Authors: Nadine Dorries
Brigid was sitting in front of the range with her youngest lying across her lap, about to have her nappy changed.
‘Hello, come in, come and sit down, and how’s our baby Joseph this morning?’ Brigid cheerfully greeted Alice. ‘Has the tooth come through that was giving him hell yesterday?’
‘Morning, Brigid, no, it hasn’t and I really wish it would. He hardly slept last night and his cheeks are burning up like mad,’ said Alice, lifting Joseph out of his pram.
‘Have ye any Disprin?’ Brigid asked Alice.
She didn’t look up as she deftly removed the pink-topped nappy pin from the white towelling nappy worn by her scrap of a red-headed daughter. Brigid was house-proud. The whiteness of her nappies, as they blew in the breeze, was a source of joy to her. She had seen too many grey nappies blowing on lines around her and had vowed that hers would always be the whitest in the entry.
As soon as the dust from a load at the docks blew up and across the four streets, she was the only mother to dash straight outside to pull her nappies off the line and dry them indoors.
‘No, I haven’t used anything, to be honest. Kathleen usually deals with most of this. I am really not sure what to do.’
‘Hang on, give me five minutes and I’ll get him one, I’ve plenty. I will just change this little madam’s nappy.’
Alice thought how much the red-headed baby reminded her of a skinned rabbit. The soaking wet nappy had filled the room with the heavy smell of ammonia.
To Alice’s horror, Brigid now folded the nappy over and wiped it across her own face, rubbing down the side of her nose before holding her hair back to wipe her forehead and under her chin. Then she rubbed it across her cheeks and over her closed eyes.
‘Oh, my giddy aunt,’ squealed Alice. ‘Why the hell did you just do that, with that stinking-wet nappy? The wee has been on that all night!’
Brigid laughed. ‘Exactly, and it’s all nicely concentrated. There’s a reason why we Liverpool girls have the best complexions in England, Alice. A wipe-over with the first wet nappy of the morning is the only beauty regime we need.’
‘What, you do that every morning?’ Alice found it difficult to hide her revulsion.
‘Alice, I have a brood of daughters and an endless supply of wet nappies. I have been doing it for years and so does every woman on the four streets and across the whole of Liverpool. Sean tells me the sailors all say the same thing, that there are no women in the world with skin as soft as that of Liverpool women. They say the sailors are so captivated by it, they sing sad songs about Liverpool girls as they leave port, so they do, and happy ones when they sail back in.’
Alice had to admit it. The women who never seemed to wash, and smelt none too pleasant, always had lovely complexions.
Many of the women on the four streets had lost most of their teeth and those they retained were black and crumbling, but their skin remained beautiful. You could even tell that Annie O’Prey had once had nice skin.
‘Jeez, Alice, where have ye been living all of ye life?’ said Brigid, laughing.
With expert deftness, she picked up the baby and handed her straight to Alice, who was so shocked she almost dropped her. How did she explain to Brigid that she had never even held baby Joseph until he was three months old?
But Brigid hadn’t noticed and was still talking as she pulled back the curtain across her kitchen press to look for a Disprin.
Alice stood with the baby in her outstretched arms begging for her not to move or make a sound.
‘Was there anything else ye needed?’ said Brigid as she rooted around in her cupboard.
‘No, nothing, I just thought I would pop in to say hello and to say that we would love to come again to the club with you and Sean, if you are ever going on a Saturday night again.’
Alice didn’t take her eyes off the baby while she spoke.
‘Wasn’t it a grand night!’
‘It was, yes, we loved it and Angela was great about minding Joseph. Jerry gave her sixpence when we got back.’
‘God, I would have to pay someone a fortune to mind mine, so I would. We have so many, we have to wait until Sean’s mammy is here, but she isn’t going back for a few weeks so we can do it again. Will ye stay for a cuppa? Sure, go on, ye only have the one little fella to look after, ye have time.’
Alice was happy to stay for a while. She wanted to ask Brigid questions about Sean and their plans for America. Her golden opportunity came just as Sean’s mammy walked in the back door.
‘Oh, hello, Alice, how lovely to see ye. Are ye stopping for a cuppa?’ Mrs McGuire said, before she had even taken her coat off.
Sean’s mother was half the size of her son and a fine-looking woman. On her visit from her village just outside of Galway, she had adopted the Liverpool custom of leaving her curlers in underneath a hairnet. It was not something she did back at home, where they didn’t bother with the curlers. A headscarf was good enough.
But now Mrs McGuire was looking worried.
‘Brigid, Caoimhe does not like that school, I’m telling ye, she does not. I almost had to push her through the door. If ye ask me, the nuns in Liverpool are different altogether from the nuns in Ireland.’
Brigid said, ‘I know, Mrs McGuire, but what can I do? The nuns say she will get used to it soon enough.’
Mrs McGuire was having none of it.
‘Aye, she might that, but if you ask me, those nuns are too cruel. One of them slapped her across her little legs because she was crying for me. Dragged her in through the door by her arm, the sister did. She doesn’t get that at home, Brigid, so why should she have to take it at school? Broke my heart, so it did, to leave her at the gate. Why won’t the nuns let us into the yard to say goodbye? Cruel, so it is.’
Brigid was only half listening as she mixed a spoon of molasses into Joseph’s bottle and handed it back to Alice, full of the dark liquid.
‘Here, give that to Joseph,’ she said, wiping the bottle with a tea towel.
‘I will, thanks, but what on earth is in it?’ asked Alice, as she smelt the teat of the bottle.
‘It’s a bit of molasses, nicked from one of the tankers, mixed with a little warm water and a dissolved Disprin, mixed in with Joseph’s milk to take the pain out of his teeth. He’ll have a lovely morning nap after that.’
Alice nervously tipped the bottle and put it into Joseph’s mouth. His eyes opened as wide as saucers when he took the first mouthful.
‘See, they love it,’ said Brigid. ‘Kathleen will have a jar of molasses in the cupboard; just a spoon and he will be fine, but only a little. You can mix it in with the milk once a day, but be careful he doesn’t get used to it now and want it all the time. The tankers don’t come in every day and we have to take it in turns as to who gets the drippings from the loadings.’
‘My God, that is the first time he has smiled in days,’ said Alice, sitting down on the chair to nurse Joseph, who was sucking so furiously that she was afraid to break his stride.
She was also watching Sean’s mammy, and waiting for an opportunity to talk to her about America. She leapt in almost straight away.
‘So, do you get to visit your daughter in America, Mrs McGuire?’
‘I do, Alice, and sure ’tis a wonderful place altogether. They pay for my fare to go and beg me to live there with them, but sure I can’t, unless Sean and Brigid decide to go too. I can’t leave them behind with all these babies to look after on their own, can I?’
Searching for the molasses had given Brigid an excuse to tidy out the press and wipe out the drawers. She gave Alice a sideways look as she emptied out the contents onto the kitchen table and wiped down the shelves. She had noticed Alice and Sean were in animated conversation about America on Saturday night. The conversation had made Brigid uncomfortable and she didn’t want Alice starting to talk about it again to Sean’s mammy.
‘I have a mammy too, Alice,’ said Brigid haughtily. ‘And I have an opinion, and I’m afraid America is not for me and Mrs McGuire knows that. If the boot was on the other foot, you wouldn’t want me to be dragging Sean away over to America and leaving ye all alone, now would ye, Mrs McGuire?’
The temperature in the room had noticeably dropped and Alice stood to take her leave. She was amazed by Brigid’s lack of ambition and thought how much she wished she could change places with her. She would even have a dozen kids if it meant getting away from Liverpool and on a boat to America.
Later that evening, Sean won three matches in a row. It had been a good fight and he had pocketed seven pounds and ten shillings from each match. More than he took in a week’s wages on the docks.
He was doing better than he had ever dared to hope and his savings were mounting up.
This was a relief. He had to train hard and, what with his job, it meant he was hardly ever at home. Boxing was a means to an end. He didn’t enjoy working on the docks, but at least with the boxing he fought for the money and it was his. He wasn’t lining the pockets of the thieving bastards over at the Mersey Dock Company.
As Sean walked home, it occurred to him that there were many things in his life he wasn’t happy with, other than having to work every moment God sent.
One of them was Brigid’s constant reluctance to talk about the day he was saving for, when they could pack up and leave for America, and join his family in Chicago. He wanted to work hard for himself and his family. To be in charge of his own destiny.
In America, he knew his efforts would be rewarded with a better life for them all.
In England, he struggled to save. Each week he made the dock company wealthier and had his head punched in every Friday night. Life had to be better than that.
His sister’s letters were full of the most innocent yet enticing details.
His mother could not stop talking about the opportunies for those prepared to take a risk and put in the graft.
Already his sister and her husband were earning a small fortune, enough to buy their own home and pay for his mother to sail to America twice a year. This summer they had been to Florida for a holiday and had sent him a postcard. It made his stomach crunch to think how much easier and more prosperous life was for them.
Sean decided that he would talk to Brigid again when he got into bed. He would wake her up if he had to. Brigid had to stop this ridiculous, small-minded clinging onto what she knew and realize that emigrating to America was for the good of the family.
‘Jeez, what is up with the woman?’ he said out loud as he shook his head.
He loved home as much as the next Irishman, but even in Galway there was nothing for Sean other than poverty and then more poverty for his kids too. He punched the entry wall with his fist as he turned the top corner and, for the first time that night, his knuckles bled. Lucky that he had another week for the skin to heal over.
As Sean looked up he was shocked to see Alice standing by her back gate. He had enjoyed talking to her at the Irish centre. She had none of Brigid’s reserve. They had spoken most of the night about America. Alice had told him she had kept all the brochures she had found that had been left by guests staying at the Grand before taking their passage across the Atlantic, and that sometimes she still read through them.
God, Jerry doesn’t know how lucky he is, thought Sean. I wish I was married to someone who had a spirit like Alice.
‘Everything all right, Alice?’ Sean asked.
‘Yes, everything is fine, Sean. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I want to know so much about how to get to America, and to try to persuade Jerry that it would be such a good idea. I wondered if we could talk again some time?’
Alice felt a thrill that came only when she was in her own secret world. Talking out her fantasies with Sean, without Jerry or anyone else being aware, was exciting. She wanted to know Sean better.
‘Would you mind not telling Jerry or Brigid that I asked, though?’
‘Aye, of course, and don’t worry, I won’t mention anything. If Jerry is as stubborn as Brigid, I know exactly what ye mean.’
Alice glanced up at the bedroom window, where Jerry had been sleeping for the last hour. As she looked back at Sean, her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Sean noticed there was something different, unusual about her. Was she wearing lipstick? Unlike the other women, Alice never ever wore a hairnet and she had styled her hair in the fashion of the girls who worked in the offices in town.
Her deep fringe swept almost over her eyes, with the rest of her hair hanging loose on her shoulders.
Alice had experimented with changes every day for weeks. Sean had noted that she was always a little smarter than the other women on the four streets, in a very English kind of way. No one had seen much of her for years and yet suddenly it was as if she was everywhere.
This was the third time he had seen Alice in as many days.
Alice noticed the blood running down Sean’s fingers. She reached out and took his hand in hers, examining it and dabbing his knuckles with her apron, making him flinch.
‘Oh, my goodness, is that from your fight?’ She looked up at him, holding both of his huge hands in hers, her eyes wide, and turned over the damaged hand to search for further signs of injury.
Alice now took her handkerchief out of her pocket and, wetting it with her saliva, began dabbing away at the open graze.
‘No, Alice,’ Sean laughed. He had knocked three men out cold tonight without a scratch. How could he tell her it was from punching the entry wall? ‘I skimmed my hand on the wall as I walked past,’ he said, pulling away.
The sensation of another woman holding his hands made him uncomfortable. Not because it was unpleasant, in fact it was just the opposite. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced for a long time.
He had enjoyed talking to Alice on Saturday night. He had noticed that she had become prettier as the months went by. Since Kathleen had moved into the four streets, Alice had filled out and was no longer the skinny wretch she had once been.
There was an air of aloofness, of reserve about her that Sean quite liked. She wasn’t like the Irish girls at home who were apt to be overly friendly in their search for a husband. Alice had a detachment, which he now realized was quite exciting.