Prized Possessions (8 page)

Pale blue suit, silk tie, wristlet watch, plump buffalo-hide wallet with its edging of fivers were advertising pure and simple, bait to sucker unwary victims into believing that Jackie Hallop was a gentleman in the making.

Even Babs Conway wasn't that daft.

She lived just three floors up from the Hallops and saw Jackie for what he really was, slight, scrofulous and almost indistinguishable from the Neds who lolled about the street corners. She knew that he slept four to a bed with his brothers and, when it suited him, wouldn't get up until noon.

Babs was also aware, however, that Jackie had money to burn and that he fancied her and that when he chatted her up there was a delicious undercurrent of opportunity running through the conversation. And, as if that wasn't enough, the Hallops' repair shop in Kingston Lane offered sanctuary when the prospect of another evening wasted at home became just too tedious for words.

The group that gathered round the stove in Hallops' repair shed were not all mercenaries. Occasionally – though not often – they talked of things other than money and the fun it could purchase.

Polly and Babs had escaped the poverty trap thanks to Mammy's efforts and the Hallop boys through their connection with Mr Manone. But others in the company hadn't shaken off their birthright and remained moral outcasts from the system and blamed capitalism for their descent into lawlessness. Such a one was Patsy Walsh. His aim was not to escape into the middle class but to overthrow that class, to destroy an exploitative
kultur
that deliberately robbed the workers of their will to fight.

Polly found this aspect of Patsy Walsh both interesting and, in its way, rather attractive. She was not in favour of what he did but she had been reared in a tough neighbourhood and some of that toughness had affected her too. How could it be otherwise? She was not put off by what Patsy did for a living and, if she had been more open about it, might even have confessed that she found the anomalies and paradoxes in his character intriguing.

Patsy was a house-breaker, a negotiator, a salesman, a voice in the wilderness; a wheedling, gentle honeycomb of a voice who, given the chance, could have argued intelligently with Baldwin or Beaverbrook. He was also a fellow traveller, a disciple of Marx and had confided in Polly that he'd been in Berlin that jolly day in May when the Communists had attacked the police stations and nine comrades had been martyred. He had seen things in Germany, he said, that made Glasgow's hunger marches look like a Christmas pantomime.

If Patsy had been less adept at breaking into houses and offices he might have been treated as a buffoon by the young men who met around the stove to share tea, toast and margarine, and talk of movie stars, football heroes, dancing – and money. As it was, they all held him just a little in awe and even Polly was not immune to his rough charms.

She crouched on a bench by the stove with Babs and Patsy beside her.

Jackie straddled a motorcycle, his narrow thighs embracing the saddle, arms folded on the handlebars while Patsy discoursed on international injustice and the national disgrace of having in power a Labour Party that was too scared to do anything original or effective.

Polly listened intently, nodding now and then in agreement.

She had removed her Scotch tammy to expose her chestnut hair. She had a neat haircut now and the sort of look that she knew bothered Comrade Walsh, for he had already told her that she was close to becoming middle class; a comment that Polly thought rather flattering in a back-handed way.

Tommy Bonnar had also turned up at the yard that evening.

Polly wasn't sure why he had come and he did not explain his reason. She didn't like or trust wee Tommy, with his skeletal features, graveyard cough and those dead, zinc-coloured eyes that seemed to see nothing yet missed nothing.

‘If I had money, real money, big money,' Patsy said, ‘I'd be puttin' it into building, so I would.'

‘What sorta buildin'?' said Dennis Hallop, who was out in the shadows under the beams filing something in a vice. ‘A bank, like?'

‘Hell no, man,' said Patsy. ‘Construction. The fathers of this fair city of ours will soon have no choice but to be knockin' most of it down. Then the ones who'll make money, real money, will be those who can lay drains an' pile bricks an' slate roofs.'

‘Tradesmen!' said Babs, not quite critically.

‘If this government stays in power long enough, the municipal borrowin' rate will be allowed to rise to six quid in twenty', Patsy went on. ‘Then the steam hammers'll cut a swathe through Glasgow like you wouldn't believe. Everythin' from the Carlton to the Calcutta Road will be swept away.'

‘I hope they give us some warnin',' Babs said. ‘I mean, I wouldn't want to get tossed out on t' the street in my nightie-nite.'

Jackie grinned and massaged the rubber grips of the motorcycle as if he were kneading flesh. ‘I'll be there t' save you, darlin'. 'Specially if you're only wearin' your nightie-nite.'

‘Look what they've done already.' Patsy ignored Jackie's attempt to sabotage a serious conversation. ‘Three thousand suburban cottages in Knightswood. Three thousand's a flea-bite. We need sixty thousand, seventy thousand new homes to rehouse the Clydeside wards. Where's that money gonna come from, these days?'

‘And where's it going to go?' said Polly.

Patsy gave her a brusque nod.

‘Have a guess, sweetheart,' he said.

‘The building trades, like you say,' Polly answered. ‘They've started developments already in Mosspark and Anniesland.'

‘How do you know?' said Babs.

‘I've seen the plans,' said Polly.

‘What plans?'

‘In the burgh council offices. Where I work.'

‘They let you see the plans?' Dennis was impressed.

‘Aye, sure.'

‘What're you then, an archy-tect?'

‘I've access to architectural files when I need them,' said Polly.

‘Do you now?' said Tommy Bonnar, and coughed.

‘What's
our
burgh council got to do with buildin' programmes in Mosspark?' said Jackie.

‘Transportation,' said Polly. ‘Tramcar routes, that sort of thing.'

‘Never thought o' that,' Jackie admitted.

‘Other people have,' said Patsy.

‘Like who?' said Babs.

‘Like the landlords an' factors who're already buyin' up every strip of private land they can get their grubby paws on,' Patsy declared. ‘When the purchase orders start tricklin' in, they're the ones who'll make a killin'.'

‘So long as they don't knock down the Palais,' Babs said, with a shrug.

‘Aye, the Palais.' Jackie swung himself from the motorbike, executed a not inelegant glide and hopped up on to the bench by Polly's side. ‘That's what I'd do if I had the real big money. I'd buy the Palais. I'd buy the Palais an' let you all in for free.'

‘The Paragon, an' all?' said Babs.

‘Yeah, why not?' said Jackie. ‘Show any picture I liked, any time.' He spread his arms, balanced on one thin leg. ‘How about you, Den? What'll you buy when we make our pile?'

‘Brady's,' said Dennis, grinning. ‘Brady's an' maybe the Parkhead brewery to make sure we never run out.' He gave a little rat-a-tat with the file on the top of the vice. ‘An' a car, a big Italian car like Mr Manone's.'

‘What sort is that, Tommy?' said Babs.

‘Alfa.'

‘Buy a bettah Alfa,' said Jackie. ‘Yeah!'

With a surge, Patsy Walsh flung himself to his feet. ‘You're all – all…'

Even articulate Patsy could find no words to express his disgust at their cheapness. He had attempted to open them to the future but they had refused to see anything except the gains it would bring them. It wasn't the first time their indifference had infuriated him, their inability to realise that decent housing and the right to work were far more important than what they could buy.

Polly sympathised with his frustration. She too was tempted to despise her peers more than she despised the red-necked hordes who fought each other with knives and bottles and razors: the Tongs and the Norman Conks, the San Toy, the Redskins and the Bully Boys, the street gangsters with their comical names and childish pride. When she heard the yapping of the new breed, however, she doubted that no matter how the world changed there would never be equality.

She watched Patsy grab his cap and stalk out into the yard.

‘Hoi, Patsy, don't take the huff,' Jackie called after him.

‘Where you goin' then?' Dennis shouted.

‘Work to do,' said Patsy, and kicked the door behind him with his heel.

*   *   *

Patsy let the night air soothe him. He loved the night. In the night you couldn't see the city's appalling squalor. He had no illusions. He knew what was out there. He had lived all his life in the sink-holes of despair that hid behind the old Victorian façades. He had visited the new suburban villas too, however, and had flitted stealthily through the drawing-rooms of the well-to-do, had peeped into bedrooms at clean, sleeping heads and had suffered not only anger but shame, shame that the city he loved was content to remain divided.

He had no job lined up for tonight. He'd wanted to stay inside, to talk to them, to try to make them see sense, but they had offended him and insulted his intelligence. What did Jackie Hallop and Dennis and the Conway girls really know about pride? They were hopeless cases, hopeless.

Hands shaking slightly, Patsy lit a cigarette and climbed the ash ramp towards the tunnel mouth.

The sky was coated with cloud, like a huge dirty blanket. Away below was the silver of the river, like a polished piece of metal, a spanner or chisel, say, or the blade of a cut-throat razor. Hands in pockets, he hunched his shoulders against the snivelling little wind that escaped from the empty tunnel and let his anger drift away.

‘Penny for them, Patsy Walsh,' Polly said.

He started.

She had come upon him as lightly as a wisp of smoke, as silently as a shadow. He couldn't have done better himself.

‘What do
you
want?' he said.

‘My sister just doesn't understand what politics means to you.'

‘She isn't the only one.'

Polly had put the Scotch tammy back on her head, had buttoned her overcoat to the very top button. She was slim and tall, almost military-looking in the high-buttoned coat. To Patsy the reeking haze that lay above the Gorbals seemed suddenly brighter.

‘I shouldn't take things so seriously, should I?' he said.

‘Oh, yes, you should,' Polly told him. ‘Somebody's got to.'

He paused. ‘Aren't you cold?'

‘No.'

‘You want a puff?'

‘Please.'

He took the cigarette from his mouth and gave it to her.

He watched her take the Woodbine between finger and thumb and place it lightly against her lips. He knew that when she gave it back to him it would taste of lipstick. He waited patiently, happily, while she inhaled.

She gave him back the cigarette and blew out smoke.

She looked away across the rooftops to the silver river while he, watching her, tasted her lipstick on his lips.

‘Nice,' Polly said. ‘Isn't it?'

‘Hmm,' he said.

‘Would you care to walk me home?'

‘Okay,' said Patsy Walsh and, just as he had seen the lovers do on the quays of Paris, took her hand in his.

*   *   *

‘Oh, so it's yourself, is it?' Janet McKerlie stepped back into the hall. ‘What time o' the night do you call this?'

‘Sorry I'm late,' said Lizzie, humbly. ‘Somethin' happened to the dash wheel an' we all had to wait while they drained the tank.'

‘We didn't expect you anyway.'

‘I always come on Tuesdays.'

‘When you can spare the time, aye,' said Janet.

She went into the kitchen.

Lizzie followed.

There was no place else to go.

For over forty years the McKerlies had lived in this same one-room flat – a single-end – in the backlands behind Ballingall Street.

If Gran McKerlie and Janet had been less obsessed with their own little fifth-floor island, they might have noticed that the tenement had gone sliding downhill and was now shored up by four massive oak beams that braced the bulbous gable against the back of a sandstone tenement. They might also have noticed that the comparatively spacious and respectable little room in the comparatively spacious and respectable old building that Charlie and Helen McKerlie had moved into directly after marriage had deteriorated to the point where not even the grisly statistics of the Office of Health took account of it.

When the long-promised regeneration of southside slums finally came to pass, the first sunless tower with its sweating damp-courses, turnpike stairs and iron ventilation grids to fall to the ball-crane and sledge hammers would be this one and
Laurieston, Ballingall Street, Number 21, Backland, Stairs, 1st left, 5 up, right lobby, 7th door, facing
would be reduced to nothing but rubble and an uncherished memory.

Lizzie knew it, and worried about it.

Janet knew it, but chose not to acknowledge it.

Gran McKerlie didn't know much about anything. She seemed oblivious to the stench on the stairs, the influx of fleas in warm weather, the gargle of water from broken eaves or the noisy squabbles that took place in the dark passageways that folk still called ‘the greens'.

Gran had a lot more to interest her than a Labour council's stuttering plans for a glorious Utopian future.

High in her eyrie – which she never left – Gran dwelled with her pains.

Everything else, except the power she wielded over Janet, was subsumed by her pains. Her pains were terrible. Her pains were constant. Her pains had more shades and hues than sunset over Arran and Gran had more words in her vocabulary to report the weathers of her pains than she had for anything else, except possibly the daily deviations of her bladder and bowels.