The Four Streets (27 page)

That was when Nellie saw her again. Her red hair flew out behind her as she put both her arms out towards them and urgently whispered, ‘Run, my darling, run.’ At that moment, Nellie felt as though their feet left the ground and they were propelled twenty feet forwards, just before the car hit them – straight in the back – and then came to an abrupt halt.

Callum saw the look of horror on both of their faces as they went down like rag dolls, and the Silver Cross pram, with both the babies inside, lurched violently forward, before slowly meandering up and down over the cobbles, stopping only when it reached the kerb, taking itself home, like a trusty old nag. And, just for a tiny moment, all was silent.

Harry, even though he was in a state of shock, raced in through the back entry door to the kitchen, for his mam and for Kathleen, and then ran with Peggy to bang on the pub door, in order to use their phone to call for an ambulance. Maura ran screaming like a banshee to Nellie and Kitty.

Once Nellie hit the cobbled ground, the blood from the back of her head soaked into the snow to form a large, bright red halo around her, making her look like a figurine in the Russian icon that hung on the altar at St Mary’s church. Kitty was out cold, lying with her arm flung out to the side.

The street erupted into chaos. The screaming and crying could be heard along all four streets and beyond, as people began running out of their homes and gathering round, huddling together from the cold and shock.

In a matter of moments, Nellie’s face became paler and her lips turned blue, until the colour of her skin blended with that of the snow on which she lay. Flakes were settling on both girls’ hair and remained frozen. A dusting of fallen crystals.

Kitty came round quickly and began to cry with the pain in her arm, shrieking for her mammy. But there was no sound from Nellie. Unconscious and hurt, with no lively spirit to offer a defence or protection, her vulnerability and frailty were exposed for all to see. She looked closer to death than life. A tiny and beautiful bird, broken in the snow.

One of the boys had been dispatched to the dock to fetch Jerry and Tommy. The women were whispering amongst themselves that even though the accident had happened only three doors down from Jerry’s house, Alice had not appeared. Nana Kathleen was on her knees next to Nellie, stroking her arms and whispering soft words interspersed with prayers fearing the worst, while Maura tried to calm Kitty down.

‘She has the energy to scream, Maura, that’s a good sign, she will be all right,’ said Kathleen, but the wise words did nothing to stem the flow of Maura’s tears or silence her wailing.

Jerry and Tommy ran up the steps from the docks and collapsed onto their knees in the snow next to their girls. Jerry grabbed Nellie’s hand and sobbed at the sight of his small scrap of life. The life he was supposed to protect and care for. This couldn’t be happening. No God would be this cruel, he thought. His mind was frozen, not by the icy wind, but by fear, as he looked at his baby and felt his mother’s arm slip across his back. Nellie opened her eyes, slowly, blinked and then closed them again. Blood was coming from the corner of her eye, which was badly cut.

Her cold blue lips suddenly moved as she said, ‘Da, I can’t open me eyes.’

Jerry sobbed with relief when, at that moment, they heard the ambulance bell as the van itself screeched and slid round the corner. Within minutes the drivers had the girls loaded onto stretchers and into the ambulance.

‘Get back inside now, all of you, it’s too cold to hang around out here. They will be well looked after in the hospital,’ they told the anxious crowd.

Maura and Kathleen were allowed into the back along with the patients, before the drivers leapt into the cab and sped away.

Silence descended on the street while everyone stared at the retreating ambulance. It had all happened so quickly.

Callum was already in the Anchor, out of harm’s way and close to passing out. Tommy and Jerry would likely want to kill him with their bare hands. Everyone now focused their attention on how to get Callum out of this hole and return the car to its rightful owner. The street looked after its own. Michael from the garage was sent for, then the police were telephoned and told about a mysterious car that had suddenly appeared on a garage forecourt.

As the ambulance pulled away, Jerry looked up to see Sheila with the pram, looking after the babies, and Peggy coming towards him and Tommy with mugs in her hand. As she walked up the road towards them, Brigie was shuffling along the ice with a bottle of Irish whiskey in her hand and a wake of little girls trotting after her.

‘Hot sweet tea for ye both, for the shock,’ Peggy said kindly.

‘Here ye are,’ Brigie said, as she poured the last drops from the bottle into both mugs. ‘That’ll help with the shock.’

Tommy, standing at Jerry’s side as he knelt in the snow, said, ‘Thanking ye, Peggy, and ye, Brigie.’

Jerry was speechless.

‘C’mon, mate, we can’t lose a day’s pay,’ said Tommy, trying to break into Jerry’s thoughts. ‘Let’s get back now. They will be all right with Maura and Kathleen.’ They both drained the mugs of sweet whisky and tea.

Tommy turned and walked towards his house in order to give instructions to the kids and to hand the mugs back to Peggy, who was talking with the other women. Jerry slowly got up from the ground and stood upright, wiping tears from his eyes that he could never have let Tommy see. The hot tea and whiskey burnt into his stomach and brought him to his senses.

Where was Alice? Why wasn’t she here at his side? He looked at the road in front of the houses. The grit had been churned by fear and shock. The ice and snow stained with Nellie’s blood.

As Jerry rose, he didn’t see the extra, almost indiscernible, imprint of another pair of knees in the snow, alongside his own.

Upon admission to hospital, both girls were dispatched straight to the operating theatre. Several hours after the accident, they had been operated on and admitted to a cheerful children’s ward, where they found themselves lying in beds, side by side.

The walls were painted white halfway up and then a pale blancmange pink to the top. Starting six feet above the ground so that no one could see in, huge Georgian windows reached up to the high ceiling. White iron-framed bedsteads were lined up against the walls in a regimental fashion, placed precisely six feet apart. Each top sheet was turned down over the pink counterpane by exactly eighteen inches. The rigorous attention to detail imposed exacting standards on the nursing staff and left no room for sloppiness.

Long, highly polished oak tables ran down the middle of the ward on which sat tall jars of flowers, books, cards, board games and the occasional toy. Around each bed stood a set of curtains on wheels, decorated with white bunnies playing in green fields, interspersed with the occasional bunch of yellow flowers. On a fine day, beams of sunshine tumbled in through the high windows and fell down onto the beds, radiating warmth, calm and innocence, in what was often the setting for high drama and despair.

The busy nurses’ office, situated at the ward entrance, offered a clear view of the young patients almost to the very end of the ward, but not quite. The last bed, the ‘night before home’ bed, was tucked away around the corner. It was every child’s aim to sleep in that very grown-up bed and to be on their way home the following morning.

Poorly and post-operative children slept in the beds nearest to the office and, as they recovered, were moved further down the ward. Recovery was measured in a daily physical progression, as beds were wheeled into new positions. Each morning, nurses would walk onto the ward in multiple pairs, like a small army, and cheerfully announce, ‘Musical beds time, children.’ It was the highlight of the day for those who were recovering and eager to go home.

Maura and Kathleen sat on long wooden benches in the corridor leading to the ward, waiting for the two girls to be returned from the operating theatre. Every time the ward door swung open, Maura would crane her neck to catch a glimpse inside.

Kitty’s arm was broken and Nellie needed surgery, having caught one eye with force on the pram handle. Maura and Kathleen huddled together, talking in whispers and looking exactly how they felt when in the presence of authority: invisible and inferior. The antiseptic smell of the Lysol disinfectant, used to clean the hospital floor, left a distinctive aura that hung heavily in the air and added to the sense of fear and the unknown.

A sweet young nurse approached them, carrying a wooden tray. Her hair was swept into an immaculate bun, which provided a throne for her tall starched cap. She had brought them a metal pot of tea and two sage-green national issue cups and saucers, a little milk jug and sugar bowl, and a plate with four biscuits. She rested the tray on the bench beside Maura and Kathleen and then squatted down to be at a reassuring eye level with them both.

‘Don’t worry, they won’t be much longer,’ she said. ‘Sister says you will be allowed to see them for five minutes but then, I am afraid, visiting is from two to three in the afternoon and six until seven-thirty at night.’

She smiled gently, almost apologetically, as though she could recognize mothers who would be torn by leaving their children in such a scary place as a hospital.

Maura was so overcome with relief at the nurse’s kindness, she began to weep.

‘Shush now,’ said the nurse, ‘there really is no need to cry. We are moving the beds around so that when they arrive back from theatre, we can put them next to each other for company and they really will be very well cared for and looked after.’

She put her hand in Maura’s and squeezed it, as Kathleen put her arm round her shoulders. The resolve that had kept Maura calm and upright for the last three hours was disintegrating.

Kathleen was well aware that, even though she loved Nellie, she wasn’t her mother. She was her nana and it was different. Maura had the right to be the more upset, the one who needed to be cared for, and the thought crossed her mind: poor Nellie. Kathleen loved her granddaughter and would do her best for her, and she would always be there for Nellie for as long as God spared her, but no one could replace a mother’s love. Kathleen comforted Maura, knowing that, of the two of them, only Maura had an irrational fear sleeping in the pit of her stomach.

They thanked the nurse for the tea and then both stared at her straight back and precise walk as she glided back through the ward doors, her crepe-soled white shoes squeaking on the highly polished wooden floor.

‘She was nice, considering she probably knows we are Irish,’ said Maura matter-of-factly, wiping her eyes. ‘Peggy’s cousin is working on the roads in London and he says the boarding houses have signs in the window that say, no dogs, no blacks and no Irish, can ye imagine that?’

‘Well, we could have been a pair of monkeys for all that nurse cares,’ said Kathleen. ‘She had a good heart and it helps to know she works here, where the girls will be.’

Kathleen poured the tea and handed a cup to Maura. They drank it gratefully, waiting to be summoned, and discussed how difficult visiting was going to be. No one on the four streets owned a car, and the route involved taking three buses. To be at the hospital for two o’clock would take up the whole day in travelling and the fare would seriously eat into the housekeeping. It was hard enough to make the money stretch until the Friday-night pay packet as it was. Everyone lived hand to mouth, week to week.

‘If he’s not dead already, I will kill Callum with me bare hands,’ said Maura coolly. They both considered the possibility, and drank the remainder of their tea in silence.

Nellie could hear voices around her in the dark. The strong smell of Lysol from the operating theatre had got up her nose, causing her to cough and panic. As she lifted her hand to touch her eyes and felt the crepe bandage wrapped around her face, fear took over. Kathleen had never known her granddaughter scream before, but she recognized it was Nellie just as soon as she heard it.

Kathleen didn’t wait any longer to be invited in; she ran through the ward doors and followed the scream. Nellie was in the first bed; in the second, lying quietly and half asleep with her arm in plaster, was Kitty. Three nurses stood round Nellie’s bed, two holding her down to stop her from thrashing around, whilst one tried to refasten her bandages. Nellie was furiously trying to kick her legs free from the nurses who were holding her down, either in pain or in terror, fighting to break free from their grip.

As Kathleen approached the bed with Maura in her wake, she saw something that made her stop dead in her tracks. The nurse holding Nellie’s leg lifted her hand and slapped her hard across the thigh.

‘Stop your thrashing about, you little bog jumper,’ she hissed.

For a moment, the child’s screaming stopped dead, both from the shock of the new pain in her leg and the insult. Confused by the throbbing in her eye, she was stunned by the fact that she was unable to see who had slapped her.

In that moment, Maura grabbed hold of Kathleen’s hand. ‘Steady, Kathleen, we want to stay and see them both, say nothing.’

The smack turned Nellie’s crying into a desperate whimper, as Kathleen shouted, ‘I’m here, Nellie, I’m here.’

Kathleen ran to the end of the bed, her face red with suppressed anger. When Nellie should have been cared for, at her most vulnerable, she had been slapped and hurt. But Kathleen, who, as a ‘bog jumper’ herself, felt the insult keenly, had not the confidence or the ability to challenge someone in uniform.

Swallowing both her pride and her boiling rage, she noticed the name badge: Nurse Antrobus. At the sound of Kathleen’s voice, Nellie’s cry became more urgent and needy. Kathleen unceremoniously pushed past the nurse. Nellie threw her arms round her nana’s neck and cried her little heart out.

Maura and Kathleen were allowed only ten minutes but managed to leave with both girls settled. The ward sister, who had looked at them over the top of her spectacles and straight down her large, upturned nose, spoke to them both as though English were not their first language. She explained that the bandages would be taken off one of Nellie’s eyes that night and the other a week later. Kitty would also stay in hospital for a week and would be sent home wearing the plaster cast.