Coming Home to the Four Streets by Nadine Dorries (books that read to you .txt) 📗

from the pawnshop, the shame would keep her from attending that too. The effort of standing had made her back twinge again and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Don’t cry,’ she said to herself, ‘you’ll manage, don’t cry.’

Chapter Five

All Malcolm Coffey wanted was to run his very lucrative little business, be a good host and to be left alone. His happiness in life was derived from the new television he had installed in his sitting room, the pools he filled out once a week, mass on Sunday, his morning tea with the Daily Post and his nightcap of the dark rum, courtesy of Captain Conor, which he kept in his Jacobean sideboard.

Malcolm had been amazed to see Biddy Kennedy so early and with her Mary Malone, whose cheeky brother, Malachi, was Malcolm’s chief suspect as being his milk thief. He was as much a scallywag as Mary looked saint-like.

Now Biddy tapped the empty hook on the coat rack behind the kitchen door. ‘Hang your coat here, Mary,’ she said, ‘then get the kettle on.’ Mary, eager to please, obeyed instantly. ‘Have you any word from Captain Conor?’ Biddy asked Malcolm and a look of concern crossed his face.

‘I haven’t,’ he said. ‘The last I heard about the Morry was from a crew that was in here three months ago. They’d had word that Conor was sailing to the West Indies and they have pirates out there, they do. No one has had word since.’

Biddy pursed her lips, and tutted as she removed her cigarettes from her pocket. ‘Everyone is in a right state. Maisie has been moaning that there’s no material for the carnival frocks and Ena had to go to the doctor’s to get tablets for her nerves, convinced the Morry has sunk – apparently she said that Babs had told her a body had been washed up on a shore somewhere in the world and it was probably Conor’s.’

Malcolm gasped. ‘No, surely not? Was that on the news?’

Biddy took out a box of matches and shook her head. ‘Not very likely, is it? There’s a lot of ocean and a lot of sailors! But it’s been that long since she heard from him and Babs is in a flap in case her and Bill have to fund the rum for the carnival. Babs said she’ll make it up to Ena and give her a free port or two to compensate.’ Biddy sat herself at the kitchen table. ‘Get your notepad and some paper, Malcolm, we need to make a list for Mary. She’s here to clean your ornaments, not admire them.’

‘Biddy, I don’t need any help…’ Biddy gave Malcolm one look and his protest faded away. He made his way to the tiny reception next to the front door and returned with the pad and pen and placed them in front of Biddy, at the same time as Mary laid two cups and saucers on the table.

‘Would you like me to make you any breakfast, Mr Coffey?’

Malcolm was momentarily taken aback and attempted to stutter a reply.

Biddy sighed. ‘Oh, close your mouth, Malcolm! Honestly, she asked did you want any breakfast, not a four-course meal, and given that this is a guest house it seems to me that maybe she should start learning now. Right, a bacon and egg sandwich for Mr Coffey, Mary, with lashings of HP sauce. Let’s see if you can find your way around his kitchen. A bit of toast for me, queen.’

Mary made no reply but, glancing around the large kitchen, set to work while Biddy turned again to an impressed Malcolm. Maybe Biddy was right; maybe he could do with the help.

‘Right, Malcolm, you are the only one who gets the telegrams when a crew is coming in, so can you send a telegram the other way like, to a ship? One that’s still on the water.’

Malcolm shook his head. ‘Tramp ships like the Morry don’t have a schedule, so no one knows when they are going to turn up and they trade on the spot, but I do know the man in America who buys for Conor’s ship. I can send a telegram to him if it helps?’

‘That sounds like a good idea, though you’d have thought he would have got a message to Ena, wouldn’t you? But anyway, let’s go to the post office, Malcolm, and send a message to Captain Conor through this buyer fella. These streets need a haul, for no one has anything. The docks are only taking on half a pen every morning because there aren’t many ships in and those that do come in have smelted iron and lumber and you can’t toast a carnival or put a roastie in a child’s belly with that, can you?’

Malcolm looked aghast. ‘I’ll be doing no such thing!’ he spluttered. ‘I won’t be a part of anything crooked and underhand. I’ll ask Captain Conor when his crew needs the rooms, but I won’t be mentioning a haul.’

Biddy took a deep breath as Mary placed a teapot on the table. ‘Kathleen Deane and her daughter-in-law, Alice, have been to see me. They’re worried sick about the carnival so we must tell Conor what we need before he fills in the manifest.’

A haul was when an agreement was reached with a captain and enough cargo was slipped off the ship at night to sell on the black market, with some being kept for the dockers’ families and widows. Biddy hadn’t slept well the previous night. She’d thought the days of the hunger on the streets that she’d seen during the forties were over.

‘I thought that with the end of the war and the busy traffic in the docks, we could rest easy, that there would be enough work for everyone forever,’ she said now. ‘But we can’t, Malcolm.’

The smell of bacon filled the kitchen. Biddy had primed Mary on the way to Malcolm’s. ‘You’ll cook Mr Coffey breakfast for him. I need to ask him to do something he