The Four Streets Read Online Free Page B

morning, spent and exhausted, Jerry and Bernadette made plans for the future yet again. They knew they were special. They knew they were different. They knew that the brightest future awaited them.
    They also knew they were lucky to have a house of their own, even one owned by the Liverpool Corporation. It was the norm for young couples to begin their married life by moving in with their parents. Bernadette and Jerry were a novelty. Jerry’s aunt had been barren, and had lavished her attention on her immaculate home, on the rugs she had been able to buy at the docks and the nice chest of drawers from Blackler’s department store. Although slightly fancy and dated for Bernadette, with far too many fringes around cushions, lampshades and curtains, it was still the best-furnished and decorated house on the street.
    Bernadette strove to be different. From the day they married, she learnt how to sew and cook, acquiring any little skill she could master to keep them one step ahead. Life had yet to wear Bernadette down, to disillusion her, to possess her womb. She embodied the arrogance of youth, combined with a hungry, impatient aspiration for a better life away from the four streets, although she and Jerry were yet to work out how it would be achieved. Even when there were only two of them, a docker’s wage merely covered the bills and provided food, with just a little left over. Most couples in the streets had at least six children, which made life much harder than it should have been.
    The neighbours nicknamed her ‘Silver Heels’, so grand were her dreams. Bernadette was aware that she had almost set herself apart from the community by talking about the future she wanted. If she hadn’t been so popular, she might easily have succeeded in this. But how could anyone dislike Bernadette and Jerry? They were so in love, so idealistic, so happy.
    A natural good neighbour, she always helped her friends. Whether it was to take a crying baby into her house to give a mother in the street some time off, or buying a few sweets for the children on the green. She attended mass every day and never gossiped – her heart was pure.
    ‘Bernadette, ye are too good for this world, so ye is, sure ye must be an angel come to spy on us,’ said Maura, who said she sinned so often she needed to go to mass twice a day. ‘Feck knows, if ye are, I’ll never get through them pearly gates now, no matter how many times I go to confession. I don’t confess everything, ye know!’ Maura would exclaim in mock indignation every time Bernadette refused to join in the gossip or say anything unkind about another woman in the streets.
    Bernadette was godmother to the Doherty twins, which made her broody for her own, but with an iron will she maintained her plan to have everything in her house perfect and some money saved before a baby arrived. And besides, she and Jerry loved their Saturday nights out, and their short trips back to Ireland to visit their families and to take home presents. The young married couple with no babies and a bit of money were accorded a similar status as the film stars of the day. They knew that once babies arrived, all that would stop.
    Jerry was so content that he could find nothing to complain about, no matter how hard he tried. Whereas many men feared going home on a Friday night after they had drunk half of their pay packet, Jerry ran home to his wife. He took a great deal of ribbing from the other dockers, but they all wanted to be him. Why wouldn’t they? He never stopped grinning. He and Bernadette were the only couple on the streets never to be heard having a row.
    The fact that they didn’t have a baby straight away was the subject of daily gossip amongst the women.
    ‘He must be jumping off at Edge Hill,’ was a theory thrown over garden walls by women with a dozen children each.
    Edge Hill was a train station just a few minutes outside Lime Street station in Liverpool city centre, and ‘jumping off at Edge