Now it was Deirdre’s turn to look embarrassed. ‘Mary, you and me, we need to have a little talk about things for, honest to God, you don’t understand. A few words followed by a few minutes with a scally like Jimmy O’Prey, they can ruin your life forever. You are never to be alone with him ever again, do you hear me? That’s how accidents happen.’
Like most of the women on the four streets, Deirdre loved a drama and that day she had one all of her very own. ‘God, my nerves are shot, I’ll be down at Dr Cole’s at this rate. Who would have thought it? You, kissing Jimmy O’Prey and in broad daylight too! The shame of it if anyone had seen you. Mary, you promise me now that you will never see him again, because if you do I’ll have to tell your da and he won’t be happy, I can tell you. There will be trouble, Mary.’
Mary looked up and saw her brother outside the kitchen window, laughing openly at her discomfort, his hands and face pressed against the glass. He was too short to reach, which meant one of her other brothers was likely on all fours in the yard and Malachi was standing on his back. He had no shirt on and his vest was streaked with dirt, his face mucky and smeared. It would be her job at the end of the day to make sure each one of them was washed and scrubbed in the metal bath. She thought of her da and she knew he would indeed have been angry if he’d been the one to catch her with Jimmy. He was always giving out about Jimmy O’Prey, using his stints in prison as a warning and an example to his own sons.
Deirdre started putting lipstick on in the mirror over the fireplace. Her face was white, her hand shaking. She’d spoken to Mary through the mirror. ‘You don’t understand, Mary, your life can change for the worse with a lad like Jimmy O’Prey. Would you want to be knocked up, married to a jailbird not because you wanted to, because you had to? The shame of it, can you imagine? It would kill your father – and me, never mind him!’
Deirdre wasn’t one for curlers during the day. She was one of the most frequent visitors to Cindy’s, the hairdresser on the parade, and was a disciple of the new order, sleeping in curlers at night and backcombing during the day. Her hair was short, bleached blonde with dark roots at least an inch long, and it seemed to Mary that no matter how many afternoons her mother spent in Cindy’s chair, whilst Mary watched the children and prepared the tea, the roots were always there. Now Deirdre snapped the cap back on her lipstick, extracted her compact from her handbag and began to wipe the pad over her nose. She regarded her plain daughter.
‘Never see him again, do you hear me, Mary? Never! If you only knew how miserable your life would become if you got yourself hitched to a boy like him.’
Mary felt lost, could her life be more miserable than it was already? How on earth could that be possible?
‘Right, now get into the wash house where I know you will be safe from the likes of that scallywag and keep yourself busy. The washing is nearly done in the copper, so rinse and mangle it and get it on the line for me before the weather changes. I need to speak to Kathleen so I’m off to number 42.’
Mary had known that Deirdre couldn’t wait to tell the women about what had just happened. It would have been a crime for them to witness it for themselves, but not to hear the embellished version from Deirdre. The fact that Deirdre had caught her and Jimmy kissing in the entry would spread across the four streets like a bush fire before teatime. Deirdre would be the centre of a drama, elicit the sympathy of the other woman for the cross she had to bear, the trauma of such a near miss and praise for the way in which she had averted a potential disaster.
Once the morning chores were over and the potatoes for tea peeled, the women of the four streets spent most of the day in and out of each other’s homes, vacating one kitchen to reassemble in another, discussing something, anything – the murder of the priest, the price of fish, the state of Peggy’s front step, the number of men taken on in the pen that morning – whatever it was that had occurred since the previous day. No one, though, ever gathered in Peggy’s. Even women who had nothing were particular about which ashtrays they flicked their ash into, whose chipped cups they drank their tea from.
Mary hadn’t waited for Deirdre to leave for Kathleen’s; she’d dashed back down to the wash house, slamming the door behind her, wondering where Jimmy had gone. She could see no way out, no escape from the drudgery that was her life, which felt so much harder than it had even before Jimmy had first spoken to her. Jimmy had unexpectedly stepped into her life and from that moment on she had begun to dream and, for the first time, felt truly alive. She wondered, could she get the washing done before Deirdre returned and then head up to the bombed-out wasteland? That was where Jimmy would wait for her, she was sure.
It was where Jimmy, a handsome nineteen-year-old, had first spoken to her, smiling down at her with an impish grin on his face and stealing her heart in an instant. His cap was low over his eyes, his smile full of mischief and promise. Jimmy did not lead the dull and boring life that Mary did and it showed. The air between them felt
