Prized Possessions (2 page)

He barked, ‘What are you doin' then, scarin' oor Billy?'

Lizzie Conway ignored the young man and, with a little smile, drew a long length of carpet from the van.

‘Right, girls,' she said. ‘You can get out now.'

Polly followed her sisters as they scrambled out of the hot, uncomfortable interior of the van where they had been packed behind the chairs. Without further instruction she began to extract huge cardboard boxes and small items of furniture, handing them to Rosie who passed them in turn to Babs who piled them up on the pavement.

In the ground-floor window Jackie Hallop's head protruded from the shell of the bedroom. He wore a grubby cotton undervest and in the dusty June sunlight his chest and shoulders were white enough to suggest that he seldom emerged from the bedroom in daylight.

His bark this time had a shrillness that made it sound more like a yap.

‘Hoi, you. I'm talkin' t' you.' He singled out Babs. ‘You, blondie.'

Still with that odd little smile on her lips Lizzie Conway turned and stared. Polly followed the line of her mother's gaze.

All up the height of the tenement, windows were filled with arms and faces, with bosoms large and small. A strange silence descended upon the onlookers, even upon the ring of children who had gathered round, a silence pierced only by the shrieking of an infant and, like an echo, the hoot of a shunting engine behind the iron works wall. Then with a wonderfully deliberate swagger, Polly's mother strolled over to the window and, leaning forward from the waist, whispered to young Mr Hallop.

‘
What
did you call her?' Lizzie asked.

‘Blondie?'

‘Her name's Babs,' Lizzie said. ‘But it wouldn't matter if she was the Queen of Sheba, that'll be the first an' last time you'll talk to one o' my girls without talkin' to me first. Do I make myself clear?'

‘I'll talk t' who I like,' the young man mumbled.

Lizzie leaned closer still.

She bent her arm and closed her fingers, making a fist, a rather large fist, which she placed one inch from Jackie Hallop's nose.

‘Oh,
will
you?' Polly heard her mother say in a dangerously affable tone. ‘How'd you like to be talkin' through a mouthful o' broken teeth?'

‘You,' Jackie said, swallowing hard, ‘an' what army?'

Polly saw her mother lean closer, so close to the young man that there was no more than the breadth of the fist between then. She could not hear which of the choice threats her mother used, which of the unladylike pieces of local jargon that would indicate to the young man, and to the neighbourhood, that she, Lizzie Conway, had the sort of connections that demanded if not respect at least a modicum of caution. Whichever one it was, whichever name Mammy Conway invoked, the effect on Jackie Hallop was startling.

Polly watched his pale face turn even paler. He jerked backward, bumped his head on the frame, vanished. A moment later, like the blade of a guillotine, the window slammed shut.

Mammy walked back to join her girls, her round hips rolling under the skimpy floral-print dress, that odd little smile still on her lips, a smile that seemed to signify not triumph but contempt.

‘God, you've done it again, Mammy,' Babs hissed.

‘Done what?' said Lizzie.

‘Got us off on the wrong foot,' said Babs. ‘Who's gonna talk to us now?'

‘You don't want to talk to the likes of him,' Lizzie said.

Just behind her ear, Polly heard Babs murmur, ‘Oh, I dunno. He looked pretty tasty to me.'

‘Polly, Babs,' Lizzie said, pointing a warning finger. ‘No back-chat, please. Get this van unloaded. Mr McIntosh doesn't have all day.'

Polly sighed, followed Babs to the back of the van, took a two-handed grip on a kitchen table and carefully extricated it.

‘Good,' Mammy said, smiling again. ‘Good girls.'

Five minutes later the contents of the van were piled on the pavement. Boxes and battered hampers were built round the table and chest of drawers, with Polly and her sisters sitting on or among them while the vehicle, with Lizzie Conway in the passenger seat, sped down the hill and, tilted on two wheels, disappeared into Keane Street.

They sat back to back, Rosie, Babs and Polly, all bare legs and bare arms, and scowled at the crowd around them.

To those urchins who had larceny constantly in mind, Polly reckoned that the big walnut dome of a Mullard wireless set protruding from one of the boxes must surely represent temptation. But the sight of three alert, unintimidated girls was enough to put them off. They were impudent and bold, Polly decided, but not
that
impudent and bold, not daft enough to tamper with the possessions of a stranger who had already made one of the local hard men back down.

She sat back a little, quite unafraid now. She had been reared in worse places than this and had gone to school, at least for a time, with kids who made this lot look like angels. They watched from a safe distance, watched and speculated with the unrevealing expressions of savages who do not know quite what the tide has washed in, while on the corner a little group of adult layabouts gathered, attracted no doubt by the smell of thievable property and three fresh young skirts.

‘Don't look in that direction, Babs,' Polly said, under her breath.

‘Why not?' said Babs, looking in that direction.

‘We don't want to bring them down on us, do we?'

‘Maybe
you
don't,' Babs said. ‘Personally I wouldn't mind.'

‘It'll only cause trouble when Mammy gets back.'

‘Yeah, I suppose you're right.'

Polly was by no means unaware how magnetic she and her sisters looked, seated there on top of the furniture. She was a shade less vain than either Rosie or Babs, but she was not so modest as to consider herself unattractive. She was tall and had long chestnut hair pulled back into a bunch behind her head, and a sharp little chin and, though she was still short of her twentieth birthday, had good legs, especially when, as now, she wore rayon stockings and a pair of patent leather shoes with half heels.

She lit a cigarette and took several long fulfilling drags before she passed it to her sister Babs, mouse-coloured but not mousy, short but not stocky, who when she inhaled showed off a figure that Jean Harlow herself might have envied. Finally, because Mammy wasn't around, Babs carefully passed the last half-inch of the Woodbine to Rosie who, at sixteen, looked dainty and cool in spite of being clad in a woollen jumper and a grey pleated skirt.

Even Rosie knew how to smoke, opening and closing her mouth over the cloud of tobacco smoke, toying with it until, at last, one perfect ring was formed, a transient O that floated up on the heat wave from the pavement and dissolved overhead while everyone, except Polly, watched in fascination.

‘Give's a drag on that, then, eh?' said one young reprobate who, even at twelve, was well on the way to becoming a nicotine addict. ‘G'an, give's a puff.'

Mouth still open and half filled with smoke, Rosie stared at him blankly. She shrugged and glanced at Babs who, kicking out one foot, snapped, ‘Piss off, sonny,' and gave a slow, arrogant flick of the head that made her short-cropped hair toss and shine in the sunlight.

Ten minutes later Polly was relieved to see her mother hurrying on foot up the hill from Keane Street.

Five minutes after that Lizzie Conway turned the key in the lock of the third-floor room-and-kitchen and the family without a man moved in.

*   *   *

Mr Peabody had never visited a bordello – well once, in Amiens, but he had only gone there for a beer – but when he thought of the word in its French form he imagined a place not a million miles removed from Mrs Conway's room-and-kitchen, which just goes to show how little Mr Peabody really knew of the world.

Perhaps it was the fragrance of perfume, nail varnish and setting lotion that lent a sinful air to the house, or the quantity of clothing that was scattered about, intimate female garments of all sorts draped from the drying pulley or over clothes-horses in front of the range.

Even in the narrow hall just behind the front door there were items that seemed calculated to take a man's mind off his rent book. A fancy china doll with painted cheeks and arms stretched out to welcome you sat on top of the coal bunker. On an upright table shaped like a Greek column, a lamp with a round pink globe poised on the fingertips of a lady whose nude body was curved into a position so supple and inviting that Mr Peabody could hardly take his eyes off it; unless, that is, Polly happened to open the landing door to his tentative knock, for then he would be unable to take his eyes off Polly and would wonder if she, lithe and slim as a willow, might be able to achieve such an extreme position if
she
wasn't wearing any clothes.

Left of the tiny hallway lay the girls' bedroom, the door never quite open, never quite closed; a mysterious haven from within which, some Friday nights, he could detect silky little sounds or faint strains of dance music or, once, a girl's unaccompanied voice dreamily crooning ‘One Alone'.

To the right lay the kitchen into which he was admitted or, to be more accurate, into which he was dragged, for his shyness was such that he could hardly bring himself to cross the threshold even although he had every right to be there. The kitchen was totally unlike any tenement kitchen that Mr Peabody had ever entered before.

It had a cluttered, overstuffed feel to it, less cosy than claustrophobic. There were cushions everywhere, even on the kitchen chairs, and thick quilted blankets that reminded Mr Peabody of Mexican bandits in cowboy films. And a smell not of gas or paraffin, of Brasso or black lead, kippers or burned toast but a sweet flowery fragrance laced with cigarette smoke that seemed to poor Mr Peabody like the very essence of decadence.

It was, in fact, soap, for, overstuffed or not, there was no cleaner kitchen in the whole of the Gorbals than Lizzie Conway's and none on his route more welcoming.

‘Will you not be taking your coat off then, Mr Peabody?' Lizzie said.

‘No, I think…'

Babs said, ‘Go on, Mr Peabody, take your coat off.'

Polly said, more politely, ‘Stay and have a cup of tea.'

‘No, really. I've only just started the round. I'll need to be gettin' on.'

‘At least sit yourself down,' Lizzie said. ‘Take the weight off your feet for a minute while I go an' find my purse.'

‘Is it all right?'

‘Is what all right, Mr Peabody?'

‘I mean, do you have the…'

‘The rent money? Aye, of course I have the rent money,' Lizzie said and went rolling out of the kitchen into the bedroom across the hall.

She was gone for several minutes, during which time Mr Peabody perched himself on one of the heavy cushions on one of the kitchen chairs and unbuttoned his overcoat just enough to bring his pouch into his lap, for although the pouch was still empty – Mrs Conway's was indeed his first port of call – he was wary of letting the money bag be seen.

‘What are you fiddlin' with down there, Mr Peabody?' Babs said.

‘I'm – I'm getting out my pencil.'

A very straight-faced question: ‘Is there lead in it?'

‘I sharpened it before I left the office.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' said Babs. ‘I prefer a really
sharp
pencil m'self.'

Mr Peabody failed to pick up on the innuendo or even to credit the girls with sufficient worldly experience to know what sex was about. He imagined that their seductive poses were entirely unconscious and so, to protect their innocence, tried not to stare but concentrated on arranging the rent books on the table. No plain pine for Lizzie Conway's table, no cork matting or chequered oilcloth; a genuine tablecloth, a good, whole piece of Irish linen embroidered with forget-me-nots and trimmed with lace.

It had a sleek, smooth feel to it, the sort of texture that invited stroking. Mr Peabody resisted. He closed his fist over the pencil, peered at the page, at the name
Mrs Elizabeth M. Conway
and wondered, in a vague way, what, if anything, the
M
stood for, who her husband had been and what had become of him.

He didn't have the temerity to put the question or request any sort of confidence that might be construed as special interest.

The golden rule for rent-collectors – ‘Never have a tenant for a friend and never have a friend for a tenant' – was one to which Mr Peabody subscribed. It seemed to him a sensible philosophy, given the sort of liberties that some clients tried to take to wriggle out of paying their dues.

Purse in hand, Lizzie returned.

Mr Peabody glanced guiltily over his shoulder.

She stood close to the chair, pressing her stomach lightly against the crown of his shoulder. She still had her figure which, given that she had borne three children and must be all of thirty-seven or -eight years old, Mr Peabody found remarkable in itself. She was hardly a sylph, of course, but the curves of her bosom and stomach were generous rather than ponderous.

She touched his shoulder.

‘Are you sure you it's money you want, Mr Peabody?' she said.

It was a clumsy joke that he'd heard a hundred times before. Usually he managed to laugh it off, say something jokey in return. But there was nothing humorous about Mrs Conway.

‘I'm afraid I have to insist that…' Bernard Peabody began.

‘I know you do. Aye, I know,' said Mrs Conway. ‘We wouldn't be wanting Shannon and Whatsit to be out of pocket, would we?'

Mr Peabody experienced an automatic dart of loyalty to the firm that paid his wages and, confusingly, a simultaneous tweak of sympathy for the woman with the open purse in her hand.

Lizzie Conway placed the coins upon the table.

Ten single shillings. Eight brown pennies. He counted them where they lay, not daring to insult her by scooping them swiftly into the bag. He pencilled the sum in the appropriate column in his book, filled out a receipt, initialled it, licked the gummed tab with the tip of his tongue and stuck it into the green linen-backed booklet that Mrs Conway passed to him.