Prized Possessions (43 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Polly was aware that ominous changes were taking place in the Conway household. By her own account Rosie had fared well at her interview. She was optimistic that she would be offered the job at Shelby's and would soon be earning twenty-five shillings a week and stepping out on the rocky road to independence. At the same time, Polly realised, Babs and she were being made to assume responsibility for their own mistakes and that, while she would never abandon them, Mammy would never again treat them as prized possessions.

They had let her down, had failed to live up to her high expectations. Mammy had every right to punish them. But, Polly reckoned, it wasn't spite or selfishness that had prompted her mother to shift the onus of responsibility, but that she, Mammy, had fallen in love. While Babs might mock that excuse or consider it no excuse at all and dismiss the reality of loving as so much sentimental twaddle, Polly was intelligent enough not to condemn what she did not understand. She had an inkling, just an inkling, of what had possessed her mother, what had changed her.

She recalled very vividly indeed what she had felt that night before Christmas when Bernard Peabody had proved himself more of a man than any of them would ever have suspected, more brave and daring than Patsy Walsh could ever be; that plain, ordinary, honest man with his hand closed round an open razor, refusing to let go in spite of the pain. She wondered if that was what love was about, an acceptance of the pain that went with the responsibility of loving someone; wondered too how it must feel, that sort of responsibility, that intensity, that constant need to be worthy one of the other, and if she would ever find a man who would make her feel that way.

On Friday morning she stole time from office routine to type out a letter to Dominic. She signed it, sealed it and put it away in her handbag. As soon as she was released from work that evening, she caught a tram to Molliston Street and delivered the letter at the door of the Rowing Club, gave it into the hand of an Irishman who promised to see that it reached Mr Manone without delay.

On Saturday afternoon Polly left the Burgh Hall at five past one o'clock.

She hurried out into the street in a state of nervous expectation. There was no sign of the Italian motorcar.

She felt a stab of anger that Dominic had not obeyed her summons and, almost in the same heartbeat, a sudden sense of loss at a promise that had never been made. She had been wrong to expect him to drop everything and rush to be with her, to put away his own concerns to attend her. She remembered Rosie's silly assumption that Alex O'Hara was her ‘boyfriend' when patently he was nothing of the kind; had she also made a fool of herself by believing that Dominic Manone was attracted to her when in reality he couldn't have cared tuppence?

The Alfa glided up behind her as she stalked along the pavement. He brought it in against the kerb and, leaning, opened the passenger door.

Polly hesitated, tied by a vestige of annoyance that he had not been stationed right at the doorstep, had kept her waiting, kept her guessing even for a couple of minutes. There was also relief, though, and a surge of pure breathless pleasure at seeing him again. She slid into the passenger seat as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Thank you for coming,' she said.

He fashioned a little gesture with his right hand, a gesture that she would come to know well. He was smiling, and his smile seemed to reflect feelings that were hidden within her too, pleasure at meeting again.

He put the motorcar into gear and drove off, eased the Alfa around the corner into Eglinton Street and swung left, heading for the Glasgow Bridge. He sat low in the leather seat, almost as if he did not want to be seen. He wore the soft woollen overcoat, the red scarf, no hat. He looked younger, almost boyish. A curl of dark hair had strayed on to his brow and Polly was tempted to touch it, to tease it back into place. She laughed for no reason, and felt her concentration scatter, the whole weary weight of accusation and negotiation, the dreadful necessity of putting herself in this man's hands vanish as the motorcar crossed the river into Glasgow.

She said, ‘Where are you taking me?'

‘For lunch,' he said. ‘I imagine you won't be expected home for a while.'

‘No,' Polly said. ‘I told my sisters—'

‘Your sisters?' Is it a conspiracy I have to deal with?' Dominic said.

‘No conspiracy,' Polly said, ‘just me.'

‘I think I may be able to cope with just you,' Dominic said.

‘Did I do wrong?'

‘I don't know,' Dominic said. ‘Did you?'

‘In sending you a letter via the Rowing Club?'

‘Oh, that,' Dominic said. ‘No. It gave the lads something to gossip about.'

‘Gossip?' Polly said. ‘About you, about – us?'

‘My aunt thinks you're dangerous,' Dominic said.

The Alfa was locked at the junction of Jamaica and Great Clyde Street, trapped by a brewer's dray and a tram. The tram loomed large by Polly's side. She was conscious of four or five men hanging on the platform, peering in at her as if she were a fish in an aquarium. She could hear them shouting remarks in a friendly sort of way. Babs would have given them an unladylike sign of displeasure or would have mouthed swear words at them. Polly simply looked away.

A moment later the tramcar lurched like something in a fun fair, dodged away from the Alfa, and rattled out of sight.

‘Dangerous? Why would your aunt think that?' Polly said.

‘She thinks that you sent me a letter of romance.'

‘How ridiculous!' Polly said, pleased. ‘Didn't you show it to her?'

‘No,' Dominic said. ‘I prefer to let her think that's what it was.'

‘Well, it wasn't,' Polly said.

‘I know,' said Dominic.

The Alfa nosed along the busy riverside through carts and drays. Polly could just make out the slabby grey shapes of ships moored at Custom House Quay and then, with another spin of the wheel, they were heading into an area of warehouses and tenements at the back of St Enoch railway station.

‘Where
are
you taking me?' Polly asked again.

‘Goodman's,' Dominic told her. ‘Okay?'

‘Okay,' said Polly.

*   *   *

Summer, winter or spring, Saturday half-day was a thing of joy for Bernard Peabody. He did little that was constructive with his free time; escaping the confines of the city brought him pleasure enough. He had a strip of garden at the back of the terraced cottage and had begun to tinker with improvements soon after his mother and he had moved in. In a veiled, patient way he had plans for an Alpine rockery that ran contrary his mum's demands for a vegetable patch.

Gardening, however, was not on Bernard's mind that mild January afternoon; nor was football, nor strolling a favourite route through the new public park; nor was anything very much except getting himself ready for a twilight ride back across Glasgow to the Gorbals to pick up Lizzie soon after she got home from work, to take her out for a quick fish tea and on to the pictures; the Coliseum probably, where Syd Chaplin was starring in
A Little Bit of Fluff,
which he'd heard was a priceless gem of reckless adventure.

He just prayed it wouldn't be too reckless for Lizzie's taste, or that she wouldn't think he was trying to take advantage of her, though what Bernard envisaged by that euphemism would have made Jackie Hallop and even young Babs chortle at his naïveté. It wasn't that Bernard wasn't a man of the world – he had seen more nastiness in his lifetime than most men – he simply lacked experience with the opposite sex. He still tended to regard them, Lizzie in particular, as somehow morally superior to anything in trousers. ‘Taking advantage' then would be a wee bit of hand-holding and an experimental nudging of knees under cover of darkness in the back row – no, not the back row, the middle row of the balcony if, that is, the Coliseum even had a balcony.

So he pondered on Lizzie and balconies while he scraped away at his chin with a safety razor and, without vanity, studied his face in the oblong mirror that was propped above the sink.

He tried to imagine what a woman like Lizzie could possibly see in him. He wasn't square-jawed and handsome, broad in the shoulder or strong in the arms – God, there were fifteen-year-old apprentices who had more muscles than he had – but the run-in with O'Hara had increased his confidence and the kiss, that tender, muffled kiss under the Sunday lights, had given him such a boost that he'd felt invincible for days afterwards.

He was, so he believed, a practical chap and had devised a sort of strategy. He wouldn't try to sweep Lizzie off her feet with his masculine appeal. Instead, he would go about things in a down-to-earth manner, to bring about the desired result – the result he desired, that is – in the not too dim and distant.

He glanced at his right hand, unbandaged now. The diagonal scar across the palm was still plainly visible and even tended to bleed just a little when he gripped anything too tightly. But he had healed quickly and whatever aches and pains the drying wound incurred were easily ignored.

He scaped the safety razor carefully over his Adam's apple and then, for absolutely no reason he could think of, began to sing.

He didn't even know what he was singing – ‘One Alone' from Sigmund Romberg's
The Desert Song,
as it happened – or why he suddenly tossed down the razor and, spreading his arms, filled the cramped little room with the sound of his voice, lifting and lilting, laying it on thick, as if he were centre-stage at the Alhambra. He sang for himself, not for the entertainment of the neighbours through the wall, or for his mother, or even for Lizzie, drudging away at the tubs in the Sanitary laundry on the other side of the city.

He sang because he was happy, because he hadn't sung for himself or anyone for many years: he hadn't lifted his voice, except in kirk, since he'd marched down to the quays with the other lads, kilts swinging and rifles shouldered, with the whole damned town turned out to see them off, waving and cheering; he had sung then, by God, had sung lustily and gladly, a hero among heroes: ‘Madamzelle from Armentieres', and ‘Tipperary', and ‘Till the Boys Come Home'. But after that day he had sung very little: after a month in the field he had sung not at all – until now.

‘Bernard, stop makin' that awful noise.'

‘I'm singing, Mum.'

‘Then stop it.'

‘Why should I?'

‘I don't know what's got into you these days.'

‘Sure you do, Mother, just think about it.'

‘I prefer not to think about it,' his mother said from outside the door.

‘By the way,' Bernard said, ‘I'll be out tonight an' I might be late. Don't wait up for me, please.'

Silence: then, ‘Late?'

‘I'm goin' to the pictures with Lizzie.'

Silence: ‘I see.'

He dismantled the razor and wiped the blade clean, dried it and the razor's separate metal parts and put them into the tin box where they were kept. He rinsed out his shaving brush – waiting. He knew his mother was still hovering outside. He gave a mischievously little shrug of the shoulders, put his brow against the wooden door, and said in a sonorous tone, ‘Last tram.'

Silence: ‘I hope you're not goin' to do anything foolish, Bernard.'

‘You mean, anything you wouldn't do?'

‘You know what I mean.'

He opened the door suddenly. She was loitering in the attenuated little corridor, already wearing her broad patterned coat and floral hat. He had no idea where she was going and did not much care. Some church or Guild outing. Some collective shopping trip. Why she regarded her social life as more interesting and important than anything he chose to do was beyond him. She took no pleasure in his pleasure. She grudged him his happiness because it was none of her doing. If he had been going out to a concert with one of her friend's dismal daughters then she would have been egging him on. She would have been sure of him then, certain of retaining her place on the moral high ground.

‘No, Mother,' he said, grinning, ‘what do you mean?'

‘That woman,' Violet Peabody said.

He was too relaxed to let her annoy him, to scratch at his guilt.

He laughed. ‘I'm goin' to the pictures not the altar, Mum, and “that woman”, as you so delicately put it, is quite safe – fairly safe – with me.'

‘I really don't understand you, Bernard.'

‘I know,' Bernard said. ‘You never have,' then breaking into song again, flipped the towel across his shoulder and sauntered into the bedroom to dress.

*   *   *

If you walked across the iron suspension bridge that links Carlton Place with Custom House Quay, turned right then left, you would have stumbled into a neighbourhood that even the most informed Glaswegian could not properly define and that Polly, Gorbals born and bred, knew hardly at all: a conglomerate of old commercial and domestic properties bearing down on queer little shops that peddled everything from second-hand suits to wigs and bird-seed, accordions to cheap false teeth; beer cellars impregnated by the smoke of locomotives shunting in and out of St Enoch's and the scaly stench of the fish market that lay beyond the Bridgegate; plus a couple of eating-houses cherished by the
cognoscenti,
dingy little places that served wonderful lunches and dinners without breaking the bank. Goodman's was one of these.

Goodman's was favoured by small-time businessmen, lawyers from the Justiciary Court, newspaper reporters, and policemen who had something to celebrate, like a birthday or a promotion or, now and then, a hanging.

It was not dauntingly formal. In addition to oysters, jugged hare and venison it served quite homely dishes like pork chops, liver savouries and beefsteak pudding. Twenty-six tables packed the ground-level room. On weekdays it was impossible to find space between noon and half past two. On Saturdays it was a little, just a little, quieter. In any case, Dominic had booked a corner table in advance. To her surprise Polly did not feel out of place. She certainly did not appear out of place in her ‘office' outfit, for there was a distinctly commercial air to the clientele and she was by no means the only young woman being treated to Saturday lunch.