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

‘Mrs Nolan, you are now into your fourth week of arrears and I have noted from the clocking-in sheets that your husband has not worked a full week for six months. This concerns me. Under normal circumstances, Mrs Doherty would be with you and I would be very willing to accept a payment plan, as I have in the past.’

Peggy looked so drained of colour he realised that she had moved beyond taking in anything he was saying. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his folder. ‘It does clearly state on the back of the rent book that, if you are more than two weeks in arrears, you have to present yourself at the administration building for an appointment to discuss matters. You haven’t been anywhere near.’

Peggy felt as though the world were spinning. She looked at Mr Heartfelt; she could make out the movement of his lips, but could no longer hear the words he was saying. She couldn’t breathe and the pounding in her ears moved into her head and beat against the sides of her brain while the pain around her lower back and across her abdomen was sickening in its increasing intensity. She needed two Anadin, she had forgotten to ask Kathleen. He held out another brown envelope towards her.

‘Mrs Nolan, please accept this letter as your notification of eviction. It is the dock board policy to give you a further seven days’ notice. If the rent isn’t paid within that time, the property must be emptied within forty-eight hours. If not, the bailiffs will be on your doorstep at 10 a.m. on Friday the twentieth of May. They will board the house and seize whatever is left inside. I suggest you go straight from here and visit the Liverpool Corporation offices in search of help. They will contact the Salvation Army to ask for temporary accommodation for you and your family; please note, it may be that you are not accommodated together.’ He was reading from the letter he would have sent, but he might as well have been talking to himself.

‘You then need to make your way to the Giro office in Bootle and tell them you have no access to money or accommodation and, finally, I will telephone children’s welfare this morning. I have already made enquiries and am aware you have young children who may have to be taken into care.’

Peggy felt as though she had been punched in the face a hundred times. Surely this could not be happening? ‘My husband – my husband – if we aren’t in the house, he can’t get down to the docks to work… he can’t do anything else.’

Mr Heartfelt sighed and shook his head. ‘Mrs Nolan, if he worked, you wouldn’t be in this position. These are dockers’ houses, owned by the board, and a condition of service is that the dockers actually work, and you make regular payment. My advice to you is to prepare your children before the children’s welfare department arrive at your door.’

Peggy’s world crashed and shattered at her feet as she heard the sound of a woman’s voice, a shout. Her head turned. The woman who’d shouted was one of the two who had been waiting for an interview. A frown crossed Peggy’s face; the young woman was running to her, Peggy, to catch her. But why? Just before she hit the dusty wooden floor, the last thing she saw before darkness blessedly claimed her, was the grin that passed between Frank the Skank and Mr Heartfelt.

Chapter Twelve

Alice was on her way to Cindy’s when a car, an unusual sight in itself, made its way slowly up Nelson Street, lurching from side to side over the cobbles. Alice recognised Mr Keeble as the driver almost instantly, but her jaw dropped when she saw that it was a rather pale-looking Peggy in the passenger seat. She waved him down and he drew to a halt and wound down the window.

‘She fainted in the administration hut and I was bringing her back up home.’

‘Are you all right?’ Alice asked Peggy, who didn’t answer her.

‘I think she could do with seeing the doctor,’ said Mr Keeble and Alice boldly said, ‘Would you mind taking us? I’ll just collect Kathleen.’

And before Mr Keeble could answer, Alice had run back into number 42 and shouted, ‘Kathleen, it’s Peggy! Get your handbag and your coat on, we’re going to the doctor’s in a car.’

*

Kathleen had never got used to calling Brendan Cole, Dr Cole. She had known him since the day he was born back home in Ireland and now he greeted her warmly when she arrived in his surgery, but not as warmly as he would have done if she had been passing him on his way into mass on a Sunday morning, back in Ballynevin. Like many before him, Brendan Cole had arrived in Liverpool as a houseman at St Angelus and never returned home to Ireland. Here in Liverpool, he had never lost his keenness to impress and remain professional at all times.

Brendan Cole listened to Peggy’s complaints about her shortage of breath and her aching veins with the patience of Saint Patrick himself, before he gave her a thorough examination behind the screen while Kathleen sat and waited on the other hard-backed chair beside his desk. Peggy had told Kathleen and Dr Cole about everything, but not about the bailiffs.

‘Your heart sounds fine, but it is a bit fast and your blood pressure is too high. Your nerves are in a bad way, Peggy,’ he said, as Peggy fastened her blouse. ‘Are you feeling OK back on your feet? Maybe I should just give you an internal and check those fibroids. Did you go back to the clinic? Are you bleeding heavily at your time of the month?’ he asked, wondering if bleeding from the fibroids had caused an anaemia that had brought on the faint.

‘I’m going to have