Prized Possessions (15 page)

‘Oh, I've had all I require, thank you.'

‘Well then, I don't mind if I do.'

He watched her plump hand exercise the fork. A sizzling pork sausage slipped neatly on to his plate. The supper invitation had not only been welcome but expected. In fact, he'd have been disappointed if Mrs Conway hadn't had the table set and the pan on the stove.

He was also pleased that Lizzie was wearing the same frock she'd worn last Friday. Somehow he'd already grown used to it. He'd thought about her in it many times in the course of the week, of Lizzie Conway's cosy kitchen, her kindness, her warmth, a warmth that had become part of a more generalised warmth that had affected him too. The office juniors had remarked upon the change in him, albeit sarcastically. Even his mother had noticed it and, as she'd put on her hat to trot out to the Women's Guild, had told him that he'd better mend his ways or face up to the consequences – whatever
that
meant.

Bernard had been smiling all week; he was smiling now.

He felt at ease, more so as the girls weren't around.

Obviously Lizzie had snaffled him for herself. He was not displeased by the development. Indeed, he had come prepared for it.

Nestling in his jacket pocket was a little box of sweets, six dark chocolates whorled into crests, each crest topped by a tiny red rosebud. The box itself looked as if it were made of real gold leaf and was tied with a piece of silk ribbon. The gift was small enough to indicate gratitude without being effusive, and expensive enough to please a woman who did not appear to enjoy too many of life's little luxuries.

He was eager to present it to her; or, he wondered, might it be better to lay it discreetly by the side of the plate for her to find when she cleared the table after he'd gone? He pondered his tactics while he chewed the sausage and mopped up egg yolk with a square of toast.

‘How's your mother these days?'

The question caught Bernard off guard.

‘My mother? Oh, she's – she keeps herself busy.'

‘Lookin' after you?' Lizzie said.

‘Well – well, yes.' He hesitated. ‘She does other things too, of course.'

‘Such as?' said Lizzie.

‘Women's Guild.' He shrugged. ‘Eastern Star, that sort of thing.'

Bernard was tempted to expound on the theme, to list all the groups and organisations to which his mother belonged and to explain that in fact he saw very little of her and suspected that her devotion to her friends and colleagues far outstripped her devotion to him. To be fair the council cottage in Knightswood was never anything but spotless and there were always clean shirts and whole socks in his drawer. Even so, he could not help but feel that he was allocated quite a lowly place in his mother's schedule of priorities.

Most nights he would find his dinner in the oven and a note in his mother's beautiful copperplate handwriting propped against the vase on the mantelpiece telling him how to turn up the gas and where she had gone and when he might expect her back. Indeed, at times it was like sharing the cottage with a ghost, the sort of restless entity that you only really saw out of the corner of your eye as it whisked away.

He bit back criticism, however, stifled his resentment and managed a loyal smile by way of defence.

Lizzie said, ‘She must enjoy the company.'

‘Yes, I expect she does,' said Bernard.

‘It'll keep her from thinkin' about the boys.'

‘Boys?' said Bernard.

‘Your brothers, from broodin' about your brothers.'

‘Oh!' Bernard said. ‘I hadn't thought of that.'

It was true. Until that moment it just hadn't occurred to him that his mother's brisk and bustling behaviour had anything to do with Peter and Charlie or that she might be motivated by the inexpressible pain of having lost her favourite sons. He'd always imagined that he was the only one who still missed them. Mum never talked about them. She kept no photographs, no letters or postcards, nothing on display to remind her of them, or of the war.

Even his, Bernard's, medal had been hidden away in a drawer.

He squinted across the table at Lizzie Conway.

Her perspicacity made him uncomfortable. What she'd just said might very well be the truth, though; or was it just a charitable excuse for his mother's egotistical need to be the centre of attention? He'd have to think about that one.

Meanwhile, Lizzie emanated gentle and soothing sympathy.

Bernard cleared his throat. ‘How did – I mean, how did
you
cope?'

‘As best I could,' Lizzie answered. ‘I'd three bairns to look after so I never had much time for grievin'. Anyway, there's a fair old difference between losin' two sons an' losin' one husband, especially a husband like mine.'

‘He wasn't…' Bernard didn't know how to put it.

‘No,' Lizzie said. ‘No, he wasn't.'

‘Is that why you were never tempted to – eh – to try again?'

‘Marry again?'

‘Aye. Yes,' said Bernard.

‘I never married again because nobody ever asked me.'

‘What?' Bernard said. ‘I find that hard to believe.'

‘True, though,' said Lizzie.

‘Amazin',' Bernard said. ‘Just amazin'.'

‘What is?' said Lizzie. ‘That nobody ever considered I'd make a worthwhile wife? No, no, there are too many single girls floatin' about for anyone to fancy a dowdy old hen like me.'

‘You do yourself an injustice, Mrs Conway.'

‘I think,' said Lizzie, ‘you'd better call me Lizzie – especially if you're goin' to keep butterin' me up.'

‘I didn't mean to offend you.'

‘You can offend me like that any time,' Lizzie said, smiling. ‘I haven't been paid such a nice compliment in many a long day.'

‘Well,' Bernard said; he paused. ‘You deserve it.'

‘You're only able to say that because you don't know me very well.'

‘Well enough, Mrs Conway.'

‘Lizzie.'

‘Lizzie, I pride myself on my judgement of character. In my profession, you don't get far without bein' a good judge of character.'

‘Stop, please.' She laughed. ‘You're makin' me blush.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm no retirin' violet, Bernard. Don't think that,' Lizzie told him. ‘I don't sit around feelin' sorry for myself. The plain fact o' the matter is, I've got three daughters. No man in his right senses would take on that burden.'

‘A nice family,' Bernard said, without thinking.

‘Pardon.'

‘I mean – eh – you seem to have brought them up very well.'

‘I've done about all I can for them, all except Rosie. No doubt, within the next year or two, they'll find husbands of their own, an' fly the nest.'

‘Is that not as it should be?' Bernard ventured.

‘Aye, it is,' Lizzie agreed. ‘But…'

‘What'll you do then?'

‘Well, one thing's for sure,' said Lizzie, ruefully, ‘no man's goin' to rush to take me on now, not as a wife – or anythin' else.'

Bernard chose to ignore the implications of the last part of her statement. ‘Why not?' he said. ‘I mean, what's wrong with you, Mrs Conway?'

‘Lizzie.'

‘Lizzie. I mean, what's to
stop
you gettin' married again?'

‘Look at me. I'm old—'

‘You're not much older than I am,' Bernard interrupted, ‘an' I certainly don't think of myself as old.'

‘Different for men,' said Lizzie. ‘Anyway, you're not fat.'

‘Neither are you,' Bernard blurted out. ‘You're' – he spread his hands helplessly as it dawned upon him just how daring the conversation had become – ‘very attractive.'

‘Thank you, kind sir,' said Lizzie, with a little bow, then, as if realising that she had made enough headway for one evening, pushed herself to her feet. ‘Come along, there's someone I'd like you to meet.'

‘Who?' he said, slightly alarmed.

‘My daughter, Rosie.'

‘Where is she?'

‘Ben the house.'

‘Oh!' Bernard said, thinking, Bedroom, bedroom: ‘Oh. Yes. Fine.'

*   *   *

As a rent-collector Bernard had seen more than his fair share of folk in bed. Everything from skinny wee babies wriggling naked and mewling to able-bodied men lolling against the bolsters with a ham roll in one hand and a bottle of brown ale in the other while their wives tried to convince him, Bernard, that the breadwinner had been struck down by a mysterious malady and that she just couldn't seem to find the rent this week.

He had encountered young mothers with milky breasts suckling their infants, elderly women carelessly displaying acres of veined flesh as they scrambled in search of his payment. Lads in the last desperate throes of TB. Lassies flushed and rasping with scarlet fever or quinsy throat. Even a fair number of what Bernard could only describe as tarts, girls who hoped that he might be tempted by their grubby sheets and bring a little cut-price trade their way – which, of course, he never did.

As far as Bernard was concerned all of this and more – much more if you included lodgers – was simply part and parcel of life in an overcrowded Gorbals tenement. But it was different in Lizzie Conway's house.

Ever since the landing door had been changed from dun to chocolate brown, ever since he'd first been confronted by the lady-lamp in the lobby, treated to a leg show by her daughter, Babs, heard soft music and smelled the perfumes that drifted from the bedroom, he'd been charged with curiosity as to what lay in the room to the front of the house.

He squeezed after the woman, past a monumental wardrobe.

He saw a large neatly made bed in the alcove to his right, a small chest of drawers, a gas fire, a chair, a lamp, a wireless set on a stand by the window. And he almost tripped over a gramophone on the worn strip of rug that marked the centre of the room.

The girl was on all fours by the gas fire, the light ruddy on her cheek. She wore a pleated grey skirt and had a cardigan thrown over her blouse but, in spite of the chill atmosphere, she was barefoot and bare-legged. A book was open on the floor in front of her. Her hair spilled across her face and she played with it, twisting it in her fingers, quite oblivious to the intrusion.

Lizzie said, quietly, ‘Our Rosie's deaf. She can hear a wee bit but not much. She can read your lips, though, if you face her square, an' she can speak nearly as well as you an' me.'

The faint tingle of expectation that had been in Bernard vanished instantly. Even bare legs, the glimpse of a thigh as the girl stirred, did nothing to restore it. He experienced a terrible wave of pity, not just for the poor, deaf lass crouched like an animal on the floor but for Lizzie Conway too, for this burden that he hadn't known about.

‘Rosie,' Lizzie shouted loudly. ‘Rosie, you've a visitor.'

The girl frowned. She moved one hand and then the other, turning the way a cat would turn, padding round. She was neither surprised nor alarmed, not even wary, and was smiling even before Bernard leaned forward and mouthed at her, ‘Hello, and what is your name?'

He had an almost invincible urge to stroke her as if she were indeed a cat.

She stared into his face. The intensity of her gaze set him back on his heels. Lizzie was directly behind him, peeping over his shoulder. He staggered, felt the woman's bracing hand on his back, righted himself and bent down again.

‘My name is Bernard Peabody. I am…'

The girl sprang to her feet with all the grace of an acrobat.

She held out her hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Peabody,' she said, in a flat, distinct voice. ‘You're our rent-collector?'

‘Bernard's also our friend, Rosie,' Lizzie said. ‘Isn't that right, Bernard?'

‘Yes, that's right. I – I am your friend.'

‘Mammy has told me all about you,' the girl said. ‘She is always talking about you. I am glad to get to meet you at last. Maybe now I will not have to stay in the back room when you come.'

‘What?' Bernard said.

‘Maybe now I will not have to—'

Lizzie tapped her daughter's arm and said, very loudly, ‘Tell Bernard what you're readin', Rosie.'

‘Oh, this.' She stooped, plucked the book from the carpet and handed it to him. ‘
Great Expectations.
Have you read it?'

‘No, not – not that one.'

‘You should,' Rosie said. ‘You really, really should.'

That flat quacking voice, that eagerness and enthusiasm: he was back a dozen years and more in the field hospital near Beaumont Hamel, back with the little bandsman who should not have been fighting at all: a boy, hardly more than a child, who had been caught on the Somme like so many others. He had gone out to get him, gone out under the guns; they had attacked under the guns, not knowing why they were being asked to do it: heavy howitzers, pounding away long-range all night long, flash after flash, thud after thud: four hundred millimetres lobbing nine hundred kilogram shells from ten kilometres away. Walking the boy in, walking in, whole and intact, the grin on his face a mile wide, his voice – like her voice now – flat and quacking, blood running unnoticed from his ears, a thin sticky trickle, like red saliva, the boy yelling enthusiastically, ‘See me. See me. I done it. I done it,' everyone knowing that he had no notion of what he had done or what the blast from the heavy shell had done to him, yelling, ‘See me. I come back. I come back.' The boy at Beaumont Hamel, the little bandsman, was dead before the sun came up.

Bernard held the book open in both hands.

‘Perhaps I will read it,' he said, knowing that he would, to please her.

‘There now,' said Lizzie. ‘Isn't that nice?'

‘Very nice,' said Rosie.