by George Friel
‘He did that one all right,’ the stranger answered. ‘The sweetie shops and the pubs all went to experience, missis. A man’s got to learn. He took a year working on it. Got it organized.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Mrs Phinn.
‘He brought out forty-five thousand pound,’ the stranger bashed on, clutching her elbow now though she was too shocked to move. ‘He had it in two suitcases and there wasn’t more than three quid in his pocket the day he was killed. It’s a lot o’ money, missis. It canny just have walked.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ Mrs Phinn panted. She was frightened. ‘I never knew a thing about forty-five thousand pound, I can tell you that. And what’s more I don’t want to know about it. I’d rather have a clear conscience and my night’s sleep than all your money.’
‘You keep your conscience and I’ll rest content wi’ the money,’ the stranger bargained. ‘The point is I haveny got it. I think you’ve got it. Sammy had it all in two suitcases when I drove the car away that night. But we couldny stop and divide it at Anderston Cross at two o’clock in the morning, could we? Sammy said we was just to wait till things got quiet. He got out of the car at the Saltmarket and I know he took a taxi your way. I heard him. He went to see Hamish wi’ the money. The next thing I hears he’s deid and there’s nae money on him. Nothing in the bank, nothing in the post-office, nothing in his digs. Missis, this is serious. Hamish must have said something to you.’
‘No, I’m afraid you’re wrong,’ Mrs Phinn told him sincerely. She was beginning to think the man was mad, and she felt less frightened. He could be humoured. ‘Hamish never mentioned that kind of money to me, and I can assure you—’
‘You’re a bloody assurance society, you are!’ the stranger interrupted her peevishly. She was sure there was a mad look in his eyes the way he glared at her.
‘Yes, I can assure you,’ she sailed on, not at all put out by his rudeness. She was used to the way Percy talked to her. ‘I can assure you my man wasn’t the sort of man to get mixed up in bank robberies. Bank robberies! For goodness sake! Huh-hm!’
She gave one of her special snorts, the violent kind that jarred Percy’s nerves.
They glowered at each other, neither yielding, and Mrs Phinn jerked her elbow free from the stranger’s clutch.
‘Why don’t you just go home and go to your bed?’ she suggested. ‘You’ve been watching the telly too much.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ the stranger cried in pain. He seemed on the point of weeping.
‘Now, I don’t like blasphemy,’ said Mrs Phinn. ‘I’m not accustomed to it. If you must swear go and swear somewhere else.’
The stranger stared at her, shaking his head sorrowfully, and she was sure she saw tears glisten in his crafty eyes.
‘Missis, are you mad?’ he whispered. ‘Come on, don’t act it! This is serious. I’m only talking to you for your own good. I was just the driver but I’m entitled to my share. I’ll play fair wi’ you but there’s other folk starting to wonder and if they get on to you they’ll chiv you as soon as look at you. I’m telling you, missis.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got my work to go to,’ said Mrs Phinn calmly. ‘I told you, I’ve got to work for my living. We canny all go about robbing banks and living in the lap of luxury. Forty thousand pound! Did ye ever hear the like!’
‘Forty-five thousand pound,’ the stranger corrected her dourly.
She looked at him pityingly and tutted.
‘To a penny?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘I was talking to your son the other night,’ he said abruptly. ‘A big fella with splay feet.’
‘You can leave my son’s feet out of it,’ Mrs Phinn objected with dignity. ‘He canny help his feet. At least he’s no’ a wee Glasgow bauchle like you.’
‘Aye, all right,’ said the stranger huffily. ‘I’d rather be a Glasgow bauchle than a big drip like him. Oh, la-de-da. Called after Percy the poet says he. He could do wi’ a haircut at that.’
‘He never told me,’ said Mrs Phinn.
‘That’s funny,’ said the stranger. ‘Maybe it’s him that knows and he’s keeping something back from you.’
‘My boy’s a big simple soul,’ said Mrs Phinn proudly. ‘He wouldn’t do anything that’s wrong. He was never brought up to it.’
‘I could see he was kind of dumb,’ the stranger agreed neutrally. ‘He talks a lot but he doesn’t say very much. He’s not all that bright I don’t think. That’s why I never told him what I’m telling you. I wanted to see if he knew anything first. But I don’t think he knew a thing.’
‘He knows as much as I know then,’ said Mrs Phinn.
‘Unless he was acting it?’ the stranger suggested.
‘I can assure you he had nothing to act about,’ said Mrs Phinn.
The stranger brooded into Mrs Phinn’s thin sour face before he spoke again.
‘You see, missis, when Sammy left us at the Saltmarket he told us he’d cellar the money till it was safe to divide it. Aye, he was the boss. He liked acting the big shot. Wouldny trust us. No’ to spend it daft-like right away I mean. No, he’d take care of it. Don’t yous worry, he said. Ye can trust me. I’ll cellar it safe and sound where it’ll never be found. Now what did he mean, cellar it? The only bloke Sammy saw when he left us was your Hamish, and your Hamish has a cellar in the school there, hasn’t he?’
‘My Hamish is dead,’ Mrs Phinn reminded him with a widow’s proud sorrow.
‘Aye, but the cellar’s no’,’ the stranger commented.
‘Yes, the cellar is,’ she retorted. She was a contrary woman. She wasn’t going to have this layabout telling her about the school cellar. It had been the bane of her husband’s last years, it was in such a state, and she wasn’t going to have it talked about by any stranger. ‘That cellar hasn’t been used for twenty years or more. It isn’t a cellar at all now, not since they stopped the steam heating.’
‘But there’s a door there in Tulip Place,’ the stranger waved a hand. ‘That’s the door to the cellar, i’n’t it?’
‘That door?’ said Mrs Phinn, sneering at his mistake.
‘That door’s blind. There’s a brick wall behind it. Has been since the school went all electrical. That’s where they delivered the coal in the old days.’
She didn’t know her contrary mixture of fact and fiction was a repeat of Percy’s story to the stranger, and she didn’t understand why he seemed to sag and surrender. She supposed his early morning fit of madness was leaving him.
‘Ach well, I can only keep on trying,’ he muttered, fishing out a cigarette end from his pocket and lighting it with his head to one side and his lips pouting. ‘I’d ha’ been on to it sooner only I had to go to Manchester for thirty days.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said sympathetically.
In the local idiom ‘to go to Manchester’ meant to go to jail. She knew that. Her husband had often told her of children who told their teacher their father couldn’t sign a form for free meals or free clothes because he was in Manchester. The locution saved everyone embarrassment.
‘What did they get you for?’ she asked softly, just to let him see she knew the language.
‘Loitering with intent. You see, a man like me. A known character. Wan o’ Sammy’s crowd. But the crowd’s no’ the same now. We miss Sammy. He put it on a bit but he’d got something. There’s no denying it. He took a year rehearsing the Finnieston job, his first real big job. He had a great future, so he had, the same man. Then he had to go and get killed, the stupid bastard. But he had something, oh aye, he had something!’
He smoked and looked over bitterly at the grim three- storeyed school.
‘Forty-five thousand pound, that’s what he had,’ he muttered. ‘It canny just have went up in smoke.’
‘Come on, Mrs Phinn! You’re late!’ a voice called through the mild morning air. The janitor was at the front gate, blithe and debonair. Without his hat on, Mrs Phinn noted disapprovingly.
�
�I’m just coming,’ she sang out sedately.
‘You can see your boyfriend when you’ve done your morning’s work,’ the janitor shouted over to her jovially.
Mrs Phinn glared at him, the stranger scuttled swiftly, and the pigeons on the roof quarrelled noisily. It was a lovely morning. She went into the school, took off her coat, tied a scarf round her head, and started to tackle the classrooms on the top flat.
She saw Percy at tea-time. He came ambling in, splay- footed as usual, round-shouldered to keep his head clear of the ceiling, and looked remarkably untired for a youth who claimed to be doing a hard day’s work every day. He sat playing with an Alsatian pup he had bought after he bought his motor-bike. He told his mother it was a stray that had followed him home, and she kept on looking at the small ads in the evening paper in case the owner advertised. There might be a reward for returning it.
‘Even ten bob,’ she said. ‘It’s always something.’
‘Ten bob!’ Percy smiled cunningly. He had paid fifteen pounds for the pup. It had a pedigree. More than I have, he thought bitterly when the dealer told him, and he felt it was another injustice.
‘Who would pay ten bob for a wee thing like this?’
He chuckled at his private joke.
‘Aye, you bring it here but it’s me that’s got to feed it and look after it,’ his mother complained. ‘It’s me that’s got to take it out for a walk every morning when you’re no’ here and I could be having a lie-down on my bed. I’m up before six every morning, don’t you forget.’
‘You don’t give me much of a chance to forget it,’ he muttered, pretending to throttle the lively pup. He called it Boatswain.
‘That’s a daft name for a dug,’ said his mother. ‘What does that mean? Boatswain! Did ye ever hear the likes!’
‘That was the name Lord Byron gave his dog,’ he told her from the chair. He liked giving information from his chair. It made him feel professorial. ‘But you wouldn’t know that, would you? I don’t suppose you’ve never heard of Lord George Gordon Byron. You never think of reading poetry, do you? You’ve never lived, that’s your trouble. Me, I’ve read them all, Shelley and Byron and – and – and eh Keats, and I’ve read Shakespeare, so I have, and I’ve read—’
‘I have so heard of Lord George Gordon,’ his mother cut in, angry with him, before he could think of another poet he had read. ‘I seen him in the telly last winter. He was in a serial. It was about folk breaking into prison.’
‘Breaking into prison!’ he sneered. ‘You break out of prison, you don’t break in.’
‘These folk broke in,’ she insisted. ‘Lord George Gordon was in it. He was against the Pope. So was your father, in case you forget. You see I have so heard of Lord George Gordon. I’m not as stupid as you like to think. I seen the serial I’m telling you.’
‘What serial was that?’ he challenged her rudely. ‘Lord Byron was never on the telly. He never gave a damn for the Pope.’
‘That’s what I’m telling you,’ his mother answered.
‘Just tell me the name of it,’ he nagged at her. ‘Tell me what it was called, go on, tell me. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Barnacle Rudge,’ his mother decided after a few moments’ brooding over the frying-pan on the gas-ring. She was frying a couple of eggs, and she had some chips in deep fat, for Percy’s meal.
‘Never heard of it,’ said Percy and rolled the pup over, bent forward from his chair.
‘I missed bits of it,’ his mother admitted. ‘Maybe I couldny tell you the story right but I know what it was called. I know what I seen.’
‘You couldny follow a serial,’ he taunted her. ‘You’d never remember what happened the week before. Sure you canny even remember when it’s the day for my laundry. You’d have me looking like a tramp if I didn’t remind you.’
‘Huh-hm, your laundry!’ she snorted, and Percy frowned and fidgeted. ‘I wish that was all I had to worry me, your laundry.’
Percy had the pup on its back and he throttled it lovingly.
His mother simmered. She could keep it in no longer. They were seldom very cordial and they were never given to confiding in each other, but his manner annoyed her, she didn’t like dogs, and she wanted to take the conversation off her failings and give it another direction.
‘A funny thing happened to me this morning,’ she started.
‘Ha-ha!’ Percy gave a staccato imitation of a ham-actor’s laugh.
His mother clenched her teeth, counted ten and went on.
‘A man stopped me at the corner of Bethel Street and Tulip Place.’
Percy’s large hand loosened its grip on the Alsatian’s throat.
‘A man?’ he said throatily, and he felt his stomach turning over.
‘A wee bauchle,’ she said, spooning fat over the eggs. ‘Wearing a dirty coat. I don’t know what he wanted a coat for, a lovely morning like it was this morning. Looked as if he slept in it. To hide his rags I suppose. A right Glasgow ned.’
Percy gaped up at her. His thick underlip hung even lower than usual and the neglected pup squirmed on the carpet beside the empty fireplace and barked for attention.
‘He was trying to tell me it was your Uncle Sammy done the Finnieston bank,’ she said, and snorted again. ‘You remember the Finnieston bank? They still haveny got who done it.’
‘Uncle Sammy never done a bank in his life,’ Percy objected indignantly. ‘He never done anything bigger than McIlweeny’s pub and he was caught coming out. Him? He couldny do a bank. He hasny the brains.’
‘That’s what I told him,’ said his mother, turning to the pot with the chips. ‘And he says your uncle gave the money to your father to keep for him, and then your uncle was killed in that smash on the Edinburgh road, and your poor father collapsed in the cellar the day after that. Ach, the man was stark raving mad!’
Percy tickled the pup again, his head down.
‘You never told me he’d been speaking to you too,’ his mother threw at him sharply over her shoulder as she drained the chips in a wire basket.
‘Him? Speaking to me?’ Percy said as if he was puzzled. ‘Och aye, I remember. There was a man stopped me one night in Tulip Place and talked a lot of tommy-rot about the cellar. I sent him away. I wouldny waste time talking to a man like that.’
‘He asked me about the cellar too,’ said his mother. ‘I just told him it was never used at all now. That cellar broke your father’s heart. I’m sure that’s what drove him to an early death. A man in his forties to die like that, hinging ower a big box o’ rubbish. He couldny get that place straight. I don’t care what they say. He never had heart trouble when he worked in Sybie Street school. It was the sight of that cellar. He couldny do a thing with it. I just told him the door in Tulip Place was bricked up. I’m no’ going to have the likes of him quizzing me about the place where your poor father took a shock and died. He must have lay there for hours before we found him.’
‘That’s what I told him too,’ said Percy.
‘Come on, your tea’s out,’ said his mother, and Percy went to the table followed by his pup. He settled it masterfully at his feet and tossed it the crust of his bread. He didn’t eat his crusts.
His brain worked so slowly that for a long time after it had received disturbing information his face remained stolid, slightly vacuous with its thick under-lip hanging loosely. His mother had no inkling he was frightened. He bent his head over the plate, stuffing his face quickly, but all the time his head was throbbing painfully in confusion and dismay. Forking his chips greedily in threes and fours he comforted himself. The stranger was a bird of ill-omen, that was sure. But he had no right to the money. Nobody had any right to the money. Nobody but the person who had a right to the place where it was found. It was nobody’s money, so it was his. Uncle Sammy could never have had anything to do with such countless wealth. Uncle Sammy? Uncle Sammy was a fly man that couldn’t keep out of jail. He could never have been the goose that laid the golden egg.
No, no, a thousand times no! Ah, sweet mystery of life, and this was a mystery too. Poetry dealt with mysteries and so did poets, and he was a poet. He was still the chosen of El. And he had been very fair dividing it amongst the under-privileged children who hadn’t a decent pair of shoes to their name. It had been given to him for a purpose. He had been true to the purpose revealed to him. He would give in to nobody. Nobody would frighten him. His stupid mother and the bauchly stranger wanted to bring the money back down to earth and explain it. But it didn’t belong there. It wasn’t to be explained as easily as that. It came from heaven. You had to have faith.
He gobbled his egg and chips in a flurry of fear and washed at the kitchen sink.
‘I’ve got nervous dyspepsia, that’s what I’ve got,’ he thought into the towel as he dried his face. ‘It’s an awful responsibility to carry. But you’ve got to face your destiny. I’ll see it through, so I will.’
‘Are you not shaving the night?’ his mother asked slyly. ‘You usually shave before you go out after your tea. What’s up? Are you no’ seeing her the night?’
‘I’m not seeing anybody,’ he answered, quelling her with a look. Her question reminded him of Sophy, and that was an offence.
‘Where are you going then?’ his mother asked.
‘Out,’ he informed her concisely.
‘Ach, I bet you’re going to meet some girl! I don’t know what a fellow your age is bothering about girls at all for. You’re far too young, and without a penny in your pocket. I don’t know how you do it.’
He let that go. He wouldn’t boast about what he had in his pocket. The elect don’t boast they’ve been chosen. As for girls, he wanted to forget them after last night. He was beginning to remember that once he had wanted nothing but peace, peace and quiet.
‘Funny how you get too busy to do what you meant to do,’ he thought, pleased at his understanding of human nature.
But now it was high time to make sure he found peace. Sophy had let him down and the stranger was getting too near. He was heart-sick and disgusted at seeing wealth passed to outsiders in defiance of the oath to El, he was bitter at the way the Brotherhood had abandoned the religion he had tried to teach them. It was time to go away.
