Run to Him (3 page)

Fionnuala knew this was true and she was also aware that to be prissy about the brushes, when she knew for a fact that the new Eubank in their outhouse had mysteriously appeared courtesy of Callum, was hypocritical.

‘Where did they come from, Callum?’ she asked him in a serious voice. ‘I have to know.’

‘Not from a house,’ he said, looking sheepish. ‘It was from a delivery to Lewis’s. No one will know.’

‘Promise me you will stop this and find a job,’ Fionnuala said earnestly. ‘It’s the only way to stay out of Walton jail, Callum.’

She had placed her hand over his and, as he looked up at her, for the first time it struck him that he had found a way to make someone like him and it didn’t involve thieving. In fact, just the opposite. Fionnuala’s reaction to the brushes had not been at all what he expected. If he had done that for any other person in this pub, they would have been beside themselves with delight. There wasn’t a single family on the Four Streets could afford to buy a set of silver brushes and even if they could, wild horses wouldn’t make these people, who had known hunger, throw money away on something so frivolous.

Fionnuala looked directly at him and her dark brown eyes owned him. All he had to do to please her was to agree not to thieve, and he realized that having Fionnuala proud of him for doing that would be worth foregoing the approval of every other family on the Four Streets.

‘Will you promise me, now?’ Fionnuala had some of her mother’s ways and like a dog with a rag, would not give up once she sunk her teeth into something.

‘I promise to stop the thieving, if ye give me a tail home?’ Callum said cheekily, catching Fionnuala off her guard and taking huge pleasure in watching her blush furiously.

For a split second, Callum thought he had blown it and that she was about to walk away, but then she smiled.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘if you want, but you keep yer hands to yerself, Callum O’Prey. I will not be fighting for my honour in the entry.’

‘I promise,’ he replied, with a grin on his face.

Fionnuala looked around and saw that her friends were calling her over. ‘I have to go and join Angela Keating and the others. Don’t tell anyone. Me mam and da wouldn’t be happy.’

‘I promise you that as well, Fionnuala.’ Callum grinned and doffed his cap.

The grin quickly slipped from his face as she disappeared into the blue haze of cigarette smoke. He had no idea how to take Fionnuala’s honour. Callum had spent his entire life thieving for his neighbours. He was sweet seventeen and had never been kissed. Despite her boldness, neither had Fionnuala.

Callum’s pal, Michael, came and stood at his side. Michael worked at the repair garage and every day he mixed with men of the world, men who had enough money to own cars. Michael was also from Dublin, unlike Callum’s family and most of the people on the Four Streets, who had originated from Mayo, Cork and every village in between.

Callum looked Michael up and down. ‘Michael you must know things about girls, do ye? If I kiss a girl, am I taking her honour, now?’

Michael furrowed his brow, lifted his cap, rubbed his Swarfega-coated, greasy hair and put his cap back down again. Michael did that every time he was asked a question, regardless of the depth or seriousness.

‘I would say it was now, to be sure. Once a girl has been kissed, that’s it. She’s not a virgin any more, is she, and there’s plenty more goes on. I hear about it all the time from the lads at the garage. There’s not much I don’t know about that kind of stuff now, so I’m sure that’s right.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Callum. ‘I never knew that. I’m still a virgin and I’m seventeen. I had better put an end to that soon, had I, Michael. Are ye a virgin still?’

‘Feck, no,’ said Michael with a note of disgust in his voice. ‘I’ve kissed loads of girls, so I have.’ And with that, off they both walked to the bar to refill their Guinness pots.

Fionnuala left the do, whilst most people were on to ordering their fourth round. Bill wasn’t daft, she thought. Putting everyone in a good mood with free food made sure that their merriment emptied pockets and purses over his bar. Fionnuala had been so full of yawns and excuses that she must away to bed, because she had to be up and report to the nursing school early, that no one complained when she slipped out of the snug door and down the pub steps.

The road was full of the Mersey mist that lay on the glistening damp streets and clung to the cobbles in the centre of the road, diffusing as it met doorways and windows and slipped in, under and into the cracks.

She hadn’t caught Callum’s eye and deliberately didn’t look for him as she left. If he wasn’t watching her keenly enough to see when she left, then it wasn’t worth him having her tail home.

She had no sooner turned into the entry than she heard his faint footsteps behind her.

‘Boo,’ he said again, for the second time that night, and this time Fionnuala laughed.

‘Away with you,’ she screamed. ‘May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat!’

Callum laughed, too. ‘Why do you think my nickname’s Dixie Dean?’ he said, smiling. ‘No one ever knows where I am. You shouldn’t walk out here on yer own, after all that’s happened around here lately,’ he said in a voice that was suddenly serious, a voice that made Fionnuala’s heart leap.

‘It’s nice that you are so concerned,’ she replied. ‘I will admit, I did feel a bit wobbly. I told my da I was walking with someone, so I’m glad you caught me up.’

‘I couldn’t get out of the pub fast enough, when I saw ye go. Ye know what my ma’s like. I had to let her know chapter and verse where I was off to, or she panics that I’m off robbing again. She’s really clingy now that I am the only one at home. She will be mighty upset if ever I end up back in jail. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Well, there’s another reason, then, why you have to give up the thieving, Callum, for yer mam’s sake. You are all she has. Now that her best friend has gone, she needs ye to be at home with her and help her. You know she thinks the sun shines out of your backside, don’t you?’

Fionnuala and Callum both laughed at the thought of his mother. No matter what anyone had to say or wherever it was, Annie O’Prey was renowned for turning any conversation around to her wonderful boys.

‘You don’t need to please anyone, you know, Callum,’ said Fionnuala. ‘Everyone thinks ye are just great, anyway.’

Now Callum’s stomach flipped over. Fionnuala had just said that everyone thought he was great. Not a living soul in his life had ever told him that before. His mother may have said so to others, but she had never said so to Callum. Unless, of course, she was passing on thanks for his latest thieving effort.

‘In fact,’ she carried on, ‘I’m not sure how many a family would have managed on this street, without yer help. It may not have been legal, but God, I have heard so many people say, “Thank God for Callum O’Prey”.’

Callum stood still in the entry and Fionnuala, who had walked on a little, stopped and looked back. The words she had just spoken were words he had never before heard. Callum was always the wrong ’un. He had spent his life being told by the nuns how he was stupid and no good for anything. He had upset his mam with his holidays in jail, along with his adored big brother.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Fionnuala, is that so? Is that what you have heard people say about me?’

‘Sure, of course I have, they say it all the time. Every time they place another order and you miraculously provide whatever it is they want, with absolutely no risk whatsoever to their own. Jesus, my mother canonizes you every time she runs the Eubank around the kitchen. But it doesn’t matter, Callum, it’s all praise built on sand, as it’s false and sinful and you have to stop now. People may praise you when they sweep their floors, but that doesn’t hand you self-respect and they don’t respect you for it. You put yourself at risk for the benefit of others and what do you get out of it? A criminal record, that’s what. Does it really bring you comfort in jail, knowing my mam is finding it easier to keep the kitchen clean?’

Callum had been full of pride at the thought that his neighbours didn’t regard him as a complete idiot, but now Fionnuala’s words were dripping into his consciousness one at a time, and for the first time in his life, they were seeping through. Fionnuala was right. She was about to become someone, a decent person. People were already looking up to her and she was only seventeen. He wanted that too. The neighbours would never throw a party in the street for him. Callum realized this, with a sinking heart. He looked at Fionnuala and knew his life was about to change.

‘I have said to you that I promise – and I will keep that promise, Fionnuala. Ye see them stars, in the sky, they are my witness and I say this, that I will stop the thieving, on one condition, if ye let me have a kiss, right now.’

Fionnuala had stopped talking. She looked down at the new suitcase in her hand and didn’t know what to say. She was only sure of one thing: she didn’t want to say no.

Callum took a step towards her. Putting both his hands on her shoulders, he pulled her towards him and kissed her on the lips. It was a short peck to begin with, but then, after he had pulled away, with his cheeky smile and gleaming eyes, and announced, ‘Well that was nice,’ he kissed her again, slowly and for a much longer time.

Fionnuala had no idea how long they stood there for. It was only the sound of old Mr Keating, stepping into the outhouse, just over the back yard wall from where they were standing, that brought her to her senses.

Fionnuala wobbled backwards for a moment, as if she were in shock and Callum reached out and took hold of her hand. He felt as if he had changed from boy to man, in just a few moments.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘Sorry for what?’ she asked, looking back at him.

‘For taking your honour,’ he said.

He had no idea why Fionnuala began to laugh.

‘You are a case, Callum O’Prey,’ she said, before she slipped away in through her back gate.

Callum stood and watched her go, unable to move, and as the gate closed behind her, Callum looked up to the sky and a thousand stars winked back at him.

*

They had seen each other as often as was possible over the next few months, always in secret. Callum had been taken on the night shift at the English Electric factory and sometimes Fionnuala worked nights too, which suited them well. She slept at the nurses’ home when she was in class or on her shift, and only returned back home on days off.

Men weren’t allowed in the nurses’ home, and if they rang the bell they had to wait outside on the steps, until the nurse they were calling for stepped outside. Fionnuala had heard stories of nurses entertaining in the common room and more risqué tales of boyfriends being slipped into beds, but that was not for her.

‘Sneak him upstairs,’ her friend Helen had said, after Callum had delivered her to the door of the nurses’ home for the third or fourth time.

‘I have no intention of inviting Callum into my room, or my bed, until there is an engagement ring on my finger, Helen. I know it’s the Sixties, but I’m not stupid altogether.’

Fionnuala did wish they had a little more freedom to be alone together, though. As it was, they took walks along the shore and trips out on the rowing boats on Sefton Park lake.

It was on one sunny day, whilst Callum rowed Fionnuala across the lake, that he declared his love for her and she, fully aware it was something of which her parents would never approve, told him she loved him back.

The truth was, she did want to love him back, and not just in words alone.

‘I never thought anyone would turn me around the way you have,’ Callum said.

Fionnuala let her hand trail in the water, as the ducks swam close to the boat, pecking towards her hand for bread she had brought.

‘Are you happy, though?’ Fionnuala asked. ‘Do you not feel better for working in the factory and living an honest life?’

‘I do, aye, but that’s because I have you now. If I was still on my own, I’m not sure I would be able to resist the temptation. After all, I’ve been robbing since I was a kid with me da. They used to take me and my brother down to the docks at night to wait by the perimeter fence and then run back up the steps to the street with the knock off goods, and hide them in outhouses, depending on who wanted stuff. I’ve left stuff in your outhouse, for yer da from mine, on many a night, Fionnuala, I can’t see why yer da would disapprove of me.’

Fionnuala’s heart bled for him, he was so innocent. She couldn’t put into words why she knew her father would disapprove, other than to say it was one thing to fence stolen goods and place an order, like many on the streets had done with the O’Prey boys, it was quite another when it came to your daughter taking up romantically with the street villain.

But now that she was in love with Callum, it was a dilemma she faced each day and she knew she would have to tell her ma and da very soon what she was up to. She couldn’t go on lying to her parents, like she was, any longer.

That night, as Callum walked her back to the home, she made a pact with him.

‘Now that you are at the English Electric, just get the word out that you don’t thieve anymore and then we will tell me da about us.’

Fionnuala had yet to admit to Callum that the silver brushes were still wrapped in tissue paper in her drawer, hidden under newspaper, and she knew that, never in her lifetime, would she use them.

‘Do you mean that?’ said Callum, putting his arms around Fionnuala’s shoulders.

‘See the stars up in that sky?’ she said, reminding Callum of their first night. ‘That’s not stars, them’s my judge and jury.’

*

That night seemed like an age ago to Fionnuala, as she ran for the bus on Christmas morning. In the time which had passed since, she had struggled to keep the hugest secret from everyone, in a family where every piece of information was shared, and it weighed heavily, but for now, she had other things to think about. She just wished she were to see her Callum today. The few moments they had planned at the bus stop might not now happen after all, if Fred was waiting for her. How nice it would have been, if she could have invited him into their kitchen tonight, as they all gathered around to listen to the letter from Aunty Joanna in Australia, or if she could have walked down the road to see Annie and sat awhile with her and Callum.