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

Captain Conor put the mug to his lips and swigged back the contents. ‘Have I ever let you down?’ he demanded.

Blinks examined the map pinned on the wall. ‘Have you set the course yet?’

Conor shook his head. ‘Not yet, be my guest.’

The first mate screwed up his eyes as he examined the map. ‘I’ve never in all my years sailed with a list like this on any ship – and to go all the way to Liverpool with one now, against all advice, is fecking reckless. We will have to set the course in a straight line, near as damn it. You were told to dump the cargo, not move it to port side – and it’s made no fecking difference to the list that I can see. I can’t bleedin’ walk straight. No one can.’

Conor grinned at the sight of the horizon behind him. The ship was listing badly, but he had been sailing long enough to know that the skies looked good, the charts were promising and they should, on a wing and a prayer, make it to Liverpool full of a cargo the manifest said had been dumped overboard before they had reached Rotterdam.

‘There’s something in this for everyone,’ Conor reminded his first mate. ‘A hold full of rum, ciggies and a whole lot more which is no longer supposed to be there, it will mean a nice windfall for everyone. If any of them bellyache, send them to me. We’re lucky that the ship’s owner is insured and has taken the news in good heart. He’s booked the dry dock in Liverpool and the accommodation for the crew. I told him we were taking on water and the load was uneven because he bought too much. He thinks half of it ended up at the bottom of the ocean in order to save his ship, which matters to him more than the rum.’

The first mate stepped out of the bridge and threw the dregs of his tea over the rails. ‘Neither the money nor the time are much use to any of us if we are dead and lying in a watery grave on the bottom of the sea, Conor.’

Conor picked up his binoculars and looked ahead. ‘I’ll stay on the bridge until Liverpool, so stop your fretting. You’ll all be buying me drinks in the Anchor soon. That telegram from Malcolm at the Seaman’s Stop told us things are tough at home and we’ve a duty to get back and dry dock there, not in Rotterdam – and it’s carnival time soon.’ He smiled and Blinks smiled back.

‘You have the luck of the Irish with you, Conor, but it’s a good job it’s May and not December. I have no doubt we will reach Liverpool safe and sound. We’ll do four on and four off until we berth.’

Conor lowered the binoculars. ‘Aye, well, I’ve cabled from Rotterdam and asked Malcolm to tell Mam I’ll be back soon and told him to give a wink to Jerry Deane.’

Blinks asked Conor why it was he never sent the message straight to his mam. ‘Surely she would welcome a telegram from every port? My missus would never forgive me if she didn’t get the telegram.’

Conor shook his head. He had never sent his mam a telegram in all the years he had been at sea. ‘Because it was the telegram boy who brought the news about my da, during the war. She would be a nervous wreck, just opening the door. And besides, my mam needs no excuse to be in the Anchor any more than she is. Set the course, Blinks, let’s head for home and, even with this list, keep those engines banked up and ramp up the knots.’

‘Aye, aye, Captain. Liverpool, here we come, even if we limp in with the Morry’s fecking arse scraping along on the bottom of the Mersey.’

*

By the time little Paddy reached the entry, the kids were clear of Nelson Street. He could hear them starting a game of football without him up on the wasteland and the stragglers were way too far ahead for him to catch up. His heart sank. Little Paddy was lonely and had been since the day Harry and the Doherty kids had left to live in Ireland. It didn’t seem to him as if anything was ever going to be the same again. As he watched the kids turn the corner, his steps were leaden and weighed down by his heavy heart. All of his life he had gone to the wasteland with Harry and the Doherty kids, always running and hiding from their grumpy sister, Angela.

Kitty used to mother them all and, being a mini Maura, guided them and made sure every game was played fairly and that they all got in through the school gates on time. Even Malachi had listened to Kitty, but then one day everything had altered. The priest got murdered, Kitty went away and then she died, and not long after that the Dohertys had left and nothing had been the same since. He was very sure that all of these things were connected, but no one ever spoke of it. On a morning such as this, he would have run into the Doherty kitchen and Maura would have quizzed him.

‘Have you had your breakfast, Paddy?’ He would lie, to save his mother from the shame, but Maura could always tell when Paddy was lying. ‘Paddy, sit down at the table, now,’ Maura would say and moments later a bowl of pobs would be set before him, or a slice of bread, soft and warm with beef dripping.

‘Jeez, Harry, your mam has the sight all right!’ he would say as soon as they left the house and slammed the backyard gate behind them. ‘She could see that I was dying for the bread and dripping.’

This morning, with his belly empty, his eyes prickled as he thought about Kitty. Her