Prized Possessions (17 page)

It didn't go very far before her knuckles struck brick.

Gouts of dust, like fur, brushed her fingers and wrist.

She shrieked silently, forced herself to grope about.

The hole was shallow but wide. Very suitable. She would wrap Babs's money in greaseproof paper, put the package in a pickle jar and stow it here in the McKerlies' cupboard without fear of discovery.

And then, flinching, Polly felt it.

She drew her hand back sharply, sucking in breath.

It had shape, hard shape. Metal, not round like a gas or water pipe, but small and individual, like a bomb. Polly steeled herself, dipped a hand into the aperture once more, fished about, found the object and brought it out.

She sat back on her heels and, holding her find up to the light from the fanlight above the door, inspected it closely.

No bomb: no gun: no box: a cocoa tin, a Fry's cocoa tin, with the label still pasted on the side, a little faded but intact. The lid was tightly sealed.

Polly experienced a queer fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach, a compound of fear and excitement and a faint premonition that she'd found something that should have been left alone. She picked at the lid with her fingernails until it flew off and skittered out of the cupboard into the hall.

‘Polly? Polly?'

She sat back, furtive and guilty, no longer patient.

She held the tin in her lap, both hands closed over it as if to trap whatever it might contain.

She made herself call out, ‘Are you finished, Gran?'

‘What're you doin'? Are you in my cupboard?'

‘No, I'm – I'm smoking a cigarette. Are you finished?'

‘Nearly, nearly.'

Polly waited. Listening. Trembling.

She lifted her hands up and turned the cocoa tin upside down.

What fell out was a fat wad of banknotes fastened with a rubber band.

Polly stared down at it then, without rhyme or reason, without knowing quite why, murmured, ‘Oh, my God! It's Daddy,' and suddenly began to cry.

Chapter Seven

Polly was shaken by the discovery of her father's hoard and the bizarre impulse that had driven her to choose exactly the same hiding place as he had done all those years ago. Her father had never had much more substance for her than a character in a fairytale and she resented the fact that he had died somewhere among the poppy fields, not heroically or definitively but in the same shifty and uncertain manner in which he'd lived.

Now, abruptly, he had been restored to her and as she had sat cross-legged in Gran McKerlie's tiny lobby holding the cocoa tin and the roll of banknotes she had felt his presence so strongly that she had begun to wonder if she'd been drawn there by a supernatural force to remind her whose daughter she really was. It had taken an effort of will on her part to hide her distress from her grandmother, to cook up a plausible excuse and, minutes after Aunt Janet had returned, take her leave, run down the slimy stairs and out of the backlands and away across Eglinton Street as if to outstrip him and leave the spectre of his influence lagging far behind.

She had run home to Lavender Court, to a houseful of steaming washtubs and laden pulleys because she had nowhere else to go and desperately needed to talk to Babs just as soon as the coast was clear.

‘
How
much?' Babs cried.

‘Three hundred and twenty-four pounds.'

‘My God!' Babs exclaimed. ‘Think of all that money lyin' there, just lyin' there for all those years. Did you count it?'

‘Yes.'

‘An' there was only three hundred?'

‘And twenty-four pounds, yes,' Polly said.

‘I thought he'd got away with eight hundred. That's the story, anyway.'

‘Perhaps it was exaggerated,' Polly said.

Babs nodded. ‘Yeah, or he spent the rest before he joined up.'

‘How long did he have?' Polly asked. ‘I mean, between the money being stolen and him joining up?'

‘Dunno,' Babs said. ‘Days, weeks – not very long.'

‘
Could
he have spent five hundred pounds in such a short time?'

‘Maybe he had debts – like Tommy Bonnar?'

‘Don't say that,' Polly snapped.

‘Say what?'

‘Don't compare Dad to Tommy. He wasn't at all like Tommy Bonnar.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Mammy told us what he was like.'

‘Yeah, but we only have her word for it.'

‘I remember him,' Polly said. ‘I remember what he looked like, how he used to take me on his knee and read to me, and how he would come into the room and tuck us into bed.'

‘Yeah, but we've no idea what he was really like, have we?' Babs said, impatiently. ‘Anyway, who cares now? Where is it?'

‘Where's what?'

‘The money, the loot.'

‘Oh, that,' said Polly. ‘I put it back.'

‘You did
what?
'

‘What else was I going to do with it?'

‘Bring it back, bring it here. It's our money, ain't it?'

‘I'm not so sure it is,' said Polly.

‘Come off it, Poll,' Babs said. ‘If it ain't ours, whose—'

‘Dad stole it from the Manones. It's the Manones' money.'

‘Oh, sure!' said Babs, squirming on the bed. ‘Are you just gonna waltz up to Mr Manone an' say, “See what I found, sir. Sorry it's five hundred light.” Are you gonna hand it over to a guy who's soaked Mammy for a fortune over the years? Nah, nah. It's ours, Polly, our legacy. We're entitled to it.'

‘We'll have to give it to Mammy.'

Babs stopped squirming. They were alone in the bedroom, seated together on the bed. It was late in the afternoon. A drizzling, depressing dusk had crept down over the backs and enveloped the city. With nightfall the rain had increased in density and pattered on the front window and trickled audibly in the guttering. Outside, gas-lamps hissed inside soft angelic halos and the cobbles gleamed, all clean for once, and picturesque.

In the kitchen Rosie was wringing out sheets. Mammy was taking down clothes that were dry and piling them in the basket to be ironed. It struck Polly that there was something unfair about Sunday chores so close in kind to those that occupied her mother during the week; Sunday gone, used up, and nothing for Mammy to look forward to but a trek through the rain to Laurieston to help put Gran to bed. She felt a sudden deep, deep sadness within her, a sense of just how much Mammy had lost, how much she had sacrificed to bring them up.

She thought of the money in the cocoa tin, a daft wee tin in a daft hiding place, so ordinary, so unimaginative that it didn't seem worthy of a man who'd had the gall to steal from the Italians.

‘If we hand it over to Mammy,' Polly said, ‘we'll have to tell her what I was doing rooting under the floorboards in Gran's house. And you know what that'll mean.'

‘The ball,' said Babs, nodding, ‘on the slates, yeah.'

‘Look,' Polly said, ‘the money's been hidden for – what? – thirteen years and nobody's stumbled on it. They're not going to find it now, are they? I mean, the chances of that happening are astronomical.'

‘The chances of you findin' it were astronomical,' Babs reminded her.

‘That's true.' Polly gave a little shiver. ‘But I had a valid reason for looking there. I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't drawn to it.'

‘Drawn to it?' said Babs. ‘God, you don't mean…'

‘I don't know what I mean.' Polly got up. ‘All I know is, we can't do anything about it, not right now, not this week.'

‘Because of the boys?'

‘Yes,' said Polly, decisively. ‘After Wednesday we'll be able to add another hundred pounds to it and then we can decide what we're going to do.'

‘Spend it,' said Babs, gleefully.

‘Or give it to Mammy.'

‘All of it?'

‘All of it,' Polly said.

‘For what, but?'

‘To pay off Dominic Manone.'

*   *   *

‘God, but you're jumpy tonight.' Patsy reached over the marble-topped table and covered her hand with his. ‘You're shakin' like a leaf, Polly. What's wrong? You worried about tomorrow night?'

‘Yes.'

He drew his chair closer to the table, leaning so close that his brow brushed her hair. ‘That's nice.'

‘Not for me it's not,' said Polly.

‘I've never had anyone worry about me before.'

‘Well,' said Polly, ‘don't get too used to it.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘If you think I'm going to hang around and be sick in the toilet every time you go out on a job, think again.'

He pulled back a little but continued to cover her hand with his. He looked away, at the deserted tables, the counter, the window, at rain beating down, rain streaked by the lights of the pub across the empty street and harried by the big wind that rampaged among the tenements.

‘Do you want it to last, Polly? This thing between us, I mean.'

‘How can I answer that?' Polly said.

‘You said—'

‘I know. I know. I'm talkin' through my hat. Don't pay any attention,' Polly advised. ‘I'm all upset. I think it's the weather.'

‘It isn't the weather,' said Patsy. ‘You're really worried about me.'

‘Haven't you had a sweetheart before?' Polly said.

‘I've had girls, if that's what you mean.'

‘I mean somebody you cared about?'

‘In my line of work—'

‘Would you give it up?' Polly interrupted.

‘For you?'

‘For me or for somebody else. For the right girl.'

‘Can't say.' Patsy thought about it. ‘Probably not.'

‘How much profit will you make from the warehouse job?'

‘Accordin' to Tommy, a lot.'

‘Enough to retire?' said Polly.

‘Retire from what?' said Patsy. ‘In my line o' work you don't retire.'

‘You just go on doing it until you're caught?'

‘I've never done time,' Patsy stated. ‘I've no intention of doin' time.'

‘You're too smart ever to get caught, is that it?'

‘You said it, I didn't.'

‘But not smart enough to quit?'

‘You're determined to reform me, Polly, aren't you?' Patsy said. ‘Put it this way, I'm not gonna quit before Wednesday night, not even for you.'

‘What'll you do with the money?'

‘Travel.' He rested his elbows on the table, his back to the window. ‘I like to see how folk live in different places. You'd like it too.'

‘I'm sure I would,' said Polly, stiffly.

‘Come with me.'

‘How can I?'

‘Easy,' Patsy told her. ‘Pack your smalls in a bag an' leave.'

‘My mother would just love that.'

‘She'd understand.'

‘I doubt it,' Polly said.

‘If I made an offer like that…'

‘Oh, it's an offer, is it?' Polly said.

‘If I made an offer like that to your sister, she'd jump at it.'

‘In that case why don't you ask Babs to go with you?'

‘I don't want Babs,' he said. ‘I want you.'

‘What, to keep your bed warm?' Polly was beginning to feel slightly nauseous again. She lifted her coffee cup and sipped the lukewarm liquid cautiously. ‘I'm not like Babs. Babs never thinks ahead. She'd go off with you because it wouldn't occur to her what would happen when she came back.'

‘Who said anythin' about comin' back? What's so bloody wonderful about Glasgow?' Patsy said. ‘There are a thousand, a million other places to live, all better than this dreary old town.'

‘Why do
you
keep coming back then?'

‘I really don't know,' said Patsy. ‘Because it's home, I suppose.'

‘Why don't you go to Russia and become a total Bolshevik?'

‘No – thank – you.'

‘I thought you supported the Communists?'

‘I do, but not enough to want to live in Russia.'

‘You don't do anything right, do you, Patsy?'

He gave a little
tut
followed by a sigh, both soft. ‘Stop naggin' me, Polly. I've enough on my plate without you goin' on about commitment.'

‘That's it. That's the word I couldn't think of.'

He glanced again at the rain teeming over the tenements. He could hear the hum of the ice-cream cooler behind the counter, the muted sound of a wireless in the back of the shop, the muffled roaring of the wind.

Apparently it hadn't occurred to Polly that heavy rain would raise the level of the river and that a strong wind would make handling the boat difficult. He wished now that he'd chosen another plan, one that didn't involve boats. He could have taken care of the watchmen, as Jackie had suggested, have lugged the safe off on the back of a van or lorry. He'd never been that kind of thief, though, had never gone out on a job with the intention of hurting anyone. He was a cat-burglar not an armed robber. Stealth not violence was his stock-in-trade.

Polly said, ‘I'm sorry, Patsy.'

He said, ‘Sorry for what?'

‘Nagging. I just don't want anything to happen to you.'

‘Like bein' pinched, you mean?'

‘Anything bad.'

‘Have no fear, sweetheart,' he said. ‘Nothin' will happen to me.'

She got up, came around the little table and eased herself on to his knee. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and put an arm around her. Mr Fascetti, old Joe, would be watching them in the long mirror but Patsy didn't care.

He laid his brow against her hair, smelled the odd, rather aromatic odour of it, like marzipan, like nutmeg. Her skin was warm, smooth and unblemished. He felt old beside her, holding her against him, old and rather weary. He thought of Paris, of Florence, of that tiny town in the Swiss Alps whose name he could never remember where he'd drunk frothy hot chocolate at a table outside in the snow under a brilliant blue sky, and how dull and lonely it had been.