The Fifteen Streets Read online

  ‘I was after warming meself up with a mouthful of stew, Mary Ellen, an’ I said to meself “I’ll take a drop below, it’ll stick to Mary Ellen’s ribs.”’ She proferred the basin, full of a lead-coloured liquid, with darker pieces of matter floating about on its surface. ‘Are you all right, lass?’ She peered at Mary Ellen through her short-sighted eyes, looking for a black eye or other evidence of the fight.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right, Peggy. And thanks for the soup.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mary Ellen . . . You’ll drink it, now, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mary Ellen hastily assured her, wondering whether Peggy was suspicious of the fate of her proferred balms. She would have to be very hungry, she thought, before she ate anything made by Peggy’s hands in that menagerie upstairs. Before he died, Charlie Flaherty earned his living in many ways. At one time, he worked for himself as a tally man, and when payment was not forthcoming, took the equivalent in kind; so two of the three rooms upstairs were stacked from floor to ceiling with an odd assortment of things, not one of which Peggy would part with, ranging from a stuffed baby crocodile to a collection of books, out of which Peggy was wont to say ‘she got the extinsive iducation’ she possessed. She spread more false knowledge round the fifteen streets than it was possible to imagine. Many of the inhabitants would have sworn that Henry VIII was Queen Elizabeth’s husband, and that England once belonged to the Irish before William the Conqueror came over and took it from them. For the sum of a penny she would write a letter; for a little more, give advice on how to deal with a summons, or a case of defamation of character, or assault. Often this advice, if faithfully carried out, would have got the worried seeker a sojourn in jail. It was strange, that although she was said to be odd and barmy, her advice was still sought. Perhaps it was because it was known that on these pennies she mainly relied for her existence. There was an unspoken feeling in these streets, which, if translated, would have implied . . . you save someone the workhouse and you’ll never land there yourself.

  ‘God and His Holy Mother preserve us this day, the trials we have! Is there anything more I can do for you, Mary Ellen?’ went on Peggy.

  ‘No, I’m all right, Peggy, thanks.’ Mary Ellen looked at the basin in her hands, hoping to convey a hint that she would like to go in and make a start on the soup.

  But Peggy did not notice this move; or if she did, she refused to take the hint; for she had something weighty to say. Leaning forward, she whispered, ‘Did I ever tell you, Mary Ellen, Mr Flaherty’s cure for all this?’ She nodded towards the closed scullery door.

  Mary Ellen, suppressing another sigh, said, ‘No, Peggy.’

  ‘Iducation! No man would fight, he said, once he had iducation. And he knew what he was talking about, for he got about among the gentry, you know, Mary Ellen. It was his theory that once a man got iducation he wouldn’t raise a hand to his wife. He might, being a human being, get a bit irritated and say, “Retire to your room before I kick your backside!” or some such thing, but to lift his hand . . . no!’

  ‘There may be something in it.’ Mary Ellen again looked at the basin. ‘Sure you haven’t left yourself short, Peggy?’

  ‘Not at all. Not at all. Anyway you go now inside, and don’t talk any more; and get that down you, it’ll put a lining on your stomach. And remember, if you want any advice you know where to come.’

  She shuffled away, and Mary Ellen closed the door . . . Don’t talk any more, and, Retire to your room before I kick your backside! If there was a laugh left in her she would have laughed; but she would remember them, and some night by the fire she would tell them to John, and they would laugh together.

  John came in at half-past five. He hung his cap and coat, together with his black neckerchief on the back of the kitchen door, then sat down on a box in the tiny square of scullery and loosened the yorks that bound his trousers below the knee. Before washing his hands in the tin dish that was standing on another box he looked into the lighted kitchen and smiled towards the three children sitting at the table. Only Katie returned his smile, her round, blue eyes sending him a greeting.

  Mick called, ‘Got anything, John? Any bananas or anything?’

  And he answered, ‘Not tonight; we’re still on the grain boat.’

  When John came to the table, his mother set a plate of broth before him, out of which a series of bare ribs stuck up, like the skeleton of a hulk. The smell was appetising, and the eyes of the three children focused on the plate.

  Mary Ellen exclaimed harshly, ‘Get on with your bread and dripping!’ and almost simultaneously each bit into his own inch-thick slice of bread.

  She placed another plate on the table and said to her husband, ‘Your tea’s out.’

  Shane turned from the fire and stared at the plate, and from there to his son and the other three. His body started to jerk, first his head, then his arms, and lastly his right leg. His words too, when they came, were spasmodic and heavy with bitterness: ‘Served last now, am I? It’s a difference when you’re not bringing it in. You’ve got to work or you don’t eat . . . not till everybody else is finished.’

  John put his spoon down and stared at his father: ‘I’ll wait until you’re done.’

  His mother signalled wildly to him from behind her husband, and pointed to the bedroom. John read her signal, but continued to stare at his father, until Shane’s eyes dropped away and he growled, ‘It’s them young ’uns—I was never set down before me father.’

  His head jerked to one side as if he were straining at a bit, and Mary Ellen said quietly, ‘Don’t be a fool! Get your tea.’

  ‘You want to start, you do!’ Shane sprang up from his chair, kicking it to one side as he did so. ‘It only needs you to start. Belittling me before the bairns! That’s a new tack.’ He towered like a swaying mountain of rage over the short unwieldly figure of his wife.

  Mary Ellen took no notice, but went on cutting bread on the corner of the oil cloth which covered the table, and the children continued to eat, their eyes fixed on their plates. Only John kept his eyes on his father, and Shane lifted his bloodshot gaze from the top of his wife’s head to meet John’s again. He stared at his son for a moment, his compressed lips moving in and out. Then he swung round, grabbed his cap from the back of the door and went to go out: but as he reached the back door he paused and cast his infuriated glance back into the kitchen again: ‘The next bloody thing’ll be: There’s the door . . . Get out!’

  He kicked savagely at the box holding the dish of water. There was a clatter and a splash; the door opened and banged, and only the clink of his heel plates becoming fainter down the yard broke the silence in the kitchen.

  When they could be heard no more, Mary Ellen moved. She went into the scullery and, bending down with difficulty, began to sop up the water from the hollowed stones.

  Dimly, with a mixture of pity and understanding, her thoughts followed her husband . . . Dominic getting drunk on his earnings . . . John coming in from work. Both of them on full time, and him with only two shifts in. He was getting on and he couldn’t work like he used to, and the gaffer picked the young and strong ’uns. His strength was failing—she’d noticed that. Drink and hard work and wet clothes that were often frozen to his skin were at last taking their toll. He seemed to retain his strength for one thing alone . . . if only that would slacken with the rest. It must sometime. Then God, let it be soon.

  ‘I’ll help you, Ma.’ Katie was on her knees by the side of her mother.

  ‘No! Get up out of that. That’s the only clean pinny you’ve got!’

  ‘Well I haven’t got to go to school the morrer.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Get up out of that.’

  ‘Here!’—John stood above her—‘let’s have it.’ He held out his hand for the cloth.

  ‘Oh get out of me road, the both of you!’ Her voice pushed them back into the kitchen, and she went on bending and wringing out the cloth. Who did they think did all the other work, the washing, the
cooking, the scouring, the humping of the coal, bucket by bucket from the back lane into the coal house because now she couldn’t throw the shovelfuls through the hatch?

  She partly soothed her irritation by saying to herself: ‘You know John’s always telling you to leave the coal until he comes in. Yes, but how can I’—her irritation refused to be soothed—‘with people waiting to get their washing out!’ She flung the cloth into the bucket. Oh, she felt so tired. If only she could see a way out of all this . . . if only the bairn was born! Yes, that was the main stumbling block. Once that was over everything would be all right; she would cope, as always.

  She went into the kitchen again and said to Mick, ‘Go and empty the bucket and wash it out, and bring some clean water . . . See you wash it out, mind!’

  Mick’s mouth dropped, and he muttered, ‘Aw! Why can’t she do it?’

  He dug Molly in the side, and she cried, ‘Look at him, Ma! Stop it, our Mick!’

  John took the rib of bones from his mouth: ‘Your mother spoke to you.’

  ‘Me ear’s bad’—Mick placed his hand over the side of his head—‘it’s been running all day.’

  ‘You going out to play the night?’ John asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Mick scowled at the table.

  ‘Then empty the bucket.’

  John went on picking his bone, and Mick clattered from the table, while Molly sniggered into her pinny.

  ‘You’ll laugh the other side of your face in a minute, my girl,’ said Mary Ellen. ‘Get those dishes washed.’

  ‘Then can I go out to play?’

  ‘Who you going out to play with in the dark, you’re not going to run the streets?’

  ‘We’re going in Annie Kelly’s wash-house; her ma’s had the pot on, and it’s warm. Annie has some bits of candle, and we’re going to put them in bottles and play houses and dress up.’

  ‘Play houses and dress up,’ Mary Ellen muttered to herself. Aloud, she said, ‘And burn yourselves to death! . . . Well, and only half an hour, mind. And you can take Katie with you.’

  ‘I don’t want to go, Ma; I’ve got to do some homework.’

  ‘What!’ the mother and John lifted their heads and stared at Katie.

  ‘You got your sums wrong?’ asked John, in surprise.

  ‘No.’ Katie shook her head and tried to repress a smile, but her eyes grew rounder and her dimples deeper as she looked at their straight faces.

  ‘Then why have you to do homework?’ John asked; ‘you never have before.’

  ‘I’ve got to learn something. Miss Llewellyn asked me to . . .’

  ‘She’s Miss Llewellyn’s pet, everybody says she is . . . I hated Miss Llewellyn. I was glad when I was moved up.’ Molly wet the tip of her finger on her tongue, and in this way she secured a number of crumbs from the table. When she had put them in her mouth, she swung round on Katie, saying, ‘You didn’t tell me ma Miss Llewellyn gave you a penny the day for learning your poetry first, did you? Nelly Crane told me . . . so!’

  The smile vanished from Katie’s face, and Mary Ellen looked down on her daughter in surprise, the daughter who was the only one of the family to take after her. She could see this child, as she herself once was, plump and bonnie and open-handed. It was unusual for Katie to keep anything.

  ‘Did she give you a penny?’ she asked.

  Katie neither moved nor spoke, but her eyes, as they looked back into her mother’s, became glazed, and she cried out within herself, ‘Oh, our Molly! our Molly!’ Now it was all spoilt—the wonderful, wonderful thing she was going to do was spoilt. The Easter egg . . . the real Easter egg in a real box, tied up with a real silk ribbon, was lying in fragments about her! And the picture of herself handing it to Miss Llewellyn was lying with it.

  That penny had brought her secret hoard to five-pence. For three weeks she had kept John’s Saturday penny and the two halfpennies her mother had given her. Today’s surprise penny had meant such a lot, for she had only another month or so during which to get the remainder of the shilling.

  Her mother became blotted out by a mist; then she felt John’s big hands drawing her to him and pressing her against his knees.

  When he bent and whispered in her ear, ‘Are you saving up to buy a present?’ she experienced the feeling she had felt before that John was in some way connected with God and the priests, because he knew everything.

  She nodded her head against the bottom of his waistcoat, and he whispered again, ‘Your teacher?’

  At this she gasped and pressed her face tightly against him. John exchanged a glance with his mother, and a smile flickered for an instant across her face.

  ‘I think you must be the cleverest lass in the school,’ John went on.

  Katie brought her head up swiftly and stared at him. ‘Why, that’s what Miss Llewellyn says! She says . . . she says I’m advanced and I must work at nights and . . . and read a lot.’

  ‘There you are. There you are. Miss Llewellyn knows. She knows when she’s on a good thing. What have you got to learn the night?’

  ‘Oh, I already know some of it, the end bit,’ she laughed. ‘Listen. A man named Shakespeare did it.’ She stood back from his knee, threw her long black plaits over her shoulder, joined her hands behind her back, and said:

  ‘There take an inventory of all I have,

  To the last penny; ’tis the king’s: my role,

  And my integrity to heaven is all

  I dare now call my own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!

  Had I but serv’d my God with half the zeal

  I serv’d my king, he would not in mine age

  Have left me naked to mine enemies.’

  John stared down on her face, which was illuminated by the feel of the strange words on her tongue, and Mary Ellen stared at the back of her dark head. Then their eyes met, reflecting the glow of her words, which were unintelligible to both of them . . . But Katie had said them . . . their Katie . . . the only one of them who had ever wanted to learn. With a swoop, John lifted her up and held her on his upstretched hands. Her head was within a few inches of the ceiling, and he laughed up at her: ‘Will I push you through to Mrs Flaherty?’

  ‘Eeh! No, John. Eeh, our John, let me down.’

  She wriggled on his hands, anxious to get away from the ceiling and the proximity of Mrs Flaherty and her weird house.

  As he lowered her to the floor John laughed, ‘You’ll soon be cleverer than Mrs Flaherty, and then everybody will be coming here and saying, “Please, Katie O’Brien, will you write me a letter?” and you’ll say, “Yes, if you give me sixpence.”’

  ‘Oh, our John, I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t ask for sixpence.’

  He bent down to her and whispered hoarsely, ‘Oh yes you would, if it would get your teacher a present.’

  She slapped his knee playfully, then turned her face away to hide the tell-tale glow.

  Molly banged the mugs into the cupboard; she banged the door as she went out; then her voice came through the keyhole:

  ‘Miss Llewellyn has a swellin’,

  An’ I’m not tellin’

  Where Miss Llewellyn

  Has a swellin’.’

  John turned quickly away from Katie’s outraged face, rubbing his hand across his mouth. But he could not rub the laughter from his eyes, and Katie turned on him, her voice full of hurt surprise: ‘Oh, our John, you’re laughing! Our Molly’s awful . . . Miss Llewellyn hasn’t got a . . . She’s lovely, she’s beautiful. She wears a lovely white blouse with a frill at her neck, and her hair’s brown and shines all over the place. And Mr Culbert’s after her. Cathleen Pearson says he wants to marry her.’ Katie’s voice broke: ‘She’s beautiful . . . she’s beautiful.’

  John sat down by the fire and pulled her on to his knee, cradling her in his arms and soothing her: ‘Of course she’s beautiful, of course she is. And who’s Mr Culbert when he’s out?’

  ‘He’s . . . he’s a teacher at St Jude’s.’

  ‘Is he? Is he? Well, he can be the Prime Minister
for all I care. But you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to this Mr Culbert, and I’m going to say, “You going to marry Miss Llewellyn and take her away from teaching our Katie? You are . . . like panhacklety!!”’

  ‘Oh, our John, you’re awful!’

  Laughing, she scrambled up and stood on his knees and flung her arms about his neck, endeavouring to strangle him with her small strength.

  ‘Here! hold on.’

  ‘Eeeh!’—she drew her face back from his—‘you haven’t got to say that.’

  ‘What, hold on?’

  ‘Yes. Miss Llewellyn says you’ve got to say, “Wait a moment,” or, “Stop a moment.”’

  ‘Do you hear that, Ma?’ He winked at his mother, who was now sitting at the other side of the hearth mending a pair of moleskin trousers.

  She gave a flicker of a smile and went on adjusting a patch. What was it about these two bairns of hers that brought her such strange joy? To see them playing together like they were now seemed to make up for all the heart scolds of life. She still thought of John as her bairn, although he was twenty-two and six foot one. He would always be her bairn, her first bairn. There were some who said you loved all you gave birth to. Fools! You couldn’t love even two alike. Even those two opposite, she loved one more than the other, but she couldn’t tell which.

  Her mind returned to concrete things, and she said without looking up, ‘The front window’s out.’

  John did not reply, but after a moment put Katie on the floor and, taking a box of matches from his pocket, went to the front room.

  Katie was about to follow him, when Mary Ellen said, ‘Get on with your homework, hinny.’

  It was some time before John returned, and still he said nothing. He sat down on his chair again and took off his boots and put his stockinged feet on the fender, and sat staring at the kettle singing on the side of the hob. Presently he took a loose Woodbine from his pocket and lit it . . . Would it never end? Would life go on like this for her until she died?