Hannah massey (7 page)

factory. But the cobbling business was still to be kept going, anA by Hughie, whom Broderick had trained from a boy.

The cobbler's shop was an eight by ten foot room with a small cubby hole leading off the back. It was placed at the end of twenty similar workshops, all peopled by men striving to make a go of it on their own.

When Hughie had worked with

Broderick, part of his job had been to collect the boots and shoes for mending, and later to return them. Another part of his job was to

solicit orders; but Hughie was no salesman, so when Broderick got the chance of a nine pounds a week job in the factory he jumped at it. And so Hughie was left. with the business. Rosie remembered saying to him at the time, "Wouldn't you like to go into the factory, Hughie, and earn big money?" and he had smiled at her and said, "I would sooner be on me own, Rosie."

From the day Hughie had taken over the little shop her mother had

forbidden her to go near it.

With the sound of the back door opening, Rosie got to her feet and moved from the table, and she was sitting near the fire when her mother entered the room.

Hannah came in blowing her lips out, saying, "Whew! It's enough to cut the nose off you out there. I've just been along to Jessie's." She smiled towards Rosie but said no word to Hughie, and he, rising from his chair, gathered up the dirty dishes from the table and went towards the kitchen. But as he passed from the room he turned his head over his shoulder and, looking towards Hannah, said, "Can I speak to you a moment?"

"Speak to me?" She didn't even bother to look at him.

"Well, I'm here, amn't I? Spit it out. There's nobody in the house but Broderick 'and Karen upstairs, and Rosie here, and she's me

daughter." She smiled at Rosie as if she had said something extremely witty, and on this Hughie turned about and went into the kitchen.

Hannah bending towards Rosie whispered low, "There's a sod if ever there was one; deep as a drawn well, he is. Do you know what I learnt the day?" She pressed her lips together, pulling her mouth into a tight line.

"Him and our Dennis are as thick as thieves. He's been over to their place." She nodded quickly.

"And it's not the first time he's been there. Oh, I could spit in his eye. And our Dennis. Wait till I see him. Five weeks it is since he darkened this door."

"It's the weather likely, the roads are" ---- "Don't you start makin'

excuses for him. If you took a tape measure from door to door it would be three miles. But I know who I've got to blame for it. Oh, be god Yes. Oh, we're not up to the standard of his lady wife. But wait,

just you wait; I'll show them or die in the attempt."

"I think you should know something." Hughie was speaking from the doorway. He never addressed Hannah by her name or with the prefix of aunt, which would have been natural. He had for the first three years of his sojourn in the house, and at her own request, called her Mam, but this endearing term had come to an abrupt end.

"Well, what should I know?" She was standing facing him, aggressiveness emanating from her.

Hughie, looking straight back at her, said quietly, "Teefields are putting on a search for stolen parts."

The shiver that passed over her body seemed to sweep the aggressiveness from it and leave her without support for a moment. Her mouth closed from its gape, then opened again, and in a much mollified tone she asked, "Where did you hear that?"

"Dave Hewitt went out of his way to call in at the shop."

"Hewitt? Then the polis is on to it. Name of God!" She jerked her head round and looked at Rosie, who was standing now; then turning back to Hughie, she asked, aggressiveness back in every inch of her, "You're not just putting the wind up me, are you?"

"Why should I take the trouble to do that?"

It was not an answer Hannah expected from him. The quality of his

voice, which touched on indifference, brought her eyes narrowing, and she said, "Why should Hewitt go out of his way to help me?"

"I don't think that was his intention; but he was a friend of mine, and still is in a way, and he knew that I wouldn't want Bamy to be caught red-handed."

Rosie was staring at Hughie; she had never heard him speak so boldly to her mother before. It was as if he didn't care a damn for her mother's reactions any more, as if he was freed from something. That his

attitude was also puzzling her mother was very evident. She hoped it wouldn't arouse her anger against him still further.

But Hannah had something more serious on her mind at the moment than to dwell on Hughie's attitude. She said rapidly, her words running

together, "How've they got on to Bamy? He's not the only one; every man jack of them's at it."

"They're on to a number. As far as I understand they're going to make a house search."

"They could come here, you think?"

Hughie didn't answer, he just stared at her. And she put her hand over her mouth as she exclaimed, "God in Heaven!" Then she asked, "When?"

"I don't know for sure. It could be to-night or tomorrow morning, I don't know."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Again her body shivered; but now with strength of purpose, and flashing her eyes to Rosie, she said, "Go 'and get your da down." It was as if her daughter had never left the cover of her domination. Then turning to Hughie she ordered, Get down to the club and get Bamy back here as fast as his legs'll carry him. "

As Rosie went from the room she. saw Hughie still standing in the

doorway. He hadn't moved, and her mother was staring |i at him. Then Hannah's voice came to her, still loud but in the form of a request, saying, "Well, will you go for me?"

Rosie heard the back door bang before she reached the bathroom, and there she called, "Come quickly. Da, me ma wants you."

"She can just wait."

"No, Da, there's trouble; come quickly."

As she ran downstairs again Broderick was on her heels, drying himself and exclaiming loudly. And when he entered the kitchen he demanded to know what was afoot. " but Hannah silenced him with " Less talk and more action, that's what we want in the next hour or so. The polis is on to Bamy and the wireless bits. "

"Good God! ... Who told you this?"

"Hughie; he got it from Dave Hewitt."

Broderick looked frantically around the kitchen, as if searching for hiding places; then turning to Hannah, he cried, "But there's no place where we can stick that stuff, woman. We can't bury it in the garden, the ground's like flint underneath the slush."

"I wasn't thinking of the garden. Only a numbskull would think of the garden." We'll have it upstairs in the box mattress. "

"The box mattress! Oh, aye, be god Aye, yes." Broderick nodded his head.

"That's the place for it. But will it stand it? Those bits are a sight heavier than tea and sugar and clothes and the like."

"We'll have to take that chance. But don't stand here wasting breath, let's get down to the shed and get as much loose stuff up as we can.

An' we've got to do it with as little nuration as possible or else Nebby Watson 'll have her nose hanging over the wall sniffing like a mangy retriever. And Alice Parkman is not above lifting the blind on the other side. So I'm telling you. "

The shed at the bottom of the garden was fitted up as a workshop. When her mother switched the light on Rosie stood gazing about her at the pieces of electrical equipment and half finished wireless and

television sets that took up every inch of the bench that ran the

length of the shed, and overflowed on to the shelves beneath and those above it. Barny had started at Teefields factory before she had left home, and she hadn't been able to close her eyes to the fact that the stock in the shed had rapidly mounted, or that Bamy made quite a bit on the side making wireless sets. But if it had troubled her, she had thought along the lines of her Catholic training--well, what Bamy did was between him and God. It was a nice easy way to prevent herself from thinking of Bamy as a hypocrite, one who wouldn't miss Mass on a Sunday, nor his duties once a month.

"Here now!" Her mother thrust a box of valves into tier arms, hissing,

"Get up with them. Be careful how you go, and don't spill them. Leave them on the bedroom floor; we'll attend to the bed when we come up."

They had made some inroad in the transportation when Bamy came pelting into the house. He looked not only worried, he looked frightened, very frightened.

"This is a to-do, isn't it?" His voice was hoarse.

"I'm for it if-they find this lot."

Hannah had met him in the halt, her arms full.

"Less crack," she said, "and get going. Take that big set down there to pieces, and do it quicker than you've ever worked in your life

afore. Go on now."

As he went to run from the hall she shouted, "Where's Hughic?"

"He's gone back to the shop."

"He would, the sod, knowing how we're fixed for an extra pair of hands.

Oh, I'll see me day with that one. Yes, by God, I will."

She was mounting the stairs when Bamy, dashing back into the hall, cried at her under his breath, "Don't be so bloody vindictive, Ma; you're always at him. But the night you should go down on your knees and thank God for him givin' us the tip, for if he wasn't a pal of Dave Hewitt's we'd have known nowt until they were on top of us. "

"An' they likely could be that at any minute, and you standin' there defending him. Get going, you young fool!"

In an hour the shed was clear except for a few tools and some garden implements, but Hannah's bedroom looked, as she put it herself, like Paddy's market. The mattress from the bed was standing up against the wall with the top of the box spring leaning against it. The box

resting on its iron support should have been full of springs, but these had been disposed of many years ago; in nineteen-forty to be exact when Hannah went into the black market. Now the bottom of the box was

covered with wireless parts, on top of which were spread blankets, and into the hollows and dales of the blankets went further pieces, until the floor was clean of every last piece that had been brought up from the shed. Then the lid was screwed on again. The lid had attached to it an overlapping padded cover, and it would have taken a very clever detectiye to^ realise it was detachable from the box itself. On top of this the two. men lifted the mattress, and then, Hannah, at one side, and Rosie, at the other, made the bed up.

"There, let them find that if they can.... Now away downstairs, the both of you." She looked towards her husband and son.

"And get yourselves to the club, for if they should come on the hop, it's better they find you spending the evening normally." She nodded at Broderick.

"Spendin' the, evening normally!" Bamy said.

"I've got the jitters.

But if I'd had any bloody sense I'd have known some- thin' was going to happen, for every man jack in our shop's been at it lately; all except creeping Jesus. "

"You mean Harry Boxley?"

Barny nodded at his father.

"It wouldn't be him who's given the show away?" said Broderick.

"No, no; Harry wouldn't do that. Come and give you a sermon on the quiet about the evil of covetin' thy neighbour's goods.... Neighbour's goods, be-buggered! An' that firm makin' millions a year profit.

Keeping old Lord Cote sitting pretty in his marble-floored mansion on the Riviera. Even the bloody manager's got a yacht. Thy neighbour's goods! "

They were all in the living-room again when Hannah said, "Where's Karen in all this? She must have known we could do with help.... Where is she?"

"Aw, she went out a few minutes ago; I saw her on her way downstairs,"

said Broderick.

"And never a word." Hannah bristled.

"She'll have the back of me hand across her lug one of these days, will that madam. Well now, get yourselves off" --she waved at the men"--an'

I'll deal with anybody should they come. But I pray to God" -her voice dropped now, "aye, I do sincerely pray to God we'll have no one comin'

to search the house, because it'll be down the length of the street afore they are over the step.... Go on, get yourselves off."

When the men had gone, Hannah turned to where Rosie was sitting staring into the fire, and going slowly towards her, she said apologetically,

"Aw, lass, I wouldn't have had your first night home spoiled for the world, but it was an emergency; it had to be done; you could see for yourself " "It's all right, Ma." Rosie's voice was reassuring.

"It's all right, don't worry. I only hope Bamy doesn't get the sack."

"The sack! Why should he get the sack?" Hannah was bristling again.

"He'll get no sack. They'll find nothing here, not so much as a nut."

Rosie, looking back at her mother, did not answer. She had worked for eighteen months in the London office of a Midland firm. From that

distance men were just numbers. When an order came to cut down,

numbers one, two and three were the same as four, five and six to an executive who had never seen the man behind the number. She

remembered, too, that their firm--she still thought of it as their firm--stood to lose twenty thousand pounds a year through pilfering.

They made allowance for that sum, yet every now and again they would clamp down on the general practice, as Teefields were doing, and there would be dismissals, sometimes followed by lightning strikes. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods."

Hannah, now pulling a big leather chair towards Rosie's, seated herself in it before leaning forward and saying, "There now, we're settled.

Let's forget all that's happened. Isn't this nice, just you and me and the house to ourselves?" She kicked off, her slippers and held out the soles of her feet towards the blazing fire.

"You know, when I got up this mornin' I had the feeling it was going to be a good day. I always go by me feelin's first thing in the morning an' I said to me self " Hannah, you're goin' to get a surprise the day," and what better surprise in. the world than seeing you, lass."

She stretched out her hand and squeezed Rosie's knee; then leaning back, she said in a casual tone, "We mightn't get another opportunity like this to have a crack, the morrow mornin' Betty 'll be in with the hairns; she always drops in on a Saturda' morning as you know. So when we've got the chance let's have our chin-wag now, eh?" She hunched her thick shoulders up around her neck in a questioning attitude.