Prized Possessions (16 page)

*   *   *

When it came to working on Sundays Janet McKerlie had been forced to put her foot down. Mr Smart, who owned the shop in which she assisted, was nothing if not persistent, however. Every five or six months for going on thirty-five years Janet had been obliged to read him the Christian version of the Riot Act and explain that though she had been stuck behind his counter for what seemed like eternity she wasn't actually his slave and still had a soul to call her own.

Mr Smart offered her overtime to take a turn behind the counter from seven o'clock on Sunday morning until half past midday.

He pointed out that the shop was, and always had been, a dairy and that the good Lord himself had seen nothing wrong in buying bread on the Sabbath and if He had been around in the Gorbals in the present time, He would probably have nipped in for a pint of milk, a quarter-pound of ham and a copy of the
Sunday Post.

One might safely say that Mr Smart was not a religious man.

The shop was his church, retailing his religion.

If that made him a heathen in Janet's book then, damn it, she would just have to adjust to it. He had threatened her with dismissal, threatening to bring in a new assistant, a young girl who would do what she was told and, of course, would be only too delighted to undertake an extra half-day's work on a Sunday to save a poor old man having to run himself ragged just to keep the business ticking over. None of these arguments cut any ice with Janet.

Latterly, she hadn't been waiting for Mr Smart to start wheedling and threatening but had gone on the attack, sniping at his niggardliness, his bad manners, his falling hair, his increasingly obvious limp and his general all-round godlessness which, Janet indicated, would wind up with him frying in hell like one of his own rashers.

‘You've been here a wheen o' years, milady,' Mr Smart would tell her. ‘But dinna you think that means you can gi'e me cheek an' get awa' wi' it.'

‘Sack me then, sack me, see where that gets you.'

‘I could employ a nice young girl for half whit I'm payin' you.'

‘What sort o' girl would work in a dismal wee hole like this an' put up wi' your godless whinin' for seventy hours a week for what you pay me?'

‘I pay ye well, milady.'

‘Forty-five shillings for seventy hours?' Janet would screech, as any hapless customers who happened to be waiting for service sidled discreetly out of the door. ‘That's a measly tanner an hour. A tanner an hour, I ask you!'

‘More, it's more. Do your arithmee-trick.'

‘I've done my arithmee-trick,' Janet would tell him, banging about with the potato scales and brass weights or rattling the long, lean knives with which meat and cheese were dissected. ‘However you add it up, Mr Smarty, it comes to exploitation. I am
not
workin' this Sunday.'

‘I never asked you to work this Sunday.'

‘You were goin' to, weren't you, but?'

‘Me? Never. I wouldn't give you the satisfaction o' earnin' some extra money, Janet McKerlie, if you were the last woman standin' upright this side o' Gorbals Cross.'

On Sundays, then, Janet McKerlie had a long lie-in.

She wouldn't rise from her mother's side in the niche bed until after eight o'clock, then she would spend a determined quarter of an hour crouched in the lavatory instead of her usual constipated three minutes.

She would also light the fire, make the breakfast, get her mother up and dressed – which was all part of the daily routine – then she would erect the sturdy head-high wooden clothes-horse, drape it with a grey sheet and, hidden from the world's view, disrobe down to the scud, and, shivering, sponge herself from head to toe, as if to wash away all trace of contact with that doyen of iniquity, Mr Smart, before she went to worship God.

Her nieces had no notion what Aunt Janet did on Sunday morning, and even less interest. As a rule one or other of them had to be dragged over to Laurieston to call on the aged relatives and a willingness to take on the awful chore had become a useful negotiating tool among Lizzie's daughters.

‘If you let me borrow your pink dress on Saturday, Babs, I'll take your turn an' go an' see Gran on Sunday.'

‘Done,' would be the immediate answer, with spit on the hands and a rubbing of palms to seal the agreement.

Going to see Gran was one thing that the Conway girls wished to avoid. Babs usually came off best in horse-trading, for Babs had the best wardrobe, the most desirable array of clothes, cheap jewellery, make-up and scent and so detested her female relatives that she would negotiate all sorts of extravagant deals with Polly to wriggle out of taking her turn on the rota.

On that Sunday, however, Polly did not have to negotiate.

She was out of bed, washed, dressed and duly passed as ‘presentable' by twenty minutes to eleven o'clock in the morning and was on her way through the cold, almost empty streets a few minutes later.

‘What's wrong with her?' Lizzie mumbled, lifting her head from the pillow as the front door closed.

‘Nothin',' Babs answered. ‘I guess she just wants t' get it over with.'

‘Don't blame her,' said Lizzie, and promptly went back to sleep.

*   *   *

‘Who is it?'

‘It's me – Polly.'

Flustered and blue-lipped, her Aunt Janet opened the door.

‘What're you doin' here at this hour?'

‘Thought I'd come early,' Polly said. ‘Keep Gran company while you're at the church.'

‘Oh?' said Janet, suspiciously. ‘That means we won't be seein' your mammy tonight, I suppose.'

‘Couldn't say,' said Polly. ‘I expect you will, though.'

‘Did she send you?'

‘Nope.' Polly was crisp to the point of curtness with Janet. Positive assertions and a show of self-confidence always disconcerted the middle-aged spinster who had forgotten, or had never known, what it was to be young. ‘Babs sent me. It was Babs's turn to visit but she isn't feeling well, so here I am.'

‘What wrong wi' her?' said Janet, putting on her pudding-basin hat. ‘I hope it isn't contagious?'

‘Well, you never know with Babs,' Polly said. ‘How's Gran?'

‘Poorly.' Janet squared the hat, slipped on a pair of blue woollen gloves and stared straight into her niece's eyes. ‘I have t' go.'

‘Go on then.'

‘Will you be here when I get back?'

‘I expect so.'

‘Don't leave her alone.'

‘Nope,' said Polly. ‘Go on.
Shoo.
'

Janet gave her a glare then left, closing the door behind her.

Polly hesitated.

She hadn't entered the kitchen yet. She could hear her Gran breathing, that odd, angry rasping and knew that at any second there would be a cry of ‘Who is it? Who's there?' She stole a moment, though, to unlatch the door of the hall cupboard and open it.

Unlike most hall cupboards, the McKerlies' was neater than a foot-soldier's haversack: a broom, a brush, a canvas apron, a small shovel, a large shovel, two galvanised pails – both spotless – and a little wicker cradle in which reposed a collection of chopped kindling, a jar of paraffin and a small, wicked-looking axe with a hammer head. Not only was the floor of the cupboard neatly lined with linoleum, the walls had been papered with floral oilcloth of such quality that the mice hadn't been able to gnaw through it yet.

There was no dust, no droppings, no beetles, dead or alive, not even the withered remnant of a moth within the McKerlies' glory hole, a situation that seemed so unnatural that it gave Polly the creeps.

‘Who is it? Who's there?'

Polly closed the cupboard door gently but didn't latch it.

She went into the kitchen.

‘Only me, Gran,' she said and, after sucking in a breath, lowered herself into the awful aura around her grandmother's chair and kissed the dear old lady lightly on the cheek.

‘You're an early bird.'

‘Couldn't
wait
to see you, Gran.'

‘Huh! You'll be up to somethin'.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Up to somethin', if I know you. Where's Babs?'

‘She's got a cold.'

‘Aye, well, tell her to keep it,' Gran said. ‘I'm no' wantin' her germs.'

‘That's exactly what Babs said,' said Polly.

‘What're you up to?' Gran McKerlie said, turning her head as Polly moved behind her to the sink. ‘There's somethin' shifty about you today. Is it some man, some feller?'

‘I really don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Comin' early. Upsettin' everybody.'

‘Well, sorry about that,' Polly said. ‘How about a cup of tea, Gran? Reputed to soothe the most savage breast.'

‘Is that impudence?'

‘Nope,' said Polly. ‘Advertising,' and, deliberately making the water roar, turned on the tap at the sink.

*   *   *

What had seemed like a marvellous idea back in Lavender Court was beginning to look pretty daft now that she was here in her grandmother's house.

It occurred to Polly that her master plan for hiding Babs's profits from the robbery under the floorboards was ridiculous, that it would be far simpler to plant the hundred pounds in a Post Office savings account and just hide the payment book. Something about the prospect of hard cash, though, generated tension in the region of the heart to the detriment of the brain. Babs might be willing to hide the cash for a while but Polly knew that her sister would never allow it to be salted away in something as vague as an account.

Polly had inherited her mother's stubborn streak. She told herself that as she'd made the effort to turn up in the backlands of Laurieston early on a Sunday morning then she might as well go through with it and see what sort of a hidey-hole Gran's hall cupboard would make.

She was still thinking in the abstract. She could not quite link what she was doing to what Patsy and the boys would attempt to do on Wednesday night. She, like them, dwelled only on results not consequences.

She had glimpsed Guido Manone through the window of the Alfa Romeo, and had spotted him now and then in the corridors of the burgh chambers. But she had seen the other one, Dominic, only once. She'd gone to a restaurant in Glasgow with three other girls from the office one night last spring and had bumped into Dominic Manone there just by chance.

He'd emerged from the restaurant in the company of another Italian. He'd had such an individual air about him, not at all cocky or swaggering, not assertive, that Polly had recognised him at once. He was also very handsome and when he'd glanced at her with his solemn gaze she'd found herself smiling as if she knew him. He, fleetingly, had smiled back. Then he'd gone off along the pavement with a neat, poised sort of gait, like a boxer, a bantam-weight.

Polly could not imagine Dominic Manone doing anyone any harm. He seemed no more threatening than any of the well-groomed men who came into the burgh offices day and daily, architects and engineers, builders and material suppliers, solicitors, and yet she hated him, had always hated him.

Polly didn't bother to listen to her grandmother grizzling on about her waterworks and the ignorance of the new young doctor who did not understand her suffering. Planted in the big, wooden-armed chair directly in front of the grate with everything close to hand – coal bucket and tongs, her sticks, the commode and the brass-tongued handbell with which she could summon assistance in case of emergency – there seemed to be precious little wrong with Grandma McKerlie that a modicum of exercise and effort would not put right.

She ate the toast that Polly made for her, drank several cups of strong tea and then, at last, informed the girl that she would ‘have to see what she could do this morning'. She reached out for the commode with her crook-handled stick, heaved herself upright and began to fumble, thick-fingered, with her skirts.

Polly said, ‘I'll leave you to it, Gran. I'll just be outside.'

‘What if I fall?'

‘I'll hear you.'

‘What if I fall in the fire?'

‘I'll only be in the hall.'

‘Janet always stays.'

‘Ah, well,' said Polly, heading for the door, ‘I'm not Janet.'

Once in the hall, Polly knelt on the floor and placed the sole of one shoe against the kitchen door and gently eased open the cupboard door.

The linoleum was lilac-coloured, printed with a cubic design that, if you stared at it long enough, began to waver and accumulate into towers and tenements and tall chimney-stacks.

Polly blinked and, shifting the broom and one of the shovels, explored the edges of the lino with her fingernails.

On all fours with her backside in the air, she felt like the heroine in a Keystone Cops picture, or one of the goblins in the Princess's annual pantomime. She picked at the edge of the linoleum, lifted a corner and curled it carefully back upon itself, so that it wouldn't crack. In spite of the age of the building and seasonal infestations of bugs and vermin, the floorboards under the lino were remarkably clean.

They were also, Polly discovered, surprisingly loose.

Using the edge of the little shovel she eased one board from its place. Four small blunt nails, quite clean and polished, four little nail holes; the board, no wider than a hand, no longer than a forearm, seemed to rest lightly on top of the cross joists.

Polly drew the board away.

She could hear her grandmother's theatrical little groans that would, no doubt, be explained in graphic detail as soon as the show was over and Polly returned to the kitchen. She placed the board against the side wall.

The smell of dank plaster and dust tickled her nostrils.

She had no idea how deep the hole under the floorboards might be or, for that matter, what might be lurking there. She bit her lip, scrunched herself into the cupboard and, before she lost her nerve, plunged her hand into the hole.