Mary now set a plate loaded with two slices of freshly sliced bread, dripping in butter melted by the hot bacon and fried egg with rivulets of HP sauce running down the sides, in front of Malcolm. Biddy winked at her; Mary had done better than she had expected. Now she would let his initial indignation melt away and compassion take over, while the smell of bacon wreaked havoc with his resolve and the warmth of it melted his heart.
Biddy felt the familiar pangs of pity wash over her as he took the first bite of his sandwich. His wife had been a fatality during the blitz, in the bomb that had dropped on Mill Road hospital, and their baby, not a day old, would very likely have been on her breast. They lay there still, buried beneath the concrete that covered those bodies unable to be retrieved. His parents, out shopping, had been killed in a direct hit two weeks later, so as Malcolm fought for king and country, he lost his entire family at home in Liverpool and returned to the dust-sheeted family home where the ghosts of everyone he had loved had waited in the shadows to greet him.
Biddy watched as he bit into the doorstep and a slow smile of appreciation appeared.
‘Shall I pour the tea?’ Mary asked.
Now it was Biddy’s turn to be impressed. ‘My, Sister has trained you well over at that convent,’ she said as Mary poured the tea. ‘Get a cup for yourself too. So, Malcolm, I want you to send that telegram and I want you to do it because your conscience will trouble you something wicked if you don’t when you get to hear about all the kids who have gone hungry and how the carnival had to be cancelled. You don’t want that, do you? We don’t have long.’
‘Biddy, you’re putting me in a terrible position. I’m not a lawbreaker and I don’t like trouble. I live my life a certain way, the proper way, with everything just so.’
‘Tell you what, Malcolm, you send a telegram saying Jerry Deane is in need of a usual favour. That way, you aren’t committing yourself to anything and Conor will know exactly what you’re asking him?’
Biddy knew before the words had left her mouth that he would agree.
‘All right,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I’ll do it, Biddy, but on this condition: not one bit of whatever it is comes off that ship ends up in the Seaman’s Stop, do you hear? I’ll send your telegram today, for Mrs Deane is a good woman and if she has asked you, then it must be necessary.’
Biddy smiled. Her goal had been achieved. ‘Of course I agree. And Maura and Tommy’s house is empty, so we can store it all in their wash house out the back, just like we always have. Now get your coat, Malcolm, and I’ll come to the post office with you. Mary, here’s your list. The rooms all have numbers on the door. Top and bottom each one out and then start on the dining room. You’ve done it with your mother enough times before.’
Mary gathered up Malcolm’s empty plate and cup and obediently carried them to the sink,where she began to wash up.
‘Did she take a vow of silence?’ said Malcolm to Biddy.
‘If she had, it would be a strange thing altogether, coming from a house with nine kids, isn’t that right, Mary?’
Mary turned from the sink and smiled. ‘I’ll get cracking once I’ve cleaned up here,’ she said.
Malcolm grinned. ‘She may not be a nun, Biddy, but it seems you’ve brought me a saint.’
Chapter Six
Once the door slammed shut, Mary leant against the range and gazed around the large kitchen where she would now be spending many hours. It was bigger than her mother’s on Nelson Street and smaller than the convent kitchen at St Saviour’s where she had worked for six mornings a week since she left school at the age of fifteen. Only those who were considering taking the veil and becoming postulants were allowed to work full-time and her mother, Deirdre, had made it very clear to her that this was her destiny. Mary had promptly burst into floods of tears.
‘Send Malachi to be a priest, not me to be a nun!’ she had howled.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Malachi wants to be a docker like your da. What’s up with you, Mary? Jesus and Lord above, you won’t ever have a moment’s worry in your life. Full board and everything paid for, no visits to the rent office for you. Why do you think the nuns are always smiling? Not a care in the world amongst them.’
Mary had stared at her mother, disbelieving, already knowing it was futile to object, already plotting an escape. As it was, Sister Evangelista had come to her rescue.
‘Mary, I see no great calling in you, but work amongst us, spend time here observing our devotions and should you feel things change…’
Things did not change and Mary knew they never would. There was nothing special about Malcolm’s kitchen, and she concluded resignedly that, whatever its size, a kitchen was a kitchen and the stage upon which her life’s dramas were doomed to play out.
‘There’s no one else on these streets who has a son for a priest or a daughter for a nun,’ her mother had begged. ‘Try harder to see a way, Mary.’
Mary’s taking the veil would bestow upon Deirdre a degree of respectability, an elevated position that she could achieve by no other means. Not by money or birth, or influence. Deirdre would become the mother of a nun and there was no greater status to be achieved on the four streets.
‘I hope if our Mary does take the veil, someone writes to Ireland and tells Maura Doherty! That’ll put her nose right
