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

‘What in the name of God has become of us?’ she had whispered. She put it back and, delving into her apron pocket, clasped the comforting rosary beads as they clicked through her fingers.

*

The children had been sitting on the stairs when she’d opened the kitchen door to leave and she had avoided their desperate expressions, but she could not unhear their miserable sobs. Still, Peggy wouldn’t allow them to play out, barefoot. Never in a million years would her children be the only barefooted children out on the street.

‘I’ll get you some plastic sandals as soon as I can, I promise now,’ she’d said. ‘It’s nearly summer and with some of the money I get for this lot, I’ll buy you chips. So come on, cheer up.’ She was attempting to cheer herself up as much as the children.

Paddy had held her gaze, his face full of concern. ‘Ma, can I do something? Do you need help? Can I help, Ma?’

‘Paddy, you can help me with the chips when I get back and I’ll make sure I get enough for everyone to have a saveloy each too.’

Her children had looked up at her, their eyes filled with the kind of adoration reserved by the masses for the pope. Oh, she would not let them down. Knowing the women would be in their houses, preparing the tea for their own families and away from the street, she’d opened the front door and, pushing the pram before her, slipped out. She had taken the one and sixpence she had left to her name, money Kathleen had given her to help with food for the tea, knowing that unless she could find more, they would be turned out of their house on Friday. To keep a roof over their head and food on the table she would sell herself down on the docks. Everyone knew, when Annie O’Prey had fallen on hard times, it wasn’t a cup of tea and a slice of Annie’s famed Victoria sandwich that the coalman had stepped inside for. She would never admit it now, but the black handprints on Annie’s backside half an hour later had been a dead giveaway. Annie had paid for a hundredweight in kind and Peggy knew of others who had done the same in desperate times.

Now, if she couldn’t get what she needed from the pawnbroker, there was nowhere else for her to turn. She was days away from losing her home and the children’s welfare would take her children into care when that happened. All she would be left with was big Paddy – and what a thought that was. Her children were hungry. She would sell the clothes off their backs, the shoes off their feet – and if she had to, Peggy would sell herself.

Now she wandered down the Dock Road, looking around her, watching carefully, and then she saw it happen before her very eyes. A woman stepped out from a closed shop doorway and a man approached her. They spoke and then she opened a door in the wall and they disappeared inside. Peggy sighed; this woman was not wearing slippers. She wore heels, a fancy coat and her hair was done.

*

The visit to the pawnshop almost robbed her of the last of her dignity, or so she thought.

The pawnbroker picked up each shoe and checked the soles. He put the blankets on one side. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve had a wash?’

Peggy looked down at her hands.

‘Well, in that case, I can’t give you much because if you don’t come back, I’ll have to get them to the wash house before I can sell them. Three shillings for the blankets and ten and six for the shoes.’

Peggy gasped. ‘Is that all?’ It had hardly been worth the long and exhausting walk.

‘I’ll have to get this lot resoled. It’s a business I run, not a charity.’

Peggy felt as though she had been winded. ‘But why? They’re made of good leather?’ She was in shock; she had guessed at three pounds at the very least. She was depending upon that amount to call off the dogs. To persuade Mr Heartfelt that she could return with more and to let them stay in their home because they had nowhere else to go.

‘Leather is leather,’ the pawnbroker said. ‘No one from around here has ever brought me good leather. They don’t even know what it looks like.’ He laughed out loud and then, with little compassion for the bereft woman standing before him, asked, ‘Am I taking them, or not?’

Peggy looked over her shoulder and out of the window. Normal people living normal lives were bustling past. Workmen on their way home to a tea on the table. Old, invisible women, returning from mass, children answering the call to return home for tea; and she thought of her own children, huddled on the stairs and hungry. And very soon there wouldn’t even be the stairs to sit on.

‘Take them,’ she said as she placed her mother’s clock on the counter and the man peeled away the layers of newsprint.

‘Ah, now you’re talking,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a fiver for that – it’s an original.’

A thrill ran through her. She could deliver chips to the kids after all, and saveloys too – and surely this would be enough for Mr Heartfelt. Frank the Skank and the threat he and his wife posed had faded. She would rather keep her home with them as neighbours than have no home at all. It had come to that.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said, and as she pushed the clock across the glass-topped counter, she heard her mother’s voice, ‘That clock’s been my pride and joy; it was your grandmother’s, so don’t you ever let it go, do you hear me?’

Peggy’s breath caught in the back of her throat. If she died before she got the clock back, and if she had the last rites and went to heaven and her mam was