This was a conversation Paddy didn’t want to have. He knew that the dripping Peggy had put on his bread that morning came from meat Jerry had paid for and the enamel bowl Peggy had scraped it out of was from Kathleen’s own kitchen. He did a good job of persuading dockers who had supped deep into their cups to buy him a drink of an evening; indeed, he could walk into the Anchor with empty pockets and then struggle to find his way home after a night of ale on the back of other men’s generosity and he never went hungry. As was the tradition of the streets, the men, the workers, were fed first and best. There was no response from Paddy to the question every man had been asked by their own wives, ‘How is Peggy paying the rent if Paddy isn’t working? We can’t ask her, so did Maura give them money, or what? She must have something to be managing on if he’s not going down the steps and clocking on.’

On days when he did work, Paddy had left early on a number of days, having cadged a sixpenny bit off someone under the pretence that the kids needed food and took it straight to the betting shop. The luck had been with him one afternoon and he had won ten pounds. He kept the money hidden deep in his pockets and had kept himself fed on pies and paid for his own pints from the winnings. He hadn’t thought about the rent, but Peggy must have been paying it somehow, otherwise they would have been out on their ear. Paddy suspected that Maura and Tommy had sent Peggy money and she had kept it hidden from him. Well, two could play at that game.

The men, aware of Paddy’s discomfort, fell silent, bored with waiting, not wanting to take out their tobacco tins and roll up a damp cigarette as the evening mist rolled up the steps from the Mersey or remove the half-smoked stubs from behind waxy ears in case they should be seen lighting up from down below.

Eugene was the first to see it and punched Jerry on the arm.

‘Would you fecking look at that! Isn’t that Conor’s ship?’ he whispered as the funnel of a steamship loomed and listed, creaked and groaned, chains clanking and ropes banging on the deck as, like an old and weary ghost, it emerged from a dense patch of mist. Captain Conor’s ship looked every day of its age.