Sisters Three Read online

Dominic explored the pastry with his fork in search of tender flakes of sole. Later Tony and he would go upstairs to the living-room to smoke cigars and drink more grappa and chew the fat, while she washed up. She resented her husband’s hold over Tony Lombard, though she had no reason to be jealous of anyone, least of all her husband.

  ‘We could all club together,’ Tony was saying, ‘and buy us a racehorse.’

  ‘Bobtail Boy, maybe?’ Dominic suggested.

  ‘Wouldn’t be a bad buy, unless Flint’s already sold him for horse meat.’

  They were keeping her at a distance. Something had happened today and Dominic and Tony didn’t want her to know about it. If she’d been more like her mother she’d have adopted a good old, straight-from-the-shoulder, hands-on-hips approach, direct as a punch on the nose: Who was she, Dominic? Who the hell was that woman at the racetrack? But she hadn’t been winnowed by years of hardship. She wasn’t big-boned and big-hearted and stuffed with character like Mam. She was a dainty, intelligent, obedient wife who in the opinion of everyone who knew her had everything a woman could want – everything except the one thing she really wanted, the one thing that Dominic could not buy her.

  They continued to talk casually about horses, what stabling and training would cost and how, between them, they might turn a profit.

  Even Tony had backed away from her.

  She got to her feet more abruptly than she had intended, lifted the empty plates from the cloth, reached for the pie-dish and salad bowl and balancing them on her arm looked down at the enquiring faces of her husband and her lover.

  ‘What’s it to be, gentlemen?’ she said. ‘Cake or canary pudding?’

  ‘Why not both?’ said Tony.

  Chapter Two

  Tony had borrowed the motorcar to collect his parents and drive them to early mass at St Cuthbert’s. The Lombardis lived in a tenement flat about half a mile from Manor Park. Tony had left years ago to set himself up in a one-bedroom apartment in a modern block on Riverside. It was a remarkably tidy hide-away but too spartan to have much character, a far cry from a family home cluttered with religious effigies and ornaments and horsehair furniture.

  Manor Park Avenue had been dismally traditional when Polly had first moved in and she had insisted on replacing the gilt-framed pictures and dark brown furniture with expensive, lightweight antiques. Dominic had co-operated and various vans would turn up unexpectedly in the driveway and a nice little Regency-style sofa or a pair of eighteenth-century walnut wing chairs would be carried into the house and arranged according to Polly’s wishes. Dominic had no study of his own, no office or den to retire to. He claimed the big public room at the front of the house when he wanted to take his ease with a cigar and a coffee pot and the newspapers or when he needed to entertain Mr Shadwell, the firm’s accountant, or Carfin Hughes, the lawyer, or other men to whom Polly was never introduced.

  On Sunday morning Polly rose early. She had made love again on Saturday night but love-making, however energetic, never wearied her and she carried no guilt about it. She had recently learned to accept responsibility for guilt, to swallow and consume and forget about it, though not about the pleasure that preceded it. Sometimes she wondered if Tony was obliged to atone for what they did together or if his promises to the priest were as hollow as most of his other promises.

  Soon after breakfast Babs and the children turned up.

  Dominic opened the front door to his sister-in-law and called upstairs to Polly to inform her that ‘visitors’ had arrived. Polly left Stuart and Ishbel in Nanny Patricia’s care and hurried downstairs. Dominic had already lifted his nieces and given each a kiss. He kissed Babs too in a perfunctory sort of way then, leaving the sisters in the hall, padded back into the living-room to his coffee and his newspapers, and closed the door.

  ‘What the hell are you doing dropping in at this hour, Babs?’ Polly hissed.

  ‘Need t’ talk to you,’ said Babs.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Things,’ Babs said. ‘Things, that’s all.’

  Polly had changed a great deal since Babs, Rosie and she had shared a bed in the tenement in Lavender Court but she hadn’t shed the conspiratorial rapport with her middle sister for they were linked by experiences that Mammy and Rosie knew nothing about and, God willing, never would.

  Polly directed Babs and the baby into the parlour then chased her nephew and nieces upstairs to the first floor playroom. The floor was littered with toys. Flanked by Stuart and Ishbel, Patricia was building a castle out of wooden bricks. Later she would dress the children and escort them to Sunday School at Manor Park Church where they would mingle with other well-to-do children and continue the process of social integration that their father insisted was good for them.

  ‘More for the fray, Patricia. Sorry,’ Polly said.

  Eager as ever, Angus threw himself full-length on the carpet and gave Stuart a grin to remind his cousin that he was already superior in many important respects. Pert and pretty as daffodils May and June held hands, stared at Ishbel and by force of will tried to reduce her to tears. There was something vulnerable about her children, Polly knew, a gentleness that Babs’s brood instinctively exploited. Much as she loved her son and daughter Polly wished that they might be less polite and self-effacing and acquire some of the Hallops’ rowdy egotism.

  Leaving the children to play, she went back downstairs to the parlour. Babs had unbuttoned her coat and blouse and was breast feeding April in front of the electrical fireplace. French doors opened out on to a flagged path and showed lawn and flowerbeds still rimed with frost, but the room was comfortably warm.

  ‘Do you want something, Babs?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Tea or coffee? Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘Hours ago.’

  ‘Where’s Jackie?’

  ‘Sleepin’.’ She winced as April tugged her nipple. ‘That’s why I brought them with me. Give the poor guy some peace.’

  ‘You spoil him, you know.’

  ‘What if I do? He looks after us, I look after him.’ Babs brushed her daughter’s head in its fluffy angora wool cap. ‘I gotta question for you, Poll.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Is Dominic in trouble with the law?’

  Polly drew out a chair and seated herself. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Babs said. ‘I was hopin’ you’d tell me.’

  ‘He’s in no trouble that I know of.’ The image of the squat little man and the long-legged blonde leapt to mind. ‘If he was, I’d probably be the last to hear of it.’

  ‘You could ask Tony.’

  ‘I could,’ said Polly. ‘But you know Tony; he won’t tell me anything. What makes you think there might be trouble?’

  ‘The coppers came round to the salon yesterday, not uniforms, detectives.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Just one – and his sister.’

  ‘His sister?’

  ‘They pretended they were lookin’ at motorcars,’ Babs explained, ‘but they were really lookin’ for Jackie.’

  ‘Did they find him?’

  ‘’Course they did. Saturday afternoon: where else would he be?’

  ‘Did they have a warrant?’

  ‘Said they had, but they hadn’t. Just a card, Jackie said, standard ID.’

  ‘Was she a copper too?’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘The sister.’

  ‘Nah,’ Babs said. ‘She was just camouflage.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘Happens I was, with the kids.’

  Polly wore a flowered housecoat and her bare legs were smoothly shaven. No matter how hard she tried Babs couldn’t emulate Polly’s style. She hadn’t the leisure for one thing, or the figure. One more baby, she would blow up like a balloon and any chance of becoming more like Polly would go down the pan forever.

  Polly said, ‘Did the detective question you?’

  ‘Nah, Jackie wouldn’t have stood for that,’ Bab
s said. ‘I think he was lookin’ for somethin’ particular, though I don’t know what.’

  Polly doubted if Dennis would leave incriminating evidence lying about the garage. Most of the salon’s important transactions were conducted between Tony and Dennis who was calm, sensible and pragmatic, at least when he was sober.

  ‘I take it the cop didn’t find anything?’ Polly said.

  ‘They don’t do the work there,’ Babs said. ‘They do the real work at a yard over in Govan. Everythin’ at the salon’s legitimate.’

  ‘Including parts?’

  ‘Parts?’

  ‘Spares.’

  ‘Oh yeah, the spares.’ Babs shook her head. ‘Don’t know about the spares.’

  Babs was probably lying, Polly thought; there were precious few secrets between her sister and her husband. She wished she could say the same about her marriage. Between Dominic and her lay the whole Italian thing plus a clique of businessmen to whom nothing seemed to matter but pride and profit. She had only a vague notion how Dominic earned the huge sums that flowed into his accounts.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Babs?’ Polly said. ‘Talk to Dominic?’

  ‘God, no! Jackie would kill me if he thought I’d blabbed. I just wanted to share it with you, Polly. I admit that the sight of that damned busybody nosin’ round our yard fair put the wind up me.’

  The baby tugged again on Babs’s nipple, her small, newly formed teeth sharp enough to hurt. Babs detached the infant from her breast. Tiny beads of perspiration lined the fringe of April’s angora wool cap but the effort of suckling instead of tiring her had made her more eager. She waved a tiny pink fist and staring up at her mother, whimpered for more. At that moment a wail floated down from upstairs. Polly heard a door open and the wail became louder. Feet thudded on the stairs. Patricia called out, ‘Stuart, Stuart, Angus didn’t mean it,’ but both Polly and Babs knew that Angus had meant it, whatever ‘it’ was.

  ‘I’d better push off,’ Babs said.

  Ignoring April’s demands she hitched up her brassiere, tucked herself into the cups and buttoned her blouse. Polly had never been able to mother in that firm, unhurried manner. She was too yielding and forgiving for her children’s good. Any second now, for instance, Stuart would trail tearfully into the parlour and Angus, not contrite but cocky, would protest his innocence against any accusation of bullying that his cousin levelled against him.

  Babs cradled the baby against her shoulder. April emitted a loud bark, breaking wind, and dribbled on to her mother’s hair.

  ‘Promise you won’t say anythin’ to Dominic, Poll.’

  ‘All right,’ Polly said. ‘But tell me if and when the coppers come back.’

  ‘Okay,’ Babs said. ‘Will you talk to Tony, see what he knows?’

  ‘I’ll try. I will. I’ll try,’ Polly said just as the door swung open and Dominic peeped into the parlour. He had his son, tear-stained, in his arms.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘Staying for a spot of lunch, Babs?’

  ‘Is that an invitation?’ Babs asked.

  ‘Certainly not.’ Dominic laughed in a way that suggested he knew why Babs had called so early and that she wouldn’t linger now that the harm had been done. ‘But you can stay if Polly asks you.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Babs said, flushing. ‘Maybe another time, uh?’

  ‘Any time you like,’ said Dominic and while Babs gathered her brood for departure, carried his son safely into the living-room and quietly closed the door.

  * * *

  After the death of her mother-in-law Lizzie Peabody felt more at home in the terraced cottage in Knightswood. Though small, it was a great deal more comfortable than any of the tenement slums in which she’d raised her daughters after their father, Frank Conway, had done a bunk. The only problem in living there was that she’d had to share it with Bernard’s mother. Old Mrs Peabody had been understandably resentful that her surviving son had picked a wife who was older than he was and who had arrived in Knightwood dragging a deaf daughter with her. The fact that Lizzie, Rosie and Mrs Peabody had managed to rub along for several years without much friction was mainly due to Bernard’s tact.

  In the spring of 1933 old Mrs Peabody passed away in her sleep. Bernard was naturally upset. Rosie wept buckets and even Lizzie shed a tear or two and set about arranging a grand funeral tea in the Co-op halls for all Violet Peabody’s friends, a gathering of fifty mourners, mostly war widows, who consumed vast quantities of sandwiches and sausage rolls and flirted outrageously with Bernard and Reverend Jacks, the only gentlemen present.

  For a month or so afterwards Bernard was very depressed. Then summer arrived, the patch of garden behind the cottage claimed his attention and at Lizzie’s suggestion he repapered and painted the back bedroom. Rosie abandoned the bed-settee in the living-room and moved into Mother Peabody’s bedroom, and the waters of Lethe closed quietly over Violet Peabody and before the year was out there was nothing much left to remember her by except a few ornaments and a nice little headstone up in the cemetery at Copplestone Road.

  In the same year Lizzie’s mother also passed away – much less discreetly.

  Gran McKerlie had been rehearsing her death for years, of course, walled up in a single-end on the top floor of a crumbling tenement in Laurieston with only Janet, Lizzie’s sister, to look after her. The building was one of many ancient tenements that the city council planned to demolish as soon as there was budget enough to replace them. Everyone looked forward to the day when the hammers would move in on Ballingall Street – everyone that is except Gran McKerlie.

  In due course council inspectors arrived, then planners, then dapper little men with folders and briefcases accompanied by doctors from the Public Health department and Gran McKerlie was officially informed that her tenement was next for demolition and that she would be transferred to more suitable accommodation. On receiving this information Gran McKerlie went mad, not certifiably, carted-off-in-a-van type mad, alas, which would have solved everyone’s problem. Instead the old woman shook off the nine plagues of age, donned the armour of righteousness and, like something nasty out of Norse mythology, elected to go down fighting. Even after the chimneys were removed, walls demolished and the whole rat-infested neighbourhood was disintegrating about her ears Gran McKerlie refused to be intimidated by the ball-hammer that hung ominously close outside her window and remained fixed in the wooden armchair from which she had ruled the roost for so long. Perhaps she saw herself as the last relic of a golden age of hardship and squalor that Glaswegians would look back on with perverse and totally unwarranted affection: whatever the reason, Gran refused to budge.

  First the council sent a constable to escort the old lady downstairs, then a second constable, then a sergeant, then two firemen, then a female Public Health official who patiently explained to Gran that a lovely ground-floor apartment awaited her in a refurbished tenement just around the corner in Moorcastle Street, that Janet had inspected the place and approved of it – which Janet had not – and that all Gran had to do to inherit this palace was permit the firemen to ease her out of her chair and carry her down the iron staircase into a waiting taxicab.

  Gran’s answer was to growl, spit and whack the Public Health official’s shins with one of her walking-sticks, a response that finally reduced Janet to helpless tears. After further consultation a council vehicle was sent across the river to Knightswood to fetch Lizzie to come and reason with the thrawn old bat before civic authority was forced to live up to its stereotype and act like a heartless monster.

  Lizzie duly arrived: Lizzie clambered up the iron staircase, squeezed past dapper gentlemen, past firemen and coppers, past the red-faced female health official and entered the smelly one-roomed flat where her mother lay in wait. The moment Lizzie stepped over the threshold Gran raised herself out of the invalid chair for the first time in twenty years and, with eyes bulging and a curious white froth on her lips, yelled, ‘Now see what you’ve done t’ me, Lizzie, you an’
your high jinks,’ and toppled forward on to the dusty floorboards, felled by an almighty stroke.

  The reports to the Fiscal’s office exonerated police and council officials from blame and Gran’s body was released to the family just as soon as the tenement in Ballingall Street had been safely reduced to rubble. Dominic met the costs of the funeral and the headstone in Laurieston necropolis. He sent Polly round to the refurbished council apartment in Moorcastle Street to offer Aunt Janet financial assistance in the shape of a well-paid job in his warehouse. Janet would have none of his dirty money, his charity. She wouldn’t let Polly cross the doorstep, wouldn’t speak to Lizzie or any member of the Conway clan, was finished with the Conways for good and all, she said, and thereafter refused to answer letters or accept gifts even at Christmas and New Year. In 1936, Mr Smart’s wee grocery store, where Janet had worked for years, was sold to Sloan’s dairy chain. Janet was given a new white overall and an increase in wages and, as far as Lizzie or her daughters knew, continued to live out her lonely little life south of the river.

  After a year or so Lizzie no longer felt guilty about what had happened to her mother and sister. She snuggled up to Bernard and thanked God for the way things had panned out, for daughters who had gone up in the world, for darling wee grandchildren, for a nice secure house and nice secure husband who, thanks to the influence of Dominic Manone, was now deputy manager of an estate agency in the leafy outer reaches of the city.

  In the back of her mind, though, Lizzie suspected that there were still some dark things out there, nightmarish things, from which neither Bernard nor Dominic could protect her and that Rosie knew what they were and what they signified.

  Bernard could have told her if only she’d thought to ask him. He knew only too well what the changes in their circumstances meant and what the cost might be in the long run for he’d wrestled with his conscience for weeks before deciding to accept the opportunity for advancement that Dominic had offered him. In a strange way he had been inspired by his stepdaughter Rosie who had lost her hearing in childhood. He reckoned that if Rosie had learned to cope with that handicap he could learn to cope with something as minor as a bruised conscience.