Maura chose not to mention the priest who was murdered, no one ever did, especially not Maura and Tommy. To mention his name was to give recognition to a man who had been an imposter in their faith.
‘Aye, well, Harry will do fine. We all did.’
Maura swallowed down her exasperation. ‘Liam, your mammy told me you spent most of your time in the fields on the farm at home and you were out every night with your own daddy, poaching the salmon. Which is all well and good, but don’t be giving out to me that you know what Cleary is like – you don’t know what our Harry’s hands look like.’
On the opposite side of the road an elderly man with white hair and beard, on a bike, raised his hand to wave and, as he did so, his bike wobbled precariously.
‘In the name of God!’ said Maura as her hand flew to her mouth and, just in time, the bike steadied as they passed.
‘He’s never fallen yet,’ said Liam, who chose the diversion to end the conversation about Mr Cleary, aware he couldn’t win.
Ten minutes later, Maura stood at the door to the bar, waving Liam on his way. As she watched the tail-lights of the van become consumed by the dark night, she felt deflated. ‘You can’t even read, Liam, what would you know,’ she muttered.
Why couldn’t Liam see that what Mr Cleary had done was very wrong? Only she and Tommy were indignant at the way Harry had been treated. She was Irish born and bred and she knew the ways well enough, but that didn’t mean that those who had experienced better should tolerate less. Maura knew the difference between right and wrong and what Cleary had done to her boy was very wrong. A feeling of dread she had yet to acknowledge or identify, slipped into the pit of her stomach, made worse by the sight of her first customer walking towards her. There was still the fire to light, food to get ready for the children, and all the while the oaf lumbering up the path towards her would be barking out his demands: ‘Get the fire, Maura. Fill my pot, Maura. Close the door, Maura.’ She sighed. ‘God in heaven, was it meant to be like this?’ This wasn’t the life she and Tommy had dreamt of.
‘Get the door open, Maura,’ her customer called out and she bit her tongue and fought back the urge to shout back, ‘Open it your fecking self!’
Chapter Four
Paddy farted so loudly that it woke his wife from her deep and dreamy sleep. Her eyes opened wide and the vision of a twin-tub washing machine disappeared in a flash. Maggie Trott had taken delivery of one only the week before and Peggy, along with every other woman on the four streets, had formed an orderly queue in order to inspect it. Since then she had dreamt every night about owning one. Then the efficient rumble of a spin dryer vibrating on her kitchen floor was replaced by her husband’s flatulent emissions. She turned her face towards Paddy.
‘You dirty fecking bastard,’ she snarled at him and, heaving her large frame up from the brass bedstead, threw back the old stained army blanket she had meant to wash in the copper boiler on the first sunny spring day. But that had been weeks ago and though there had been other sunny days since, somehow some inconsequential events got in the way and the blanket got dirtier and dirtier.
Peggy just didn’t know how that had happened. Before the Dohertys had left for Mayo, she and Maura had washed their blankets on the same day every single year without fail. Peggy had no mangle, but she and Maura would carry the heavy wet blankets, one by one, out of her yard, down the entry and back into Maura’s yard, feed them through the mangle and then carry them back in before throwing them over Peggy’s line. There was never any knowing when a sunny day would appear, but when it did, Maura would bang her mop on Peggy’s kitchen wall and Peggy would realise it was time to wash the blankets. She had meant to do it, the intention was there, as was the mangle, still standing in Maura and Tommy’s yard, but as she often did with so many things in life, including in the man she had chosen to marry, Peggy had failed miserably and the bed bugs had breathed a sigh of relief.
She crossed the few steps to the sash window, her bare thighs slapping together because, although she was only forty, she tottered on arthritic feet. They were made worse by the excessive weight she carried, thanks to living on bags of broken biscuits while she fed what meat and vegetables they had to her husband and children. She flung the window upwards, allowing the sound of the church bells to fill the room.
‘Jesus Christ, be quiet, will you?’ Paddy muttered, almost under his breath.
‘Stop your blaspheming, you fat slob.’ Peggy folded her arms across her winceyette nightdress to protect herself from the fresh breeze. Grey, almost threadbare and peppered with the occasional cigarette burn, it strained at the seams of Peggy’s bulging frame. Dipping down, she stuck her neck
