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

midwife for Maura. On occasion, the midwife busy elsewhere, they were the only two there, in that special hour when the smell of a newborn and new love filled the room, often in the early hours when all the cleaning up was done, the baby on the breast or lying in a blanket-lined drawer. Then, the fire lit and tea in hand, they talked of their hopes and dreams for the new life they had brought into the world…

Scamp scraped his paw at the outhouse door and whined and Peggy, dragged back into the moment, just at the point that her body could hold on no longer, reached down, and caught her baby in her hands and then fell backwards onto the wooden plank seat, wondering and amazed that her child was the longed-for daughter at last. She knew to wait; she had birthed seven children. The great contraction was to come when she would deliver the placenta and she knew it would come in its own time, just as her daughter had. She reached up for the grubby ribbon tied around the neck of her blouse, yanked it out and, using her teeth, ripped it in half to tie the umbilical cord. Then she took a wire curler out of her apron pocket and using that and her teeth, separated her daughter from the placenta.

Sighing loudly and spitting, Peggy pulled her uncomplaining bundle up onto her chest and wrapped her cardigan around her, holding her against her as she rocked. Her eyes were wild, her face flushed and she felt a huge sense of relief and panic, all at the same time.

‘The bailiffs are coming,’ she whispered into the side of her daughter’s face. ‘I prayed for you, I wanted you, I’ve asked and asked the Holy Mother to send you, but you’ve come too late; they will take you off me now, they won’t let me keep you. I can’t let that happen, I can’t.’

Her baby snuffled and Peggy, holding her away from her, looked down into her face She was struggling to breathe and so Peggy sucked the mucous from her nose and her airways and spat it onto the floor. Her daughter gasped, her first full breath, opened her eyes, and looked straight into Peggy’s own, which were bright with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep you, you can’t stay here for there won’t be a here; we will be out on the street.’

*

Mary had almost reached her back gate. Her thoughts, initially troubled by the sight of Jimmy with another girl on his arm, had turned to relief in the blink of an eye. She had expected to feel devastated, but between Cindy’s proposition as they left the salon together and her own transformation, she felt as though she were standing at the crossroads of her life and for once the choice was hers to make.

Cindy had said, ‘You know, Mary, I often wonder what will happen to the salon if I get married and have a baby. Reg isn’t going to wait much longer for me because I’m a stroppy mare and he puts up with a lot!’ She’d grinned down at Mary. ‘Look, what I’m saying is, I could do with training up someone to take over from me and I like you, Mary; I think I could trust you, so, if you fancied a change from scrubbing floors and washing dishes…? I liked the way you chose your style; you have a boldness and you remind me of myself when I was younger. Alice was right, Mary, choose your own destiny. And honestly, it doesn’t have to be one of misery and nappy buckets, not until you are really ready for it, anyway.’

Mary’s mouth had opened and closed. Cindy had laughed. ‘You don’t have to answer me now. Off you go before I have your mam down here wanting to know where you are. I know you help a lot at home, everyone knows that, and I’ll tell you what: whoever does run this place for me, will get the flat upstairs because I’ll be moving into Reg’s house.’ Cindy grinned. ‘Oh Mary, if you could only see your face. Go home, think about it and come and see me when you’re ready, but honestly, I think me and you would make a great team. And remember, the only way to shape your own destiny is to control it. It’s your life, no one else’s.’

With a smile on her face and her eyes lit with excitement, Mary had left Cindy, full of anticipation for all that could lie before her. And then she’d passed Jimmy outside the betting shop. Seeing him kiss the girl full on the lips, in the same way he’d kissed her, had pierced her feelings like a pin in a bubble and she’d gasped; she had just told Cindy she loved him with all her heart, said she knew he was just scared of her mam and da, that was why he hadn’t come to see her. But that was no longer true. She’d turned and watched the group as they walked away, Jimmy with his arm around the girl, and at that moment it dawned on her that she’d been set free. She’d lived a year in madness, waiting and hoping and dreaming of Jimmy and yet, here he was, and she couldn’t believe that she had been so stupid, so willing to hitch herself to a cartload of strife. To think of walking in her mother’s footsteps and hope and pray that her firstborn would be a girl in order to lighten the load as the years progressed. Why would she wish her misery on another?

As she made her way back to Nelson Street, Mary had felt the thrill of a different life opening before her. Cindy’s salon. Cindy’s salon. She would be exchanging one bleach for another, boredom for company, and soapsuds for sophistication – but, most of all, chores for creativity. She