Prized Possessions (24 page)

Polly answered without hesitation. ‘She works for the CWC.'

O'Hara sat back. ‘Uh!'

Polly didn't dare lift her gaze to look at Patsy who stood by the table, hands bunched loosely into fists.

Polly said, ‘Mr Manone – Dominic – spoke to her about it this morning.'

‘An' you came right up here to tell your boyfriend?' O'Hara said.

‘Of course I did,' said Polly. ‘I know what Patsy does for a livin'.'

‘You thought it might be him, right?'

‘Nope,' Polly said. ‘I knew it couldn't be Patsy 'cause I was with him.'

‘Aye, but not all night,' said O'Hara.

‘Long enough,' said Polly. ‘I came to tell him because I thought he might know who'd be smart enough to row off downriver with a safe full of money.'

‘Down the river?' said Patsy; another bark of laughter. ‘Clever, clever.'

The chair creaked as O'Hara eased his weight back.

He was still squinting, though, still with that wrinkle of doubt about the eyes. Short of drawing out a knife or a razor he could do no more to threaten them, however, and he was too cautious to resort to physical violence just yet, particularly now she'd mentioned Manone's name.

‘You don't know who might've done it then?' O'Hara said.

‘No idea,' said Patsy. ‘Down the river? Jeeze, that's rich.'

‘Mr Manone ain't laughin',' Alex O'Hara said.

‘I'll bet he isn't,' said Polly.

*   *   *

Five minutes later, seconds after O'Hara had left the flat, Polly was sprawled diagonally across the top of the alcove bed. She was still fully dressed but her coat was unbuttoned and her skirt hitched up. Patsy's hands caressed her thighs above her stockings and cupped the moist warm pocket of her knickers. He did not enter her but lay heavily upon her, rubbing urgently against her, making her gasp and thrash and lift herself up in aching little spasms that were partly pleasure, partly pain.

At that moment she couldn't separate sense from horse-sense. She realised that he might take her and that she wouldn't resist. That she wouldn't be a girl, a virgin any longer and would have to carry a secret of her own and the worry that went with that secret. That she would have no one to trust with that secret other than Patsy himself and she wasn't at all sure that she wanted to give him that much power over her. After a while, though, she stopped thinking altogether and surrendered helplessly to the strange, untrained rhythms that moved through her body.

Patsy did not attempt to undress her. His love-making was forceful but not insistent. It was accomplished without penetration. Polly still wore the silly cup-shaped hat that Aunt Janet had given her at New Year a year ago. She stared up into Patsy's face, urging him to take her but even in the throes of a loving act he remained controlled. She wanted to shout that she was ready, that she wanted him inside her but the spasms were becoming more frequent, more and more demanding and when he came against her thighs she responded with a single, profound spasm of fulfilment that left her dazed by its intensity.

Patsy pulled back from her at once, his eyes wide with horror.

‘God, Polly. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

She eased herself up, holding her skirts away from her sticky thighs.

‘For what?' she heard herself say.

‘I didn't mean it to be like that, the first time.'

‘It's all right.' Polly leaned forward and kissed him, first on the brow then on the lips. ‘I wanted you to do it.'

‘But it wasn't right,' Patsy said. ‘I don't know what came over me.'

‘I do,' said Polly and, flustered at last, asked him if he would be good enough to fetch her a handkerchief.

*   *   *

‘I don't know why you're so pleased with yourself,' Babs said.

‘I'm not pleased with myself,' said Polly, ‘not particularly.'

‘You're lyin' there grinnin' like the cat that ate the canary.'

‘Am I?' said Polly, sleepily. ‘Well, maybe I am. I'm just glad it's all over and that none of the boys got caught.'

‘Do you really think it's all over?'

‘Babs, I'm too tired to worry about it any more tonight.'

‘Jackie's hands…'

‘Patsy says they'll heal up in a day or two.'

‘Patsy, Patsy! He's no better than the rest o' them.'

‘Leave Patsy out of it,' said Polly ‘It's not his fault you squabbled with Jackie. You should have been more sympathetic.'

‘Aye, an' I should've been paid.'

‘They didn't get away with anything. They didn't make any money.'

‘Mr Manone said—'

‘Don't tell me you're going to take Dominic Manone's word for it,' Polly said, ‘instead of believing the boys.'

‘I don't know who to believe. After all I done for—'

‘Babs.'

‘What?'

‘Shut up an' let me sleep.'

‘Okay, okay,' said Babs.

Chapter Eleven

The theory was that the Pope himself would not know what to make of St Margaret's Institute for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. Few people did: it was neither clearly Catholic nor Protestant in a town where your identity was defined by the colour of shirt you wore and which football team you supported, but the Institute's history ran counter to such simple-minded definitions.

It had been founded by a Baptist who had made a fortune trading in tobacco and who, as a late convert to God and a hearing trumpet, had struck a bargain with the trustees of the Gorbals parish poorhouse to administer a fund in his name; a promise that had gone the way of all parish promises as the years had rolled by and the Baptist's family had died out one by one.

Next a convocation of nuns from the silent order of St Irene had tried to muscle in on the act by buying up the land on which the crumbling little building stood; a manoeuvre that had led to the infamous Deaf and Dumb riots of 1871 and one of those bits of administrative carpentry that had resulted in what some folk regarded as an ecumenical disaster and others had lauded as an ingenious example of civic compromise involving not only Catholics and Protestants but the odd Jew as well.

As odd Jews went Mr Feldman was odder than most. In appearance he was something of a stereotype, a great brown bear of a man with a curly beard greying at the edges, and huge hairy-knuckled hands that could sign in the language of the deaf with a dexterity that seemed at odds not merely with his size but with his enormous booming voice. He emanated not severity but authority and his presence in the Institute's boardroom would set the hearts of wispy little nuns to beating faster and terrify those governors who opposed him.

Nothing that Mr Feldman did was for his own aggrandisement, however. He had one interest in life, one dedicated purpose: to coax words from the mouths of deaf-mutes and restore in them the memory of forgotten sounds. He was an expert teacher – tender, patient and firm; an expert fund-raiser too when some gadget or device that would assist the work of the Institute came to his attention and the wind had to be raised to purchase a new micro-telephone or valve-amplifier or one of the latest ‘teletactor' vibrating plates that had just come upon the market from America.

To his little charges Mr Feldman was a prophetic figure who seemed to be everywhere and know everything. While they held him in reverence they were never afraid of him, for he was, above all, the essence of fairness and even the youngest sensed that he always had their best interests at heart.

He would be there to welcome them when they trooped in of a morning and would be there at the gate when they trooped out again at four o'clock, arms folded, beard bristling, quick to spot a drayman who was driving too fast or a careless carter or a coalman who had failed to respect the fact that the children on the pavement could hear nothing, or nothing much, and that shouting at them to clear off and leave the cuddy alone was not only pointless but insulting.

‘YOU,' Mr Feldman would roar. ‘HOLD THAT ANIMAL STILL, PLEASE.' Even those children who could hear nothing at all – true congenitals – would feel the vibration of the master's voice and, with a confidence that he had instilled in them, would pull gargoyle faces at the coalman or carter and, with Mr Feldman egging them on, would scamper across the thoroughfare, safe to the other side. Then they would turn and wave and the master would wave to them and they would go off around silent street corners into silent closes warmed by the feeling that Mr Feldman would be standing behind them, not just tomorrow but throughout the whole of the rest of their lives.

Rosie feared the loss of Mr Feldman's approval more than anything.

She might defy Polly and chafe against the maternal bit on occasion but she obeyed Mr Feldman without question. When he told her to do something she did it. When he told her not to do something she did not do it. She obeyed him because discipline had been dinned into her as part of the process of learning not just how to speak coherently but also how to make a world that perceived her as deficient understand that she was anything but.

‘Talk to me, Rosie,' Mr Feldman would say, his red lips animate within the curly brown curtain of his beard. ‘Come along, girl, imbue me with the pearls of your wisdom. Talk. T-aw-k. Tongue. Mouth open. Back of the throat.'

‘I can talk,' Rosie would utter, indignantly.

‘What are you going to say?'

‘What do you wish me to say?'

‘That is up to you. En-gay-dje me in con-ver-say-shon, please.'

She was quick to pick up half-heard sounds, to interpret the unfamiliar words that the master pronounced.

After several years of training she no longer knew whether she heard words or saw or felt them or which particular set of receptors was involved in the act of comprehension, only that she could understand and communicate and that she had Mr Feldman to thank for it.

She still cared enough about the master's opinion to be embarrassed when at a quarter past four o'clock on a Friday afternoon Alex O'Hara showed up at the gate of the Institute and, leaning against the stone post with his hat tipped back and his hands in his pockets, gave her one of those sly little smiles that, taken out of the context of Molliston Street, seemed even to Rosie to be lecherous rather than affectionate.

For one awful moment she saw Alex O'Hara as he really was, stripped of the glamour that she had imposed upon him, the little-girl silliness that she had confused with a romance.

They were not a suitable couple. Never had been. Never would be. He was not her sweetheart. He was not
fit
to be her sweetheart. When she saw him there at the Institute gate she experienced no lift of the heart, no raising of the spirits, but rather a leaden realisation that she had made a monkey of herself and that Mr Feldman would be bound to think so too.

‘YOU, SIR, WHY ARE YOU LOITERING THERE, PLEASE?'

Alex O'Hara rolled his shoulders from the gate-post, glanced insolently up and down the street, then, as if he had just noticed Mr Feldman, touched a finger to his breastbone and mouthed the word,
‘Me?'

‘YES, YOU, SIR.'

Mr Feldman was right behind her.

He stood on the step at the door of the main entrance, his hands on Rosie's shoulders, while two girls and three boys from the advanced class piled up behind them, goggle-eyed with curiosity.

‘Ah'm waitin' for her.'

‘ARE YOU, INDEED?'

‘Aye, ah'm are indeed.'

Mr Feldman stooped. Rosie felt his beard press against her cheek.

‘Rosie, is this true?
Do
you know this man?'

‘Yes, Mr Feldman.'

Alex O'Hara sauntered a few steps into the narrow schoolyard. The children behind Mr Feldman swayed.

‘She knows me,' O'Hara said. ‘I've been sent t' take her home.'

‘Who sent you?' Mr Feldman said.

‘Her mammy.'

‘Really?' Mr Feldman said. ‘Are you a friend of Mrs Conway?'

‘I'm everybody's friend,' Alex O'Hara replied. ‘Right, Rosie?'

‘Rosie, is it safe for you to go with this man?'

‘Yes, Mr Feldman.'

‘What is his name?'

Slurring the words nervously, Rosie said, ‘His name's Alex O'Hara.'

‘Come on, man,' O'Hara said. ‘I ain't gonna eat her.' He held out his hand. ‘Come on, Rosie, your mammy's waitin'.'

Mr Feldman knew perfectly well how O'Hara made his bread and whose interests he represented. He even had an inkling of the sort of relationship that Lizzie Conway might have with this man and while he did not approve he was enough of a realist to acknowledge that the Conway woman was doing her best for her children in the only way open to her. He had been resident in the Gorbals long enough to remember Frank Conway's mysterious disappearance a dozen or so years ago at a time when so many young men were being sucked into oblivion, yet it jarred him to think that Rosie might be dragged into that society, that all his teaching, all his moral instruction, would be wasted if she became a criminal's sweetheart or, worse, a criminal's wife.

Reluctantly he removed his hands from Rosie's shoulders and let her walk down the steps to the playground.

She did not take O'Hara's hand, thank God, but simply fell in beside him, tailoring her long-legged, loping step to the man's indolent shuffle as if he, O'Hara, were the child and she the adult.

Mr Feldman sighed.

One of the girls tapped his elbow and, when she had his attention, mouthed an eager question: ‘Is he her boyfriend, Mr Feldman?'

‘CERTAINLY NOT,' the master roared. ‘SHE IS FAR TOO YOUNG FOR BOYFRIENDS,' then, taken aback by his own vehemence, hurried his not-so-little charges out of the playground and into the silent street.

*   *   *

O'Hara tried to hold on to her hand but she was too conscious of the Institute, at least its roof, peering from above the row of little shops at the end of Brooke Street and had the idiotic feeling that Mr Feldman might be straddling the tiles or clinging to a chimney-pot and that at any moment she would hear his massive voice ringing in her ears, warning her not to be a fool.