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though it were running from an open tap on a slow flow, creating a puddle of blood that had reached his own boots.

Chapter Three
    It was bitterly cold in the early morning half-light as heavy rain washed over the streets on the crest of gales swept up from the Mersey River. A fresh squall every minute relentlessly pounded any unfortunate soul who had reason to be outdoors.
    ‘It’s as though an angel is chucking a bucket of water down the street, so strong it is,’ said Peggy to her husband Paddy, as in her half-sleep she opened the bedroom curtains.
    Peggy was a plain woman, with a face that had never experienced even a touch of the cold cream currently flying off the shelves in Woolworths in town. Peggy had no beauty routine. Peggy had no beauty. What she lacked in looks she complemented with a mental denseness that made much of what she said hard to comprehend and frequently funny. Peggy was also a stranger to housework and, unlike the other women on the streets, made no effort to dispel the English urban myth: that the Irish were a dirty breed.
    Peggy hurriedly drew the curtains again when she remembered that they had been closed all week as a mark of respect and needed to remain that way for another day. She peeped through the side of the curtain and stared at the fast-flowing rivulets of water gushing down the gutters on either side of the entry.
    Paddy turned over. He wasn’t going into work this morning. He and Peggy were a good match. Paddy wasn’t a pretty sight at any time of the day. With red hair and cheeks to match, from his high blood pressure brought on by overeating, over-drinking and over-smoking, he had aimed high with Peggy and got lucky.
    ‘The ships will wait,’ he had announced as he turned out the light the night before, which of course they wouldn’t, because their time in dock was dependent on the tide, not Paddy. This morning the men and boys who normally struggled to be taken on by the gaffer would fill the places of those from the four streets.
    Peggy lifted the net and raised her hand in a half-hearted greeting as she saw Maura run down the entry and in through her own back gate from early-morning mass. Maura’s head was bent against the wind and rain and she was holding onto her hat, but as she put her hand on the gate latch, she looked up towards Peggy, as though she knew she were watching.
    If Peggy pressed her face full against the net and onto the glass she could just see halfway up Maura’s backyard to the outhouse. An acute nosiness, born from an idle existence, forced her to strain to see if that was where Maura went next. Peggy knew Maura was returning from six o’clock mass and felt guilt stir itself somewhere in the depth of her belly. Maybe she should have made the effort for first mass today. Sure, didn’t she have enough to feel bad about, without having seen Maura playing the Mary goodwife? She made a mental note to attend mass in the evening, after the funeral. A note she would have lost by the end of the day.
    For every other street in Liverpool, it was a day of heavy rain. But those who lived by the river had to contend with the squalls that battered the docks on a regular basis. The four streets took the brunt of every storm that had gathered pace and momentum across the Irish Sea, only to be broken up and dispersed when buffered by the houses. They stood out against the tempest like a policeman’s upturned outstretched hand, yelling ‘stop’ to the wind and rain as they whipped round the houses and then subsided into a flimsy breeze, on their way across the city.
    Peggy and Paddy were right to be surprised by the weather. It was one of the worst days anyone on the four streets had seen for many a long year. But the residents weren’t fazed. Those from the west coast of Ireland had seen as bad, if not worse.
    Just as Peggy was putting the kettle on and beginning to make the watery porridge that passed as breakfast in her house, Maura was on her knees in front of