taking her some time to adjust to the fact that Peggy had known – long before even Maura herself or Jerry’s mother Kathleen – about the devastation that had torn apart the lives of Maura’s closest friends. This was a thing of shame. Both Maura and Kathleen would have difficulty holding their heads up amongst their neighbours for some time to come. Their credibility as the wisest, holiest women on the four streets had been shot to bits. And who would now visit Kathleen to have their tea leaves read, when she couldn’t even foretell the catastrophe that was occurring under her very nose, in her own home?

Maura was not happy.

‘To think, the shame for Kathleen, with Alice married to her own son and living under the same roof, and neither she nor Jerry had a clue. Can ye imagine the lies, and the stealth? God, what a wicked woman that Alice surely was. The cut of her. Didn’t I say so all along? Was I not the one who was never happy with such a union? Didn’t I say this would happen, eh? Eh?’

Maura banged her rolling pin on the wooden table and then waved it at Tommy. Flour flew from the end, dusting Maura and transforming her raven hair in metal curlers into an even, rolling, snowcapped range.

Tommy didn’t dare say that, since the day both of them had been witnesses at Alice and Jerry’s wedding, Maura had never even intimated that Alice would have an affair with Sean, the husband of another of Maura’s closest friends on the street, and then have the audacity to run away to America with him. When Maura was in this mood, there was only one thing to say and do.

‘Aye, Maura, ye did sure enough,’ he said, nodding sagely.

‘Did Jer never so much as say anything to give yer a clue as to what was going on? Did he not? He must have said something, Tommy. How could yer miss summat like that? Was Sean not acting different, like? Holy Mother, Sean was one of yer mates and he has run off with yer best mate’s wife. Ye work with them both all day, every day, and yer never knew a thing. Jaysus, Tommy, ye are a useless lump sometimes.’

Tommy, the meekest of men, forgot his own rules of engagement and took mild exception to this latest criticism.

‘Me? For feck’s sake, Maura, Kathleen runs an industry reading the bleeding tea leaves every Friday and she read fecking Alice’s every week. If she couldn’t see it coming, how did ye expect me to? On the docks we don’t talk about such things as women. We talk about the horses and football, so don’t blame me.’

‘Bleedin’ football and horses, when there is really important stuff going on under yer very nose. Ye amaze me, Tommy Doherty, ye really do, so.’

Maura undid her apron, throwing it onto the table. Then she flounced out of the back door, crossing the road to Jerry’s house to speak to Kathleen. There, once again she would offer solace and comfort, in the midst of the shameful tragedy that had befallen both of their houses.

‘Put the boxty in the oven,’ she had thrown over her shoulder as she left. ‘Do ye think ye can manage that? Have ye brain enough, eh, Tommy?’

Maura hadn’t waited for a reply. As the back door slammed, Tommy turned to Harry, who throughout his exchange with Maura had been watching his da intently.

Watching and learning.

‘Always agree with women, Harry, ’tis the only way to a quiet life.’

And with that, relieved that Maura had left to vent her irritation elsewhere, Tommy extracted a pencil stub from behind his ear and continued to mark out his horses in the
Daily Post
for the two-thirty at Aintree.

‘Put the boxty in the oven, lad,’ he said as he shifted his cap back into place. ‘I’m fancying “Living Doll”, a nice little three-year-old filly at seven to one. What do you think, Harry?’

Slamming the oven door shut, Harry rushed to sit next to Tommy to continue his education in how to be a man, whilst his twin brother, Declan, ran round the green, kicking a ball and pretending to be Roger Hunt.

Scamp, Little Paddy’s scruffy, grey-haired mongrel, ran across the green towards the boys and flopped down into the snow at their feet, grinning proudly. From his jaws hung the carcass of a steaming-hot chicken, one leg hung by a sinew, dripping hot chicken juices onto Harry’s shoe.

‘Fecking hell, where has he nicked that from?’ said Little Paddy as both boys stared at the dog, their own mouths watering.

In truth, Little Paddy was acting. On the four streets, no one locked their doors. The always hungry and artful Scamp had returned home, on more than one occasion, carrying a joint of hot meat. Just last week, Peggy had snatched a shoulder of lamb from his jaws, rinsed it under the tap and then thrown it in to the pot with their own meagre meal, a blind stew, which until that moment had comprised of potatoes and vegetables. Once the stolen shoulder of lamb was in the pot, all evidence of Scamp’s kill was concealed and they were safe from any neighbor who chose to burst through the back door yelling, ‘Have you seen me joint?’ Which was exactly what did happen only moments later.

‘That’ll do nicely and, ye lot, keep yer gobs shut,’ Peggy had said to her wide-eyed children, once the kitchen had returned to normal, as she dried her hands on her apron, which had been in desperate need of a wash for almost a month.

The boys only occasionally saw a roast chicken on Sunday and not always then, either. Quite often a Sunday roast would be without meat of any description. Instead it would consist of two types of potatoes, roast and mash, with mashed swede and carrots, topped with a great deal of fatty gravy. This was made with dripping and surplus meat fat left from previous meals that had been saved in an enamel bowl. Amazingly, here was Scamp, with half a steaming chicken in his mouth. As good a piece of meat as either had ever eaten on Christmas Day.

Both boys were by now salivating as they wondered who on earth on the four streets could afford to cook a chicken on a Tuesday.

‘Maybe we should run home, before whoever it does belong to runs down the street, looking for it. I’ll get the belt from me da, without wanting another from somebody else an’ all,’ said Little Paddy as he looked up and down the street nervously. But there was no sign of anyone.

Harry felt sorry for Little Paddy. Tommy had never so much as raised his voice to any of his children. They often heard Big Paddy next door laying into his kids and Harry knew it pained Tommy. But there were rules of survival on the four streets and one was that when it came to matters of children being disciplined, you didn’t interfere.

One evening, Little Paddy’s cries were so loud that Harry had begged his da to save his friend.

‘Da can’t, Harry,’ Maura had said, pulling him to her and giving him an almighty hug, while she shielded his ears with her hands. ‘We can’t interfere. It’s the law.’

Little Paddy, made nervous by the arrival of Scamp and the stolen chicken, was now becoming impatient with Harry. ‘Do you want to know a secret or not?’ he demanded, hands on his hips.

Harry’s stomach was rumbling at the sight and smell of the chicken and his attention had wandered from Little Paddy’s secret. Always mild-mannered, unusually for him, he was not in the best of moods today. He didn’t really want to know. He was more interested in reading than in gossip. School didn’t begin for another week and he had read every book he had been allowed to bring home for the holidays. Without another world to disappear into, he felt adrift.

Tommy had promised that tomorrow he would take him into town on the bus, to the second-hand bookshop on Bold Street, to see whether there was anything suitable for him. The new library, being built alongside a new children’s nursery on the bombed-out wasteland, was only halfway through construction. Harry was possibly the only child on the four streets to have lost sleep with excitement at the thought of having an endless supply of books at hand and no longer having to beg them from the sisters, or explain why he wanted something other than the bible or a prayer book.

‘Make sure you choose the biggest book they have, if they are all the same price. It will last longer,’ Maura had said when Tommy had made the suggestion early that morning.

Maura had never read a book in her life.

Neither Harry nor Tommy commented, but Harry saw the little smile reach the corner of his da’s mouth as, once again, he gave Harry that wink. The wink that told Harry: they were united, father and son. A team. Together.

Paddy had persuaded Harry to watch him playing footie on the green with his brothers and the rest of the local boys. Harry’s asthma meant that he couldn’t join in, but he enjoyed watching. Harry looked up at Little Paddy and nodded.

‘Go on then. You look as though you will explode if I don’t listen to whatever gossip it is ye have now. Although God knows, Paddy, it always gets you into trouble with ye da and I have no notion how it is ye get to know all these things.

Little Paddy needed no further encouragement. He was now unstoppable. He jumped from foot to foot on top of the stone and spoke at double his natural speed.

‘There’s a new priest arriving at the Priory. His name is Father Anthony and he has said that he is going to get to the bottom of who killed Father James, so help him, God.’

Little Paddy roared the ‘so help him, God’ bit, and raised his fist to the sky and dropped his voice an octave to mimic an older man.

Little Paddy continued, ‘Mammy went to the Angelus mass last night at St Oswald’s and she heard it herself from Annie O’Prey. Sister Evangelista has asked Annie to give the Priory a good dusting before they arrive and to be the new cleaner, now that Daisy has gone. She’s to help the new father’s sister, Harriet, who is coming to look after him and protect him from murderers. Annie is taking over from Daisy, so she is, and she’s right pleased about it, too. And there’s more. They think Daisy has gone missing, so she has, and never got off the boat in Dublin, or met her brother.’

Harry was now impressed. This was serious news, but he also knew his mother’s chagrin at Peggy’s having heard first would know no end, especially as it concerned the arrival of the new priest.