The Four Streets (22 page)

‘You dirty, stinking, foul little bitch,’ Alice hissed under her breath. ‘Stand up.’

Nellie couldn’t. She couldn’t even breathe properly, let alone stand up. Her legs were shaking so much she couldn’t move. Her throat had closed over and her mouth was so dry that, even if she had wanted to speak, she couldn’t have.

‘STAND UP!’ Alice shouted. Nellie wished she could. She wished she could stand up and run out of the door and down to Maura’s house, but she couldn’t move a single limb.

‘How dare you touch my furniture, how dare you touch my furniture, how dare you?’ Alice hissed.

Nellie looked at Alice for the first time. Blotches of red had appeared on Alice’s neck and were marching up towards her face. A dribble of spittle below her lip had flown out in anger and stood out bright white against the now very red chin. Alice wasn’t looking at Nellie, she was talking to herself. Muttering about vermin and foul children, about her ruined life, ruined because of a brat. Even as she was moving the sideboard, she carried on talking to herself, looking over her shoulder to the door. She was in such a rage that she didn’t care if Jerry walked in.

Alice’s dark hair was tied back in a tight bun, but a section from the front, which would have been a fringe if Alice had ever had a style, suddenly flew out and bobbed backwards and forwards across her eyes like an overlarge windscreen wiper, distracting her. Alice tried to tuck it back, but the errant strand was adamant. As soon as Alice managed it, it flew straight back out, with such a flop it was as if ghostly fingers had pulled it out, and it landed again in front of her eyes. Nellie knew that piece of hair was saving her.

The sideboard was heavy, but Alice heaved and pulled until the gap between it and the wall was big enough for her to get inside.

‘Come here, you little bitch,’ she shouted, as she leant down and took hold of Nellie, who was tiny and frail by any measure, by the top of her hair, lifting her off her feet. The pain was excruciating, but still Nellie never made a sound. As her feet touched the ground again, she wet herself. She couldn’t help it.

The pain in her head was searing and the amber liquid running down her legs stung. She had no time to register the extent of the pain, it was all happening so quickly. Alice let go of Nellie’s hair and grabbed the top of her arm. She dug her fingers and her nails into Nellie’s shoulder and arm so tightly that, despite herself, Nellie let out a stifled scream. She was as light as a feather and as Alice swung her through the doorway from the living room to the kitchen, her shins crashed against the door frame.

Nellie could smell Alice’s acrid sweat. Alice was wearing a bottle-green jumper and she could see every stitch in every row as her face was rammed up against it. The smell was overpowering close up and caught the back of Nellie’s throat, making her gag. Out of the corner of her eye, Nellie could see her ‘pobs’ bowl and her da’s tea mug on the draining board. Suddenly, the sight of something that was her da’s made her cry with lonely desperation. Seeing his mug accentuated the fact that her situation was hopeless; she needed him back now.

As they got closer to the range, Nellie began to breathe so fast she became dizzy. She was crying so hard she was beginning to panic. Her feet kept leaving the floor as Alice jerked her along, gripping the top of her arm tightly, lifting her up and swinging her through the air like a rag doll towards the kitchen. This was it, she knew. Finally, Alice was going to put her in the fire. She was going to burn in the flames of hell, like the priest in church said you did when you sinned. She had broken the dancing lady. She was a sinner. She knew was going to die, like her own mammy.

As they approached the range, Alice picked up the boiling kettle. She was still talking and hissing to herself; about her ruined life and having to change the bed sheets of dirty people no better than scumbags, and now she was expected to pander to a verminous brat. Still holding Nellie off the floor by the top of her arm, Alice poured the boiling water out of the kettle into the sink. Then suddenly, Nellie’s arm was set free as she grabbed her hair again, jerking her head back.

Although it hurt her so much, Nellie was relieved. The pain in her arm had been so bad she had felt like it was going to snap. She didn’t know that in a few more minutes, her shoulder would have dislocated and that Alice had let go just in the nick of time. Alice pulled her head so far back Nellie thought her neck was going to break. She let out another stifled scream and her breath came in short, fast gasps, as Alice brought the bottom of the boiling-hot, copper-bottomed kettle down close to Nellie’s face. She stopped with only half an inch to go.

The heat of the kettle was burning into Nellie’s nose and cheeks; paralysed with fear, she couldn’t move. Her cheeks were burning with a raging heat and it felt as though silence had descended over the kitchen. She whimpered, ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ each word followed by a tiny sob.

‘See this?’ screamed Alice. ‘See this? Next time I won’t stop, next time I will smash it down straight onto your ugly face. Do you get it, do you?’

Nellie tried to nod, but she couldn’t move her head because Alice’s grip on her hair was so tight.

‘Do you?’ Alice screamed, spit flying out of her mouth to sizzle where it hit the boiling-hot kettle.

The sudden loud smash of pottery on the concrete floor startled Alice. Nellie was vaguely aware of the noise as it happened somewhere in the kitchen, but it was a mere backdrop to the sound of the pain screaming in her ears.

Alice turned her concentration away from Nellie and looked down at the smashed statue of the Madonna, broken into a hundred tiny pieces, fanned out like broken eggshells across the kitchen floor. Alice slowly placed the copper kettle back onto the range. Turning away from Nellie, she stood and looked at the pieces on the floor and then at the mantelpiece above the range. She couldn’t have done that, could she? Alice ran her hand along the shelf, feeling for a reason to explain how the Madonna had moved six inches to the edge and fallen off. For a moment she forgot about Nellie as, in utter confusion, she bent to pick up the larger broken pieces from the floor.

Nellie hadn’t taken in what had happened. She could not see through her tears or feel through the pain searing across her scalp and throbbing in her arm. She was quietly sobbing and felt sick and dizzy. The hyperventilating from her fast breathing was having an effect and her legs felt weak, pins and needles pricking her whole body. And then, as violently as it had begun, it ended. Everything went black.

Nellie had fainted in blessed relief.

Just at that moment, Jerry moved to take a corner of the crate being unloaded from the back of a newly arrived merchant navy vessel. The other dockers called him Stanley Matthews after the great footballer because he always took the corner. Tommy leapt to take the other corner.

‘How’s the colleen this morning?’ he shouted to Jerry, as with six others they carefully steered the crate away from the ship’s gangway.

‘Sure she’s grand, never better,’ Jerry shouted back.

They both knew they were talking about Nellie, not Alice. As he spoke, the image of Nellie, not half an hour since, came into his mind. The thought of her running through their imaginary jungle with a cup of water and squealing that she was being chased by fish, looking and sounding just like her mother, made him chuckle yet again. His heart was warm. When Nellie was excited or happy, he saw his Bernadette. It made a difference to his day. The glimpse would stay with him all day as he still thought about her, often.

His daydreaming was broken by the yells of warning from the men at the front. The side of the butter crate they were moving had come adrift and collapsed. Two hundred and fifty smaller wooden crates of New Zealand butter were spilling out of the side of the crate all over the dock floor. As Jerry heeded the warning and ran, two of the crates hit him hard, square on, one on the top of his arm just below his shoulder, the second on the top of his skull.

He didn’t see them coming, which was rare. He was usually one of the fastest to jump out of the way of trouble, making him one of the few men on the docks who had never sustained an injury. Neither crates hurt him badly, but enough to make him scream out in pain.

‘Shut yer feckin’ moaning,’ said Tommy, as he ripped open a lid of one of the smaller crates and started stuffing half-pound packets of butter into his pockets. ‘Stop crying like a babby and fill yer fecking pockets, there’ll be butter on the table fer weeks.’

Jerry did as he was told. He scooped up the smaller packets and, flinching, rubbed the top of his arm and his head. He felt the pain from the bruises for days afterwards.

An hour later Nellie woke, exactly where she had been thrown onto her bed. Her head was at the bottom where her feet should have been and she was shivering, on top of the blankets. As she lifted her head to look around the room and check she was alone, she felt a sharp pain in her arm and as though her scalp was raw. She lay back, face down, on the bed, eyes open, heart closed. She couldn’t even sob. Her bed was wet and cold. She knew her room smelt and her legs stung. For hours she lay, staring at her fingers or at the door. The pain in her arm and head throbbed, and she felt so alone, so sorry for herself.

She cried quietly, as she listened to the sounds of Harry and the other children playing outside on the green while the light began to fade. The noise tormented her and emphasized her loneliness. She could pick out the individual children by their voices or their laugh. She thought she could hear them shouting, ‘Nellie, where are you, come out and play.’

They weren’t and never would. The kids in the street had got used to Nellie being kept inside, and Nellie’s was the only house that the kids dare not run in and out of without knocking on the door first – and no one did that. Harry’s mammy had said Alice was a witch, they had all heard her, so it must be true. The children were scared half to death of what would happen to them if they did knock on the door and she said, ‘Come in.’

‘If ye knock on Nellie’s door,’ said Harry, ‘the witch will turn ye into a rat and then she’ll tell Jerry, “There’s a rat in the yard,” and he will beat ye to death with the mop until ye was splattered all over the yard. Sure he would because he wouldn’t know it was really ye.’

The others would clasp their hands over their mouths. They imagined all manner of horrors in Nellie’s life: that she was locked in a crate in the yard, or that Alice turned her into a black cat and sometimes couldn’t turn her back again, which was why they went days without seeing Nellie. The kids on the four streets gave Nellie’s house a wide berth, sometimes staying in the centre of the road, for fear that Alice’s hand would reach through the front door and pull them into the dark, never to be seen again. They all genuflected and crossed themselves as they walked past Nellie’s door. And sometimes Nellie saw them.

Nellie knew she was different. She knew that all the children in the road lived the same life, but one that was nothing like her own. Nellie was odd.

Late that afternoon she tiptoed along the landing and sat on the top stair. She needed the toilet but didn’t dare ask. The street lights came on and she heard the children being called in for their tea. She couldn’t hear a sound in the house. There was no movement from downstairs. No light. The house could have been empty, but Nellie knew it wasn’t. Alice never went out. She could sense Alice, sitting in her chair, staring vacantly into the fire, or standing in the dimness of the bedroom, staring out at the street.

Nellie went back to lie on her bed. She was cold and sore and despite a desperate need for the toilet, which had distended her tummy and made pain wash over her in waves, she still didn’t dare ask.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear Alice come into the room.

‘Get up,’ she barked, hovering in the doorway, reluctant to even step into the room that was Nellie’s world. ‘Go to the outhouse and then to the kitchen to eat, before your father comes home. Then you can get back into bed.’

Her ominous form disappeared from the frame of the doorway almost as soon as it had arrived. Nellie was so lonely that even the arrival of Alice at her bedroom door momentarily dispersed the sadness, if only to replace it with fear.

Nellie did as she was told. She couldn’t object and, anyway, she was so desperate for the toilet, she flew down the stairs, terrified that she would soil herself. God alone knew what the consequence of that would be.

Before going, she looked back at the new yellow street light that had been erected directly outside, casting a warm and comforting glow into her room. It wasn’t all bad. If she was in her bed when her da got home, she knew he would come in to say goodnight. She also knew she would be too scared to tell him about her beating. That she would hide the bruise on her arm away from him. That she would not be able to answer him when he asked her what she had done that day and, even at her young age, she would see the hurt and worry in his eyes when his questions were met with silence. Jerry had not the intuition to realize that if Nellie gabbled with enthusiasm on the days she spent at Maura’s, there must be something badly wrong on the days she didn’t speak at all.

That evening, Jerry paused outside his back door, reluctant to go in. No other man on the streets knew how Jerry lived. He was the only man who had a wife and yet got his own breakfast. Dockers worked long physical hours, while the women stayed at home and ran the house. That was the way it was. Jerry was thankful that he and Bernadette had only one child. How would he have managed with half a dozen? No other man would know how to begin to cook his own breakfast or dinner. No man on the four streets knew that was how it was for Jerry. To think that everyone once envied him for having the most beautiful, the most loving, the most perfect wife. And look at him now. If they knew how it had worked out for him, he would be a laughing stock. It wasn’t only Nellie who lived a double life. Nellie and her father lived in the same house and shared a mutual love, but neither knew how the other existed for most of the day.