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

on her face. If it wasn’t for the fact that Reginald is a well-respected businessman and desperate to make an honest woman out of her, she would have a name for herself, that one would. That man saves her with his intentions alone. She’s very lucky indeed that she has him – half the girls around here would love to be in her shoes. He could have anyone he wants, so God alone knows why he bothers with her. Brazen as you like she is, her skirt near up to her knickers. It’s a disgrace. Brazen.’

Eric fought not to frown. He had often thought that Cindy was a delight to look at, a feast for the eyes and a free and independent spirit, someone to be admired because, as Maggie Trott had often said, ‘No one leaves Cindy’s company without feeling all the better for having been in it – and it’s not just the hairdo that does it.’

As Gladys agitated, Eric had often thought how much more civil life would be if every man were lucky enough to be married to women like Maggie Trott or Cindy.

‘How do you collect that one’s money?’ Gladys had barked at him during her last rant about Cindy, squinting and looking sideways at him. Until recently, that look would have made Eric feel quite unwell. His mouth would dry, his bowels turn to water and his heart would race, but no more. Her bite had lost its sting of late and Eric had no idea how or why. It was as if her words now ran over him, rather than piercing him with their malice as they once had.

‘She leaves it in a used envelope underneath the empties,’ he’d lied. If he had said, ‘I call in and we have a good old natter and a laugh,’ he wasn’t quite sure what Gladys would have done next.

*

Cindy tapped her cigarette ash into the sink with her polished nail and, with expert precision, turned the tap on to extinguish the butt before she flicked it into the bin behind the sink. Then, turning the tap off, she shook in a liberal grey cloud of Vim and began to rub to remove the smell of the ash and perming solution from the sink before the next customer came in. She had over an hour until Maggie Trott arrived for a perm and set. The entire process would take three and a half hours and Cindy often commented that she spent more time with some of her customers than she did with members of her own family.

Glancing in the mirror, she frowned at her reflection. She wore her strawberry blonde hair backcombed into a cloud that tucked in just behind her ears. Reg often complained about the amount of time Cindy spent on her own hair.

‘Reg, if my hair doesn’t look marvellous, why would anyone want to come to my hairdresser’s, for goodness’ sake? I’m a walking advertisement,’ she would retort.

Turning off the hose, she rubbed her hands down the front of her coverall to dry them and patted an errant lock of hair back into place. Her make-up looked dewy from a morning spent with an overhead dryer blasting out into the small space, so she took out her handkerchief and dabbed her nose. The colour of her skin complemented her hair, and powder-blue eyeshadow enhanced the bright blue of her eyes. She was pretty and she knew it and was proud of the fact that she had passed twenty-one and was still single, a rare bird indeed on the Dock Road.

‘By the time we get married, I’ll be collecting my pension,’ Reg joked, every time she rejected him.

‘Reg, I keep telling you, stop asking me,’ she would reply, as though Reg bored her. But he would do it again, with a bouquet of flowers in his hand or as he had last week, with a new Ingersoll watch in a padded box. He had bought the ring two years ago and she had told him to keep it safe somewhere, but that he was never to ask her again with a ring unless she gave him permission. The women of the four streets often begged her to regale them with this story.

‘Well, you’re playing a very dangerous game, my girl,’ Kathleen Deane said to her, more than once. ‘He’ll be getting down on one knee to someone else one day soon. You’re playing with fire, you are, Cindy.’

Alice, her daughter-in-law, had taken a different approach when she had been Cindy’s age and, a woman of few words, she would smile at Cindy, approvingly.

‘If I had my time again, I wish I’d told our Paddy to stick his ring up his arse too,’ Peggy had once said.

‘Really?’ Deirdre had replied. ‘And where is that ring Paddy hooked you with, then, Peggy?’

Once again Peggy had found herself on the wrong end of the laughter, until Maura had patted her hand and chipped in, ‘Who needs a ring when you have a heart as big as and better than any diamond, like our Peggy has, eh?’ And the laughter had stopped dead.

Cindy matched her disdain for marriage with an equal degree of kindness towards others and there were plenty who were in need of it. She was admired by the women who would sometimes call into the shop, not to have their hair done, but to while away the time and natter, because a natter with Cindy made them feel better – and whether Cindy had a customer in the chair or not made no difference. On the rare occasion when Maura had had her hair cut, Cindy would tell her, ‘Come in on Wednesday morning when I’m quiet and I’ll do Peggy for free – just check her hair for nits the night before for me with your toothcomb,’ and no more needed to be said.

Cindy was a phenomenon. She was on birth control, had faced down the priest and come to no harm. She