Prized Possessions (36 page)

The promenade was empty as far as his eye could see, sweeping away round by the headland, past quaint little old buildings at the harbour and out again into swirls of pearly rain that cloaked the hills to the south. There was a brisk little swell on the sea, the touch of a breeze and Dominic could taste the cold salt in his mouth. He experienced a surge of energy, an inclination to start out along the empty promenade and walk and walk and walk in the hope that somewhere along there, waiting for him, he would come across a girl, not just any girl, one in particular, and that they might walk together the whole length of the promenade and back again.

‘What is wrong with you?' Uncle Guido said. ‘Did it not go well?'

‘It went fine,' Dominic told him. ‘Fine. Everything is okay.'

‘You will make a deal with Pirollo?'

‘I'm prepared to think about it,' Dominic said.

‘Then think about it inside the motorcar,' Guido said. ‘I want to get home before it becomes dark.'

Dominic climbed into the Alfa and Uncle Guido drove back to Glasgow, back to Manor Park Avenue where, pacing up and down outside the gate, Tony Lombard waited to tell them the sad news.

*   *   *

One glass of Co-op sherry consumed at a minute after midnight could hardly have caused Bernard's lethargy. Even so, he felt so lazy and relaxed next morning that he stayed in bed until midday and spent the early part of the afternoon dozing in an armchair by the living-room fire.

There had been a good deal of friendly traipsing between the cottages but at his mother's insistence Bernard had put out the lights at half past midnight to deter callers. Mrs Peabody might be gregarious but she was also a wee bit of a snob who preferred the company of specially selected friends to that of mere neighbours who, like her, had been culled out of the riverside slums of Finnieston, Anderston and Partick. She was also – here Bernard sympathised – affected by a time of year when she could not help but recall her deceased sons and husband and regret that the passage of years carried them ever further from her. All she had left was Bernard – and she didn't think much of him, even although he provided for her and never got into trouble.

On Friday the Women's Guild would hold a sandwich lunch in the church hall, a high point of the season for Violet Peabody. She spent much of Thursday afternoon in the kitchen baking scones and cakes for this treat. It was after four o'clock before she appeared, still aproned and rather floury, gave Bernard a little dig to rouse him and placed two bowls of oxtail soup on the table.

Bernard had been busy weaving a lovely daydream and felt so benign that he ambled from the chair to the table and seated himself without a murmur of complaint at the lateness of the hour.

He regarded his mother fondly.

Less fondly, she looked up and said, ‘What are you grinnin' at?'

Bernard said, ‘I'm thinking of getting married.'

Brown soup dribbled back into the bowl and one little droplet clung to his mother's bottom lip. She stuck out her tongue, licked it away, then, after a two or three-second pause, said, ‘Not today you're not.'

‘No, not today.' Bernard laughed. ‘Soon, though. Before the year's out.'

‘You can't afford to get married.'

‘Oh, I reckon I can – just about.'

‘You can't stay here,' his mother told him. ‘I'm not sharin' my kitchen.'

‘In that case I'll apply for a house of my own.'

‘They'll never give
you
a house, not at your age.'

‘They might,' Bernard said. ‘Failing which I can always go an' stay with my wife over in the Gorbals.'

Mrs Peabody put down her spoon, dabbed her lips with a napkin.

‘It's her, isn't it? The one who came here the other day?'

‘Lizzie, yes.'

‘I didn't like her.'

‘I didn't expect you would.'

‘She's an old woman.'

‘Of course she isn't an old woman,' said Bernard. ‘She's only a year or two older than I am.'

‘More like six or seven, I'd say.'

‘That hardly makes her Miss Haversham, does it?'

‘I thought her name was Conway.'

‘It is,' said Bernard. ‘I was just making an … never mind.'

‘Don't you take that tone with me, my lad.'

‘What tone?' said Bernard.

‘I've seen a lot more of life than you have.'

Still relaxed and determined not to squabble, Bernard wondered if that was strictly true. He knew what the ladies of the Guild thought, how they took unto themselves the whole burden of suffering that the war had engendered, how they mocked their brothers and husbands and genuinely believed that a life devoted to cooking, keeping house, raising children and making ends meet was far more arduous than the lives their menfolk led. Men, after all, only laboured fifty hours a week in the belly of a ship in Browns or Fairfields, in the nauseating heat of Dixon's Blazes or the Kingston Iron Works, underground in a coal pit or out on the North Sea in all weathers on the deck of a trawler.

There was also the matter of the Great War, a conflict that had – some said – given women a little taste of freedom, though the cost in grief and hardship had been far too high for women as well. Even so, Bernard wondered what the ladies of the Guild really knew about hardship, if they would have been so scathing about the male of the species if they had been obliged to scurry like rats along a stinking trench or endure night after night of bombardment or, in a windless dawn, to slither over the top and charge headlong on to the guns – all for King and Country, Hearth and Home, for the Girls that were left Behind.

Bernard said, ‘I've no doubt you have, Mother, but it's not a question of who's suffered the most or who's seen most of life. It's really dead simple. I want to get married. I intend to get married.'

‘To this Conway woman.'

‘Yes.'

Nothing she could say or do would make his temper fray at the edges. He had never felt so thoroughly at ease before, as if he had been waiting out the time since the Armistice for just this moment, the moment when he could put all the emptiness, all the cowering, behind him by allowing himself to fall in love. He had been conservative and abstemious and patient. He had been dutiful and industrious and uncomplaining. He had been the perfect citizen, the perfect son for far too long. But now he was in love and he would bring to bear all the discipline and fortitude that the army and society had inculcated in him, all the courage, to get the woman he wanted and make her his wife.

‘She won't be able to give you children.'

‘She might, if we decided…'

‘She has children. She's got girls near your age.'

‘Nice girls,' said Bernard. ‘One of them's deaf.'

‘They can't come here.'

‘I know that,' Bernard said.

‘Have you – has she … Is this why you…'

‘No, Mother, no, no,' said Bernard. ‘Nothing like that.'

‘But she
has
set her cap at you, a woman of her age.'

‘Aye, she's set her cap at me,' said Bernard. ‘What's more, I like it.'

‘Gorbals,' his mother said. ‘Gorbals – I never thought I'd see the day.'

Bernard broke bread into his cooling soup and supped with his spoon.

‘Anyway, I haven't asked Lizzie yet and there's a lot to be settled before I do,' he said, between mouthfuls. ‘But I thought it only decent to let you know what's on my mind so you'd be prepared for it.'

‘Decent isn't the world I'd use.'

‘Mother, I'm in love with the woman.'

‘That won't last.'

‘It might,' said Bernard. ‘In any case I'm willin' to take the chance.'

‘What about me? What'll become of me?'

‘I'll make sure you're looked after,' Bernard said. ‘I'm not desertin' you. I'll carry on payin' your rent for one thing.'

‘But you won't
be
here,' Mrs Peabody said. ‘You'll be with her.'

‘That's true,' said Bernard.

‘You won't love
me
any more, Bernard, and – and you're all I've got left.'

‘Of course I'll still love you.' Bernard put out his bandaged hand and patted the back of her wrist lightly, awkwardly. ‘Think of it this way, Mum, you won't be losin' a son, you'll be gainin' a daughter.'

‘An old woman, huh!'

‘A good woman,' Bernard said.

‘That,' said Mrs Peabody, grimly, ‘remains to be seen.'

*   *   *

Dusk came late to the valley of the Clyde. The sky had cleared and, by half past four o'clock, a frosty sharpness in the air caused Polly's breath to cloud as she entered the avenue that bordered the park.

She had located Manor Park easily enough with the aid of a little brown-backed Glasgow atlas that she had filched from the Burgh Hall reference library several months ago but the trek from the Gorbals, added to the morning's excursions, had left her leg-weary. She paused at the gate for a moment to catch her breath and screw up her courage before she walked up the gravel drive and, heart pounding, approached the Manones' front door.

There were three men in the front parlour. Nobody had thought to close the curtains. From his position on the couch, Uncle Guido was first to spot the girl. He put down his coffee cup, craned his long neck and said, ‘Someone is coming to our door. A young woman, I believe.'

Dominic shot out of his armchair and swung round to face the window.

‘Well, well, well!' he said. ‘It's Polly Conway.' All three men peered at the girl from the long window. Streetlamps bloomed yellow against the lavender sky and privet and laurel bushes loomed in the dark garden. ‘I had better let her in,' said Dominic eagerly.

‘Teresa will do it,' Guido said.

‘What the hell does Frank Conway's daughter want with us?' Tony said.

‘I think she might want to trade,' Dominic said, while, like an echo, the doorbell rang.

‘Trade? What does
she
have to trade with?' said Tony.

‘That's what we'll have to find out,' said Dominic and, ignoring his uncle's warning growl, hurried out into the hall to greet his new recruit.

*   *   *

She was impressed and rather intimidated by the scale of the house and the size of the dining-room into which Dominic led her. It was not that she found it comfortable – far from it. The black marble fireplace was empty and the electric bulbs in the ceiling pendant shed a wan, unconcentrated light. The bulky table and sideboard were in dark stained wood and the tall chairs' padded upholstery had a slightly musty smell that made Polly think of crypts and mausoleums.

The room was cold, though Dominic in his high-cut waistcoat and shirt-sleeves did not seem to notice. He wore sleeve garters like an Italian street trader and when he drew out a chair for her at the long polished table she noticed that his wrists were downed with dark hair, which somehow made him seem less boyish and more threatening.

She tried to recapture the anger that had brought her here, the hot, swelling temper that news of Tommy Bonnar's death, and Patsy's reaction to it, had roused in her. But it was gone, that rage; she was left with a fluttering sense of her own frailty and the knowledge that she had nothing with which to protect herself against this man except her ability to keeping him guessing.

Dominic seated himself at the head of the table, back to the uncurtained window. He leaned back, put his hand to his chin and studied her for a moment, then, without shifting position, said, ‘I think I know why you're here. I assure you – I swear to you – I had nothing to do with what happened to your friend Bonnar.'

‘Tommy Bonnar wasn't my friend,' Polly said. ‘I hardly knew him.'

‘It is because of what happened last night that you are here, though?'

‘Yes,' Polly said. She had to start somewhere. ‘What happened to Tommy Bonnar wasn't an accident, was it?'

‘It may have been.'

‘I find that hard to believe.' Polly's tone was as chilly as the air in the dining-room. ‘I don't think coincidence stretches that far.'

‘Coincidence?' said Dominic.

She chose her words with care. ‘The last time we met, not that long ago, you asked me for information about the warehouse robbery.'

‘So?'

‘You were looking for the men responsible.'

‘That is true.'

‘When I asked you if you'd take revenge on them…'

‘You suggested that the robbery might have been a mistake.'

‘Yes, but now there are two “mistakes” to take into account,' Polly said, ‘and I don't believe in that much coincidence. You also assured me that you didn't know that Alex O'Hara had called at our house and intimidated us.'

‘Which was the truth.'

‘Could setting fire to Tommy Bonnar's house have been something else that O'Hara did without informing you first?'

‘I doubt it.'

‘Why do you doubt it, Mr Manone?'

‘Alex would have used a blade.'

‘Did you tell him to use a blade?' said Polly.

He looked at her, head to one side, still speculative but perhaps just a little amused, not by what she was saying but by her temerity in daring to say it at all. ‘Am I right in thinking that your mother doesn't know you have come to see me today?' Dominic said.

‘Our business has nothing to do with my mother; well, not much,' Polly told him. ‘It's a matter between you and me, Mr Manone, which is the reason I took the liberty of intruding on your privacy on New Year's Day.' She was unaware that her speech had begun to match his rhythm, his correctness. ‘You haven't answered my question.'

‘I did not tell O'Hara to do anything to Tommy Bonnar. After all, I had no reason to want Tommy hurt.'