by George Friel
‘I know all about that piano,’ Mrs Phinn said aggrievedly. ‘My man told me all about it. He filled in a white requisition to have it uplifted and he was still waiting for them to come when he went and died.’
‘Oh, well, ye canna blame him for that,’ Mr Green said kindly.
‘Maybe wan o’ the boys has took it,’ Mrs Mann suggested. ‘Ye know whit boys is like.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Mr Green, nodding his head and tutting. ‘They found a kid here the other day with forty- seven keys in his pocket. They pick them up and steal them and borrow them and get another one cut and then they try them on the shop doors and up closes where they think there’s nobody in. Oh, ye canna be up to them!’
‘Well, I hope you find your key,’ said Mrs Phinn, stooping to her pail of sawdust. ‘But we can’t stand talking to you all night. Some of us has got work to do.’
Mr Green found the missing key back on its nail in his cubbyhole two days later. He never found out that Savage had pinched it and had a duplicate cut in Barrowland quick.
‘I’m fly, you see,’ Savage boasted to Specky and Noddy. ‘I didn’t steal that key. I just took a lend o’ it and put it back before wee Greeny had time to miss it. You see the idea is you’ve got to make sure you’re not suspicious.’
‘So you’ve a key to get in by Tulip Place and you’ve a key to get in through the school,’ Specky nodded in admiration.
‘You’re going to cause a lot of trouble,’ Skinny muttered sadly. ‘Percy’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘It was for Percy’s sake I done it,’ Savage grinned. ‘I think he dreams mair nor he sees. But maybe he’s right about somebody watchin the door round the corner. So I can get at the money—’
‘You’re not to say money!’ Skinny cried, anguished.
‘Well, I can find the road to El through the basement then,’ Savage amended unctuously. ‘Is that better?’
‘And how do you get past the janny’s house?’ Specky asked. He was offended that an ape like Savage had managed to do more than an intellectual like himself.
‘I put my sannies on,’ said Savage. ‘I know when wee Greeny and his wife are watching the telly, and I just creep across the playground. It’s as safe as the Bank.’
‘How much have you taken?’ Specky asked bluntly.
‘Enough,’ Savage laughed at him. ‘Do ye want to come in? Percy’s daft. Ye canna leave it all to him, can ye? I’ve got enough put away for life.’
‘Well, don’t you ever boast to Frank Garson or he’ll shop you to Percy right away,’ warned Specky. ‘I think he’s suspicious already.’
Mr Green wasn’t suspicious.
‘Just one of those things,’ he said to his wife when the key turned up. He never made mysteries out of the inexplicable, he never brooded over how, why and wherefore. He simply put aside every anomaly in daily life as ‘just one of those things’, and went on living his busy life. So far as he thought about the return of the missing key at all he supposed one of the cleaners had taken it in mistake for another, forgotten about it, and put it back in its place rather than own up after he had asked questions about it.
He went down to the cellar alone on the Sunday afternoon, not meaning to do any work, just to estimate how much work would be needed to put the place in order and get rid of the lumber – once he was sure what was lumber and what wasn’t. As on his previous visits, a glance was enough to depress him. He went sadly up the narrow steps, shaking his head and far from saying a prayer for the repose of the soul of the late Mr Phinn.
‘What a janitor!’ he muttered as he locked the door. He felt he had an enormous cupboard there, with countless skeletons. ‘It must have been worrying about that place killed him.’
He was quite unwilling to tackle the job of tidying the cellar himself in spite of what he had said to Mrs Phinn. He took her at her word and got her to come in the next Saturday afternoon and work for nothing. To help her, he drafted in another cleaner, Mrs Quick, promising her a few bob out of his own pocket. Mrs Mann heard of the job and offered her services too for a mere tip. Mr Green didn’t mind. He knew Mrs Mann was just being nosey and hoping to come by pickings, but he couldn’t see what pickings there could be in a cellar full of school rubbish. He stood in at the start of what he called jocularly Operation Underground, gave the three cleaners a general idea of what he wanted done, and when they were started he stealthily slipped upstairs and went out for a pint.
The cleaners were good workers. By shifting the position of the various items, putting like with like, marshalling everything along the walls and sweeping and mopping a central area they created an illusion of tidiness. The cellar certainly looked different when they were finished, and to that extent they had made an improvement in it. Mrs Mann found the three tea-chests hidden behind a rank of broken desks along the darkest wall where the roof of the cellar descended to meet the rising floor halfway under the playground, and rummaged in the first of them. Maybe there was something would never be missed.
‘Nosey!’ cried Mrs Phinn, scowling from the centre of the cellar, and drawing the back of her rough hand across her sweating brow. She had a sudden jab of pain when she saw Mrs Mann kneeling over the chest. It reminded her of the way she had found her husband, sprawled just like that, stone cold dead over the very same chest.
‘How are we to know what’s rubbish and what’s not if we don’t look?’ Mrs Mann asked hoity-toitily over her shoulder. ‘That’s what wee Greeny’s paying us for. He wants to know what he can throw out and what he can’t. You’ve got to be nosey to do the job right.’
She plunged into the crate again and surfaced with the fairy wand. She flourished it towards Mrs Phinn and in the voice of a pantomime fairy she chanted. ‘And now I banish the wicked witch! Begone, bugger off, you ugly old bitch!’
‘Ach, that’s the school concert stuff,’ Mrs Quick cried with a wave of her broom.
Mrs Phinn’s scowl narrowed to a glare. It was the sorrow of her life that she had been the belle of the district between seventeen and nineteen, lost her good looks and her figure, and finished up, she well knew, an ugly old bitch. The worries of marriage, the strain of making ends meet and coping with a husband who kept bad company and drank too much, had ploughed her youth’s fair field with furrows of bitterness.
‘It’s an awful pity they stopped doing a concert every year,’ said Mrs Quick. ‘I used to enjoy them. They used to do some rare pantomimes and a kind of variety show. And they were good for the weans and a’. It learned them good to speak right.’
Mrs Mann put the wand across one of the broken desks and dived into another tea-chest, her broad bottom level with the edge of the chest as she delved deeper, her head and torso inside. She came up again and turned round with a top hat in her hand.
‘Oh, I remember that turn!’ Mrs Quick squealed in delight. ‘There was wan o’ the girls came on dressed like a man and she wore that tile hat. Oh, she was a rare wee dancer!’
Mrs Mann crowned herself with the top hat, picked up the fairy wand again as a walking stick and swayed to the swept centre of the stone floor singing in a broad Glasgow voice.
I’m Burrlington Berrtie,
I rrise at ten therrty,
An’ go furr a strroll in the Parrk!
She did a little jig with an ease and lightness surprising in a woman of her colossal bulk, but she was used to it. She performed those steps every year when she marched behind the flute band in the Orange Walk on the Twelfth of July.
‘You’re going back some!’ Mrs Phinn commented coldly.
‘I used to hear ma maw sing that song,’ Mrs Mann explained amiably. ‘She’d be about your age.’
‘Ach, yer granny’s mutch!’ Mrs Phinn retorted contemptuously. ‘You stand there and do a song and dance act but it’s me that’s doing all the work and getting nothing for it and you’re doing nothing and getting paid for it. It’s no’ fair.’
Encouraged by Mrs Mann’s entertainment Mrs Quick delved into the
third of the chests and dragged out a brocade jacket.
‘That’s what the Baron wore the year they did Cinderella,’ she screeched, and tried it on.
‘Baron Figtree!’ Mrs Mann howled, clapped her hands, took a front-stage pose and declaimed a couplet from an old Glasgow pantomime.
Tomorrow’s my grandmother’s wedding day.
Ten thousand pounds will I give away.
‘Hooray, hooray, hooray!’ Mrs Quick took the cue, with a triple change of voice to suggest the discordant applause of the lads and lasses of the village. Mrs Mann bowed and went on.
On second thought I think it best
To stow it away in the old oak chest.
‘Boo, boo, boo!’ Mrs Quick responded as before.
‘When yous two has stopped acting the goat,’ Mrs Phinn cut in with clearly enunciated superiority.
Her two helpers leaned over the tea-chests, laughing as only fat women can. That Mrs Phinn had no joy in their turn increased theirs. Mrs Quick wiped her eyes with her duster.
‘Well, come on, Jessie,’ she wheezed. ‘We can tell him this is a’ the old concert costumes and he can burn it or date whit he likes wi’ it.’
‘Shove them up against the wa’, Maggie,’ said Mrs Mann. ‘The three o’ them. Then we can tell him they’re a’ the gither.’
Mrs Mann kept the top hat. If she couldn’t pawn it Noddy might be able to use it when he dressed up for Hallowe’en. It would maybe earn him a few extra coppers round the doors or on the street. She was always thinking about money.
‘We could tell some o’ the weans there’s a lot of good stuff down here for when it’s Hallowe’en.’
‘Aye, they could get some rare fancy clobber here,’ Mrs Quick agreed, thrusting the top layers of the chests down hard to make them look tidy.
‘I don’t suppose it matters there’s no false-faces,’ Mrs Phinn muttered. ‘Your Nicky wouldny need one.’
‘Ho, ho,’ Mrs Mann replied, pushing the third of the chests alongside its mates. ‘Very clever, I must say.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Percy was the first to see the cellar had been entered. He came down by the chute on Sunday night, making his usual visit to what had become a sanctuary to him, and stopped at once when he reached the floor. He thought he was going to faint. For the first time in his life he understood what it meant to get a shock. Something seemed to have hit him in the midriff, his heart went vaulting and then tumbled, his legs were paralysed, his head was a clamour of alarm bells, his eyes were in a mist one moment and as sharp as an eagle’s the next, his palate was parched and his tongue was stuck to it, his brow felt chilled, and he nearly wet himself.
When he recovered from the seizure he galloped over to the chests, almost tripping himself on his splay feet in his excitement. His torso was so far ahead of his legs that he seemed to mean to get there by bodily extension rather than by running. He saw the concert props and costumes weren’t quite as they had been left. Some that had been in different chests were now in the same chest, some that had been underneath were now on top. He leaned over the first chest, pulled out skirts, hats, jackets, trousers, cardboard capstans and festoons of coloured paper, and delved to the bottom. The money was still there. And so with the other chests. Whoever had been in the cellar and swept it out and moved the chests hadn’t disturbed more than the top layers. The transistor, the tape-recorder and record- player, the TV and the uke and the guitar were still safe against the farthest and darkest wall of the cellar, the rats’ wall, behind a faç ade of planks, pails and the barrel of washing-soda. So much for the thoroughness of the cleaners’ cleaning. He knelt beside one of the chests with his hands clasped and said a sincere prayer of thanks.
‘Oh, blessed El, I thank thee for not allowing thyself to fall into the hands of the ungodly,’ he panted, his mouth against his finger-tips.
He thought of moving the money, but he didn’t know where else he could put it. If it had survived one attack in the cellar it could survive another. The cellar still seemed the safest place for it, and the proper place too, since it had been found in the cellar. He was unwilling to find a new site for what had always been safe in the place where it was discovered. The cellar seemed its natural and even sacred place because that was where El had chosen to reveal himself. Even the distribution amongst three chests had a mystical meaning to him. He couldn’t bear to tamper with fortune by shifting anything.
He called an extraordinary assembly at once, held a special service, and declared an extra dividend in thanksgiving for the safety of El. The Brotherhood didn’t mind the special service, they liked singing together, and they took the extra share-out gladly enough. But looking down from his throne Percy noticed signs of a strange uninterest here and there, an air of forced swallowing. There came to him suddenly the memory that he had helped the woman in charge of the dinner-school once when he was a boy, and she had given him a double helping of ice- cream after the diners were all gone. He took it eagerly. It was three or four times as large as the largest ice he had ever had before. Then she gave him a second plateful, just to be nice to him, and he got through it only because it was impossible to refuse ice-cream. But he was sick afterwards, and it made him think less of ice-cream in the future.
‘It was only the cleaners, ye know,’ Savage explained wisely after the service. ‘The way you talk you’d think it was evil spirits had raided the place.’
‘Maybe you don’t believe it, but the world’s full of evil spirits,’ said Percy.
‘Oh aye, I believe that,’ said Savage with flippant solemnity.
‘I know it was the cleaners was in,’ Percy tried again. ‘I’m perfectly well aware of that, but the point is what made them come down here. Nobody’s ever been down here before. If that wasn’t the promptings of evil spirits, what was it? Go on, you tell me! And what’s more it’s a miracle they didn’t find anything. That shows we’re being looked after. You’ve got to believe in destiny, ye know. Kismet. Kay Sarah, Sarah.’
‘It was wee Noddy was telling me his maw was in here Saturday afternoon,’ Savage answered conversationally, refusing to ask who Sarah was. He knew Percy was just dying to explain it to him. ‘He knew by the Saturday night everything was okay. His old girl never mentioned a thing. Your maw was down as well. Did she no’ tell ye? Jees, that would have had ye worried stiff if she’d said to ye, I’m going down the cellar to clean it out!’
Percy snubbed him silently. He hadn’t known his mother was in the cellar on Saturday. He had missed her in the afternoon, but he hadn’t asked where she had been and she didn’t tell him. It made his head ache to think of the danger they had been in. His headaches were becoming a daily plague, and he blamed them on the strain he was under, being responsible for the safety of thousands of pounds and the welfare of a horde of ungrateful boys. And so it would go on till something happened. Something was bound to happen. But he couldn’t imagine what it was. He lived in fear of a knock at the door. Every time he passed a policeman he felt nervous. He dreamt nearly every night of the stranger who had accosted him in Tulip Place, and waited patiently for his bad dreams to come true. The stranger must reappear. He knew there was no escape from him. He felt all alone and powerless. It came back to him that he had wanted to have a lot of money so that he could get peace. And now he had less peace than ever. He had the money, but his mind wasn’t free to write poetry. But would Shelley have written any poetry if he had to look after a street-gang? He made up his mind to start tomorrow and organize his life better, so as to find time and peace to begin writing a poem. But it was always a case of starting tomorrow. He groaned, sitting on Miss Elginbrod’s chair, and put his head between his hands, his elbows on his knees.
‘Headache?’ piped Savage brightly in a commercial TV voice. ‘Be good to yourself! Take a Scrunchy-Lunchy. Six good points for sixpence. Makes you one shade lighter. Scrunchy-Lunchy’s good for weans, puts an end to aches and pains. Take a Scrunchy-Lunchy tonight and tomorrow you’ll—’
‘Oh, shut up, you!’ Percy snarled at him, turning on his Chief Claviger, taking his hands away to reveal a frustrated face with big bewildered eyes. He hated vulgarity. It added to his distress that he was coming to hate Savage, yet once he had liked him. He had meant to polish a rough diamond, and now he hated the look of it.
Savage was delighted. He had got Percy really annoyed.
‘Aw, keep the heid,’ he said amiably, and went away.
Drunk with power at having got the better of Percy he caught up on the other members of the Brotherhood at the corner of Tulip Place and entertained them with an imitation of Frank Garson. He couldn’t stand Frank Garson, and he couldn’t leave him alone. He had always to be making a fool of him because he kept his face clean and spoke politely. His star turn was to put on a West-end voice and repeat something Garson had said. The incon- gruity of chaste correct speech coming from Savage’s loose mouth gave the Brotherhood an uneasy amusement and they laughed guiltily when he imitated a girlish walk to go with his imitation of Garson’s girlish voice.
‘It was Ai who found the money, but Ai don’t want any share, ow now, thenk you.’ Sa metter of fect, Ai think Ai ought to inform the polis.’
He picked up a phone from mid-air, dialled a number in the same place, and squeaked, writhing like a striptease dancer, ‘Ello, ello, Sat Whitehall 1212? Ken Ai hev a wurrd with the Chief Constable, pulease? Ello, ello, ello! Satchoo, Chief Ai jist want to report there’s an awful lot of boys here has an awful lot of money. Kin Ai claim a reward for telling you?’
‘Ach, wheesht,’ said Specky, past being amused. ‘You’ll make jokes about money once too often. Somebody’ll hear you.’
‘You know Percy’s rule,’ Skinny accused him. ‘And it’s a wise rule too. We promised never to mention money outside.’
‘I’m fed up wi’ him and his great god El,’ Savage retorted lightly. ‘Money’s money the world over, and ye might as well admit it. Kidding yerself it’s something mysterious and supernatural, the way Percy talks, it’s daft. Where’s wee Garson? I want to see him. Did ye notice he’s still no’ taking any money?’
