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

coming back, why would they be doing that? Is there someone else living in there who shouldn’t be?’

Paddy blinked. He was truly confused and had no idea what the woman was talking about.

‘Lost your tongue, have you? Well, here’s something else to pass onto your mam: if there’s anything knock-off arriving in this house on a regular basis, it had better stop right now. Do you understand? Makes sense to me that an empty house must be getting used for something, so fencing, I reckon. That’s why the nets are still up. Well, you make sure your mam knows I’m onto them. The robbing can stop, because Frank Wright is moving in, those nets can be washed, that step scrubbed and the playing on the bomb site, that can stop too. Have you got that? Make sure your mam knows that we will be in before the carnival. I think we can improve the standards around here no end and it will make it a better community for all to live in.’

Paddy nodded, his thumb was now thrust so deep in his mouth it protruded out of the side of his cheek. There was nothing knock-off in their house – no one trusted his mam and da to keep anything safe – but Tommy and Maura’s wash house and scullery had indeed been the trading post if there had been a haul and he knew the woman was bang on. The house was empty now, but as soon as the Morry came into dock, that would change. He knew that there were empty wooden tea chests, still in Maura and Tommy’s outhouse. Not a scrap of tea in them, though, or his mother would surely have had it.

He had slipped in himself once and tried to scrape some out for her, when he had found her sitting at the kitchen table, crying. He had tipped up a case and, pulling away the thin paper lining of the chest, to his joy extracted enough to make his mam a pot of weak tea every day for a week. She had been so grateful she even stopped crying and hugged him. That had been the week after Maura had left.

The woman folded her arms, peered down at him and sniffed. It had occurred to her that either little Paddy wasn’t about to cough up, or he was so stupid he was of no use to her. She had no ill feeling towards the boy, but Margaret was disappointed that the best the dock board could do for her Frank, following his promotion, was a house on Nelson Street. Margaret hated rats and therefore hadn’t wanted to live so close to the river.

‘I can tell you,’ she said, ‘if housing wasn’t still so short, we wouldn’t be moving here, but needs must.’ She wasn’t really talking to him as she looked up and down the street. ‘They will be building the new houses soon and then we’ll be off. All this lot, they will be razed to the ground and the rats along with them.’

Paddy instinctively clasped his hand over his pocket – and felt a shock run though him. Max was gone! The woman took one long look at little Paddy, who wasn’t quite sure if, by rats, she had meant the large river rats that ran along the bins and the top of the yard walls, where he had found Max, or the residents of the four streets. He stood frozen to the spot. Max, where are you? he thought, as he crossed his legs.

The woman sighed. ‘These streets have a dreadful reputation.’ She slipped her handbag into the crook of her arm and clasped her leather-clad hands together. ‘Goodbye, young man,’ she said. ‘Remember what I said and make sure your mother knows. My husband won’t be tolerating litter like that in the gutters, either.’

Paddy took a deep breath as Kitty appeared from nowhere, behind the woman’s back. He thought Kitty had come to save him and Max, but it was too late, he could tell where Max was by the warmth on his shoulder and by the look on the woman’s face that she had seen him.

‘Oh my giddy aunt!’ she screamed, lashing out with her handbag and thumping little Paddy on the chest. ‘Get that disgusting thing away! Look, look, you’ve got a rat on your shoulder!’

She raised her arm to hit him with her handbag again and this time she was aiming straight at his head. Worried that Max might be hurt, little Paddy staggered backwards. The woman was now puce in the face and her voice had risen to a shriek, the veins on her neck bulging as she stepped towards him, her handbag flailing in the air.

‘Frank!’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Oh, Lord, I had no idea it was this bad, they’re everywhere, overrun this street is. I have to tell Frank, you disgusting beast!’ And without another word the woman turned and ran down the road, apparently unaware that Kitty was right behind her.

He wondered if Kitty, like him, wanted to laugh at the sight of the woman retreating, but Kitty had disappeared as quickly as she had arrived. The nets on Annie O’Prey’s window quivered as little Paddy opened his knapsack and, without the need for instruction, Max hopped straight in. Annie’s nets dropped again and, with a quick glance, Paddy checked that there was no one else in the street before turning to face the wall, unbuttoning his short trousers and relieving himself against Maura and Tommy’s house.

Little Paddy placed one hand on the wall as he leant in and felt the cool brickwork against his forehead. He had just seen the ghost of Kitty, for far longer than was usual, had been thumped with a handbag by a strange woman, Max had almost been killed with a swing from the same bag – and he hadn’t even got down his own street to the bombed-out wasteland yet.