Prized Possessions (46 page)

‘My excuses?' Guido said. ‘I have no need for excuses.'

‘Frank Conway did not steal from my father,' Dominic said.

‘I do not know what you are—'

‘Did he?'

‘What nonsense has this girl been telling you?'

‘
You
took it,' Dominic said. ‘
You
spirited it away. And as if that was not bad enough, you accused Frank Conway. But he fooled you, did he not? He joined up and died in the fighting in Flanders not to protect you but to protect his family.'

‘This is untrue. This is fantasy.'

‘Why did you need so much money so desperately? Did you get a girl into trouble? Did you have to bribe some woman, or buy off her husband, perhaps? What
was
the reason, Uncle Guido? Why did you not just ask my father to bail you out? Will you not answer me?'

‘There is nothing to answer.'

‘Were you too ashamed to talk to your own brother? So ashamed that you would steal from the family rather than admit what you had done?' Dominic said. ‘What was it? It
was
a woman, wasn't it?'

‘What if it was?' Guido said, sullenly. ‘It is a long time ago.'

‘Conway's wife?' said Dominic.

‘What are you saying?' Guido roused himself. ‘I would not touch that fat slut. I have too much respect for myself. You think I took Carlo's money to give to a woman, do you? I did not. I took it because he twisted it out of me. Conway. Frank Conway blackmailed it out of me. He knew what happened.'

‘What did happen?'

‘I thought she was willing.'

‘God in heaven, Guido! You raped someone?'

‘What if I did? She was nothing, dirt, sleeping with her sister's husband, screwing her sister's husband.'

‘You raped her,' Dominic said. ‘Then you paid her to keep quiet.'

‘I did not pay her. I paid Frank Conway. He fixed it.'

‘Where is this woman now?'

‘I do not know.'

‘You do, damn it,' Dominic said. ‘What is her name, Guido?'

‘I do not know. I cannot remember.'

‘Guido, what is her name?'

‘Janet.' He hesitated. ‘Janet McKerlie.'

‘Lizzie Conway's sister?'

‘Yes.' He stood, looming, big carpenter's hands folded at chest height. ‘Now do you understand why you must have no more to do with Polly Conway?'

‘No, Uncle, I don't,' Dominic said.

‘But what if she finds out?'

‘I will make sure that she does not find out.'

‘How will you do that?'

‘By making her one of us,' said Dominic.

*   *   *

Janet said, ‘He gave it to you, didn't he? What did you have to do t' get it, that's what I'd like to know.'

‘Look,' Polly said, ‘the whole thing was a mistake. Here's your money, every last penny. Just take it and put it away safe.'

‘Where did you get it?' Janet said. ‘If it came from the Manones…'

‘It didn't. The guy I lent it to,' Polly said, ‘paid it back.'

They were alone on the landing at the top of the turret steps.

The wind moaned in the stairwell. Two floors down the gush of a lavatory hung suspended in the half-dark. The leaning old tenement smelled fresh tonight, though, its saturated odours swept away by a dry east wind. Polly was well wrapped up, a scarf cowled over her head and knotted beneath her chin. Janet, however, had slipped out in a thin dress and looked, Polly thought, even more shrunken than usual.

‘I can't leave her for long,' Janet said. ‘She'll wonder what's goin' on.'

‘Take it then,' Polly said. ‘It's all there.'

She had withdrawn the money from the new bank account and put it together with the money that Dominic had had delivered to the office in a plain manila envelope. The notes were high denomination, and the packet seemed remarkably slender for the amount it contained.

‘Count it, if you like,' Polly said, as her aunt accepted the envelope.

‘I'll take your word for it,' Janet said. She hesitated. ‘I don't suppose I'll be seein' Lizzie for a while?'

‘I doubt it.'

‘I should never have said what I did.'

‘No,' Polly agreed. ‘It wasn't very wise.'

‘Will she come back?'

‘Mammy?' Polly said. ‘Oh, I expect so, once she calms down.'

‘I don't know what to tell Gran. She's not as daft as you might think,' Janet said. ‘She knows somethin's goin' on.'

‘I'll come in, shall I?' Polly said. ‘I'll tell her Mammy's under the weather and won't be round to see her for a week or so.'

‘I wish you would.'

Janet held the envelope as if it had no more value than yesterday's newspaper. She was, Polly thought, remorseful but lacked the ability to display anything but bitterness. When she turned to step back into the apartment, Polly laid a hand on her arm. ‘Did you really imagine that Daddy would come back to you, or, for that matter, come back at all?'

‘Frank? Nah. He was too frightened.'

‘Frightened of what?' said Polly. ‘Carlo Manone?'

‘Responsibility,' Janet said, ‘that's what our Frank was afraid of. But I don't suppose you know what I'm talkin' about.'

‘Oh, but I do,' said Polly. ‘Believe me, Aunt Janet, I do,' and followed the woman indoors.

*   *   *

Everything was happening so quickly that Lizzie had no idea whether her life was at last coming together or was finally falling apart.

Rosie had been invited ‘to take up a position' with Oswald Shelby, Sons & Partners and, heeding Mr Feldman's advice, had accepted, even though it meant leaving school in mid-term. She had bidden a tearful farewell to the Institute on Friday afternoon, had put off her uniform and, looking quite the little lady, had gone off on Monday morning to catch the tramcar into Glasgow with all the other shop-girls and clerks.

Lizzie had not been there to wish her well on her first day of employment. She had been off at her usual early hour to begin her shift at the laundry and it had been left to Polly to ensure that Rosie ate a hearty breakfast, washed her face, combed her hair and had enough money in her purse for tram fare and a bite of lunch.

It had also been left to Polly to mend fences between Mammy and Janet. Once Janet had her money back, though, and Lizzie had been coaxed round to Laurieston to offer the olive branch, Janet's confessions soon sank down into the silt of habit and, within a week or two, were lost in banal revelations about the state of Grandma McKerlie's bladder and bowels.

There was also no doubt that young Jackie Hallop was ‘courting' Babs and that Babs, for all her hoity-toity airs, had developed an affinity with the boy downstairs, an affinity, Lizzie suspected, that had more to do with sex than with planning a future together. Lizzie did not dislike Jackie. He had qualities that reminded her of her late husband. While she would have preferred Babs to take up with someone as honest and reliable as Bernard she couldn't deny that Jackie's exuberance did have a certain appeal. Besides, the motorcycle repair business seemed to be flourishing and the Hallops were seldom short of cash.

What she objected to was that Jackie, Dennis and young sister Louise had all but taken up residence in her kitchen. They would appear at all hours to play cards, listen to the gramophone or simply chew the fat. It was all that Lizzie – with a little help from Polly – could do to persuade them to leave before midnight.

Jackie would tell her, ‘I fair like your house, Mrs Conway. Bags o' room, bags o' room, an' nobody for to nag us.'

‘Aye, an' it disnae smell neither,' Louise would put in, as if that in itself was a compliment.

What disconcerted Lizzie was not so much the appearance of these unlikely cuckoos in her nest as the fact that her chicks seemed to enjoy the Hallops' company. Rosie, for instance, who spent her days in the unimaginably quiet atmosphere of Shelby's antiquarian bookshop, would throw herself wildly into the card games, would whoop and clack with the best of them. Even Polly, usually so sensible and reserved, would be lured into Chasing the Ace or taking on the bank at Newmarket.

Two or three nights a week – always on Sundays – there would be a houseful; French toast sizzling in the pan, teacups on the table, bottled beer, a great, hovering, throat-catching pall of cigarette smoke that even a wide-open kitchen window could not dissipate.

Expecting sympathy, Lizzie complained to Bernard.

‘Cards?' Bernard said, neutrally. ‘Well!'

The following Sunday evening Bernard turned up at Lavender Court bearing a bunch of flowers for Lizzie, a box of dates for the girls, and – just by chance – a pocketful of loose change which, by the time he had finished showing the Hallops what an old soldier remembered about the art of Pontoon, was considerably heavier than when he'd arrived.

A life coming together, or a life falling apart?

Lizzie had no idea.

All she could be sure of was that routine upon which her existence had been based six months ago now had to be squeezed into days that seemed to grow ever shorter. In addition, she was bored by elements that had once seemed crucial, among them the daily grind of sanitising infected garments and labelling poor folks' intimate possessions, of trudging up to the backlands of Laurieston to engage in guarded chat with Janet and help her ailing mother undress. If it hadn't been for Bernard she might have envied her girls their blossoming, might have cried herself to sleep at the realisation that they were off and running and would soon leave her behind.

Her trust in Bernard allayed such fears, however, and she was forced to concede that her restlessness stemmed mainly from the fact that too much was happening too soon, and that she couldn't for the life of her predict just where it was all going to end, or, for that matter, when.

‘Patience, dearest,' Bernard would say when, on those rare occasions when she had him to herself, she would shed a little tear and try to explain how adversely progress was affecting her. ‘What's for us will not go by us.'

‘What does
that
mean?' Lizzie would snivel.

‘Lord knows,' Bernard would tell her. ‘It's a sayin' my mother's very fond of – so it probably doesn't mean anythin' at all. The Italians have a similar sort of sayin', but I can't think of it offhand.'

‘The Italians!'

‘You're just unsettled. It's the time of year.' Bernard would put an arm around her. ‘Here, have a hug, that usually does the trick.'

Lizzie would not resist the hug – having more or less fished for it – but she was sometimes just a little disappointed that her wonderful man could not make everything come right, could not quite usurp the phantoms of her past or bring the future to pass right there and then. It was unreasonable but she could not help it; what she wanted was too much of a tangle in her mind for her to understand, let alone for poor Bernard to fix.

If anyone possessed a magic wand that person was Dominic Manone. He had waved it to find Polly and Babs decent jobs when decent jobs were scarcer than apples on a fig tree. He had protected them from the likes of O'Hara. Sure, he had charged sweetly for the privilege, but he had always been there and had never let them down. Lizzie had no idea why she should be afraid of him now.

Worry, like a sudden jab of pain, would draw her up while she stooped over the reeking tubs or bent over a garment with her needle, would cause her breath to catch in her chest as she climbed the stairs in Laurieston or fried eggs in the pan for all and sundry in the kitchen at home. Worry about Polly. She would watch Polly flick out cards at the kitchen table, watch her smile as she raked in the coppers and small silver that skill or luck had brought her – and would wonder what Polly was keeping to herself, what secrets lay within her daughter that she, Lizzie Conway, had not put there and had not nurtured.

She was deceiving herself, of course. She knew perfectly well why she was afraid of Dominic Manone and why she could not confide in Bernard.

Polly and Dominic: Polly stepping out with Dominic Manone, stepping out of the black Italian motorcar that she, Lizzie, had never once set foot in; her Polly stepping out with an ease, a style, a confidence that she had never possessed. Where had it all sprung from, this grooming, this poise and coolness, this apparent acceptance of all that had once seemed so gloomy and intimidating? How could she stop it? Or should she stop it, or was this just the price that had to be paid for security?

All coming together or all falling apart?

Only time would tell, Lizzie supposed: God help us, only time will tell.

*   *   *

It was two weeks before Easter when Babs dropped the bombshell. She told Polly first. She told Polly for the simple reason that she had to tell someone and Polly these days seemed to be the only person she could trust to offer the sort of advice that a girl in her situation required.

The curious thing about it was that Babs was not dismayed when her condition was confirmed by the lady doctor in the little shopfront consulting room at the far end of the Calcutta Road.

So far she hadn't found sexual intercourse all it was cracked up to be and did not regard conception as one of nature's great mysteries. As she walked home from her second consultation, though, she felt quite joyful, and rather fulfilled. There had been something inevitable about her connection with Jackie Hallop and nothing mysterious about how the damned thing had happened, only which of the dozen or so acts of union had actually put one up the spout.

Naturally she was tense and a wee bit anxious but she didn't doubt that Mammy would know how to fix it, that Mammy would settle everything for her and her baby, and that once she got over feeling rotten in the morning everything would be all right.

‘Pregnant,' Polly said. ‘Dear God! Are you sure?'