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

the urge to laugh. Kathleen had told him what Dr Cole had said to Peggy when she was in the surgery with her. ‘That’s a God-given illness you’ve been handed out there, then, one that improves by night-time so you can still get down to the pub. Holy Lord, if I am to be afflicted with anything, please make it Paddy’s back!’ Jerry clasped his hands together and made a mock praying gesture to the sky and laughed out loud.

‘How’s your Peggy managing for the money?’ asked Callum, his voice full of concern.

This was a conversation Paddy didn’t want to have. He knew that the dripping Peggy had put on his bread that morning came from meat Jerry had paid for and the enamel bowl Peggy had scraped it out of was from Kathleen’s own kitchen. He did a good job of persuading dockers who had supped deep into their cups to buy him a drink of an evening; indeed, he could walk into the Anchor with empty pockets and then struggle to find his way home after a night of ale on the back of other men’s generosity and he never went hungry. As was the tradition of the streets, the men, the workers, were fed first and best. There was no response from Paddy to the question every man had been asked by their own wives, ‘How is Peggy paying the rent if Paddy isn’t working? We can’t ask her, so did Maura give them money, or what? She must have something to be managing on if he’s not going down the steps and clocking on.’

On days when he did work, Paddy had left early on a number of days, having cadged a sixpenny bit off someone under the pretence that the kids needed food and took it straight to the betting shop. The luck had been with him one afternoon and he had won ten pounds. He kept the money hidden deep in his pockets and had kept himself fed on pies and paid for his own pints from the winnings. He hadn’t thought about the rent, but Peggy must have been paying it somehow, otherwise they would have been out on their ear. Paddy suspected that Maura and Tommy had sent Peggy money and she had kept it hidden from him. Well, two could play at that game.

The men, aware of Paddy’s discomfort, fell silent, bored with waiting, not wanting to take out their tobacco tins and roll up a damp cigarette as the evening mist rolled up the steps from the Mersey or remove the half-smoked stubs from behind waxy ears in case they should be seen lighting up from down below.

Eugene was the first to see it and punched Jerry on the arm.

‘Would you fecking look at that! Isn’t that Conor’s ship?’ he whispered as the funnel of a steamship loomed and listed, creaked and groaned, chains clanking and ropes banging on the deck as, like an old and weary ghost, it emerged from a dense patch of mist. Captain Conor’s ship looked every day of its age.

Jerry grinned. ‘It is, Seamus, one blue funnel, three stripes, two masts and the answer to our prayers has arrived. The next thing I have to do is meet up with Captain Conor or his first mate, Blinks, and find out what they have on board. If he’s been out to the Caribbean, it’ll be full of rum and, knowing Conor, he will have brought plenty back to make the ladies happy.’

Callum placed his hand to his brow and watched as the tugs expertly guided the ship in. ‘Will he have to pay tax on the booze, Jerry?’

‘Oh, the owner of the load will be paying it, not Conor. Our job will be to get our share up the steps smartly and stored along with whatever else he has for us and then doled out without Frank the Skank or anyone else noticing. Then we have to take the rest to sell at the market and via other means,’ Jerry tapped the side of his nose, ‘to make Conor his cut.’

Big Paddy looked panicked. ‘We’ll definitely get our rum off, won’t we?’

Jerry slapped his hand down on Paddy’s shoulder. ‘We have plenty of time to get organised, Paddy, but the only way you will see any of it is if you pull your weight. If there’s a haul coming up the steps, I won’t be taking any prisoners. Seamus, who can we get?’

Seamus looked up towards the streets. ‘There won’t be a man not wanting to help when Babs and Bill find out Conor’s down there. I mean, he does know the carnival is next week and I bet he’s got everything the women need to get the float ready.’

Jerry dipped his head and watched as the tug captain on the bridge called down to the crew on his own boat and they eased the Morry into berth. There was a ship already in the second dock further up, waiting to be unloaded, which looked more promising than the lumber ships of late. It had been there for four days and yet not a single stevedore had been allowed anywhere near and the bottom of the gangway was guarded by two dockside policemen. Jerry scanned the dockside and Seamus could almost see the cogs in his mind turning.

‘Look,’ said Jerry, ‘the police aren’t interested in Conor; yet normally they would be all over the dock like a rash when the Morry sails in.’

‘Yeah, whatever is on that other ship, someone is waiting for their own cut and it isn’t us,’ said Eugene.

Jerry was deep in thought. ‘Aye, well, we need to get those policemen to take a stroll down to the Clarence Dock while Tommy and I organise getting the load up the steps and into Tommy’s outhouse.’

Callum took a ciggie stump out from behind his ear and pushed himself back into a cut-out in the wall. ‘We don’t have those look-the-other-way bizzies any more, do we,