Prized Possessions (7 page)

Only Polly was old enough to realise just how much her mother had sacrificed to bring them up.

When Rosie grumbled or Babs moaned it was Polly, not Mammy, who would snap at them or give them a good hard slap and tell them to sit up and count their blessings.

Only Polly really understood her mother well enough to be sensitive to the changes that were taking place, those prickly little undercurrents of restlessness and brooding silences. So it was Polly who spotted the first white hairs, the first wrinkles, the first trace of night sweats and that – that
heaviness
that had begun to affect her mother. In themselves the signs meant little. She, Lizzie, had been ‘down' before; a kidney infection had all but floored her for the best part of six weeks. But this was different, quite different.

‘Are you feeling all right?'

‘I'm feelin' fine.'

‘You don't look quite yourself.'

‘I'm fine, Polly. Stop botherin' me.'

They were sitting up together about half past nine o'clock, not an unusual hour for the family to retire on Sunday night. In the bedroom across the little hall Babs and Rosie would still be fiddling with the knobs of the wireless set in the hope of discovering dance music or something more cheerful than solemn-voiced Englishmen discussing politics or religion. Mammy was already in bed, Polly seated on a chair close by, her feet stretched out and resting on the quilt.

‘I mean,' Polly said, ‘if there
was
somethin' wrong, you'd tell me, right?'

Lizzie put down the tattered magazine,
Sea Breezes,
that she'd pinched from Tosh, the van driver at the laundry.

‘Polly, for God's sake,' she said, ‘nothin's wrong with me.'

A tubby lamp on a shelf overhead shed light upon them. There were no other lights in the kitchen but the fire still glowed in the grate, the uncurtained window above the sink caught the faint gaseous glow of arc-lamps from the shunting yard to the east, and patched on to the night sky were the lights of backland tenements.

The little metal clock ticked busily in the awkward silence.

Lizzie peered at her daughter, frowning.

Polly wore a cotton nightgown, had a shawl over her shoulders and six or eight little paper curlers screwed into her brown hair. Somehow she felt disadvantaged by the curlers. She pretended to be engrossed in the copy of
Breathless Surrender
that Mammy had also pinched from van driver McIntosh.

‘Are you tellin' me I look ill?' Lizzie said.

‘No, you don't look ill.'

‘Hoi.' Lizzie nudged her daughter with a hefty elbow. ‘Look at me, Poll?'

Polly spared her mother a darting glance. ‘What?'

‘You tell
me.
You started it.'

Polly sighed. ‘You're just not yourself these days. Are you worried about something?'

‘I'm always worried about somethin'.'

‘I mean, particularly.' Polly hesitated. ‘Has it started?'

‘Has what started?'

‘You know what I mean – the change?'

‘God, I wish things
would
change.'

‘
The
change,' said Polly. ‘The time of life change.'

‘Oh, that! No, though there are signs it mayn't be far away.'

Polly put
Breathless Surrender
to one side. ‘Isn't it early?'

‘It started with Gran McKerlie soon after I was born.'

‘Gran was always sick,' Polly said. ‘What about Auntie Janet?'

‘God knows!' Mammy said. ‘Janet never talks about these things.'

‘Is that because she's still a virgin?'

‘Polly!'

‘Well – she is, isn't she?'

‘Probably,' Lizzie said, warily.

‘Is the change worse for virgins?'

‘I doubt,' Mammy said, ‘if you'll ever have to worry about that.'

‘Thanks very much,' Polly said. ‘I hope you're not implying—'

Mammy patted her arm. ‘I know you'd never do anythin' stupid.'

Polly was not so sure, and prudently changed the subject.

‘Did you go to talk to Mr Manone this morning?'

‘Aye.'

‘Thought as much,' Polly said. ‘About our Rosie?'

‘Rosie?' Mammy appeared puzzled. ‘What does Mr Manone have to do with our Rosie?'

‘I thought you might be trying to borrow money again. For Rosie, I mean. Or,' Polly added, hastily, ‘that you were asking him to find her a job.'

‘Time enough for that come June, when she leaves the Institute,' Mammy said. ‘Anyway, Mr Feldman tells me he might be able to find somethin' suited to her abilities. She can type forty words a minute, you know.'

‘Yeah,' Polly said, ‘but she'll never be able to take dictation or answer a telephone.' She paused. ‘What
did
you go to see Manone about?'

Mammy lay back against the pillow and looked up at the stained lace fringe of the miniature lampshade on the shelf above her head. ‘I needed to find out how much we still owe him.'

‘How much?'

‘Eight hundred pounds.'

‘Huh!' Polly said. ‘You should've saved yourself the tram fare, Mam. I could have told you that Manone's never gonna let us off the hook. It's the way sharks like him work. You borrow something, not even very much, and wind up paying off the bloody interest for the rest of your life.' She inched closer to the bed and rested a hand against her mother's arm. ‘I suppose the smarmy sod told you it was a debt of honour.'

‘Oh, I knew that already. I've known it for years.'

‘It's why he looks out for us,' Polly said. ‘He looks after us the way you'd look after a herd of cows. He finds us jobs just so's he can milk us for money every month.'

‘He says he'll settle for five.'

Polly drew back, shook her head. ‘He knows you'll never be able to rake up five hundred. Anyhow he doesn't want you to pay him off. That's the last thing he wants. He just wants to keep the tap dripping.'

‘I'm sick of it,' Mammy admitted.

‘I know you are,' said Polly.

‘What'll happen when you get married?'

‘I've no intention of getting married,' Polly said.

‘I don't want you to wind up like your Auntie Janet.'

‘Don't even jest,' said Polly.

‘See,' Mammy said, ‘that's the trouble. I'd like you to get married. I'd like to see all of you married.' Polly had heard this song before. ‘I'm frightened you get carried away by the wrong sort of chap. Don't tell me it can't happen. I've seen it happen. One minute you're nice sensible girls, next minute you're swept off your feet by some Ned in a fancy suit who rattles a bit of cash in his pocket.'

‘Well' – Polly regretted it before the words were properly out of her mouth – ‘well, if this mythical guy's rattling money in his pocket and he's mad enough to want to drag one of us to the altar he might even be willing to square your debt with Dominic Manone.'

‘No.'

‘Clean the slate,' said Polly, lamely.

‘Never.'

Mammy heaved herself from the pillows. For an instant it seemed that she had been gripped by cramp again. She placed her chin on her knees and stared, scowling, at the pattern on the quilt. Polly saw the muscles of her mother's forearms flex, the contour of shoulder and back change as she stiffened her spine. There was nothing old, nothing aged about Mammy now, nothing in the pose to indicate that her determination was waning.

‘I'll not hand it down to you, not to any of you,' she said. ‘Frank Conway was my man. I took him on for all the wrong reasons an' I've had to pay the price ever since. But not you, Poll, or your sisters. Once you're all safely out of here then I'll do what I have to do.'

‘And what's that?' Polly asked.

‘Go and live with Gran and Janet, I suppose.'

‘Is that the best you can dream up?'

‘Or marry.' Mammy rubbed her cheek against her shoulder. ‘Now wouldn't that be a turn-up, dearest, if your mammy went an' got married first.'

‘Who is he?' Polly said. ‘Hell's bells, Mam, it's not yon van driver, is it?'

‘McIntosh? Nah, nah. He's already got a wife. Besides, he's too old for a sparky young thing like me.'

‘What
are
you talkin' about?' Polly sat bolt upright. Stared at her mother. Blinked. Said, ‘Good God, you
do
have some guy in mind. You've no intention of going to stay with Gran and Janet. Who is he? Does he fancy you?'

‘I think he does – but he doesn't know it yet.'

‘Who?' It was Polly's turn to nudge. ‘Who? Who? Who?'

‘Mr Peabody.'

‘The factor's man?' Polly's mouth opened and closed in astonishment. ‘Oh, Mammy, you can't be serious? I mean, I know you said you fancied him but I thought it was a joke.'

‘No, it's no joke,' Mammy admitted. ‘I haven't done anythin' about it yet – and perhaps I never will – but let's just say I wouldn't be averse to marryin' Bernard Peabody, or someone very like him.'

Polly swallowed, thickly. Her eyes grew hot. She felt less bewildered than betrayed by her mother's admission, as if the whole affair were cut and dried and the shabby little agent were already waiting in the wings to take her place in Mammy's affections. She stammered, ‘Are – are you really in love with him?'

‘Don't be so bloody daft,' said Mammy and, with a fruity little chuckle, rolled on to her side and drew the blankets firmly over her head.

Chapter Four

As Polly was for ever reminding her sister it was more than their lives were worth to be caught fraternising with the Hallops. For this reason Babs continued to treat Jackie and his brothers with disdain whenever she encountered them in Lavender Court, though she would nod to Jackie's mother now or bestow a haughty little smile on his small sisters just to show them that she wasn't entirely two-faced. What Polly said was true, of course: Mammy would have a purple fit if she suspected that one of her darling daughters and scruffy Jackie Hallop were on the way to becoming sweethearts or that Babs and Polly were frequent visitors to the Hallops' yard in Kingston Lane.

It was not exactly Polly's wish to spend two or three evenings a week consorting with Jackie Hallop and his friends but, as eldest, she felt a certain responsibility to her sister and at first she tagged along just to make sure that Babs did not get into trouble.

From the outside the Hallops' yard was unremarkable. Even the sign above the padlocked gate –
Sunbeam Garage & Repair Works
– was nothing more than a sheet of corrugated iron painted in faded letters.

Kingston Lane was one of those sneaky little alleys that linked nowhere to nowhere, a remnant of the days long gone when the Gorbals had been a village of cottages and market gardens. Back of the so-called ‘repair shop' – another monument to corrugated iron – brambles still ripened in autumn, dog-roses still blossomed and a country-lover might have found evidence of the herbal beds that had flourished here a hundred years ago, a tiny clump of mint, a sprig of thyme or fennel clinging to the ashy soil below the disused railway tunnel.

The yard was strewn with bits and pieces of metal – Jackie got quite upset if you referred to it as ‘junk' – most of it stripped from motorcars and motorcycles; an L-shaped necropolis of dented fenders and fretted wings, of bent axles, rusting sub-frames and side-cars eroded almost beyond redemption. There was no sign of sophisticated machinery, only one ancient wooden structure rather like a gibbet, topped by a pulley wheel that clicked and revolved all by itself even when the air was still.

When Mrs Hallop's boys were called upon to work, they worked hard. Jackie and his older brother Dennis could be busy little bees when it suited them. An expert mechanic, Jackie had a particular fondness for motorcycles. He could strip a machine in a matter of hours and, if there was urgency about it, reconstruct the damned thing and have it off the premises before the dawn patrol appeared on the horizon. In fact, three constables and one divisional sergeant were roaring around the county on bikes that had Jackie Hallop's fingerprints all over them – and nobody any the wiser.

Jackie believed that it paid to have friends in high places and was never less than civil when it came to dealing with coppers. Which was more than could be said for his honest, quite-above-board father whose fondness for a dram often had him struggling in the arms of the law on Friday nights and had come close to costing him his job as a railway porter.

If old Sandy Hallop had lost his job, however, it would hardly have mattered. His sons would see him right, for the Hallop lads were coining in more in a month than a railway porter earned in a year.

For Babs, however, money was not the main attraction.

Every Saturday night young Jackie Hallop shed his greasy overalls, donned a beautiful pale blue double-breasted lounge suit and turned up at the Calcutta Road Palais de Danse looking like a million dollars. It would take more than a length of lined flannel to transform Jackie into Prince Charming, of course, but the Calcutta Palais, though glittery, was hardly a royal palace and most of the girls there were impressed by gorgeous feathers.

Jackie had one or two other things going for him, too. He had escaped the plague of acne that affected so many of his peers and his complexion, though pale, was passing smooth. And he wasn't much of a one for the booze. Beer made him sick and spirits made his head spin so he was usually sober when most of those around him were falling down drunk, which was a big advantage when it came to getting off with girls.

Next to motorcycles, girls were Jackie Hallop's passion in life. He liked them even more than he liked money. If the ladies generally preferred money to Jackie then that was just dandy, for Jackie had acquired the knack of making the two things – Jackie and cash – seem indissoluble.