Authors: Nadine Dorries
Run to Him (7 page)
‘How could you do this to me and put us in this position?’
‘I just wanted the best for ye, Fionnuala. Sure, everyone calls you the angel of the streets, I wanted to bring the angel home on Christmas night in a fancy car, I wouldn’t have kept it, ye know that.’
She did know it. Callum had done the same thing once before, with equally disastrous consequences.
‘You promised me, Callum. You said the stars were your witness and you promised me.’
‘I have been an idiot and I’m about to pay for it. I will have to live without you for the best part of two years.’
Fionnuala gasped. ‘Is that right?’ She looked at the policeman. She could tell he pitied her.
His answer was gentle. ‘I’m guessing so. It’s Christmas and as we haven’t had to nick him for the past few months, he could plead he was turning over a new leaf. Who knows, if the magistrate has had a good Christmas, he may be lenient, it could be less.’
The curtains opened and Helen joined them. ‘Are you still in one piece, Callum? I thought Fionnuala would have beaten the living daylights out of you by now.’
‘She almost has,’ said Callum, with a rueful smile.
Fionnuala’s anger dissipated as rapidly as it had arrived. She had seen a sixteen-year-old boy die this morning and had held his mother’s hand as her world broke in half. She realized she needed to keep a perspective on things.
Callum held out his hand and, slowly, Fionnuala took it.
‘I’m going to wait outside, lad,’ said the policeman. ‘I’ll trust both of you nurses to bring him out in a minute.’
‘You can trust us,’ said Helen, winking at the policeman.
For a split second, Fionnuala forgot what was happening to her. ‘God, you are outrageous,’ she said.
Helen grinned. ‘I know I am.’ She turned to Callum. ‘Come on then, Callum, I am officially the one looking after you and handing you over. I’ll pop outside. Say goodbye, you two lovebirds.’
Once again, Fionnuala and Callum were alone.
‘Will you still tell your da about us?’ Callum looked sheepish.
Fionnuala had no need to even think about her answer. ‘I will, later. Tonight when they are all in bed, I will talk to my da.’
For the first time, Callum looked as though he were about to cry. ‘This is the last time, Fionnuala, I swear. Having to leave you is killing me.’
She couldn’t reply. The tears ran down her cheeks. It was killing her too.
*
He had been standing at the bus stop for an hour. Fred had wanted to meet Fionnuala tonight and walk back home with her. He had thought that the best way to talk to her was when they were alone and, as the house was always busy, he would never find a minute there in the midst of the bedlam known as their kitchen. If anyone went into the parlour, seven pairs of small ears were glued to the door. No, there was definitely no such thing as a secret on Waterloo Street. What Fred had to say was for Fionnuala’s ears only. He had almost broached the subject with her this morning, but had decided against it, just in case his words didn’t come out right. After all, he didn’t want to spoil her Christmas Day, or make it unnecessarily stressful for her. No, he was right to have left it until now.
He would tell her tonight that he and Maggie knew all about Callum and he would say, why didn’t she run around to Nelson Street and fetch him home, to have a bit of supper with them all?
Callum was the son of a man who had been his friend on the docks. A man he had walked to and from work with, every day for years. A man he had watched hit by a flying rope on the end of a crane and killed instantly, with his own eyes. Callum was the son of his late friend and, a thief or not, Fred would not dishonour the memory of his friend in that way. Callum would be welcome in his house and if necessary, Fred would steer Callum onto a straight and narrow path and get him taken on down at the docks, into his own gang where he could keep an eye on him, because that’s what Callum’s own da would have done.
As Fred squinted down the road, he saw the lights of the bus rise over the brow; he heard the squelch of the tyres against the slush and snow and his heart beat a little faster, just as it always did when he was about to see one of his daughters, after a day apart.
*
Callum sat next to Fionnuala on the bus. His arm was around her shoulders and they hugged each other tightly, both dumbfounded at the turn of events.
The policeman had been using the police phone at the hospital entrance as they walked up to him. Fionnuala, struggling, but managing to hold her distress and tears in check and Callum, walking with shoulders bent, tormented with remorse at what he had done. As Callum began to speak, the policeman held up his hand, indicating that Callum should wait a moment.
‘Aye, Sarge, well, there’s no problem my end. I’m sure he will be mighty delighted now… Yes, indeed. Thank you, Sarge.’
The policeman put the telephone down and grinned. ‘Well, ’tis true, people do go soft at Christmas. The man whose car it was has rung the station and when he heard that you were hurt, and could have run away but chose to stay and help the people on the tram, he dropped the charges. He thinks you suffered enough, spending Christmas Day on casualty, being checked out. You are free to go, lad.’
At that point, Fionnuala felt faint with gratitude.
*
They had lit the fire in the parlour and were all gathered around. Fionnuala and Callum were sitting, like a king and queen, in the middle of the sofa, and the seven girls were grouped around on the floor. They both had trays on their laps filled with a Christmas dinner, which they were tucking into, while the girls giggled and plied Callum with questions. Fred had sent around for Annie O’Prey to join them, to hear the news herself, from Fionnuala and Callum. Fred didn’t want to hurt Annie’s feelings by letting her think he had been the first to guess, little knowing that Annie had guessed long ago, on the night she passed by the top of the entry and glimpsed her son and Fionnuala enjoying their first kiss.
The room was filled with a glow from the fireside and the Christmas tree lights. Maggie, sitting on her hard-backed chair, next to the fire, was as happy and content as a mother could be. She slowly took her airmail letter, from her sister in Australia, out of her pocket and, looking down at the familiar writing on the envelope and the pencilled sketch by her sister of a holly leaf in the corner, felt a tear prickle her eye. Immediately she felt her husband’s hand give her shoulder the gentlest squeeze.
Once Annie had arrived, toothless and grinning through the door, Fred filled their glasses with Christmas sherry.
As he gave Fionnuala hers, he said to the room at large, ‘Well, Fionnuala, I bet that was your quietest day at work this year.’
‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ said Fionnuala. ‘If only you knew.’ And she grinned, as Callum sheepishly took her hand.
‘Show time,’ shouted Mary, demanding everyone’s attention as she and her sisters jumped to their feet. Then, holding the cover of the Bobby Vee record out in front of them, so that they could read the words, seven little girls sang to Fred.
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
The next heart-rending book from Nadine Dorries,
The Ballymara Road
, will be released in Summer 2015.
If you haven’t read Nadine’s bestselling
The Four Streets
, read on or click the image below for an exclusive preview:
You can read a preview of the sequel,
Hide Her Name
, here:
For more information, click one of the links below:
An invitation from the publisher
Read on for a preview of
1950s Liverpool
In the tight-knit Irish Catholic community of the Four Streets, two girls are growing up.
One is motherless – and hated by the cold woman who is determined to take her dead mother's place. The other is hiding a dreadful secret which she dare not let slip to anyone, lest it rips the heart out of the community.
What can the people of the Four Streets do when a betrayal at the very heart of their world comes to light?
Chapter One
Let me take you by the hand and lead you up from the Mersey River – to the four streets, and the houses stained black from soot and a pea-soup smog, which, when winter beckons, rubs itself up against the doors and windows, slips in through the cracks and into the lungs of gurgling babies and toothless grannies.
In May 1941, Hitler bombed Liverpool for seven consecutive nights.
All four streets survived, which was nothing short of a miracle.
Home to an Irish-Catholic immigrant community, they lay in close proximity to where the homes of families far less fortunate had once stood. Life on the streets around the docks was about hard work and survival.
Children ran free, unchecked from dawn until dusk, whilst mothers, wearing long, wraparound aprons and hair curlers, nattered on front steps and cast a distracted eye on little ones charging up and around, swallowing down the Mersey mist.
They galloped with wooden floor mops between legs, transformed into imaginary warhorses. Dustbin lids became shields and metal colanders, helmets, as they clattered and charged along back alleyways in full knowledge that, at the end of the day, they would be beaten with the smelly mop end.
The women gossiped over backyard walls, especially on wash day, whilst they fed wet clothes through a mangle and then hung them on the line to dry.
In winter, the clothes would be brought in, frozen and as stiff as boards, to defrost and dry overnight on a wooden clothes maiden placed in front of the dying embers of the fire.
Such was the order of life on the four streets. All day long housewives complained about their lot but they got on with it. Through a depression, war, illness and poverty they had never missed a beat. No one ever thought it would alter. Their way of life was constant and familiar, as it had been as long as anyone could remember. When little boys grew up, they replaced their warhorses for cranes and, just like their da, became dockers. Little girls grew up and married them, replacing toy dolls with real babies. Neighbours in Liverpool had taken the place of family in Ireland and the community was emotionally self-supporting.
But this was the fifties. The country had picked itself up from the ravages of war and had completed the process of dusting itself down. Every single day something new and never before seen arrived in the shops, from Mars bars to Hoovers. No one knew what exciting product would appear next. Liverpool was steaming towards the sixties and the Mersey beat. Times were about to change and the future hung heavy in the air.
It smelt of concrete new towns and Giro cheques.
The economic ebb and flow of daily life on the streets was dominated by the sound of cargo ships blowing their horns as they came into the docks angrily demanding to be unloaded. A call for the tugs meant money in the bread bin, which was where every family kept their money. An empty bread bin meant a hungry home.