Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘So what do I do when the paper supply dries up.’

  ‘We ship you another batch,’ said Harker. ‘Same quality.’

  ‘If it’s coming in from abroad, from Italy,’ Dominic paused, ‘or Germany…’

  ‘It ain’t comin’ in from anywhere,’ said Harker. ‘It’s here, a ton of it, all you’ll ever need. Signed in and stored away in a nice, dry, rodent-proof warehouse. You think your old man would risk having an expensive cargo of manufactured paper confiscated at the ports or, worse, turned back like an Italian coal ship?’

  ‘So,’ Dominic said, ‘I make, you distribute.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

  ‘Where do I deliver?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Flint said. ‘I collect.’

  ‘You collect.’

  ‘Sure,’ Edgar Harker said. ‘Sweet, ain’t it?’

  ‘I don’t see what’s so damned sweet about it,’ Dominic said. ‘You expect me to stand back and watch a hundred thousand pounds in doctored fivers sail away in the back of one of Flint’s vans every month, then hang around waiting for you to tell me how much – or how little – I’m going get for it. I’m already out twenty-eight hundred in basic expenses.’

  ‘Take it off the top then,’ Flint said.

  ‘Is that what you’ve been promised?’ Dominic said. ‘A cut off the top?’

  ‘Naw, that ain’t what Johnny’s been promised,’ Harker said, a faint threatening snarl in his voice. ‘We hand you a goddamn money-mill, son, an’ you have the bloody gall to bicker about twenty-eight hundred.’

  Dominic held up a hand placatingly.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’

  Harker stroked his moustache with bridged fingers and smiled broadly, showing the twisted scar and worn teeth. ‘Aye, you’re Carlo’s boy, sure enough,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d no balls at all but I should’ve known better.’ He chuckled, shook his head. ‘I figured you’d quibble when it came to it, though, so I’m gonna make you a better offer.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Dominic.

  ‘Five per cent face value on every cargo.’

  ‘Five thousand a month ain’t hay, Dominic,’ Johnny Flint reminded him.

  ‘You gear up to a higher production rate,’ Edgar Harker said, ‘we can cope with that. You make it, we take it, you get more moolah.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I offered those terms in the first place?’

  ‘I thought you were,’ Edgar Harker said, shrugging. ‘Must’ve been a breakdown in communications somewhere along the line. Happens.’

  ‘All right,’ said Dominic again. ‘Five per cent of face value is…’

  ‘Generous, Dom, generous,’ Johnny Flint put in.

  ‘… acceptable,’ Dominic said. ‘Tell me, who pays the girl?’

  ‘I do,’ Edgar Harker said.

  ‘She’s thinks I’m her paymaster,’ Dominic said.

  ‘She can think what she bloody-well likes,’ Edgar Harker said. ‘She’ll get her rake-off from me. Nobody else.’

  ‘Is that all she’ll get from you?’ Dominic said.

  ‘None of your goddamned business, son,’ said Edgar Harker. ‘Five thousand pounds clean cash money in your hot wee hand every calendar month, that’s your business. That’s the offer I’m empowered to make. Now, no more stupid questions, Have we got a deal, or haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got a deal,’ said Dominic and, sliding on a satisfactory smile, shook Harker’s outstretched hand.

  * * *

  It was long after Lizzie’s usual time to sleep, but she could not shut an eye. She was worried about Bernard who had been so morose and uncommunicative these past few days that she felt alienated from his affections, though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what she’d done to offend him.

  ‘It is not you, Mammy,’ Rosie assured her. ‘Bernard is mad at me for falling for a policeman. But I am not going to stop seeing Kenny, no matter how much Bernard sulks.’

  Her daughter’s explanation did seem logical, particularly as Bernard and Rosie no longer walked to the railway station together and one or other would contrive an excuse for leaving early. They barely spoke now and at meal times it was left to Lizzie to scrape the bones of conversations that died in vexatious little grunts or stone-cold silences.

  The situation had become worse in the past couple of days. Bernard hadn’t come home until after nine o’clock and had smelled of drink.

  ‘Did you go for a dram with Mr Shakespeare, dearest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just thought I smelled…’

  ‘If I want to go for a dram with Shakespeare then I will.’

  ‘Bernard, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.’

  Lizzie had no wish to turn into a nag and did not press him further. When he pushed away most of his dinner and refused his pudding, however, she began to fear that he was ill with some dreadful disease that he was keeping from her. Convinced that she had uncovered the truth, she lay awake in bed at night, listening intently to the sound of his breathing, waiting, really, for it to stop.

  When she tried to hug him he pretended to be asleep and lay stiff as an ironing-board beside her or uttered a painful groan and rolled away from her, so far away that he was left hanging half out of the bed.

  Alone in the house during the day, Lizzie frequently dissolved in tears.

  She was even tempted to make the long journey across the city to call on Polly or on Babs but it wasn’t just the river that separated her from her daughters now; the style in which they lived, their sophisticated acceptance of things that frightened her made it difficult for her to confide in them. She didn’t want them to think that Mammy had turned soft in her old age. Besides, what did she really have to complain about; that Bernard was sulking; that Bernard might be ill? How daft those reasons seemed, how feeble. She had no proof that he was ill, only a paralysing anxiety that her silly hunch might actually turn out to be accurate.

  Nights were the worst. He and she lay side by side, not daring to hug and cuddle, jerking away when a knee brushed a hip or toes touched as if any sort of contact between them might prove to be contagious.

  Lizzie crouched on her side, a pillow stuffed under her shoulder so that her head was raised up enough to allow her to look at the darkened ceiling instead of the darkened wall; the house so quiet that she could hear ash falling in the grate and now and then the hum of a late-night bus speeding past on the Anniesland Road.

  She listened anxiously to Bernard’s breathing, heard him sigh, then, shockingly, sob: one sob, like a raindrop, falling into the silence, then another and, loudly now, another. Suddenly her man, her tower of strength, was sobbing fit to burst. She rolled towards him at the same moment as he turned to her. Their arms tangled under the bedclothes and she found him, gathered him, shaking, into her embrace and pressed his lean body against her breasts to absorb his misery.

  ‘Bernard,’ Lizzie said, beginning to cry too. ‘Oh, Bernard, Bernard, will you not tell me what ails you?’

  ‘I’m frightened, Lizzie. I’m so frightened.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dearest, please tell me what you’re frightened of?’

  ‘Everything,’ Bernard said.

  She was overwhelmed by relief that she was not the reason for her husband’s tears and believed she understood: he was worn out, poor lamb, tormented by worry about the possibility of war: that must be it, and that must be all.

  Sighing, Lizzie drew him closer, almost enveloping him. She kissed and patted and hugged him, his head upon her breast, soothing him as if he were a child to whom the world meant nothing, nothing but a mother’s love:

  Until, exhausted by her many attentions, poor Bernard fell asleep.

  * * *

  The shop was busy that brusque early spring afternoon and even Albert had been routed from his bunker in the alcove to attend to casual customers. Mr McAdam and Mr Robert had gone off to a house sale in Jefferstone where there were many lots in the
library and not much time to price up the catalogue. There had been problems in the packing department and an unusually heavy lunch-time post had come down from the secretary’s office upstairs and Rosie had been co-opted to type out letters of quotation.

  She was more than up to the task, of course, and had been distracted from her own concerns by a beautiful three-volume edition of Ackerman’s Microcosm of London, with all one hundred and four coloured plates intact, which Brentano’s had expressed an interest in buying.

  She had lunched in that day, nibbling a sausage roll and drinking tea in the bleak little staff room in the basement while the packing department lads squabbled and swore and pranced in and out just to annoy her. She had eaten in yesterday and the day before too. It had been over a week since Kenny had appeared at the shop, over a week since they had shared a plate of macaroni-and-cheese in the Lido Café, over a week since she had heard a word from him.

  Common sense told her that Kenny was busy, just busy, that awkward shifts and a full card of crimes had taken him away from her. Common sense also indicated that things between them were not as they had been before Christmas, however, and that now Kenny was practically her fiancé she deserved a little more consideration in the shape of a telephone call or a letter of explanation or apology. She was both annoyed and deeply concerned, panic-stricken in fact, at the prospect of never seeing Kenny again.

  Common sense, a quisling virtue at the best of times, finally betrayed her. She was filled with not unrealistic imaginings that Kenny had decided to give her up rather than risk the wrath of his superiors in St Andrew’s Street and that this was his cowardly way of waving bye-bye: or that he had discovered just how closely her sisters were involved in unimaginable crimes: or that he had finally realised that her deafness was an impediment that he didn’t want to live with for the rest of his life, signing and stammering and being embarrassed by her shouting out in public, and that he didn’t have the heart to tell her so face to face.

  Even while she typed letters of quotation she felt helpless and abandoned and filled with self-pity, so much so that she didn’t see Albert pad back into the alcove and pick up his pipe from the ashtray and almost jumped out of her skin when he put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘If,’ Albert said, ‘you’re going to start cryin’ lass, I think it might be an idea not to do it all over the Rowlandson plates.’

  He fished in his breast pocket and found a clean if crumpled handkerchief, handed it to her, watched her blow her nose. He gave her a little pat on the shoulder and drawing his chair closer, seated himself by her side.

  ‘Is it him? Have you heard from him?’

  ‘Nuh-no, I huh-have not heard from him. Tha-ut’s the trouble.’

  ‘Bit early for a broken heart, though,’ Albert said.

  ‘Yuh-you don’t understand.’

  ‘Strange to relate, Rosie, I’ve had my share o’ broken hearts,’ Albert said. ‘Long years ago, admittedly, but I can still remember how it hurt. When did you see him last?’

  ‘Nine days ago.’

  ‘Did you quarrel?’

  ‘Nuh-nothing like that.’

  ‘Then he’s just busy.’

  ‘He should have let me know. He should have been in touch.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Albert said. ‘Think on this, though: the tramlines run both ways.’

  ‘Pa’din?’

  ‘You haven’t been in touch with him, have you?’ Albert said. Rosie wiped her cheeks with her knuckle, blew her nose once more and offered the handkerchief back to Albert. He shook his head. ‘Keep it. I’ve another one at home. Now, answer my question, Rosalind? Have you let him know?’

  ‘Whuh-what?’

  ‘That you miss him. Why haven’t you written to him?’

  ‘It’s not up to me. I’m a girl.’

  ‘So what?’ said Albert.

  ‘Albert! I’m surprised at you!’ Rosie said, more cheerfully. ‘I thought you were still opposed to women having the vote. The fact of the matter is that I do not have Kenny’s address.’

  Albert smote his forehead with his palm forcefully enough to create a resounding smack that Rosie, of course, could not hear. She could read his expression, however, and exasperation was evident in his gesture.

  ‘Call yourself a researcher,’ Albert said. ‘By gum, if Kenny was a copy of First Principles you’d find him fast enough, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘But I do not know where to begin?’

  ‘Try the Post Office Directory,’ said Albert.

  * * *

  There had been a special assembly in the police Gymnasium that afternoon which all ranks had been ordered to attend. The meeting had been addressed by no less a person than the Surgeon General, Sir James Wilkie, who had travelled from London to deliver a series of illustrated lectures on the organisation of air raid casualty services. Coloured slides depicted the effects of gas attack and the emergency treatment of victims in such grisly detail that several young constables were swaying in their seats and even Kenny, who had seen more than his fair share of charred and dismembered corpses, had had to lower his gaze a couple of times.

  Among the civilian personnel only Fiona remained unfazed. Her blue eyes never left the screen for she found the graphic horrors more fascinating than shocking and couldn’t wait to leap into a Civil Defence Volunteer uniform and begin saving lives.

  At the end of the two-hour ordeal off-shift officers sidled away to wait for the pubs opening and those on-shift galloped along to the canteen for a reviving cuppa before reassembling in the muster room. Kenny would have prefered to leave with Fiona, for the lecture had depressed him. He had been summoned to Inspector Winstock’s office to explain his recent failure to pull his weight, however, and trudged gloomily up the stone staircase and into the long corridor where the cupboard-sized offices of senior inspectors rubbed shoulders with the registration and licensing departments.

  Winstock was already slumped in a wooden chair, smoking furiously.

  He looked rumpled, his complexion ashen. Tell-tale stains of milky fluid at the corner of his mouth indicated that he had been tippling from a bottle of stomach medicine. His tongue, when he opened his mouth to speak, was pure white.

  ‘What did you think of that then?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Kenny answered.

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Well, disturbing might be a better way of putting it, sir.’

  ‘How did your sister take it?’

  ‘She loved it.’

  ‘Aye, she would,’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘I expect she’ll be off as soon as the whistle blows, off like all the rest of you, and I’ll be left here high an’ dry with a bunch of old men and cripples. Will you stay on in the Force when the war comes?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Winstock.’

  ‘Not you, Kenny,’ the inspector said. ‘You’ll go leaping into the cannon’s mouth first chance you get. God knows, son, you’re a Highlander and Highlanders are always spoiling for a fight. The real battle won’t be out there in Flanders, though. The real battle will be right here on our streets.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Winstock.’

  ‘I mean it.’ He flicked a finger over the corner of his lips and removed the tell-tale stain. ‘There will be fire raining down from the skies and the dead piled up on the streets like rats.’ Kenny’s depression was no match for the inspector’s apocalyptic vision. ‘Anyway,’ Winstock went on, ‘the Chief Constable wants to know what we’re doing down in the basement, and since it’s my head on the block, it’s your head on the block too.’

  ‘Manone hasn’t turned up at the Athena again, sir.’

  ‘God Almighty! I know Manone hasn’t turned up at the Athena. Stone’s been squatting in the damned lobby for weeks, ogling the tarts and having a high old time. I’ve taken him out of there and put him in a radio van across the street from Tony Lombardi’s flat. And, guess what, Tony Lombardi’s also done a bunk, vamoosed, vanished into thin air.’

  ‘What about Dominic?’
>
  ‘Oh, aye, your friend Dominic,’ Inspector Winstock said. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your friend Dominic?’

  ‘Haven’t you read my report, sir?’

  ‘This?’ Winstock lifted a cardboard folder and shook it. ‘This is toilet paper, Sergeant. What’s more, you damned well know it’s toilet paper. If you don’t come through with something more valuable that this very soon then you’ll find yourself interrogating the Irish and running up closes in the Gorbals searching for detonators.’

  ‘I’ve been occupied with other cases.’

  ‘Ballocks! Half a dozen domestics. I’ve checked the log. Where’s Manone?’

  ‘At home, at the warehouse.’

  ‘Where’s Lombardi then? Where’s the blonde girl? Where’s bloody Edgar Harker who, incidentally, has a file as long as your arm with the Philadelphia police department? A file as long as your arm.’

  ‘Convictions?’

  ‘One assault charge three years ago. Dismissed.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant, that’s all.’

  Kenny tried to control his mounting panic. He was not intimidated by the inspector’s threats, though he knew his performance had been disappointing and that he deserved more than a verbal reprimand. He had been a good constable, an efficient and conscientious sergeant, had carved out a promising career as a detective. Now, at this moment, he was on the point of throwing it all away to satisfy an aspect of his character that he had never known existed.

  He had felt pity for the urchins in the streets, compassion for some women and men who were regarded as the dregs of society, but that was a general thing, finite and individual. What he felt for Rosie Conway was quite different.

  There was nothing in his experience to compare with it. If only his sister had been more – what? – human, perhaps, then he would have been able to ask her what to do about his troubled heart. But Fiona would only scoff at what she perceived as weakness. She had supported his unprofessional behaviour so far only because she was unclear precisely what or who the department was pursuing and because, he supposed, she loved him in her cold, clinical way. That situation wouldn’t last much longer. He had detected a look in her eye today, a passionate enthusiasm for engagement, for a war in which she could participate and not merely translate. He couldn’t depend on Fiona keeping quiet much longer.