Prized Possessions (6 page)

‘I – I've c-come to see Mr Manone,' Lizzie stammered. ‘I – I wonder if this is a sort of convenient time.' Guido Manone stepped back and, with a sweep of his large hand, invited her in.

If there were servants in the house then they were not in evidence. Perhaps, Lizzie thought, they were all at chapel.

She followed Uncle Guido across a broad expanse of carpet to an oak-panelled door. The house had always struck her as gloomy, more like a museum than a dwelling. There were all sorts of strange smells in the atmosphere, spicy smells like cinnamon and clove and a waft of cigar smoke to add a hint of luxury.

Uncle Guido rapped upon the door, opened it and ushered Lizzie into the room she thought of as the parlour. Some parlour! You could have fitted four tenement kitchens into it and still have had room to spare. Massive marble fireplace. Old furniture. Oil paintings of saints and half-clad women on the walls. By the fireplace, standing, was young Dominic Manone. He wore a spotless white shirt, dark waistcoat and matching trousers; polished black shoes, not slippers, as if even at home on a Sunday morning a formal code had to be observed.

Lizzie was used to cocky little dandies with primrose socks, polka-dot bow ties and soft felt hats, the ‘chancer' element who had run the rackets in Frank's day. They were dreary pretenders compared to Dominic Manone.

His solemn, olive-tinted face and black unsurprised eyebrows, so straight that they might have been inked in by a draughtsman, were daunting and appealing at one and the same time.

‘What is it you want?' he asked in a slightly lisping accent that owed more to Glasgow than Genoa. ‘Do you want coffee, or will I send for tea?'

‘No,' she said. ‘No, thank you, Mr Manone. I won't be stoppin' long. I just want a word with you about – about the matter between us.'

‘What matter is that?' he said.

On a polished side table stood a china coffee pot, cup and saucer, a cigarette box and a tub of the long, blue-headed matches that you only saw in the very best restaurants. Dominic Manone did not offer Lizzie a cigarette or even a seat. He perched on the arm of the Georgian wing chair by the fire.

He looked as strong and compact as a street fighter, one of the bare-knuckle breed, not a cowardly razor king. If he had not been who he was he could have been a legend in the ring. Except that the Italians, like the Jews, seldom took part in the fierce gang fights that spilled blood for no purpose.

If he
had
been a fist fighter though, Lizzie thought, she would have bet on him every time.

She said, ‘I need to know when I'll be paid up.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I do.'

Chin tucked in, head cocked, he glanced at her from the tops of his eyes. ‘What's the matter? Don't you like your new house?'

‘Who told you about my new house?' Lizzie said, then added, ‘Anyway, it isn't a new house. It's just bigger than the last place.'

‘Is it the girls, your daughters, you worry about?'

‘What sort of a mother would I be if I didn't worry about my children? Please, Mr Manone, tell me when I'll be all paid up.'

‘Never,' he said, softly. ‘You haven't even cleared the interest on our eight hundred pounds. What was your first repayment – five shillings? Then ten shillings. Now it's twenty-five a week. We've always been accommodating, have we not? Never so much did we ask that you would be left penniless.' He shook his head. ‘Find six hundred fins – no, find
five
hundred – and we'll call it square.'

‘Where am I goin' to get five hundred pounds?'

‘Do you see the position I'm in, Lizzie?' Dominic said. ‘How can I let you off what you owe when it's so much? What would the other people who owe me money think? That Dominic Manone had gone soft in the head?'

‘I didn't steal your damned money,' Lizzie said.

‘Where did it go then? Where
is
my eight hundred pounds?'

‘Frank spent it,' Lizzie said. ‘Or took it with him. How do I know? I never saw a flamin' penny of it.'

‘We have only your word on that.'

‘Dear God!' Lizzie said. ‘Do you think I'd have been livin' hand to mouth for the past ten years if I'd had eight hundred quid tucked away? I'd have been off out of here. Off like a shot.'

‘Would you have taken your mama with you, and your sister too?'

‘Meanin' if I'd left them behind you'd have had them carved up?' Lizzie said. ‘For God's sake, what kind of a man are you?'

‘You must not be so dramatic, Lizzie.' He got up, fetched a chair from a corner, placed it behind her. ‘Haven't I done what I could for you? Have I not been helpful to your family?'

‘You have,' Lizzie admitted. ‘You found the girls jobs when there was no work about. I'm grateful for that but…'

‘What more do you need from me?'

‘Supposin',' Lizzie said, ‘I want to get married again?'

Surprised, he pursed his lips. ‘You don't need my blessing for that.'

‘How can I saddle a new husband with my last husband's debt?' Lizzie said. ‘That wouldn't be fair, would it?'

‘He isn't a rich man, this potential husband?'

‘Far from it.'

‘Is he from this part of the world?' Dominic asked.

‘West End.'

‘Have you told him anything about our arrangement?'

‘'Course I bloody haven't.'

‘Do you wish me to talk with him? Explain the situation.'

‘I can do that myself – if and when I have to.'

‘Oh, I think that you
will
have to.' Dominic paused. ‘Unless…'

‘Unless what?' said Lizzie, looking up.

‘Your girls are working? Could they not take over your debt?'

‘What?'
Lizzie yelled. ‘Land my girls with
my
debt. I'd die first. I'd let you cut my throat before I'd allow my daughters fall into your…'

She tried to take control of herself. It didn't do to raise your voice to Dominic Manone, to treat him as if he were any Tom, Dick or Harry. His suggestion had been totally unexpected. It hadn't occurred to her that Frank Conway's debt might pass down through the generations like some disease of the blood. Cramp gripped her, making her wince.

Oddly enough, for a man in his position Dominic wasn't used to watching people suffer. Also, he had considerable sympathy for Lizzie Conway, more sympathy for her than for any other person, man or woman, with whom he did business. It wasn't her fault that she had been caught in the poverty trap. It wasn't her greed or stupidity that had put the albatross around her neck. She had inherited a crippling debt.

If Lizzie Conway thought that he could write it off, however, just eliminate it from the books at the stroke of a pen, she was much mistaken. No matter how much sympathy he had for her, no matter how much he admired her struggle to make something of herself, he couldn't go against nature. Everything had to be paid for in kind or in blood. That was his father's law, the law of nations. To flout it, even once, would be opening the door to anarchy.

He didn't know Lizzie Conway very well. He had never clapped eyes on her daughters, except that one time three or four years ago when he'd driven down to Rutherglen Road to watch the arrival of the hunger marchers, to experience at first hand the palpable and stimulating rage that dripped like sweat from the legions of dockers, steel-workers, miners and shipwrights who came tramping down the high road, heading, so they said, for London.

Lizzie Conway had been stationed on the pavement at the end of the parkway, her arms about her girls, holding them tightly to her as if to prevent them being sucked into the floodtide of protest.

He had been hidden in the rear seat of the long-bodied Alfa Romeo with Uncle Guido and Tony Lombard and some skirt that Tony had brought along. He had looked out and had seen Frank Conway's widow, not waving, not cheering, showing none of the wild solidarity that activated the women around her. She'd had her arms around her girls, grown though they were, and he, Carlo Manone's son, had envied them not just their unity but their closeness, their resistance to the anarchic fever that was sweeping through the streets.

‘I'm not going to do your girls any harm,' he said.

‘If you do,' Lizzie said, ‘I'll…'

‘What? Murder me?' He uttered a little
huh-huh
of laughter, not cynical but warm, as if the idea of being done in by this common, unglamorous woman was somehow amusing. ‘You wouldn't murder me, Lizzie Conway. You wouldn't know how.' Then he was serious again. ‘Who is this guy who wants to marry you? What's his name?'

‘He's not one of your crowd.'

‘Has he asked you?'

‘Not yet; but he will.'

‘Do you love him?'

‘He's a good man,' Lizzie said. ‘He'll look after me.'

‘What about your daughters? Will he look after them too?'

‘He'll take us all out of here.'

‘I thought you liked living in the Gorbals.'

‘I hate living in the Gorbals. It's no place for young girls.'

‘They are not young girls. They are young women.'

‘I don't want them marryin' any of your boys.'

Again the
huh-huh
of amusement. ‘They could do worse.'

‘Could they? Worse than Alex O'Hara?'

Dominic pushed himself to his feet. He adjusted his shirt cuffs and stared from the window at the plane trees that lofted their branches over the hedges.

‘I can't help you,' he said. ‘I can't rub out the debt. If you want to get married then you'll have to tell your husband the truth; or find some way to raise the wind behind his back.'

‘How much would buy me out once and for all?'

‘I told you five hundred.'

‘All right,' Lizzie said.

Dominic turned from his contemplation of the trees. ‘You will pay it?'

‘Yes.'

He came forward, placed his hands on the chair and leaned towards her. His breath had the same smell as the house, dry and spicy, but not unpleasant. He touched her cheek, a soft little slap to make her raise her head and look at him. ‘You've found the money, haven't you? The money Frank stole?'

‘I haven't found the money. I've no idea where it is, or what Frank—'

‘Don't lie to me, Lizzie Conway.'

‘After ten bloody years –
twelve
bloody years – what chance have I got of findin' anythin'?' Lizzie said. ‘If you ask me I don't think there is any money. I think Frank blewed it before he joined up.'

‘Eight hundred fins? Come on!'

Lizzie drew in a breath. She touched Dominic's wrist with her fingertip and lightly pushed his hand away from the proximity of her face. Even that, she realised, was a daring thing to do.

He stepped back.

Lizzie got to her feet.

She brushed at her skirt, fiddled with the collar of her coat and straightened her hat before she looked up again. ‘No, Mr Manone, I'm
not
goin' to pull a wad of banknotes from my purse. I
don't
have the money.'

‘So why did you come here this morning?'

‘To find out how much you'd settle for.'

‘Well,' Dominic said, ‘now you know.'

‘Aye,' Lizzie said. ‘Now I know.'

*   *   *

In the last tenement, and the tenement before that, all four Conways had been crowded into a single room. There had been a bed set into the wall and another had been dragged down out of a cupboard late every night and cranked back up early every morning. Before that, in the basement in the old weavers' row near the railway, there had been no bed at all and Mammy and the girls had slept all together on a straw-filled palliasse on a damp stone floor, among rat-dirt and cockroaches. Mercifully, Rosie couldn't remember that far back.

In the winter of 1920 Rosie had contracted a fever that had all but destroyed her hearing. The cause of the fever and just how close Rosie had come to death were matters that Lizzie refused to discuss with anyone except Mr Feldman. Only Polly could recall those dreadful days and nights when Rosie had been racked by crisis after crisis, when Mammy, solid, reliable, unfazeable Mammy, had wept with frustration when the doctor had refused to treat Rosie without payment in advance.

Finally Mammy had lifted Rosie from the mattress, had wrapped her in a blanket and had gone running out into icy darkness, leaving Polly – wide awake and scared, so scared – in charge of Babs. It had been mid-morning before Mammy had returned, haggard and hollow-eyed. Without Rosie. Rosie had been kept at the Victoria Infirmary where Mammy had carried her and where some kindly register had taken her in, in spite of the fact that Mammy had no insurance and couldn't pay the fees.

It had been a fortnight before Rosie had been returned to them, frail, fractious, and permanently deaf. And Mammy had never been quite the same afterwards, never easy, never relaxed.

She had taken night work on top of her day shifts. Polly had often been kept away from school to look after her ailing sister. Before the summer was out, though, they were up and off, quitting the damp, rat-infested basement for a tenement kitchen that was at least dry and there had been real beds to sleep in, enough coal to keep the place warm and just enough food on the table to nourish them. They had survived thus until Polly was old enough to leave school and find work and then, with an extra wage, however small, coming into the house, things had become marginally easier.

Bits and pieces of second-hand furniture had begun to fill up the spaces, ornaments to appear on the shelves, and rugs and blankets and cushions, purchased from market stalls, had created a cosy clutter. After Babs had been found work too there had even been enough to buy clothes that fitted, shoes that didn't let in the wet and an occasional luxury like the wireless or the gramophone.