Prized Possessions (27 page)

Bernard took another draw on the cigarette and blew smoke away from Lizzie's tear-stained face. ‘I'm just glad I could be of help.'

Polly sluiced away the blood in the sink. She washed her hands, plucked a towel from the hook, turned, and said, ‘I think we owe you an explanation.'

‘Not necessary,' Bernard said.

He glanced at Rosie who had come to the end of the table and was staring at him as if he'd suddenly acquired a halo and wings. The shawl was draped about her shoulders and, in the aftermath of her terror, she seemed to have shed four or five years from her age, to have become a child again, round-eyed and uncomprehending. Bernard winked at her. She smiled wanly.

Polly came to the table and seated herself on one of the chairs. Bernard was seated too, his bare arm laid upon newspapers while Lizzie worked upon the bandage, cutting two long tails and wrapping them firmly around his wrist.

‘Too tight?' she asked.

‘A wee bit tighter, please.'

She applied pressure, tied a knot and then another.

Polly said, ‘I think you're entitled to be told what all that was about.'

‘It's none of my business,' Bernard said.

‘Don't you even want to know who that guy was?' said Babs.

Bernard hesitated. The Conway girls were all around him. He was the centre of attention, no longer an object of teasing scorn and mockery. He had no difficulty in hiding his pain. He had endured much worse than this. They claimed you couldn't remember pain but he certainly did and how good it had made him feel when it finally subsided.

In a field hospital at Hazebrouck they had given him morphine and had sent him back to recuperate at a place near Cassel. They hadn't sent him home. He had got himself off the morphine p.d.q. because he had seen what it did to others, worse than the drink. He was back at the Front in a fortnight because they thought he might be malingering and, anyway, they were down to stemming the Boche advance with cooks and storemen, anyone who could carry a rifle.

‘He's one of Dominic Manone's boys, isn't he?' Bernard said.

‘His name's O'Hara,' Polly told him.

‘Oh!' Bernard said.

There had been enough nameless enemies in his life; he didn't need another to add to the list. When he looked at the girls around the table and at Lizzie Conway he felt a curious sense of separation from the grey-clad figure that had walked behind him all these years, tugging at his greatcoat tails and urging him to keep down, keep low, and take no chances.

‘O'Hara is a bad one,' Rosie said.

‘I rather gathered that,' said Bernard.

The iodine was biting. Cold sweat started on the back of his neck and down his breastbone. Polly Conway was right: the gash probably did need a stitch or two. He certainly wouldn't be doing much work with a pen for the next few days. He wondered what sort of tale he could tell Mr Shannon that would absolve him from culpability and keep his wage coming. Perhaps Mr Shannon would find something else for him to do; unless he managed to make his left hand work as well as his right? He thought about that, vaguely, while – less vaguely – he became conscious that Polly Conway was holding his arm and that Lizzie was hugging him about the neck.

He searched his soul for the primness that had always protected him, discovered that it had evaporated. He could smell whisky, iodine, even blood but also the comforting aroma of Lizzie Conway's kitchen, distinct and womanly. He leaned his head against Lizzie's hip for an instant then righted himself and said, ‘Are you in debt to O'Hara?'

‘'Course we're not,' Lizzie replied.

‘Come on, Mammy, no use trying to hide it,' Polly said. ‘We're in debt to Dominic Manone and probably always will be. My daddy ran off with hundreds of pounds of the Manones' money and got lost in the war. Since then we've been paying it back in monthly instalments.'

‘That's terrible,' Bernard said. ‘What a burden!'

‘A debt of honour,' Polly said, ‘that's what the Manones call it.'

‘Rubbish!' Bernard said. ‘It's plain extortion.'

‘That's why O'Hara turned up here tonight,' Polly said.

Bernard had been tramping the streets of the Gorbals for years and had heard lots of rumours about Guido Manone's nephew. He knew just how much power the Manones held not only in criminal circles but in the community at large.

‘I can lend you something if you really need it.'

‘Oh, Bernard, no,' said Lizzie. ‘You've done enough for us.'

‘Would you really give us dough if we were stuck?' Babs said.

‘Yes. I don't like bullies, you see,' Bernard explained.

Mammy was brusque suddenly. ‘We couldn't possibly accept your money, Bernard.'

‘Well, if you do need it you know where to come.' Bernard pushed himself to his feet, looked round for his jacket. ‘You know what they say: It's no loss what a friend gets.'

Polly and Babs helped him struggle into his jacket and overcoat. He wound the scarf around his neck and put on his hat. He looked shaky but claimed that he was strong enough to do his rounds, deposit the takings and survive the long rattling tram ride out to Knightswood.

They all accompanied him into the hall and out on to the landing.

‘I hope he's not waitin' down there,' Babs said. ‘Bloody O'Hara, I mean.'

‘He won't be,' Bernard said. ‘He'll have had enough for one night,' and then, quite boldly, stepped across the landing to the Gowers.

*   *   *

Dominic had dined in Goodman's Restaurant near St Enoch's Square with four old school chums. Three were practising solicitors, the other a dental surgeon. A convivial bunch, they set more store by the fact that they had shared an alma mater than by anything that had happened since. They were well aware how Dominic earned his living but, being men of the world, did not hold it against him and carefully steered the conversation away from topics that he might find embarrassing.

It was after eleven o'clock before Dominic decanted himself from a taxi-cab in Manor Park Avenue and after drawing in a few lungfuls of damp night air walked to the front door of the mansion and rang the bell.

Uncle Guido opened it.

‘Tony is here. He is waiting to speak with you.'

‘What about?' Dominic asked.

‘The robbery.'

‘How long has he been waiting?'

‘Half an hour, maybe less.'

Sobriety came upon him quickly. He felt a twinge of annoyance that an enjoyable evening would end with family business but the feeling soon passed and by the time he entered the living-room he had all his wits about him.

Tony was seated on the sofa, a plate balanced awkwardly on his lap and a coffee cup and saucer held in his hands. Aunt Teresa was urging him to eat the last of the smoked ham and pickled cucumber sandwiches that she had prepared for him, an effusive display of hospitality that even Uncle Guido had been unable to prevent. Aunt Teresa had also been quizzing Tony about his girlfriends and fishing to find out if her nephew had his eye on anyone in the Community. Even Tony had a hard time dodging the woman's questions without seeming rude and his relief at seeing Dominic was palpable.

Aunt Teresa might take a chance with Tony Lombard but she was far too shrewd to risk offending her nephew and, within seconds, had cleared the cups, saucers, plates on to a tray and had vanished from the room, leaving the men alone.

Tony wiped crumbs from his chin with a handkerchief and lighted a cigarette. He spoke Italian, a blurred, drawling version of the language that he had picked up from the Sicilian grandmother who had been responsible for bringing him to Scotland and who had raised him to be a helper to the Manones. She had been Guido's mistress a long time ago and might even have wound up as Guido's wife if she had been younger and better looking. She lived with a granddaughter and her Scottish son-in-law downriver in Skelmorlie now and rarely came up to town.

Tony said, ‘It seems that Walsh might have pulled the job.'

‘Go on,' said Dominic.

‘That is O'Hara's opinion,' Tony continued. ‘He telephoned me from Brady's public house and asked me to meet him there.'

‘Did you go?'

‘Certainly, I went.'

‘Was Alex sober?' said Dominic.

‘No, he had been drinking for some time before I got there.'

‘What did he tell you?' said Guido. ‘Tell Dominic what he told you.'

‘He told me Walsh pulled the job but that Tommy Bonnar organised it.'

‘Tommy?' said Dominic, surprised. ‘Does O'Hara have proof?'

‘None to speak of,' said Tony.

‘Then he is whistling in the darkness,' Dominic said.

‘Tell him the rest of it,' Guido said.

‘According to O'Hara,' Tony went on, ‘one of Lizzie Conway's daughters knows all about it and can put the finger on those involved.'

‘The blonde daughter who works at the warehouse?'

‘I think it is another one, the older one.'

‘Is this O'Hara's proof?' said Dominic. ‘Gossip from some girl?'

‘You should listen,' Guido said. ‘You know how these things happen.'

‘Her name is Polly,' Tony said. ‘You obtained work for her three or four years ago, I think.'

‘So?'

‘She is Patsy Walsh's girlfriend,' Tony Lombard said.

‘Do you see?' said Uncle Guido. ‘You should be listening.'

‘I am listening,' Dominic said. ‘I am just not sure who I am listening to.'

‘I am only telling you what O'Hara told me,' Tony Lombard said. ‘You want that I should do something about it? Go see Walsh, maybe?'

‘Or the girl, go see the girl,' said Uncle Guido.

‘Did she also put the finger on Tommy Bonnar?' Dominic asked.

Tony shook his head.

‘Obviously the girl knows something,' Uncle Guido said. ‘Someone will have to go talk to the girl.'

‘You want me to do that?' Tony Lombard said.

‘No,' said Dominic, after a pause. ‘I will talk with her myself.'

‘When?' Guido asked.

‘Tomorrow,' Dominic replied.

*   *   *

His mother's Co-op calendar was tacked up behind the door of the kitchenette. This late in the year steam from wash-tub and cooking pots had done its worst and the cheap paper was wrinkled like old parchment. Bernard could barely make out the illustration – a kitten playing with a ball of wool – let alone his mother's pencilled script and it took him several seconds to decipher the code that told him she had gone to a Guild carol concert in Partick.

Bernard had no idea who she had gone with. Few of the names that his mother scattered in his direction ever stuck and he had no wish to become embroiled with her chattering acquaintances. Over the years his mother had often tried to match him up with a long-toothed spinster or a comparatively youthful widow, daughters of Guild friends who were on the look-out for husbands. Bernard would have none of it and switched his primness up to full volume whenever one of the poor, desperate creatures was thrown in his path.

Partick Halls? A late night, probably. Chips afterwards, or tea in a Merkland Street café. The last tram out to the suburbs.

Bernard had eaten nothing since lunch. Although he had no appetite to speak of, he poached a couple of eggs and brewed a pot of tea. He ate at the table in the living-room and felt better afterwards. He had about half an hour, he reckoned, to do what he had to do.

First he sponged the blood from his jacket and applied a little of the stain-remover that his mother favoured. He put the jacket on a wire hanger and hung it to air on the wardrobe door in his bedroom. It was cold in the living-room. He would have re-lighted the fire in the grate but he did not think that he could manage to lug coal from the shed in the back garden. From the chest of drawers in his bedroom he extracted a metal box and carried it to the table in the living-room. Scissors, a fresh pad of cotton wool, a long bandage. Seated at the table, he cut off the dressing that Lizzie had put on.

The wound had bled considerably and the lint pad was soaked. He carried the pad into the kitchen along with the remains of the bandage and stuffed them into the pail that his mum used as a dustbin. He worked left-handed, found it less difficult than he had anticipated. He bathed the wound with warm water from the kettle then examined it again. It hadn't occurred to him that a deep, clean, almost surgical incision could be so insulting to human flesh. He was concerned about infection, of course, and about damage to the median nerve which, if he remembered his first-aid training correctly, bridged the radial and ulnar bursa. He still hadn't lost sensation in his fingers and could wiggle his thumb effectively; good signs, he reckoned.

Tomorrow afternoon, however, he would take himself round to Dr Begg's new surgery and have it properly examined. Stoical he might be, but stupid he wasn't and he could ill afford to take time off work, not even a day or two, to let the damned thing heal. He worked quietly, awkwardly, cleansing and dressing the wound as best he could. He used his teeth to tug the bandage tight, to help him draw the knot. When that was done he put everything away again, removed his torn and bloodstained shirt and hid it in a newspaper parcel under his bed. He would get rid of it tomorrow, like evidence.

When Mrs Violet Peabody, reeking of chips and vinegar, came breezing into the living-room at twenty minutes past eleven o'clock, she found her son seated at the living-room table clad in pyjamas and an old donkey-brown dressing-gown that had once belonged to his father. He had a mug of strong tea by him and a big lined jotter open before him and was diligently scripting numbers and names in pencil across it, his brow furrowed in concentration, the tip of his tongue protruding between his lips.

‘What are you doin', Bernard?'

‘Nothing. Just some work. How was the concert?'