Prized Possessions (25 page)

She did feel foolish and – for the first time – scared of Alex.

If he had been tactful and had waited for her at the corner of Keane Street then she might have kidded herself that he cared for her and that the meeting represented a step forward in their limp relationship. But to have him just appear at the Institute gate like that, to embarrass her before Mr Feldman and her classmates – no, that was too thoughtless, too blatant, too crass to leave much room for self-delusion.

She walked fast, faster than Alex. He skipped to keep up with her and then, as they came around the corner into the bottom end of the Calcutta Road, grabbed her arm and pulled her in against the wall of Brady's pub which, at that hour of the afternoon, wasn't open for business.

The short end of the Calcutta Road was awash with mothers and small children, solitary shoppers, old men hanging about waiting for the pubs to reopen. Lorries from the back gate of the Kingston Iron works ground over the cobbles and from Latimer Road came the sparky blue flashes of tramcars turning sharply to head out past the new synagogue on to the Rutherglen Road. There were more horses than motorcars, more carts than vans, and the smell of horse manure mingled with the ever-present odours of coke smoke, coal smoke and the albuminous vapours of the Russia Road Chemical & Dyeworks.

Four thirty and already dark; the shortest day was less than a week away and the cold grey cloud that had lidded the Clyde valley for the past few days had thickened with impending rain. Streetlamps were already lighted and shop windows glimmered, not cheerily, in the pungent dusk.

He grabbed her arm not to slow her pace but to draw her off the pavement and steer her into one of the gloomy close-mouths that opened between the shopfronts.

The gas had not yet been turned up on the common stair and the darkness was pricked only by the windows of the tenements across the backs, crushed down into scribbled reflections on the long, litter-filled puddles that turned the backs into unwholesome ponds.

Rosie did not know where she was. She yielded not to Alex O'Hara's will but only to his strength. He dragged her with him forcibly then, drawing her past him, drove her out into the back court like a lamb to the slaughter. There was no sign of a weapon, of a knife blade in his hand but Rosie had the impression that he had one in his pocket and that if she resisted him he would not hesitate to use it.

She gasped with fear. She couldn't form words, couldn't make her throat work or her tongue curl. She uttered no coherent protests at his treatment, nothing except a plaintive
‘auk, auk, auk',
then when he flung her against the tenement wall,
‘Ma-Ma-Maaa',
like the cardboard squeaker in a cheap doll.

He thrust a hand behind her head, clasped her neck and brought his mouth to hers. He nuzzled his frozen lips against her mouth, sliding his nose this way and that across her face as if they were Eskimos. There was no love in him, only a vinegary sort of lust that circumstances had given him an opportunity to exploit. He jerked his hand from behind her head and placed it, fingers spread, in the middle of her chest. He pressed her back against the sandstone wall which was slicked with black soot and dusted with ash.

There was a window to Rosie's right, lighted, and a window above to her left, windows above that, windows all around. She could see the shapes of women floating like fish inside their kitchens, the shapes of clothes hanging on loose ropes across the high backs. She could see the crenellated edge of the sky whorled with the sifting grey smoke that made up the air that Glaswegians breathed and upon which they thrived. In the half-light from windows and sky she could see spittle on Alex O'Hara's upper lip – spit or perspiration, she did not know which.

She made no attempt to escape.

‘Can you hear what I'm sayin' to you, Rosie?'

‘Auk.'

‘Can you hear what I'm sayin'?'

She managed to nod, to utter a word that was not a word,
‘Uh-huh.'

His face was an inch from hers. He held his body back, bent from the waist as if he were reading her the riot act. He was calm, though, icy calm. Even inside her envelope of fear she sensed that this was business for Mr O'Hara, business not pleasure.

‘Mun-nay,' she said. ‘Tam-marra.'

‘Forget the money.' O'Hara spoke distinctly, making his lips move and tongue show. ‘I want to know where you were on Wednesday night.'

‘La' nigh'?'

‘No, Wednesday night. At home? In your own house, right?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘With your mammy?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘With your sister, with Polly, right?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘What time was that about?'

‘Aw – aw nigh.'

‘All night?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘You'd better get this right, Rosie,' he told her, pressing his hand flat against her chest again. ‘I'm not playin' the game wi' you now, honey.'

‘Yes,' Rosie managed to utter.

‘Your sisters were in the house wi' you all o' Wednesday night, right? They didn't go out, right? Not even Polly?'

She would have lied to him if she had understood what sort of truth he wanted from her. How Polly and Babs had become involved in her non-existent affair with Alex O'Hara was beyond her comprehension.

He pressed hard, the heel of his hand just above her breasts.

She squeaked.

‘Right?'
he said, savagely.

‘Yes, aw – all night.'

‘They never went out at all on Wednesday night?'

‘Nam … No. Neffer.' She shook her head. ‘Never.'

He drew back, fumbled in his pocket and produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes. He lit one and offered it to her. She took it, her hands trembling, her cheeks wet with tears.

‘That's all I needed t' know,' Alex O'Hara told her.

He smoked too, blowing the smoke away from her. He glanced at her and for an instant Rosie thought that he might be going to start on her again. She was more afraid of his mouth, of his kisses, than she was of his hands. She held the lighted cigarette between her finger and thumb, ready to stab into his face, but he did nothing now and seemed idle, almost easy in her company.

‘Come on then, Rosie,' he said. ‘I'll walk you home.'

‘No,' Rosie said, distinctly. ‘I will manage myself.'

‘Suit yourself.'

She put the cigarette to her lips and drew in smoke. The act of inhaling soothed her, made her feel adult and gave her breathing space. She took two puffs, dropped the cigarette and ground it flat with the heel of her shoe. O'Hara watched. He was grinning sheepishly now as if embarrassed by what he had done or had discovered a spark in her that he hadn't suspected was there.

Rosie said, ‘Are you finished with me?'

‘Aye. Go on.'

She walked away from him into the dark tunnel of the close.

‘Rosie?' he said.

She did not turn round.

‘See you later, Rosie,' Alex O'Hara called.

Rosie did not hear him.

She was running pell-mell for the street.

*   *   *

Polly did not even have an opportunity to fit her key into the lock, for no sooner had she arrived at the door than it flew open and her mother grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into the hall.

‘What the devil have you been up to?' Mammy demanded.

‘Me? Nothing,' said Polly, quailing before the onslaught.

She caught a glimpse of Babs in the doorway of the bedroom and Rosie, wrapped in an old shawl and looking like a tinker's lass, in the kitchen.

She had been thinking of Patsy and what he had done to her on the bed. Unfamiliar sensations had teased her throughout the day. Friday bustle in the burgh offices had not dispersed them. She had been glad when it turned half past five and she had been released. She had walked home slowly through the first chill sift of rain, trying to sort out her responses to her first sexual encounter and wondering why she did not feel more ashamed.

When Mammy pulled her into the house, therefore, Polly's first thought was that Mammy had somehow learned what had taken place on top of Patsy's bed. But even as she ducked to protect herself from punishment, Polly realised that something else had riled her mother, for her temper contained more panic than true rage.

‘What?' Polly said. ‘What have I done now?'

‘She knows,' Babs called out. ‘Mammy knows about us an' the boys.'

Polly dived into the bedroom and managed to close the door.

Backing towards the window, Babs called out, ‘She knows about everythin'. Rosie told her.'

Babs had not even had time to take off her coat and hat. How farcical, Polly thought, how unladylike; yet she experienced a wave of relief that she wouldn't have to explain what Patsy had done to her and why she hadn't resisted. She flung her handbag on to the bed just as Mammy burst in, her cheeks hot with temper, eyes bulging. It took all Polly's courage to face up to her.

‘What has Rosie been telling you?' Polly said.

‘About them boys.' Lizzie corrected herself. ‘Those boys downstairs, and the one you've been hangin' about with. It's all your fault what happened to Rosie tonight.'

Polly felt a dart of panic. ‘Rosie? What did happen to Rosie?'

‘O'Hara got to her,' Babs said. ‘He knows you lied about stayin' with Patsy on Wednesday night. The alibi's blown.'

Polly felt weak at the knees. She groped for the bed, seated herself on it.

‘Did he actually hurt Rosie?' she asked.

‘No,' said Lizzie. ‘But he scared the wits out of the wee soul.'

‘That's my fault,' said Polly. ‘I should never have encouraged her to deliver Manone's payments. I should have done it myself.'

Lizzie squatted by the bedside. She still reeked of disinfectant and her hands were raw. She'd had no opportunity to rub them with the lanolin ointment that kept her knuckles from cracking and her fingertips from peeling. There had been a time before they could afford soothing creams and lotions when Mammy's hands had been so rough that she had had to wear thin crepitous leather gloves all the time. Polly felt a pang of conscience at the memory. She reached up, took her mother's hands and closed her smooth, smudgy fingers over them.

‘Listen,' she said, ‘if you want to know what's happening, I'll—'

‘I told her already,' Babs said. ‘I didn't have much option, Poll, sorry.'

‘What have you to be sorry for?' Mammy said. ‘The only thing you should be sorry for is gettin' mixed up with that crowd downstairs.'

‘They work for Dominic Manone,' Polly said.

She felt a certain stiffening within her, a grievance that her mother would accuse them of consorting with Gorbals wild men when she herself had been married to one and still saw fit to visit the Italian now and then and accept his favours. There were certain debts in the Conway account that could never be paid off, not debts of honour but obligations to a past from which none of them could ever quite break free.

Suddenly Polly saw the reasons for Mammy's anger and panic. She had sustained her debt to Dominic Manone to keep her daughters, her prized possessions, free of their father's influence, to raise them inch by inch out of pervasive poverty.

They had lived in slums but they were not of the slums. The brown-painted door, the rugs, the cushions, the floral-print curtains, the wireless set and gramophone were not frivolous luxuries: they were statements of identity. It was not about money, had never been about money. It was about self-respect and responsibility, about discipline and conscience. Mammy wouldn't rest until they – her girls – were married to men who did not thieve and threaten for a living. Now that plan had been imperilled by their stupidity and recalcitrance. Small wonder that her mother was angry.

Polly said, tearfully, ‘Mammy, I'm sorry. So sorry.'

‘Me too,' said Babs, hastily.

Lizzie crouched by the side of the bed. Her cheeks were stained with tears but all trace of temper had gone. She was breathless, trembling and hurting but when Rosie appeared in the doorway, shawl about her shoulders, Polly felt a touch of hardness, of the unremitting Conway selfishness that had been her birthright. Even Rosie's flat, quacking voice irritated her for a moment.

‘I did not tell O'Hara anything,' Rosie said.

Polly knew that this was not the truth, that this little scene of family unity and forgiveness was not a solution, not an end but a beginning.

Twenty minutes later Mr Peabody turned up to collect the rent.

And five minutes after that – O'Hara.

Chapter Twelve

Polly did not know why she was so relieved to see the rent collector that Friday evening. She had harboured feelings of resentment against him ever since she'd learned that Mammy was eyeing him up as a potential husband. She didn't jump to conclusions, like Babs, or dismiss him as a fool but none the less she considered him too weak to be worthy of a woman like her mother.

When she thought about Mr Peabody – which wasn't often – Polly thought of a man who had never been young, who, stuffy and prissy and lacking conviction, was already trapped in perpetual middle age. She had lied only to flatter him and to please Mammy, had stated ‘absolutely' that she thought that rent-collecting was a manly occupation. She did not really consider it so, any more than she considered clerking a manly occupation or set any store by the neat brown suits and trilby hats of the young surveyors who frequented the Burgh Hall offices or by the navy blue three-pieces of pompous burgh councillors who confused their petty power with masculine appeal.

When she tried to tally up the qualities that made a man what a man should be, Polly inclined towards the boys who lived close to the edge; not the dumb or lazy but those hearty young males who flooded out of shipyard gates or poured, running, from under the steelworks' towering gantries, their faces grimed but not grim and who, if unemployment caught up with them, joined the back of the dole queue with the same gruff optimism with which they had squared up to wage-slavery. She liked the look of them, liked the dirt on their cheeks, the sweat on their brows, their callused hands, their vigour; the fact that they would never willingly trade independence for security and that, in them, the muscles of revolt were still firm enough to slither and tighten.