The Kelly Sisters

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

It's 1925 and Patricia, Tara and Aideen couldn't be more excited to be starting a new life in Liverpool. Yet it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems, for the girls are hastily swept onto a huge ocean liner heading to New York. When their father vanishes mid-way across the Atlantic, the grieving sisters prepare themselves for a new life in the big city. For whatever their father was running from has every chance of catching up with them…

Release date: July 30, 2015

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 388

Sample

Chapter 1

Dublin,February 1925

Bernie Kelly and his girls were moving to Liverpool on Monday and his friends were throwing a party to see him off.

‘Don’t make it a big one, lads,’ Bernie had pleaded. He’d only given them five days’ notice. ‘Just half a dozen or so of me best mates, that’ll do.’

‘Only half a dozen!’ Ray Walsh, one of the best mates, chortled, for Bernie, a solicitor, was on best-mate terms with most of the professional men in Dublin – and on slightly different terms with a number of their wives.

‘I’d prefer a quiet do,’ Bernie had insisted. He winked and squeezed his friend’s hand, adding in a low voice, ‘I don’t want all and sundry knowing I’m taking off, like.’ And Ray had understood. Bernie wasn’t leaving for the stated reason – that Liverpool would provide more opportunities for himself and his daughters – but for another reason altogether, possibly to do with a woman or an over-insistent bookie.

Hopefully he would only be gone for a while until things blew over, as it were, and he and the girls would be back, his misdeeds, whatever they were, either forgotten or forgiven, though this was more of a hope than a belief. Everyone knew Bernie Kelly sailed pretty close to the wind from time to time. Perhaps this time he had got a bit too close.

It was even rumoured that eight years ago his poor wife, Meriel, had died not because she’d just given birth to Bernie’s first legitimate son, Milo, but of a cruelly broken heart. She must have known that every now and again another woman in Dublin was going through the same agony of producing a son or daughter courtesy of her handsome husband, him of the alluring smile, the dancing eyes and the ever-roving hands.



The party was held on a Saturday night in the Kelly’s big, rambling house overlooking Phoenix Park. There were no more than thirty people there, even though Bernie had held parties in the past at which there’d been ten times that many. His girls, the prettiest in Dublin – Patricia, 18, Aideen, 16, and Tara, 14 – went round with the food that had been prepared by old Nora Hogan, who’d done the cooking and cleaning for the family since the beginning of time. Bernie was rumoured to be paying her off with a small fortune in gratitude for all her hard work on behalf of him and his family over the years. Rumours of one thing or another, good and bad, surrounded Bernie like a cloud of noisy bumblebees.

His eight-year-old son, Milo, had already been left with Bernie’s sister-in-law, Auntie Kathleen, a widow who’d looked after the girls since his wife had died. They had already moved into a house on the far side of the park and both would be sent for when the time was ready, when Bernie and his girls were settled in their fine new house in Princes Park, one of the grandest areas of Liverpool.

At the party, Bernie handed out cards showing the address and telephone number of his new office in Dale Street, not far from the city’s town hall. ‘But I won’t be properly installed for a month or so,’ he told people. ‘So don’t be calling till then.’

He looked more worried than excited about the big change that was about to happen. Whenever he laughed or smiled, you could tell he was only putting it on. He was rarely seen without a cigarette burning in his mouth. He’d always been fond of cigarettes, but was fast becoming what was known as a chain-smoker. It was the same with drink, his intake of the hard stuff having gone up by a mile.

‘Are you sad you’re leaving, Bernie Boy?’ Ray asked at the party, thinking that was the reason for his miserable gob.

‘Of course I am, Ray. I was born and bred in Dublin. The thought of leaving is tearing me guts apart.’

‘Well, stay, Bernie. Stay. There’s not a single soul here that wants to see the back o’ yis. Aren’t we all like one big happy family?’

Patrick Adams, Dick O’Neill, Bernie and Ray himself had met at Trinity College in Dublin where they’d been taking their various degrees. They had remained friends ever since. Ray was fonder of Bernie, Patrick and Dick than he was of his own brothers.

‘It’s not possible,’ Bernie sighed. ‘Anyway, it’s time for a change. Things have to move on, progress, or you just get stuck in a rut for the rest of your life. Like I said, I’m moving for me own and me girls’ sakes. We could well end up in London one of these days.’



The party was well over by midnight, a good five hours before Bernie’s parties usually came to a riotous end. After everyone had gone, he urged his daughters to go to bed straight away.

‘I’ve changed me mind. We’re leaving early tomorrer, ’stead of Monday,’ he told them. ‘Are yis all packed and ready to go?’

Patricia and Tara agreed they were, but Aideen, always the awkward one, nearly had a fit. ‘I’m not nearly ready, Daddy,’ she said angrily. With her dark red hair and green eyes, she was the only one to take after her dad, except she didn’t possess hardly any of his charismatic ways. The other girls resembled their pale, golden, long-deceased mother.

‘Then get your sisters to give you a hand,’ Bernie ordered his middle daughter. ‘We’re leaving promptly at ten o’clock in the morning and that’s that.’

Tara gasped in horror. ‘But what about Mass?’

‘You’ll just have to go to the seven o’clock,’ her father snapped.

‘But, Daddy,’ Patricia, the eldest, reminded him, ‘all of our friends are coming tomorrow to say goodbye.’ They’d been invited to afternoon tea.

‘Well, they’ll just have to say goodbye to the empty air,’ said Bernie. ‘Because you’ll all be on the boat sailing to Liverpool.’

‘Also, Daddy,’ Aideen said crossly, glaring at her father (he didn’t scare any one of them the least little bit), ‘I really think we should stay up and take the plates and glasses out to Nora for her to wash as well as help her tidy up a bit.’ The downstairs rooms were littered with the detritus of the party.

‘Go to bed, the lot o’ yis,’ Bernie yelled. ‘Or I’ll put you over me knee, one by one, and give you a good spanking.’

Tara laughed. ‘Just try it, Daddy, and I promise it’ll be you who’ll get the spanking.’

Nevertheless, all three went upstairs to bed. They might not be scared of their charming daddy, but they loved him and didn’t want him upset. They could tell something was wrong and didn’t want to make things worse.



It was February and it was freezing. There were specks of frost in the air being blown to and fro by an icy wind when Bernie Kelly and his shivering girls left the house by Phoenix Park the next morning. A car was parked outside to take them to Dún Laoghaire from where the boat sailed to Liverpool, as well as a van for their luggage. Each girl carried a little valise that contained nightclothes and toiletries – it might be a while before the trunks could be opened, Bernie had explained. A tearful Nora stood on the steps and waved goodbye.

It was warm on the boat in the first-class lounge, though the sea outside was the colour of dirty pea soup, according to Aideen who had a way with words and a vivid imagination. A fierce wind whistled wildly.

They were thrilled to finally reach Liverpool, though nearly froze to death when they disembarked from the boat and made their way to another car that was to take them to the Adelphi hotel, where their father had booked a suite on the second floor. Their new house wasn’t quite ready to move into, Bernie explained. There were still one or two things that had to be done. Fortunately it only took a jiffy to get to the hotel.

‘This is nice!’ Tara said as she removed her coat and threw herself onto one of the three single beds, each covered with a voluminous royal blue satin eiderdown.

There was a knock on the hotel suite door and Patricia opened it to a waiter with a tray of coffee. He informed them that dinner would be served from six o’clock onwards.

Bernie emerged from his own room, puffing madly on a cigarette, and announced he could eat a horse. Having reached this far, he was looking more at ease with himself, the girls decided as they tidied their hair, smoothed their frocks and adjusted their stockings ready to go down to dinner.

‘’Tis a big thing we’re doing,’ Patricia said while combing her blonde satiny hair and applying powder to her nose and cheeks – she was the only one who used makeup. ‘Moving all the way to another country, like. And it’s himself who’s had to take all the responsibility.’

‘Well, none of us wanted to move, so why should we be expected to take any of the responsibility?’ Aideen reasoned.

‘I don’t mind moving, not a bit.’ Tara adjusted her garters. ‘I wish I were old enough to wear a suspender belt.’ She sniffed as she attached a white flower to her hair, which was the same colour as Patricia’s. ‘I didn’t want to stay in Dublin for the rest of me life. Liverpool sounds much more interesting.’

Their father knocked on the door. ‘Are yis ready in there?’

‘Coming, Daddy,’ they chorused.



The Kelly sisters created mild consternation in the glittering dining room; one outstandingly attractive young woman was enough to cause eyes to pop, but three arriving all together was a spectacle. Their clothes might not be the latest fashion but they looked smart in their fine woollen frocks decorated variously with buttons, bows and little lacy frills.

Somewhat appropriately, they had Irish stew for dinner, followed by steamed pudding and custard. The meal over, Aideen fancied going for a walk, but her sisters were horrified at the idea.

‘It’s much too cold,’ Tara asserted. ‘Me, I’d just like to sit in the lounge and read. We’ll have plenty of time to go for walks in Liverpool.’

Patricia claimed to feel the same. ‘I might write one or two letters telling people our new address, though I’ll need English stamps to send them.’

Bernie looked at her through narrowed eyes, though didn’t say anything. ‘Get yisselves early to bed,’ he advised. ‘We’ll be having a busy day tomorrer.’



Tara cried herself to sleep that night. She’d been looking forward to the move to Liverpool and was ashamed of such a quick change of heart, but she was already missing her old bedroom in the house by Phoenix Park, her teddy bear, as well as her brother Milo. It had been arranged for Milo to come and stay with them at Easter and during the long summer holiday from school. Auntie Kathleen would bring him.

Aideen didn’t cry, but she was furiously angry with her father for bringing an end to the secretly exciting life she had been leading in Dublin for virtually a year. Along with two girls – Frances O’Hara and Bernadette Doyle, who attended the same expensive girls’ school as she did – she roamed the streets of the city getting up to all sorts of mischief. Under the pretence of belonging to a mythical Catholic club, as they told their parents, the three girls stole from shops, picked from pockets and smoked cigarettes in the dark corners of the dark streets. Occasionally they would meet up with boys and Frances had once let a boy touch her breasts. Being with the girls had felt terribly daring and enjoyable, and she would miss it.

Patricia was unable to sleep. Daddy had been up to something – well, he was always up to something or other – but this time it was more serious than his usual transgressions. She was worried that Liverpool, being merely a hop, skip and a jump away from Dublin, wasn’t distant enough to escape a vengeful husband or a wrathful bookie.

Patricia had attended commercial college and then worked in her father’s office, where she was able to keep an eye on him. She had noticed lately the way he jumped whenever the telephone rang and how he insisted on opening the post himself each morning, rather than allowing his secretary, Ruth, to open it, or Patricia herself.

It would only be a few hours before she discovered that her father had a completely different plan in mind that had nothing whatsoever to do with Liverpool.



Bernie hammered on their door long before it was even faintly daylight, came in and switched on the light. He was already fully dressed, including his overcoat.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ he growled. ‘Rouse yourselves, girls. We’ve a boat to catch.’

Tara raised her tousled head. ‘A boat, Daddy?’

‘A boat. I’ve changed me mind.’ His face wore a furtive expression, as if he was aware of the shock and dismay he was about to cause and was embarrassed by it. ‘We’re going to New York.’

At this, all three girls responded with assorted expressions of astonishment.

‘New York!’ stuttered Patricia, her brain clicking from sleep to very much awake in an instant.

‘What?’ Aideen gasped.

‘Oh, no!’ Tara began to cry. Having already gone off Liverpool, at that time of the morning she wasn’t even sure where New York was.

‘It’s all arranged. Everything’s booked. The boat sails at midday.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Come on, me darlin’ girls, get a move on.’

‘What about our luggage?’ Patricia asked.

Bernie didn’t meet her eyes. ‘It’s already on the boat,’ he rasped. He left the room, banging the door hard and making the girls jump. Patricia and Tara got speedily out of bed, but Aideen just sat there, looking thoughtful.

‘He never had any intention of staying here,’ she said slowly. ‘Our trunks must have gone straight from the Irish boat to the New York one. Those cards he had printed with the Liverpool address didn’t mean a thing. He wanted everyone to think it was where we were moving to, when it was New York all the time.’

Patricia was throwing on her clothes. ‘We must never write and tell anyone where we are,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Daddy’s gone and done something really awful and we have to protect him.’ The letters to friends she had written the night before had been a waste of time. ‘We are travelling into the unknown,’ she announced dramatically.

Aideen nodded and Tara said, ‘Does this mean we might never see our Milo again?’

‘We can’t not see our Milo again,’ Aideen said passionately.

Patricia agreed. ‘I’ll be having a word with Daddy later,’ she promised. If anyone was after him, they’d know where Milo was – or they’d soon find out – and they’d discover where Daddy was living from the New York postmark. Or any sort of postmark if he decided to move somewhere else. ‘We can write to Milo when everything’s back to normal.’

If it ever was.



What’s he done about passports? Patricia wondered in the car that was taking them to where the New York boat was berthed. It was called the Queen Maia, she saw when they arrived. It was a massive white vessel with three black funnels and was at the centre of a hive of activity. Luggage was being taken aboard on one of the many gangplanks, and crates and sacks were being lowered by crane into the hold. A freezing fog had descended on their little part of the world and the busy scene was being acted out in a fuzzy mist.

Bernie paused at the foot of the highest gangplank and showed what an amazed Patricia saw were four passports to the peak-capped, heavily overcoated man in attendance. He’d actually acquired passports without his daughters’ knowledge, using photographs that had been taken when they were at school.

A steward showed them to their cabin, which turned out to be a suite of three bedrooms with an octagonal lounge at the centre. It was even more luxurious than the accommodation at the Adelphi, the in-built furniture glossy white and the beds draped with ivory satin. Thick eau-de-Nil carpets covered the floors and everywhere smelled of expensive perfume.

Aideen disappeared, returning a few minutes later to say, in an awed voice, that the bathroom was actually black and silver. ‘And there’s a mirror that covers an entire wall, and two sinks.’

Neither Patricia nor Tara spoke. They were in the lounge, sitting on the very edge of the white leather chairs, as if they didn’t really belong there. Their father had entered the suite with them but had since disappeared.

‘I reckon he’s gone to look for the bar – or one of them,’ Aideen said. ‘There’s probably half a dozen on this ship. Is this a ship or a boat?’ she queried.

‘It must be both,’ Patricia surmised. She patted Tara’s knee. Her sister looked close to tears. ‘It’ll be all right, darlin’,’ she promised, hoping it wasn’t an empty one.

There was a knock on the door. A lad of no more than thirteen or fourteen was there to ask what time they intended coming to breakfast.

‘In half an hour,’ Patricia told him. A pot of tea and some bacon and eggs would do them the world of good.



Their father was either deliberately keeping himself out of their way or drinking himself to death in one of the numerous bars. They had been on-board the Queen Maia for two days and seen little of him. They met at meals, but he would leave before they’d finished eating and could start a proper conversation. Patricia would hear him return well past midnight, when she wasn’t in the mood to get up and interrogate him, which would only wake and upset her sisters. Tara was already forever on the verge of tears.

Under different circumstances they might have enjoyed life on the boat, it being so entirely different to the life they’d always known. They were travelling first class, which was typical of Bernie Kelly. He didn’t know what it was like to be careful with money. Patricia felt sure that second or even third class would have been adequate. They were well-off but they weren’t rich, not like the other passengers on their deck. The women wore furs made from animals Patricia hadn’t known existed. Diamonds sparkled on their ears and around their necks. They dressed for dinner in silk, satin or luscious velvet gowns and had their hair done in the hairdresser’s on-board.

Last night in the first-class lounge, an entire orchestra played while people danced and a woman in a gold dress sang ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’, ‘It Had to Be You’, ‘Tea for Two’ and many other songs the girls knew, having heard them before on the wireless back home in Dublin.

They had sat in a corner, watching and listening. If it hadn’t been for the worry and uncertainty they were facing, it would have been a little bit like heaven. Instead, it felt more than a bit like hell.



It was a moonless night, raining slightly, and the Queen Maia looked as if it was sailing into nothingness on an ocean of black ink. The lights from the ship itself illuminated the water around it. Bernie Kelly leant on the rail and watched the reflections ripple and flow in its frothy wake.

Christ, it was cold. It was early morning, two or three o’clock, and he was the only person on deck. An outgoing chap with scores of friends, he wasn’t used to being alone and it made him feel utterly wretched.

Until recently he had always been the luckiest of men. But things had changed. The events that had happened in his life, good and bad, had always affected him, but he accepted they were the will of God, so not even the death of his wife, Meriel, had brought him low. Since then, his main concern had been his girls, his son and, of course, himself. But the last three months had been a nightmare. His luck had deserted him and everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, with breathtakingly awful consequences.

He’d been flattered when his very own firm of solicitors had been appointed to manage the estate of the recently deceased Earl of Graniston. Bernie had known his son, Richard Heath, at university, who had since inherited the title. The estate was worth something like ten thousand Irish pounds and Richard wanted it sold and the money transferred to England, where he now lived permanently.

The sale had gone through smoothly without a single hiccup and three months ago a cheque for just over ten thousand pounds had been deposited in Bernie’s business account at his bank, from which he was expected to deduct his commission and pass on the rest to his old acquaintance, the new Earl of Graniston.

Except he hadn’t.

Bernie threw the butt of his cigarette into the dark ocean and immediately lit another, shielding the lighter’s flame from the sharp wind in his cupped hands. Music was coming from somewhere and it accentuated his loneliness, knowing that elsewhere on the boat people were listening to the same music and enjoying it. He couldn’t imagine enjoying anything again.

He had seen the money in the bank as an opportunity to make more. An affluent chap and an expert card player, he had never been this affluent and visualised himself betting a hundred pounds when he was used to only betting ten. It wasn’t that he was greedy, just that it was something he was good at and he enjoyed the thrill of winning.

Right from the start things hadn’t worked out as he’d expected, but he knew for sure that if he continued, his luck would turn. It was bound to; it was inevitable.

When it turned out not to be, in desperation Bernie had travelled all the way to London, where he’d heard there was an illicit casino in the basement of the Excelsior hotel in Mayfair. It had always been his dream to go to the South of France and play at a table, throw a dice and make a wish – he felt a surge of excitement now just thinking about it – but in London all he did was lose more of the new Earl of Graniston’s inheritance, which by now had shrunk to less than half of its original sum. The earl’s secretary or some other flunky had already written asking politely for his employer’s money.

If you would be so kind as to send a cheque at your earliest convenience the letter had said, or something similar. From now on, Bernie thought with a wry smile, he should expect them to become rather less polite and more demanding.

At some point the reality of his situation had hit him like a giant fist in his solar plexus. He was a solicitor who had embezzled a client out of almost six thousand pounds. Each morning he imagined waking up in an imaginary jail cell. What would happen to his children? The house by Phoenix Park would go – it was only rented, anyway – plus all its contents; his office would close; his car – a three-litre Bentley tourer, now in storage, of which he was hugely proud – would be taken. He would have nothing left and there would still be nothing when he emerged from jail years later. How many years he would spend in prison he guessed would be anything between five and ten.

He let the remains of his second cigarette fall into the ocean just as a voice said, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ It was a man wearing a black oilskin cape – one of the ship’s crew.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Bernie laughed harshly. ‘Just contemplating suicide.’ The world would no doubt be a better place without the likes of him.

The man clearly thought he was joking and laughed at his words. ‘Best to contemplate it from a nice, warm bed, sir. This rain feels as if it’s getting heavier.’

‘I’ll do that in a minute,’ Bernie said as he lit another cigarette. ‘After I’ve finished this.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

‘Goodnight yourself.’

Bernie glanced at the stars. He didn’t know their names, only that his lucky one had disappeared, having somehow managed to float further into outer space and explode.

He sighed. If he were telling this tale to another human being, then he wouldn’t have reached the worst part yet. Earlier, a mere few hours ago, he had been wandering around the ship, wetting his whistle in the various watering holes until he was pissed out of his mind. He was at his most pissed when, in one bar, he came across a poker game with four players and half a dozen onlookers. One of the players, a foreigner with close-cut grey hair, beckoned him to join them.

‘Why not?’ Bernie chuckled, entirely forgetting that his whistle was so wet it had probably drowned. His eyes were glazed, his sight impaired, his brain working at an unnaturally low level.

He threw his business card onto the table. It had his name on – Bernard Casey Kelly, Solicitor – and the address of his office in Dublin. He’d get a new one printed once he’d got settled in his new address, wherever that might be. The man with the short grey hair picked up the card, read it and then nodded at Bernie to sit down.

‘Me cash is buried in me luggage,’ Bernie explained. ‘Will an IOU do for now?’ It wasn’t as if he could do a runner in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. ‘I’ll pay yis tomorrer.’

The man nodded again and Bernie sat down. As usual, he was overwhelmed with a feeling that he was going to win – and this time the winnings would be huge. Nothing would, or could, stop him. Winning was an absolute certainty. He couldn’t lose. He had learnt nothing over the past few months.

It was dark in the bar. Music, drums thumping away, was coming from a loudspeaker, and there was a strange smell, pungent, much too sweet, that he reckoned was some sort of foreign aftershave or possibly tobacco. It made his eyes water. The men spoke to each other in a language he didn’t understand, but used English to Bernie with an accent he thought might be Eastern European.

And of course Bernie lost. The more he lost, the more sober he became. He realised he didn’t even know what currency they were playing in. He examined a note and the figure of 500 stared back at him.

‘What is this?’ he asked of no one in particular.

‘That is a five hundred dollar note,’ he was informed.

‘But dollars are always green.’

‘Not the high currency o. . .