Coming Home to the Four Streets Nadine Dorries (book recommendations for young adults TXT) 📖

off and she knew the answer before Dr Cole spoke, so she lunged straight into the remainder of her woes in an attempt to persuade and deflect him.

‘And if all that wasn’t enough going on, it’s my husband, Paddy. He’s a lazy git; he won’t go to work and so he hasn’t had a full week in six months and we’ve got no money. He won’t get out of bed, we’ve got no food in and I can’t go to the priest again. You must know about Paddy; he says he’s coming down here every week and you are waiting for him to be under a doctor at the hospital, a specialist, and it’s all taking so long…’

Peggy reached a tearful crescendo and Kathleen pushed a handkerchief between her fingers.

‘How are you keeping up with the rent, Peggy?’ she asked.

‘I’m managing,’ said Peggy as she dabbed at her eyes.

As Kathleen watched Dr Cole writing down everything Peggy had told him, she thought how like his father he had become. Every day of the week, Brendan Cole had half a dozen Peggys in his surgery, women who came to see him about problems which had little to do with their health and more to do with the circumstances they lived in, so the sight before him today was a familiar one. Peggy blew her nose noisily into the handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Nolan,’ he said. ‘I can’t write a letter to the dock board instructing them what to do with their own property, I just can’t. I can have a word with your Paddy, though, if you think it will help? Because I have seen your husband and I think there must be some mistake. I can find nothing wrong with his back and I certainly haven’t referred him to the hospital.’

Peggy gasped and looked as though she were about to faint again.

‘Look, there are two solutions to this problem. The first is for me to have a word with Paddy. I’ll check him out again, but I’m afraid that isn’t going to have any impact on how often he goes down the steps, or on who your new neighbours are, so you will have to think of something else to deal with that one. Have you spoken to the dock board, to Mr Heartfelt?’

Peggy looked horrified. ‘No, no, I’m not going there, I’m not, ever again.’

‘That’s where she was, Brendan – I mean, Dr Cole – she must have been asking them herself, were you, Peggy? Is that why you paid your rent down there?’

Peggy lied to her friend for the second time and nodded.

‘And what did they say?’ asked Dr Cole.

Peggy looked up. ‘They didn’t get a chance, I fainted,’ she said.

‘Well then, you may simply have to consider keeping yourself to yourself when they move in; don’t give Sergeant and Mrs Wright any cause to address you.’

Peggy repeated his advice disbelievingly, ‘Keep yourself to yourself…’ while she screwed up her face in a look of amazement. No one, absolutely no one on the four streets, kept themselves to themselves. Even the children joked that sometimes they forgot where they lived or who their actual mother was, they spent so much time in and out of each other’s houses. Mothers likewise joked that they forgot which kids were their own. Kathleen could see this was all going nowhere.

‘Are there no tablets, doctor?’ she asked.

‘For bad neighbours?’ Dr Cole almost smiled at his mother’s old friend. He remembered the Deane farm where they got their eggs and milk, he could almost smell it if he closed his eyes. He and Liam had attended the village school together but while he had studied and studied, Liam had been just the opposite, had hated school with a passion, preferring milking and hay making to composition. ‘Well, Peggy, I can give you tablets for your nerves, but I would rather you tried to sort the problem out for yourself first.’

‘What would you give me?’ Peggy looked interested.

‘He means the Valium,’ Kathleen said to Peggy in a half-whisper. ‘You don’t want to be taking those, they made Alice sleep all day, when she was bad, you know, before…’

Dr Cole shot Kathleen a look which was clear in its meaning; she was to stop talking. Dr Cole knew all about Paddy and his bad back, his gastric stomach, his gout, his lungs, his terrible headaches. He was in the surgery almost every other week, looking for an excuse not to report for work. He decided that if Paddy’s behaviour was having such an impact on Peggy, it was time to be a bit firmer. He would threaten to really send him to the hospital.

Peggy’s lip began to tremble again at the thought of the state they were in. She had never felt so alone in her entire life. The fear of the mess she was in, the challenge ahead, made her feel as though she were detached, floating through each scene of her everyday life. Surely, this was a bad dream and soon, she would wake? A picture of herself and the kids out on the street, with their furniture piled around them, came into her mind…

‘Look, Peggy,’ Dr Cole said, ‘when you feel yourself losing control, try and take some deep breaths and put into perspective what is happening around you instead of panicking; you will feel much better for it. Tell your Paddy to come and see me.’

Peggy looked deflated. ‘I would be a lot better, doctor, if Maura were still here. I do miss her and it’s as if everything just keeps going wrong all the time.’

‘Ah, Mrs Doherty… A lovely woman. She’s moved back home, hasn’t she?’ he said to Kathleen. Dr Cole felt deeply sorry for Peggys in his surgery, women who came to see him about problems which had little to do with their health and more to do with the circumstances they lived in, so the sight before him today was a familiar one. When