Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  Rosie had acquired a variety of ways of comprehending. She could lip-read with astonishing accuracy, but how the words conveyed themselves to her brain not even Bernard could begin to understand. He was very close to Rosie, though, for every morning they walked the half-mile to the railway station at Anniesland Cross together and had developed an affectionate rapport.

  On wet days they shared the shelter of Bernard’s black umbrella. On crisp, invigorating winter mornings with the sun just showing above the trees of Jordanhill, they would step out lively. But whatever the weather Rosie’s cheerful presence would send Bernard rattling off on the train to Breslin with a smile while Rosie, travelling in the opposite direction, caught the train into Glasgow for a day’s work in Shelby’s bookshop.

  On that particular November morning, however, the sun failed to penetrate the fog that shrouded the suburbs, street lamps remained lighted and the houses seemed to be cut from thick grey flannel. City workers emerging from garden gates nodded to Bernard and touched their hats to Rosie and girl clerks and shop assistants fluttered gloved hands in greeting. Bowler hats and scarves, newspapers, lighted pipes, after-breakfast cigarettes, the minutiae of the weekday world, Bernard thought, the substance of days that would go ticking on and on, strangely fulfilling in their predictability.

  Rosie raised her chin from beneath her scarf and said, ‘Do you ever wonder how much money our Dominic rakes in?’

  Bernard turned to face her. ‘What makes you ask?’

  She shrugged. ‘The fog reminds me of the old days.’

  ‘You are too young for’ – he broke the word into three parts – ‘nos-tal-gia. Don’t tell me you’re hankering after the Gorbals?’

  She laughed. ‘Nuh, nuh. I was just thinking of Dominic’s boys, the street collectors. I wonder what became of Alex O’Hara, for instance, after Dominic changed his spots. Dominic has changed his spots, has he not?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Polly?’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘I don’t know if he’s changed his spots com-pleet-ly,’ Bernard said.

  ‘I can see what you’re saying.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But I do not hear an answer.’

  ‘I don’t have an answer, Rosie.’

  The hub of the Manone empire was still the Central Warehouse in Govan. Dominic had financed Jackie Hallop’s motor showroom, no secret there. He had also bought into Lyons & Lloyd’s real estate agency and had installed a new manager, Mr Shakespeare, who was Bernard’s boss. Dominic owned stock in several Clydeside cafés and restaurants and supplied equipment for ice-cream factories and a bottling plant. The bulk of his interests were decidedly shady, however, and Bernard preferred not to know about them.

  ‘Does the Rowing Club in Molliston Street still belong to Dominic?’

  Rosie definitely wanted an answer. He could always tell when she was trying to wheedle something out of him by the way she slurred her consonants. Why, he wondered, was she suddenly so interested in Dominic? Personally he preferred to forget the dreadful years in Lavender Court when squaring up to Dominic’s debt collectors had forced him to acknowledge that honesty and cowardice do not necessarily go hand in hand.

  He hesitated, then signed with a firm, flat, emphatic slash of the right hand to terminate that line of conversation.

  Undeterred Rosie continued to watch for an answer.

  ‘I believe he sold the club to John Flint when he gave up bookmaking,’ Bernard said at length. ‘Polly put pressure on him, I think.’

  ‘Does Polly have influence over him?’ Rosie said. ‘I know she is supposed to wear the pants in the Manone household but I do not think that is the case.’

  Bernard could see the busy junction of Anniesland Cross up ahead. For once he was relieved to be nearing the railway station. He really did not want to be reminded that he, or rather Lizzie, had almost lost out to the gangs and that only the intervention of Dominic Manone, the biggest crook of all, had finally rescued the Conways from the contamination of the slums; Bernard still detected a sinister irony in that fact.

  Rosie’s job in Shelby’s bookshop may have matured her but she would never have her sisters’ hard shell. He had constantly to remind himself that married or not the Conway girls were united and that by accepting Dominic’s offer of a post with Lyons & Lloyd he too had put himself beyond the pale.

  Rosie stopped at the crossing that would carry them over the tramlines between buses and trade vans and the slow-moving drays that came down in convoy from the coal depot and the long horse-drawn carts from the timber yard that adjoined the canal. In the murky morning air the gasometer resembled a zeppelin hovering behind the railway bridge that spanned the Great Western Road. Bernard glanced at his wristlet watch and took Polly’s arm to steer her across the thoroughfare. She resisted, not petulantly but firmly.

  ‘Will you not tell me anything about Dominic?’ she shouted.

  Bernard put his hand to his ear as a tram thundered past.

  ‘Can’t hear you,’ he mouthed. ‘Sorry.’

  And that morning at the railway station, for the first time ever, Rosie refused to kiss him goodbye.

  * * *

  Oswald Shelby, Sons & Partners, Books, Rare Books, Bindings & Manuscripts, had been at the centre of the book trade in Glasgow for the best part of sixty years. Their premises in Mandeville Square, just around the corner from the Royal Exchange, occupied all five floors of one of the city’s neoclassical buildings. It was not the architecture that caught the attention of passers-by, though, but the two shallow windows in which were displayed a few of the many bibliographical treasures that Shelby’s had for sale.

  Dressing the windows was a task that Mr Robert Shelby, the junior partner, had allocated to Rosalind Conway. Sometimes she would stack the spaces with leather-bound sets, on other occasions with just a few handsome volumes laid on velvet cloth. Price tickets were never attached, only a simple description of the items written on postcards in the clear copperplate script that Rosie had perfected. She enjoyed dressing windows and didn’t object in the least when cocky young stockbrokers or insurance clerks loitered outside to ogle her while she worked. She would give them a smile, sometimes a wink but always modestly ensured that she wasn’t giving them an eyeful of her knickers as well. Her main occupation was that of research cataloguer and she spent most of her time hunched behind a long table in an alcove at the rear of the ground-floor book room. She had received her training from Mr Albert Briggs who was almost as old as the building itself, though in recent years Albert’s eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he could hardly see print at all and Rosie did all the manuscript work and most of the typing.

  Rosie had no brothers and had never known her father. The men who had most influenced her were not blood relatives, not Conways or McKerlies but Bernard, Mr Albert and, of course, Mr Feldman at the Institute where she’d been schooled. As a teenager she’d moped over Mr Robert Shelby and imagined that he would eventually fall in love with her but it didn’t take long to discover that love does not conquer all and when Mr Robert married an English debutante Rosie was more relieved than disappointed.

  On the table were a pile of books that Rosie had lugged up from the basement last thing on Saturday, choice items from the library of the late Sheriff of Golspie. She laid out her sheaf of lined foolscap, filled the inkwells, renewed the blotting-paper and had just picked out a first edition of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France when the bell above the main door chimed.

  ‘That,’ said Mr Albert, ‘sounds like your young man again.’

  Rosie frowned. Mr Albert, arms folded, calmly puffed his pipe. She didn’t have to ask how he knew who had entered the shop when he couldn’t see further than the tip of his nose for she had an odd, almost supernatural sixth sense when it came to picking up sounds that her ears could not hear.

  ‘Is it him?’ said Albert.

  Rosie peeped over the partition.

  ‘It’s him,’ she said, trying to
whisper.

  ‘Where’s Gannon?’

  Gannon, now in his twenties, was the shop-boy. He should have been dusting counters and display cases and generally keeping an eye on the book room while Mr McAdam, the department manager, spent his usual twenty minutes in the water closet attending to a call of nature and completing the Glasgow Herald crossword. Gannon, though, was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Your young man’s either a shoplifter,’ Albert said, ‘or he’s after somebody. Who could he be after, I wonder?’

  ‘Gannon perhaps?’ Rosie struggled to keep her voice down.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Albert said. ‘If anyone ever comes for Gannon it’ll be in a Black Maria. Now, do you want me to hoist my poor old bones…’

  ‘I will go and see what he wants,’ said Rosie. ‘If I cannot make out what he is saying I will come and fetch you.’

  ‘You’ll make out what he’s saying, I’m sure.’

  Albert returned the pipe to his mouth, leaned back and folded his arms as Rosie darted out from behind the desk before Gannon could appear and spoil everything. She put on her best ‘Babs’ walk, chest out and hips swaying. Unfortunately she didn’t have Babs’s figure but she was more graceful than her middle sister and hoped that might compensate. She had met the young man several times before, which is to say that he was on his way to becoming a regular. There were a dozen like him, though not so attractive, men who would drop by to chat to Rosie and who made nothing out of her deafness. They were bookworms, however; clearly the young man was not. He seemed uncomfortable in the book room, as if fearful that the shelves might collapse or the stately glass-fronted cases crack if he trod too heavily on the carpeted floor.

  ‘Good morning, Mr MacGregor,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘You are the early bird, are you not?’

  A pinkish flush spread across his broad cheeks. He considered resting an elbow on the surface of a Globe bookcase but decided against it. He stuck his hands in his overcoat pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. He wore black polished shoes with thick soles.

  Rosie watched his lips move: ‘I’ve an hour to spare so I thought…’

  ‘What better way to spend it than browsing among old books?’

  ‘Aye – yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosie. ‘I was hoping you had popped in to see me.’

  ‘Oh, I did. I mean … I have.’

  Rosie could do little to control the pitch of her voice. To compensate she had perfected the art of body language and could convey much by a wave of the hand or a tilt of the eyebrow. ‘Is there something in particular you are after?’

  ‘I’ve something I’d like you to look at.’ He fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat and drew out a brown-paper packet. ‘I wonder if it’s got any value.’

  Rosie hid her disappointment and took the packet. What worthless ‘treasure’ had he unearthed from a hall cupboard or from his old grandmother’s dresser drawer, she wondered. She gave him a professional smile.

  ‘I am not a valuator. Mr Robert is our valuator.’

  ‘Still,’ the young man said, ‘I’d like you to look at it first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you never know. You might have seen it before.’

  She felt a sudden stiffening inside herself. Last time they had chatted he had mentioned that he knew her brother-in-law, dropping Dominic’s name so casually into the conversation that she’d made little of it, just enough to prompt her to ask Bernard about Dominic’s present circumstances. She hadn’t forgotten the sort of men who’d hung about the Ferryhead Rowing Club, though Mr MacGregor didn’t look at all like one of Dominic’s runners. Besides if Dominic had an item – a stolen item – that he wanted valued she was the last person he’d send it to. She placed the packet on top of the bookcase and peeled off the brown-paper wrappings.

  As soon as the little volume was exposed Rosie’s demeanour changed. She lifted the book carefully on the flat of her hand and opened it at the title-page.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ Mr MacGregor said.

  Although he was standing close by, she heard his question as a faint bumble-bee drone that had no meaning whatsoever. She did not ask him to repeat himself.

  She studied the book’s title-page, turned the pages with her forefinger and examined the red and black type, red-ruled margins and stunning woodcuts.

  He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing her ear.

  ‘Can you read what it says?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie answered. ‘Heures à la Louange de la Vierge Marie.’

  She pronounced the French words badly but she didn’t think Mr MacGregor would notice.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Hours in Praise of the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘It is a prayer book.’

  She turned the book over and opened it at the back page.

  ‘Ex libris Augusti le Chevalier,’ she read aloud.

  He pointed. ‘Is that a date?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred and twenty-five. Paris – for Geofroy de Bourges.’

  ‘Wow! It’s old, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for a prayer book,’ Rosie told him. ‘An early date does not give it value.’

  ‘What’s it worth?’ Mr MacGregor said. ‘Approximately.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  She continued to turn pages, counting the woodcuts, checking seaming and pagination: no shaving of the margins, the binding tight: an almost perfect copy of a choice item. Even so, holding the little volume gave her a queer feeling that something wasn’t quite right about it.

  ‘It is valuable, though, isn’t it?’ the young man said.

  She could sense his urgency; perhaps he was one of Dominic’s cronies and the choice little item had been stolen.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Just wait right here.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To find Mr Shelby.’

  ‘For – what for?’

  ‘To make you an offer.’

  ‘An offer, but…’

  She glanced up the length of the shop in the hope that Gannon or Mr McAdam had returned to the floor. She thought of calling out to Albert but Albert was too old and frail to protect her if the thief decided to cut up rough.

  She kept calm and said, ‘I thought you wanted to sell it.’

  ‘No, I only want it valued.’

  ‘What for? Insurance?’

  ‘Look, just tell me – have you seen that book before?’

  ‘Never,’ said Rosie. ‘It is quite a rare item, I think.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure nobody has ever shown you this book?’

  ‘You mean somebody like my brother-in-law?’

  ‘Your brother-in-law?’

  ‘Dominic Manone. He sent you, did he not?’

  ‘He’s the last person who’d send me,’ Mr MacGregor said.

  For a moment Rosie thought he was about to snatch the prayer book from her hands and make a break for it. She pulled the volume to her breast and followed the movement of his lips anxiously.

  ‘Knew I shouldn’t have come,’ he murmured. ‘Rotten idea in the first place.’

  ‘Idea? Whose idea? Dominic’s idea?’ Rosie said loudly.

  ‘You’re going upstairs to telephone the police, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am going to show the book to Mr Shelby.’

  He leaned against the bookcase and fumbled with the buttons at the breast of his coat. Rosie was suddenly afraid. She remembered O’Hara, Dominic’s persuader, his razors, his knives. The bluff young man with the curly fair hair and frank open face might be an up-to-date version of the same vicious breed.

  She opened her mouth to shout for Albert, but no sound emerged, then she was staring at a card that had appeared in the young man’s hand. He held it out to her like a badge. It wasn’t a badge, however, just a card, open like a little pageless book. She saw the words City of Glasgow Police, red-letter stamping, a name printed
beneath a signature: Kenneth Robert MacGregor.

  ‘Yuh – yuh – you’re a policeman,’ Rosie stammered.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I am,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Rosie, and puffed out her cheeks in relief.

  Chapter Three

  The decor of the Athena Hotel did not impress Dominic Manone. There was too much steel and mirrored glass, too many bars and elevators and circular corridors and the pale mock-marble staircases reminded him of nothing so much as great frozen blocks of vanilla ice-cream, all too self-consciously modern and arty for his taste. He ate lunch there with Victor Shadwell from time to time only because Victor liked to appear up to date, though in fact the accountant would probably have been more at home in the Rowing Club than in the cold neon glare of the Athena’s bar and grill. He crossed the lobby, presented himself at the reception desk and asked for Mr Harker. He expected to be directed to the coffee lounge or one of the bars. Instead he was given a room number and told to go straight up to the ninth floor.

  The elevator was vast, fast, and empty. It discharged him into a featureless corridor of pale blue carpet that curved around the north side of the building. From the little windows he could look out at nothing but sky. He followed the numbers around the bend then ahead of him saw a rectangle of light and standing out in the corridor, arm raised in welcome, Edgar Harker wearing a pair of pale green flannel trousers and a turkey-red sweater.

  ‘Dom,’ he called out, ‘come away with you, come on in. Found us okay?’ He ushered Dominic into the suite with a vigorous handshake and a slap on the back.

  Four close-set windows defined the shape of the building and under them, bathed in icy November light, was a black leather sofa, and on the sofa was the girl.

  She seemed, Dominic thought, to need that amount of space to accommodate her long slender legs and long-waisted body. She wore a tailored suit in charcoal grey and a white shirt-blouse with a frothy lace collar, jet black patent leather shoes. Her arms were extended along the back of the sofa, long, long arms with the longest most delicate hands Dominic had ever seen. Her head was tilted to one side, a strand of gleaming golden hair dangling over one eye. She gave a little shake of her shoulders and looked up at him, not sweetly but with a kind of taunting mockery.