Sisters Three Read online

  The strange proud light in his eyes hadn’t diminished. He seemed more amused than irked by Babs’s rudeness.

  In a loud check overcoat and turkey-red scarf he looked less like a bookie than a variety-hall comic; Polly almost expected him to whip out a water-pistol and a raucous motor-horn and begin squirting and parping away.

  ‘Huh!’ Babs said. ‘You’re no more a Yankee than I am.’

  ‘Right you are there, sweetheart. I’m from these ’ere parts originally.’

  ‘So you did know my Mammy?’ Babs said.

  ‘Everybody knew Lizzie McKerlie. Fine big thumping woman.’

  ‘An’ I’m just like her, am I?’

  ‘The very spit,’ said Harker.

  Polly felt the question rise into her mouth like water brash.

  ‘My father, did you know my father too?’

  Flint fell away from her, a hand to his brow, palm covering his eyes.

  ‘Who was he again?’ Harker said.

  ‘Frank, Frank Conway,’ Babs said.

  ‘Yeah, old Frank.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But if you knew my mother…’ Babs began.

  ‘I was gone before Frank appeared on the scene, sweetheart, long gone,’ Edgar Harker said. ‘Whatever happened to him, anyhow?’

  Out of a sick, hollow little space in her chest, Polly answered:

  ‘He died in the war.’

  ‘A hero’s death then,’ Harker said.

  ‘Yes, a hero’s death,’ said Polly and without even shaking hands, headed off down the corridor and out on to the balcony at the top of the steps where Babs caught up with her.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Poll? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I just – I felt a little faint, that’s all.’

  ‘That guy…’

  ‘What?’ Polly said. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I think he fancied me.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Polly groaned.

  ‘Maybe ’cause I remind him of Mammy when she was young. I reckon he fancied Mammy, don’t you? Anyway, he’s old enough t’ be my father so he’ll get no change out of me.’ She placed a hand on Polly’s shoulder. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right. Really, I’m fine.’

  They went carefully down the steep steps, arms linked, and walked around a corner of the cinema into Paisley Road West to find a taxi to take them home.

  ‘What d’ you think then?’ Babs asked as soon as some colour returned to her sister’s cheeks. ‘Will Flint keep his word when it comes to it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Polly said.

  ‘How come?’ said Barbara. ‘I thought you trusted him.’

  ‘I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anybody these days,’ Polly said.

  ‘Not even Tony?’

  ‘Not even Tony,’ Polly said, and was startled to realise that she meant it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For the most part Lizzie managed to ignore the pamphlets that eager volunteers shoved through the letter-box.

  Bernard, however, read and collected them assiduously.

  ‘What are they askin’ us to do now?’ Lizzie would enquire.

  Bernard, who understood his wife’s reluctance to admit that anything was wrong, would answer, ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Nothing much’ was not a phrase favoured by Lizzie’s neighbours, however. As soon as she set foot out of doors she was beset by wild speculations about just how soon German bombers would appear over Knightswood and how much damage they would do. Suckled on injustice and weaned on protest, the Scots were by no means a stoical race and pessimists outnumbered optimists two to one.

  Mrs Kearney, a widow, believed that everyone would die in a cloud of poison gas, and Mr Galbraith and his wife were already hoarding tinned foodstuffs and filling the bath with coal. On the other hand, scatty Mrs Deans, mother of three sons, was convinced that Hitler’s army would crumple before the wave of conscripts that would parachute into the heart of Berlin to give that dirty dog what for.

  Towards the end of February council carts arrived at the cottage row bearing sheets of corrugated steel and lengths of wood, the rudiments of Anderson shelters. Brick shelters had already been erected in the local park and the rose garden adjacent to the hospital was so pitted with trenches that there was serious danger of subsidence. In council houses on the high ground that gave unparalleled views of the Clyde basin, miles of sticky brown tape had been applied to oriel windows and home-spun sandbags were banked against trellises and garden sheds.

  Anderson shelters were a different proposition, though. They had to be buried deep into the ground and turfed over, not just for protection from enemy bombs but to preserve a suburban fondness for neatness. Lizzie, who depended entirely on Bernard to save her from whatever might fall from the skies, was pleased to see the carts arrive for hard physical labour would surely keep her husband from brooding about Rosie and Kenny.

  Meanwhile she carried on with cooking, cleaning, scrubbing floors and, stepping over the holes that the menfolk, mole-like, had thrown up in the back green, hung the washing out to dry as usual.

  Meetings were convened in the Caldwells’ house, meetings that Lizzie did not attend. Expert advice was sought from Civil Defence administrators who knew no more about constructing shelters than coal-merchants or shipwrights and considerably less than Bernard who had personally studied structures under stress and who retained vivid memories of the havoc that shrapnel could wreak on the human body. He kept this information to himself, however, for unlike many of his cohorts, he had no desire to show off.

  On the last Sunday in the month Bernard and Lizzie attended morning service at St Margaret’s. The church was packed. The organist played a medley of voluntaries and rousing martial hymns. The congregation sang lustily about ‘True Valour’ and ‘Marching as to War’. The minister, Mr Heatley, delivered a quiet sermon for he was as mild-mannered and unmilitary as the new King George. His prayer for peace was heart-felt, however, and the congregation’s ‘Amen’ could be heard halfway down Great Western Road.

  As soon as he arrived home from kirk Bernard changed out of his suit into a pair of old dungarees and while Lizzie set the table for lunch went out to the green at the back with a measuring string and a little booklet of instructions to mark the line of the drainage pipes that would make the Peabodys’ shelter not only safe but habitable.

  Rosie hadn’t accompanied her parents to church. She’d had a period that week and a bit of a sniffle and Lizzie hadn’t had the heart to dig her daughter out of bed just to join in worship. When Bernard and Lizzie got home at half-past twelve o’clock, Rosie was still in her bedroom. The drone of the wireless filled the closet-like hall, not dance music but the high falsetto of proper English voices pontificating on religious topics. After putting on her apron and lighting the gas under the soup pot Lizzie returned to the hall and listened outside the bedroom door.

  She heard nothing but the cadences of the radio, not a sound from her daughter. She didn’t knock – Rosie couldn’t hear knocking – but opened the door and put her nose around it. Rosie was lying tummy down on the bed, arms by her sides, face buried in the pillow. She had exchanged her nightgown for an old black skirt and blouse and her legs and feet were bare. She lay so still that Lizzie was filled with dread that her lovely wee daughter had suddenly fallen ill. She darted to the bed, grabbed the first thing that came to hand – Rosie’s leg – and gave it a tug.

  Eyes red, cheeks wet with tears, Rosie shot up at once.

  ‘What? What do you want?’ she shouted.

  ‘Are you all right, dearest?’ Lizzie mouthed.

  ‘Leave me alone, just leave me alone.’

  Rosie flung herself down and buried her face in the pillow again.

  Lizzie had long since learned to distinguish distress from a tantrum. She switched off the wireless, seated herself on the bed and, refusing to be deterred by her daughter’s wriggling, stroked Rosie’s h
air until the girl rose again, crying, ‘Stop that, stop that, Mammy, please.’

  ‘Are you not well?’

  ‘I am perfectly okay,’ Rosie said ‘There is nothing wrong with me,’ then, sobbing, flung herself into her mother’s arms.

  Lizzie hugged her, soothed her, let the storm of tears blow itself out.

  ‘Now,’ she said at length, ‘tell me what’s wrong, dear.’

  ‘It is Kuh-Kenny. He wuh-wants to muh-marry me.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lizzie studied the tear-stained features while Rosie read her lips. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘All? All? Is it not enough?’ said Rosie, outraged.

  ‘Has he asked you to marry him?’

  ‘He huh-has suggested it.’

  ‘Suggested? What does that mean?’

  ‘He wants me to marry him before he – before he…’

  More tears were imminent and Lizzie pushed the conversation on before the flood-gates could open once more. ‘Take a deep breath, dearest, an’ tell me just what Kenny said that’s got you so upset.’

  ‘He says he is going to join up.’

  Lizzie experienced a sharp clutching sensation about her heart. Smothering her panic, she said, ‘Join the army, you mean?’

  ‘Yuh-yes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To fight the Germans.’

  ‘Does Kenny want to fight the Germans?’

  ‘I duh-don’t know, duh-do I?’

  ‘When did he ask you to marry him?’

  ‘Last week,’ Rosie said. ‘In George Square.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him I would have to think about it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to be Kenny’s wife?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie shouted, all control of her vocal chords gone. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s wrong then? Why all the tears?’

  ‘He wuh-wants to go to bed with me.’

  ‘Ah!’ Lizzie said, softly.

  ‘Not now. After we are married.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s perfectly natural for a man to…’

  ‘Before he guh-goes off to the army.’

  Lizzie uttered a little tut, too restrained to be audible. ‘Come on now, Rosie, let’s sort this out. What are all the tears about? Because you don’t want to marry Kenny an’ are frightened of going to bed with him, or because he might not come back from the war?’

  The war: Lizzie could hardly bring herself to utter those two nasty little words. She had lost her Frank in the Great War – or so she chose to believe. If she had been alone she would have found some simple chore with which to occupy her hands, to take her mind off the bleak, blank future, but now she had Rosie to think of, and Polly and Babs, and their children. She could not shy away from her responsibilities. If a war did come and the men went marching off for months or years on end then her girls would need her more than ever before. She felt herself stiffen, literally stiffen.

  She planted both her big soft hands on the bed and raised herself up.

  ‘Rosie, do you love Kenny MacGregor?’

  ‘Yes, Mammy, I do.’

  ‘Then when he’s good an’ ready, when he needs you enough to take you for his wife, no matter what, you should marry him.’

  ‘What – what if he is killed?’

  ‘Then at least you’ll have known what love is an’ Kenny will die lovin’ you.’

  Lizzie had a vague notion that the comforting phase had been cribbed from a magazine story but its banality troubled her not.

  ‘What about Dominic?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Dominic?’

  ‘What will Dominic say if I marry a policeman?’

  ‘Dominic doesn’t rule our lives.’

  ‘I think that is why Kenny wants to leave the police and join up, just so he will nuh-not have to arrest Dominic.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’

  Rosie shook her head. ‘I could not stand it, Mammy, if Kenny joined the army and fought and died just so he could muh-marry me.’

  ‘God!’ Lizzie said. ‘Isn’t there enough in your head without dwellin’ on morbid thoughts like that.’ She sat up straight and looked down on her daughter whose eyes, washed by tears, were no longer solemn but bright and attentive. ‘We’ll take this one step at a time, Rosie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Marriage isn’t just about brides an’ grooms and goin’ to bed together,’ Lizzie said. ‘It affects a lot of other people besides the happy couple, that’s true, but Dominic Manone isn’t one of them. I think you’re lucky to have a man who loves you so much he’ll put you before his career.’

  ‘Is that what he is doing?’ said Rosie. ‘Sacrificing himself for my sake?’

  ‘If that’s the way you want t’ put it, aye.’

  ‘Oh, my!’ said Rosie. ‘Oh, my goodness!’

  Lizzie pushed herself upright then, leaning, kissed her daughter on the brow.

  ‘One step at a time, dearest. We’ll have them here for tea, him an’ his sister an’ thrash things out then.’

  ‘But nuh-not with the family?’ Rosie said. ‘Not with Polly and Babs?’

  ‘No, not the family, just the three of us,’ said Lizzie. ‘You, me, and Bernard.’

  ‘Oh, Mammy, when can I invite them?’

  ‘Any time you like,’ Lizzie said.

  * * *

  It was cold in the stables and the men wore overcoats. It could have been a funeral or a wake, the men in sombre black, the girl, Penny, wrapped in a long grey army-style coat with the busby hat pulled down over her ears.

  Outside, though it was only an hour past noon, daylight already seemed to be waning. At Giffard’s request Tony had switched on the overhead light. The naked bulb hanging from a dusty cable served only to increase the gloom and it was not until Giffard had finished tinkering with the press and gave Tony the nod to throw the big switch on the power box and run current into the machines that the platform shuddered and came to life.

  Dougie had a pair of pliers in his hand and a small screwdriver clenched in his teeth like a pirate’s dagger and did not exude confidence.

  Now that the machinery was ready to go into operation Dominic saw just how jerry-built it was, how amateur the whole thing had been from the start and that he had erred in expecting Giffard, a one-man-band, to pull it off. The guillotine, flat-bed printer and modified multigraph, linked by screws and bolts, looked like a cartoon and he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a whistle hoot and see little puffs of steam fart out of the ink slots. He stood back against the wall, hands in his pockets while the machine shuddered and growled like an aeroplane revving up.

  For several seconds there was no movement apart from the shudder then, in sequence, the guillotine blade dropped, a feeder bar lifted, a band of paper was grabbed by a rubber roller, dragged over the flat-bed and, caught by the cylinder of the multigraph, passed jerkily into a collecting tray.

  ‘It is working, Dougie,’ the girl said.

  Dougie removed the screwdriver from his teeth. ‘Wait a wee minute, but.’

  The band of paper feathered into the tray, followed by another, and another.

  ‘Dear God!’ said Tony, and laughed. ‘The old devil did it.’

  ‘I haven’t done nothin’,’ Dougie said. ‘It ain’t right yet.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Tony said.

  ‘It’ll have t’ deliver a bloody sight quicker than that,’ Dougie said.

  Dominic said. ‘What about the printing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Penny said. ‘How well does it print?’

  The machine hesitated, jerked wilfully and fed a wrinkle into the next sheet, and the one after that.

  ‘Switch it off, Tony’ Dougie said.

  Reaching behind him, Tony snapped off the current.

  The four of them moved in to stare at the spoiled sheets of paper in the tray.

  Dougie eased the top sheet from the layer, squeezed it like a concertina, crumpled
it into a ball and tossed it into a wire basket in which, Dominic noticed, were umpteen other crumpled balls of paper. Dougie extracted another sheet, glanced at it, demolished and dumped it too. Four bands of printed paper were now left in the long tray. From each band ten Brittanias looked up out of fussy lines of script above a prominent hollow-letter Five.

  ‘Are they dry?’ Dominic said.

  ‘Dry enough,’ said Dougie.

  ‘Let me see.’

  The printer lifted the sheets and placed them on a trestle table by the straw bales. Dominic stepped forward and studied the banknotes carefully. Neither Tony nor Penny joined him and Dougie, as if he’d lost interest in the matter, walked around behind the guillotine and began to fiddle with the blade.

  ‘They don’t look new,’ Dominic said.

  ‘I added chemicals t’ the ink,’ said Dougie, shrugging.

  ‘But they do look right,’ Dominic said.

  The girl whimpered.

  ‘They look very right,’ Dominic said. ‘Cut me some.’

  Tony threw the switch and a moment later paper ran beneath the blade. Dougie snapped down the manual bar with a flick of the wrist and gathered the notes one by one as they nosed out of the machine. He tidied them and handed the bundle to Dominic.

  ‘Soft,’ Dominic said. ‘Too soft.’

  ‘It’s the heat,’ Dougie said. ‘Leave them for half an hour an’ they stiffen up.’

  Dominic rolled the little bundle of banknotes in one hand, furling them like cigar leaves. He extracted one, held it up to the bulb, changed position, held it up to filtered daylight. ‘You’re a month ahead of schedule. When will you be ready for a full run?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How bad is the wastage?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Three in ten, thereabouts.’

  ‘Can you reduce that figure?’ Dominic said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Dougie, I need an answer.’

  ‘I can’t gi’e you an answer,’ Dougie said. ‘What’s the run, anyway?’

  ‘Twenty thousand, perfect, each month.’

  ‘What!’ Dougie exclaimed. ‘For God’s sake, Dominic! This contraption won’t stand up t’ that kind o’ treatment. It’s not the Royal Mint. You can’t expect treasury production from one man, from me, just me. Who’s askin’ for twenty?’