by George Friel
‘But how could he be Mr Mann if he’s your mother’s brother?’ Mr Daunders asked softly.
The soil on Noddy’s plain cheeks was irrigated by two parallel streams.
‘Ah now, there’s no use crying,’ said Mr Daunders, a forefinger raised. ‘You tell the truth and you’ll have no need to cry. Once you tell me the truth you’ll have nothing to worry about.’
Noddy thrust one hand into the pocket of his jeans to grope for the other ten-shillings note and draw comfort through his finger tips from the touch of it.
‘Come, come,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘You don’t stand before your headmaster with your hand in your pocket. Stand up straight with your hands by your side.’
Then he saw something dart through Noddy’s alien eyes, a passing fear, a swift alarm, and the hand seemed unwilling to come out of the pocket. He saw he had missed a move.
‘Turn out your pockets,’ he said. ‘Let me see just what else you’re hiding.’
He sighed and tutted over the second ten-shilling note and put it on top of the first.
‘And who gave you this one?’ he asked wearily.
‘Ma murrer,’ said Noddy.
‘To get messages?’ Mr Daunders suggested.
Noddy agreed in his usual way.
‘And she gave you the other one too?’ Mr Daunders prompted. ‘Not your uncle, your mother. Your mother gave you them both?’
Noddy nodded.
‘But she’d already given you one ten-shilling note to get messages. Why did she give you two?’
‘Case Ah loast wan,’ Noddy tried bravely.
‘No’, said Mr Daunders. ‘That won’t do, Nicholas. I’m not saying you stole this money. But I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.’
‘Please sir, si truth,’ Noddy wept.
The interrogation went on from six minutes past eleven till seventeen minutes past twelve. But Noddy wouldn’t say Savage’s name, or Percy’s, or mention the cellar. He was bound by his oath, and he was more afraid of the consequences of breaking it than of Mr Daunders. If his arms were paralysed and withered and shrivelled and dropped off like the leaves from the trees in autumn he would never be able to play the piano. He might as well be dead as have no arms. Nothing Mr Daunders could do would be as bad as losing his arms. He prayed to El to give him strength and he called out to Percy in the lonely darkness of his soul, and he gave nothing away. Mr Daunders tied him in knots, unravelled them, and tied new ones. Noddy didn’t care. It always surprised him how grown-ups dug into a story that wasn’t worth listening to. He said he had saved the money, he said he had found it, he said his mother had given him it, he said his uncle had given him it, he said his mother had given him one note and his uncle the other, he said he had saved one and found one, he said a big boy who had left school had given him them to keep for him, but he didn’t know the big boy’s name, didn’t know where he lived, where he worked, or what school he had gone to. He said he had just happened to put his hands in his jeans and found the two notes that morning in class and he had no idea how they got there.
‘Two ten-shilling notes, that’s one pound,’ said Mr Daunders thoughtfully, smoothing the notes on his desk. ‘Well, I still think it’s a lot of money for a boy like you to be carrying about. Especially when you’re not very sure how you come to have so much.’
He stared hard at the ragged dirty urchin and shook his head in defeat. A brief smile jerked at Noddy’s frog-like mouth. He was thinking of the daftness of all this fuss about a couple of half-notes when he had hundreds of pounds in fivers and singles stowed away safely to buy a piano when his mother got a new house in the scheme. It would be a rare surprise for her. But he couldn’t buy a piano so long as they were living in a single end. He kept his hoard in a waterproof bag inside the cistern in the stairhead lavatory, and his mother thought he was suffering from diarrhoea, he went to the closet so often, but he was only making sure his piano-money was still safe. He loved counting it.
Mr Daunders recognized that the twist in Noddy’s enormous mouth was a smile, and he frowned severely.
‘There’s nothing funny about it, you know,’ he said. ‘You were crying earlier on. I don’t see why you should be smiling now. I’m going to keep this money and I’m going to send for your mother, and I’ll get to the bottom of this yet.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr Daunders called in Noddy’s mother right away. She was a cleaner in the school, so he had no trouble getting in touch with her. He waited on after four o’clock till she came in for her evening’s chores. But it didn’t get him anywhere. She stood in his little room, a timid foot and no more inside the door, with her working-overall on and scarf round her head in royal fashion, a big-bosomed, enormous-hipped, thick-ankled woman. That this hulk of womanhood should be the old block of a skelf like Noddy made Mr Daunders think of the mountain that gave birth to a mouse, and as he remembered the phrase he sighed at the destiny that had condemned him to be a headmaster in a small primary school in one of Glasgow’s wild-life reservations, a pocket of vandalism, a pool of iniquity. He had a painful stab of longing to have done with backward and delinquent children and be a retired headmaster living his own life, following his own interests. He had an elegant eighteenth century edition of Horace with the mad Christopher Smart’s prose translation facing the Latin. He always took it with him when he went on holiday, but somehow he never found time to open it. Now he couldn’t even remember where it was that Horace had spoken of the mountain in labour giving birth to a mouse. ‘I must read Horace again when I retire,’ he thought, even as he was talking severely to Mrs Mann.
Mrs Mann had her own distracting thoughts. According to the book of words only widows were supposed to be employed as cleaners in Corporation schools, and she wasn’t technically a widow though she passed for one in so far as she didn’t have the support of a husband. A husband in jail for robbery with violence wasn’t a resident head of the house. She felt entitled to her job, but she was afraid Mr Daunders was going to tell her she was sacked. When she understood he was talking about her son she felt quite happy and smiled encouragingly to the headmaster. Mr Daunders frowned at her. He knew quite well she was no widow, he knew where her husband was. He had hoped his knowledge might be used as a lever to extract information from her. But she had no information for him. Yet she was the only person who gained from the interview.
She challenged Noddy that night.
‘I was hearing you was found wi’ more money than you’re supposed to have,’ she said, slapping his face to begin the discussion on the proper terms. ‘Two ten-shilling notes, eh? Now where the hell did you get two ten- shilling notes?’
Noddy said he had found them in a midgie in Ossian Street. There was a bank at the close. The bank must have thrown them out by mistake. They were in an envelope.
‘Ha-ha, a likely story!’ said Mrs Mann her fingers splayed on her hips. She didn’t think of asking for the envelope as Mr Daunders would certainly have done. ‘And what did you never think of telling me you found them for if that was how you got them?’
‘Ah never goat a chance,’ Noddy mumbled, crouched in a corner of the kitchen near the sink, his right hand over his ear. Mrs Mann darted swiftly and smacked his left ear and Noddy changed guard.
‘Ye hid nae intentions o’ tellin’ me, ye little bugger!’ she screamed, and then smacked his right ear. Noddy put both hands up.
‘Ah hud,’ he said. ‘Ah’ve never saw you since Ah fun them. Ah only fun them this moarning.’
‘And whit wur ye gaun tae dae wi’ them?’ said Mrs Mann, pursuing her beloved seventh son as he edged round the kitchen past the dresser and the coal-bunker, along the valance of the recess-bed, up to the fireplace, and behind the ruptured armchair that flanked it.
‘Ah wis gaun tae gie ye hauf,’ said Noddy, willing to give up one of the bits of paper for the sake of peace.
‘Oh, ye wis, wis ye?’ said Mrs Mann sceptically. ‘Well, come on then! Let’s see ye hauf it!’
‘Oh, the bastard! So he hus!’ cried Mrs Mann, and shook her fists at the whitewashed ceiling above the pulley where her shift and a pair of bloomers were drying, her head thrown back and her bleary eyes staring wildly.
And just as Mr Daunders had waited for her at four o’clock she waited for him at nine o’clock the next morning after she had finished her morning chores. She was humble, garrulous, apologetic, over-explanatory and nervous, but quite firm. Noddy had taken the money from her purse. It was a terrible thing to have a son that would steal from his own mother who had always done the best she could for him, but he was only a boy and he wasn’t very bright, he just liked to play with bits of coloured paper, so if she could have her money back, she paused and leered in expectant servility.
Mr Daunders knew when he was beaten. He gave her the two ten-shilling notes, and since she was an honest woman and a good mother she didn’t keep them both. She gave one to Noddy.
‘There y’are, ma son,’ she said tenderly, and threw him across the kitchen in the excess of her affection. ‘There’s your share like you promised me. And the next time you find anything jist you let me know and don’t go causing a lot of bother keeping things tae yersel. Ye’ve goat tae let yer mammy know. Yer mammy’s yer best friend.’
Noddy took the note silently. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with it, but it was good to have it in his pocket again.
‘Ah ye’re a guid wee boy,’ his mother grinned, and she rumpled his long uncombed hair. Noddy jerked his head away and scowled. Any show of affection distressed him.
He was even more upset to find he was in the bad books of the Brotherhood. The news of his interrogation had spread with the speed of foot and mouth disease, and he was brought on his knees before Percy at the next Friday Night Service. Percy was frightened. First the stranger and now Noddy’s two ten-shilling notes. He saw them as two straws that suggested there was a wind rising somewhere, but he didn’t know where to look for it.
‘I gave you a pound note,’ he said severely to Noddy. ‘How did you come to be caught with a couple of ten-bob notes? Tell me that.’
‘I changed the note you gave me,’ Noddy declared, primed in advance by Savage. He tried to rub one of his knees as he was forced to remain on them by Specky and Skinny while the Regent Supreme examined him. It was a most uncomfortable position. He wasn’t used to it. Looking at the squalid urchin Percy had an idea. He must get them all to kneel during the Friday Night Service.
‘What did you go and get it changed for?’ he demanded with the soul-searching stare in his mournful eyes again.
‘Because,’ said Noddy. ‘Let me go, let me up! Ah never told nuthin. Ah swear it, Ah kept the oath. You ask old Daundy. He’ll tell you Ah never told him nuthin.’
‘What did you change it for if you’re saving up?’ Percy persisted. ‘You’re sure nobody else has been giving you grace?’
‘Course Ah’m sure,’ Noddy complained, rubbing the other knee ostentatiously. ‘Let me up! Ah’ve got a sore knee. Sure you’re the only one with a key. Who else could it be?’
‘If I find any of yous fellows coming in here behind my back,’ Percy addressed the congregation threateningly, ‘I’ll burn the whole lot, so I will. Have you no respect for nothing? I made you make a gentlemen’s agreement, I taught you about El and how powerful he is if you keep him secret, and now you go flashing ten-bob notes in the school. I don’t like it. If there’s the least danger of strangers getting a lead into the sanctuary of El we’d be much better to burn the chests and all that’s in them. I’m warning yous.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Savage, squatting at the right foot of the Regent. ‘You’re the only wan wi’ a key. Whit are ye worrying aboot?’
‘All right,’ Percy said grudgingly. ‘I’ll let it go but I’m telling yous I don’t like it, I don’t like it one little bit, so I don’t but.’
Savage smiled, and Percy passed sentence. Noddy was condemned to forfeit payment for four weeks for being caught in possession of the money they had all sworn never to be found with. Noddy wasn’t bothered. It was enough for him that he could get up off his knees. He relied on Savage for the month that followed. Savage had promised to give him double his ration if he didn’t let Percy find out where the ten-shilling notes had come from.
His mother wasn’t bothered either when the other cleaners talked about her son being up before the headmaster for stealing money.
‘He never stole it, he found it,’ she said, choosing to concede at last that she had heard them talking behind her back and under her nose. She shook out a duster as if she were a toreador at a bullfight, her torso swivelling on her enormous hips. ‘And I may say for your information if you’re interested that my Nicky is a good son to me. Anything he does steal he brings straight home to his maw. He’s always been a good boy, I don’t care what yous say about him.’
‘There’s nobody saying anything about him,’ said Mrs Phinn, gaunt and chilling.
‘Not bloody much,’ said Mrs Mann. ‘Dae yous think I don’t hear ye? Dae yous think I’m bloody-well deaf?’
‘I was only saying I wish my Percy could find a couple of ten-shilling notes and give me one of them,’ said Mrs Phinn from about three storeys above her.
‘Him,’ snorted Mrs Mann. ‘Your Percy couldna find his way frae here tae there withoot tripping ower his big feet. Him! He couldna gie ye a kind look, he’s that bloody sour. Ma wee fella’s aye cheery anyway, I’ll say that for him. He doesna go aboot wi’ a face that wid turn milk.’
‘He was never a midgie-raker anyway, my Percy,’ said Mrs Phinn proudly. ‘He was never a lobby dosser like some weans that never see their faither.’
The vernacular struck home and Mrs Mann could only grunt contemptuously. The janitor was coming along anyway to break it up. She couldn’t deny Noddy had been a lobby dosser more than once in his short life. A lobby was the word for the long stairhead landing found in older tenements, and a dosser was a person who slept there. So a lobby dosser was a waif, stray or vagrant who took shelter at night in the common stairway of a tenement and went to sleep in the lobby. Noddy had done it often, playing truant and staying away from home for nights on end. But he was always discovered by some man leaving at five or six in the morning to go on the early shift in Singer’s or Beardmore’s. Yet he never learnt. He would do it a week after he had promised never to do it again. There wasn’t all that much difference between sleeping on the stairhead in a strange close and sleeping under the old coats on top of the boards in the recess-bed in his mother’s kitchen.
‘Come on, my darlings,’ Mr Green bustled them jovially. ‘You’re not paid for standing there arguing the toss. It’s time you did some work. I bet you I’ve got the biggest blethers in Glasgow for cleaners. So she says to me so I says to her. Yap-yap, morning and night. Come on, get cracking.’
They shuffled off, but he came after them with a hand up, remembering.
‘Here, wait a minute! Who’s got my key for the cellar? I had it hanging up on its nail in my room, and it’s not there now. Do any of you know who took it?’
‘We’ve no occasion to go near the cellar,’ said Mrs Phinn, her pail with a shovel in it in one hand and her brush in the other. She was the self-appointed spokeswoman for the cleaners because she was the late janitor’s widow, but she was far from being the oldest cleaner, and her assumption of seniority didn’t increase her popularity with the other widows. ‘Nobody here touched your key.’
‘Well, somebody’s took it,’ Mr Green insisted. ‘A key doesn’t just go for a walk all by itself.’
‘Why should we touch your key?’ Mrs Phinn asked him straight, putting down her pail and brush and folding her arms across her flat bosom in a position of rebellion. ‘We never need to go down there.’
‘Maybe no,’ Mr Green granted. ‘But I’ve got to get down there, and soon. I’ve been trying to get down since I came here. I’ll need to
get a weekend there and clean that place up. I opened the door once and shut it again quick. I’m keeping that place locked now. I don’t want Tom, Dick and Harry wandering in there. I’m fair ashamed of it. It would scunner you. It’s a real Paddy’s market, I’m no’ kidding.’
Mrs Phinn glared at him through her NHS spectacles.
‘Aye, it’s all very well for you,’ Mr Green said jovially to avert a quarrel, ‘but your man left that place in some bloody mess, so he did. Christ, it’s even got a piano in it! How the hell he ever got a piano down those stairs beats me. And what a stupid place to put a piano anyway!’
‘Where else was he to put it?’ Mrs Phinn asked indignantly. ‘That’s where he put everything there was no room for. That’s where he was told to put things when Mr Gainsborough was headmaster. That was years before your time, of course.’
‘Aye, and before Noah’s time too by the look of the place,’ Mr Green muttered, rather less jovial. ‘Did you ever take a look at it? I bet you you’d find St Mungo’s report card down there.’
‘St Mungo would never have been at this school,’ said Mrs Mann, only half-joking. ‘He’d have went to a Catholic school.’
‘If you think my husband’s to blame for the state of that cellar, I’m quite willing to work on Saturday and tidy it up,’ Mrs Phinn declared, standing straight and noble between her pail and her brush that leaned against the door of a classroom.
‘Oh, so you’re after some overtime, are you,’ Mr Green clapped hands, rubbed them, and smiled. ‘I couldn’t put you through for overtime. The Office would never wear it.’
‘Not for overtime, for my husband’s sake,’ Mrs Phinn answered, and drew surplus mucus up her nose in the way that always annoyed Percy. ‘If you think you can run him down. He was a janitor before you were born.’
‘I’m not running anybody down,’ Mr Green soothed her. ‘I’m only passing the remark that the cellar’s in a bloody mess. Many thanks for your kind offer of course. Nevertheless, notwithstanding, I’d better see to it myself. The trouble is the key’s lost.’
