A Glasgow Trilogy

by George Friel

  ‘Well, I’m Mr Phinn if you like,’ he offered, prepared to sacrifice himself to save his boys.

  ‘I don’t like,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Ye’ll jist have to like it I’m afraid,’ Percy said bravely, but he felt his belly trembling and his left leg was quivering, ‘there’s no other Phinn about here. What Mr Phinn do you mean?’

  ‘Who’s the janitor in that school there?’ the stranger asked, and thrust his head towards the building behind Percy.

  ‘Oh, you mean him?’ said Percy, and sagged in relief. Nobody could question the dead. ‘That was my father so it was. Is that who you mean?’

  ‘Well, what do you mean there’s no Mr Phinn here?’ the stranger demanded irritably. ‘Has he been shifted? You’re after saying your father’s here. Do you mean he’s been shifted?’

  ‘No, he’s no’ been shifted, but he’s no’ here now,’ Percy said brightly. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ the stranger whispered, his face so close to Percy’s that they looked like two Eskimoes making love.

  ‘What would I be kidding for?’ Percy answered indignantly. ‘I wouldn’t be kidding about a thing like that, would I? I can show you his grave if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ said the stranger and bowed his head in grief.

  Percy was impressed by the piety of the ejaculation.

  ‘Did you know my father?’ he asked tenderly.

  They stood looking at each other under the single gas- lamp in the drab lonely alley called Tulip Place by a poetic Town Council, and the summer twilight gathered into darkness.

  ‘Naw, I never knew him,’ said the stranger impatiently, then slowed to a fonder utterance. ‘Och aye, I knew him well.’

  ‘I see,’ said Percy uneasily.

  ‘You see that door there, does that door lead to a cellar?’ the stranger asked, jabbing a finger abruptly at the scarred door across the pavement.

  ‘Oh aye, that was for the coal,’ said Percy. ‘But it’s never used now.’

  ‘You’ve got a key for it, have you no’?’ the stranger said with a smile so ingratiating that it put Percy in a new panic.

  ‘Oh no,’ he disclaimed hastily. ‘That door’s never used now, it was for the coal you see, but you see they don’t use the boilers now, cause it’s all electric, so there’s no key for it, ye canna get in that way at all, it’s no’ a door really, it’s all bricked up inside, so you see a key’s no use. Because of the bricks. Ye canna get in that way. It’s all bricked up.’

  ‘You mean it’s bricked up?’ the stranger glowered. ‘Then how do you get in? Tell me that!’

  ‘Well, there’s a door in the basement,’ Percy admitted, ‘in the school I mean, but it’s never used, you see, and nobody’s got a key to it. You see it’s no’ a cellar now, it’s just a rubbish dump and nobody has ever any call to go in there, and it’s overrun wi’ rats, you see.’

  ‘I see,’ the stranger said patiently. ‘Did your father ever mention any of his pals to you, doing a favour for them like, you know? Did you know your Uncle Sammy?’

  Before Percy could decide on the best answer they heard someone plodding along Bethel Street. They turned together in alarm and looked at the corner. A policeman was passing on patrol. Percy knew him. It was Constable Knox, the local bobby who had often taken a wee rest in the cellar in the old days and had a cup of tea with his father. He raised a hand in greeting as Constable Knox passed and the policeman acknowledged it with a nod so dignified it was almost imperceptible. Then when he turned again to cope with the stranger Percy found he was alone. He was just in time to catch a glimmer of a raincoat scurrying through the close on the other side of Tulip Place. He set his motor-bike safely against the kerb and galloped home on a wild bronco of alarm.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He made quite sure the stranger wasn’t in Tulip Place or Bethel Street the following night before he went down to the cellar by the side door. He was glad it was a Friday night, for that meant every member of the Brotherhood would be present to attend the Friday Night Service. He had taught them to refer to it as the FNS, and they were drilled to accept the penalty of forfeiting a week’s money if they missed it. He let them in cautiously, opening the door no wider than was needed to admit a sidling entrance, and after the Creed and the hymn, before they came forward in single file for the share-out, he made a little speech. It was understood that any announcements he had to make would be made between the singing of the hymn and the distribution of the grace of El, so when the choir had finished the hymn and the campanologist had rung the bell three times to emphasize the end of that part of the service, he stood before Miss Elginbrod’s chair and addressed them solemnly with the scarf of a Rangers’ supporter draped round his shoulders like a stole.

  ‘I’ve got an important announcement to let yous know,’ he said, and looked from left to right and back to front before going on. He had read that a pause could be used with great effect in public speaking, a pause and a look, so he paused and he looked. There was silence. Gratified by the hush he went on. ‘The holy sanctuary of El is in danger from the prying nose of a stranger. An enemy. Yous all know that in this world which is a vale of tears we are continuously besieged by enemies seeking for to devour us. El is ours and we are El’s and it’s our duty to behave so as to keep it that way. Now you have got to be told that just the other night, not far from this place where we meet to pay our respects to El, I was detained by a man who was certainly a spy sent here by them we’ve got to beware of. He proclaimed for to have knew my father but he made a strong depression on me of having an interest in how to get in here. So if yous ever see a bowly-legged man anywhere in Tulip Place or Bethel Street yous is not to knock at the door. Wait till he goes away. And if he doesn’t go away don’t come anywhere near the door. He only wants to find the way in, and if he ever does we’ve all had it. You know what happened to the Incas of Peru when the Spaniards discovered Montezuma’s treasure.’

  They didn’t, but the way he said it made them understand it wasn’t a good thing for Montezuma.

  Savage lurched from squatting at the right foot of the Regent Supreme, bowed insolently to the Brotherhood, and turned half-right to speak to the chair.

  ‘What should we no’ come in by the door in the basement then for?’ he asked. ‘There’s nobody could see us that way if we came in through the playground and went down to the basement.’

  ‘Of course you would be seen,’ Percy said impatiently. ‘Yous would have to go in by the main gate, wouldn’t you? And yous would have to cross the playground right in front of the janny’s house. He’d be bound to see you. It’s no’ dark till after eleven o’clock these nights. Or else he’d hear you. I know. I lived there long enough. Just take my word for it if you don’t believe me. And anyway the door in the basement’s kept locked. The new janny keeps it locked. And I never managed to get a key for it. So you see you just couldna get in that way. And even if you could you would never manage it, no’ without getting caught.’

  ‘Aw, I see,’ said Savage, and squatted with such a pleased smile that Percy was puzzled. And being puzzled he worried.

  But it was time to go on with the business of the evening and he let Savage rest. He stood before the first of the three tea-chests, signalled the campanologist by making the sign of El in mid-air, and when the bell had been rung the Brotherhood came forward to the chest and knelt down to whisper their request.

  ‘Four fivers,’ said Noddy, making the required sign on his brow as he humbly knelt at Percy’s large crepe-soled shoes.

  Percy frowned. How quickly times had changed since they were content to ask for a small sum for a particular purpose! Now they asked for an absurd amount and never thought of telling him what they wanted it for. They had panted through an orgy of spending, asking for things instead of money. And he had agreed. He had even been their errand-boy. That was his mistake. He saw it too late, and stood frowning at Noddy in disapproval. This was a new phase. T
hey had tired of buying things they couldn’t use and couldn’t hide. Now they wanted money again, not for anything special but just to have the money itself as power in their pocket. He had given in to them too long, he had let the gentlemen’s agreement lapse. It was high time he made a stand.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s far too-too much for you. You just want it. You don’t want it for anything.’

  ‘I do,’ said Noddy. ‘I’m saving up for a piano.’

  ‘And where would you put a piano if you had one?’ Percy demanded. ‘You’d have the whole street talking. You’ll get one, and like it.’

  ‘One fiver,’ said Noddy humbly.

  ‘One single,’ said Percy meanly, and handed him it.

  Noddy took the pound without arguing, but he muttered behind Percy’s back. Savage listened to him. Savage courted him.

  ‘Are you saving up hard?’ he asked Noddy on the stairs the next morning. They lived up the same close.

  Noddy nodded. He wasn’t given to saying much.

  ‘It’ll take you a long time to get enough for a piano at Percy’s rate,’ he suggested.

  ‘Aye, so it will,’ said Noddy neutrally.

  ‘And if ye’re saving up what are you doing for spending- money?’ Savage asked sympathetically.

  Noddy brought his shoulders up to his ears and showed off two black-palmed hands. He said nothing to mean nothing.

  ‘Here I’ll give you a few bob for spending,’ Savage said, lording it over the dumb urchin, and gave him two ten- shilling notes. ‘Percy isn’t the only prophet of the great god El, ye know. Just you see me tonight at seven outside the pictures and I’ll give you something to help to get your piano.’

  He gave him twenty pounds. He had been entering the cellar secretly at midnight for a week past and taking away money in handfuls from the third and last of the tea- chests, the one that was stowed away in the farthest corner of the rat-wall, the chest Percy seemed to think would do for their old age. Some of the money he hid up the chimney in the back room of his house, where a gas-fire had been fitted into the place once filled by the cradle for a coal fire. Some of it he hid inside the derelict air-raid shelter, built before he was born and never pulled down, that filled the hinterland of the tenement where he lived. Some of it he hid on the roof of a glue-factory where the gutter came within reach of the flat top of the washhouse in the back-court. Some of it he put inside an old pair of wellingtons under his bed and stuffed sheets of newspaper on top of it. He was careful never to carry much of it about with him, but he had between four and five hundred pounds he could get at quickly, and he set himself up as a rival to Percy. He liked giving money away. It made him feel big.

  Noddy put the twenty pounds into his own hoard, and kept the two ten-shilling notes in his pocket as spending money. He was delighted with them, so delighted that he had no desire to spend them. Two bits of paper were twice as good as one, and he valued Savage’s gift of the two half- notes more than he valued Percy’s donation of a single pound. The ten-shilling notes were beautiful. He would sit looking at them, marvelling at the curly lines round the heading, Bank of England, and puzzling over the words ‘Promise to pay the Bearer on Demand the sum of Ten Shillings’, with more curly lines round the last line. What did it mean, Promise to pay Ten Shillings, when this bit of russet and dirty-white paper was itself ten shillings? He stared hard at the seated lady on the left with a long pole in her hand and wondered who she was. And beneath her was a long number and beneath the number there were the words Ten Shillings in a frame with curly lines all round it. Up at the right there was the same number, and a fancy design with 10 Shillings in the centre. On the back, inside a lot of feathers or dead leaves, it said 10/- twice. So there was no doubt it was ten shillings. Then why promise to pay ten shillings for it? Or what was ‘on demand’? It hypnotized him. Probably no one had ever looked so long and so hard and so often at a mere ten shilling note as Noddy did that weekend.

  He was still at it when he was back at school on the Monday. He had one of them under the desk when Jasper was at the board trying to teach the division of fractions.

  ‘Three-quarters divided by one-half equals three over four multiplied by two over one,’ he jabbered, scribbling with the chalk as he went through it, ‘equals six over four equals one and a half.’

  He turned to look at his class. They were staring at the blackboard with a glazed look, stunned, stupefied and speechless, all except Noddy. His eyes were equally glazed, but not at the four-line transmutation of three- quarters into one and a half. He was admiring one of his ten-shilling notes.

  Silent in his rubber-soled shoes, Jasper prowled over to the faraway boy. He wore rubber soles as an economy measure, for on his salary he couldn’t afford two pairs of shoes and a motor-bike as well. He was a poor man. Noddy hadn’t heard a word of the gabble at the blackboard, but now he heard the silence and looked up sharply to see what was wrong. He was too late. Jasper pounced.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he breathed in horror, holding the note reverently by the corner while Noddy cowered, fretting the fingers of his empty hands.

  ‘It’s no’ mines,’ he answered swiftly.

  ‘Go and stand in the corner, Mann,’ said Jasper. ‘Mines is things you go down. Coal mines, copper mines, gold mines. The correct possessive pronoun is mine. I’m sick and tired telling you that. I might as well talk to a brick wall.’

  Noddy exasperated him much as Percy had exasperated Miss Elginbrod half a dozen years earlier. He couldn’t help picking on Noddy, the boy pulled at him like a magnet. He pushed him into the corner with his face against the wall, and snorted at him, ‘Hum! Hm! Mann! Some man!’

  And then he said, as he had said so often before, for Noddy had an ugly face with a broad flat nose and a scowl like Beethoven’s, ‘You’re no more like a man than a monkey.’

  He stood behind the boy, turning the note over and over. It seemed real all right. He was taken by a sudden anger that this unwashed urchin should have ten bob in the middle of the month when he himself hadn’t much more.

  ‘There’s something fishy about this and I’m going to find out what it is. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Found it,’ said Noddy, over his shoulder.

  ‘Where?’ Jasper asked, caressing his blue chin between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Forget,’ Noddy said in a half-hearted whisper.

  Jasper brought the headmaster into it. Mr Daunders was an experienced man. He had a talent for questioning pupils who were found with more money than they could reasonably be expected to have. The school was full of midgie-rakers, petty thieves, pickpockets, raiders of their mothers’ lean purse, breakers of gas-meters, milk-round embezzlers, robbers of weans sent on a shopping errand. What else could you expect in a Glasgow slum where the buildings had been condemned thirty years ago and were still standing as warrens where smalltime criminals pro- liferated?

  ‘Leave him to me,’ he told Jasper. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this.’

  So Noddy stood on the strip of carpet in front of the headmaster’s desk, and the headmaster sat behind the desk and played with a bone paper-knife. The offending ten- shilling note flat in front of him, Mr Daunders looked calmly and benignly at the suspect. He saw an undersized boy wearing a ragged grey jersey and torn jeans tucked into a pair of wellingtons, a flattened, frightened dirty face and dark eyes as uncommunicative as the eyes of a wild animal.

  ‘That’s far too much money for a wee boy like you to be carrying about,’ he began pleasantly. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Mamurrer,’ Noddy mumbled.

  ‘Your mother gave you it?’ Mr Daunders interpreted. Noddy nodded.

  ‘Why?’ said Mr Daunders.

  ‘Go a message,’ said Noddy.

  ‘What were you to get?’

  Mr Daunders asked.

  ‘Forget,’ said Noddy.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘And where were you to go for this message?’

  ‘Doh-no,
’ said Noddy.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘Your mother gave you ten shillings to get something you’ve forgotten in a shop you don’t know. That’s not a very good answer, young man. Now just tell me the truth.’

  ‘Muncle gay me it,’ Noddy offered.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mr Daunders.

  ‘For ma birthday,’ said Noddy.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders. He drew open a card-index box at his right hand, flicked to Mann, Nicholas and took out the card. ‘And when did your uncle give you this rather generous birthday present?’

  ‘Lass night,’ said Noddy.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders. He waved the index card gently. ‘And can you tell me why your uncle should give you ten shillings for your birthday last night when your birthday was five months ago?’

  Noddy couldn’t. He said nothing.

  ‘Did he forget about you for five months?’ Mr Daunders asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Noddy whispered respectfully. Mr Daunders sighed.

  ‘No, I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth yet,’ he said sadly. ‘Now I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m not saying you stole this money, I’m not saying a thing against you. I just don’t believe you’re telling me the whole truth. I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t make inquiries when a boy is found playing in class with a ten-shilling note he can’t explain how he got.’

  Noddy clenched his toes inside his wellingtons and said nothing.

  ‘All right,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘Suppose it was your uncle. Is that your father’s brother or your mother’s brother?’

  ‘Ma murrer’s,’ said Noddy. He hadn’t seen his father for a couple of years. His mother always visited Barlinnie alone.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘Then what you’re saying is that Mr Mann gave you ten shillings for your birthday five months late. Well, better late than never. Is that right?’

  Noddy granted the point with another nod.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Mr Daunders asked. ‘Quite sure?’ Noddy nodded.