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

of relief and slip it back into place again. But for three Fridays now there had been no tick. His ma usually left to pay the rent every Friday morning, straight after pay night on Thursday. She also took her curlers out to pay the rent, for Peggy, despite her ways, loved her hair. It had once been the feature that made her stand out amongst her peers. And although not as thick or as lustrous as it once was, it still made a statement when she removed her curlers. Peggy might stand in the rent queue in a coat with no buttons and her worn-out slippers, but her hair took on all comers from the dockside streets. However, little Paddy had noted that Peggy and her curlers had not been parted for the past three weeks and his heart had tightened in fear.

Peggy’s eyes narrowed as she took in a deep and weary breath. She wanted to ask him why was he asking about the rent. What business was the rent of his anyway, being just a child, but she thought better of it. Her son was frequently bottom of the class at school, but at home there was very little that passed him by. Peggy’s hand slipped over the pocket of her apron and felt the crackle of the envelope within. Little Paddy and Peggy, both hiding a secret deep in their pockets, held each other’s gaze.

‘Is Da going to go to work this next week, Mam? Will the rent be paid?’

Peggy shook her head, visibly irritated. ‘Stop asking me questions, Paddy, I don’t know, do I? It’s not as if I have Tommy Doherty for a husband, is it? Your father was out at work every day because Tommy, who never missed a day’s work, shamed him into it, and I can’t keep going over the road to ask for Jerry’s help. Jesus, I couldn’t stand the shame.’ Peggy’s words stuck in her throat and Paddy could hear she was trying not to become agitated as he heard the rosary beads click in her apron pocket. ‘Even Alice, a Protestant, doesn’t have my life. Oh, there’s something wrong there! She never sets foot in a church, not even her own. Full of sin she must be, and yet she has a husband like Jer and me – me, I have that fat lazy good for nothing upstairs!’

Peggy rolled her eyes up to the ceiling before she rubbed them with the back of her hands. Tommy Doherty had saved Peggy’s life on a number of occasions and was the kindest man they knew. He had saved little Paddy and the kids more than once too, because the house walls were one layer of brick and noise travelled well. The moment Tommy had heard raised voices or the sound of a chair flying across the kitchen floor, he would storm up her back path, into her kitchen and heave big Paddy off whoever was on the receiving end of his fists. On more than one occasion, that had been Peggy herself, with the boys huddled in the corner, crying. Peggy felt lost without the Dohertys for many reasons. Peggy’s eyes were red through lack of sleep and worry and her face was white, the only warmth in her cheeks a reflection from the red headscarf she wore tied around her curlers every day.

There was a time, in the days when Paddy did work regularly, when every now and then, on a week with good overtime, Peggy would call into Cindy’s to have her hair done into a beehive and on those days little Paddy was so proud of his ma because she was almost like the other mothers. She would also go to the bingo with Maura, and nothing made little Paddy happier in the whole world than seeing his mother, smiling and excited, rushing down the yard to meet Maura and knock on for Shelagh or Deirdre. Oh, he loved her so much!

Peggy’s shoulders drooped and the desolate sight of her, of the empty tin of Get Set hair spray on the mantelshelf standing next to the empty bottle of red nail varnish, a testament to better days, pained his heart, as did the worry etched on her brow and the sadness in her eyes. He knew something of how she felt, because he had lost his best friend too. He and Harry Doherty had been like brothers but he never said anything of this to Peggy; he knew she had enough on her plate. His head fell and he gazed down at the dirty, unwashed quarry tiled floor, covered in crumbs and half of the wasteland brought in on shoes. He was right, then. The rent hadn’t been paid and that concerned him because he had seen Tommy Doherty storm up the stairs to his da’s bedroom so often and heard him shout, ‘Get out of that bed, you lazy bastard! Because if you don’t, the rent won’t be paid and the dock board will have the bailiffs round and all of you out on the street with every measly thing you own!’

Tommy would never have said that to his da if it weren’t true and little Paddy had seen it happen, had walked past a family on the Dock Road, the ma crying, Eric the milkman coming to their rescue, loading their belongings onto the back of his milk float, Ena bringing the mam a glass of whiskey to steady her nerves. Maura had told him later that Sister Evangelista had sent them to a refuge on Upper Parliament Street to keep them dry until the Liverpool Corporation found them a house, but that the house would be miles away, out at Speke. Maura had bought them a bag of scones at Cousin’s on the parade and asked Harry and little Paddy to drop them round to the ma.

‘You take them, lads,’ she had said, ‘it will save her dignity that way. Better if I don’t