Maura nodded. ‘Aye, well make sure I’m stood next to you when you do.’ They both knew which one of them the villagers feared the most and it wasn’t Tommy.
In bed, Maura slipped into the crook of Tommy’s arm and draped the other arm around his waist.
‘It’s better than me being on the docks, isn’t it, Maura? Us being here? Better than always worrying when the next ship was coming in and if I’d be taken on. It’s getting bad there, you know; the docks are only half as busy as they were.’ Tommy always spoke more freely in the dark.
‘Aye, but you always were taken on,’ she said. ‘You were one of the hardest workers. Like Jerry used to say, you’re small and stocky, built like a brick shite house. You never went without a day’s work.’
Maura, who set her alarm around the bells for morning mass and the Angelus, knew she should give thanks for what she had and be grateful and this she managed for most of the day, but, when the lights were out and she was lying in Tommy’s arms, it was near impossible. ‘I miss the four streets,’ she whispered and the hot tears that prickled at the back of her eyes broke free and ran down her cheeks.
‘Eh, come on, queen,’ Tommy said. ‘Don’t be crying now. Isn’t this what we wanted, to be back in Ireland, running our own business? Home is where the heart is, Maura.’
She buried her face into his chest to stifle her sobs. ‘But our Kitty’s grave, it’s in Liverpool…’
And for that, Tommy had no reply. He had left his Kitty all alone in the churchyard, his precious eldest daughter and the best friend any daddy could have. How had he not thought of that on the day they left, when he had taken the flowers he had bought in the market to her grave? It would be her birthday soon and who would be there for her, to lay flowers on her grave now?
‘I miss the four streets too,’ he whispered. ‘I miss the craic with the men, the games of footie, darts. And I miss work, I do; you don’t get much conversation from a cow’s udder. And the pub – I miss the Anchor. You are a grand barmaid, Maura, but it’s a fact, Babs is better.’
Maura gave him a playful jab in the ribs. ‘Oi, you, if that woman cried, there would be a landslide on her face, she wears that much make-up. Would you like me to start doing that, eh, chatting up the fellas in here?’ She could sense rather than see his smile.
‘Just think,’ he said, ‘it’s the carnival soon. They’ll all be revving up over there, getting ready. Remember how excited the kids all got with you organising everything and Angela helping Miss Devlin last year with the games and being so full of herself, she was unbearable to live with until the Tuesday after the Whitsun Holiday?’
Maura didn’t speak; she was lost in her own memories of company and banter. She thought about the Friday nights when they all got together down at the pub, the friendships forged in adversity, the making of the bunting at her kitchen table, half of the women from the streets squeezing in and out of her kitchen, the steam from the kettle permanently boiling for more tea. Babies on breasts, women seeking tea and sympathy or simply a word of advice from Maura who was regarded with the same esteem and respect as Dr Cole or Mother Superior.
Tommy, wandering in his own thoughts, recalled the O’Prey boys, the fastest runners in the north-west, who helped him to run around the streets and houses with sacks of potatoes that had fallen off the back of a ship, tipping out an enamel washing-up bowl’s worth to each house that was short of money, his heart pounding in case a bizzie walked up the road and caught them because he couldn’t run as fast as Callum or Jimmy. But most of all, he missed visiting his Kitty.
Moving to Ireland had absorbed all their time and energy and it had occurred to him that, since they had got here, Kitty had faded. Even the sharpest of the pain in his heart, all that had remained from those dark days, had gone and he even missed it because it was this pain that kept his Kitty alive and, even though the priest was dead and gone, even though Kitty and all she had suffered at his hands had been avenged, he still didn’t feel as though he had done enough.
As she so often did, Maura read his mind. ‘I miss our Kitty so much,’ she said.
Tommy placed his hand on top of Maura’s shoulder and, feeling the coolness of her, pulled the blanket up and tucked it in around her. ‘You’re cold,’ he whispered and rubbed her shoulder lightly over the top of the blanket. ‘I miss her too, every single day,’ he said as his hand casually slipped under the blanket to the familiar rise of her breast and rested there. ‘There’s no one here who really knew her other than Liam and Maeve and I hate to remind them of what happened. I know they feel responsible, even though they aren’t. We will never know, Maura, how or what; we will only know that someone wanted Kitty dead. She knew, we knew, but they didn’t dare come after us.’
There was a long silence, broken at last by Maura. ‘Kitty isn’t here…’
Tommy stroked his hand along her breast. ‘Aye, because we don’t talk to the same people Kitty did since she was a babby, the people who watched her grow. There’s nothing here, no one, to bring her to us. Not one person who watched her play in the streets or knew her in school. She won’t know this place, out here, won’t be able
