by George Friel
‘Thanks very much. But I’m not sure I like to be called good if it means calling other folk bad. You know the old saying. There’s so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, it ill becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us.’
He jingled it out for her, but still she wouldn’t smile.
It was a bad time for her. The dying year brought back the time of Shelley’s death and the season returning reopened a wound unhealed. She had always the feeling that Shelley was never truly dead and gone till she drowned him in the Canal, and Donald’s death by anonymous violence enlarged her anniversary misery at Shelley’s death by drowning. She longed and yearned and deeply craved to soar from the earth like any astronaut, to leave the world behind and be born again in the spirit, with all things physical, gross and material as irrelevant to her newborn personality as the after-birth to the infant. She prayed for the time to come beyond time when she could live on a higher plane outside earthly space, a liberated disembodied intelligence at home among the angels in a life without end. But just as she knew there was only one way of being trapped on earth, by being born, she knew there was only one way of escaping, by dying, even though there were ten thousand doors leading to that escape and she was unwilling to open any of them while Grace was still on earth.
It was a bad time for Bobo too, the worst possible time. There she was, waiting for Dross to come back and make up. And where was he? A million miles away, waiting for her to make a move. She might well have moved first, for she was womanly weak, Dross’s weekly woman, a creature of habit, and nobody else ever got the same song out of her heart as Dross did even when he wasn’t trying. But she was neutralised by Donald’s death, past caring. The will of her wont was paralysed. The loved body and all its joys were mortgaged to a mean estate, a condition to be paid for by sorrow. In her lonely melancholy she was more like Wee Annie than ever she knew, and in feeling she was somehow to blame for Donald’s death, somehow guilty of it by being just what she was, thirtyfive, twentythree, thirtyfive, though in fact she was just turned nineteen, she justified much of what she never knew Wee Annie said to Main about her.
She lived to herself. She wouldn’t even go to the Phoenix, though it was often she thought about it, wishing for the lights and the chatter and the glow of familiar spirits as she moped at home with Woman’s Own or Woman’s Realm or just Woman, thinking night and day about her man. She tried She but it only made her wonder what He was doing. Dross himself looked into the Phoenix once or twice, but of course she wasn’t there. He put it down to her stuckup pride, her lack of true love, and he wouldn’t demean himself to ask Jess and Jean what had happened to her. Nor could he loiter with Yoyo and Yowyow. They only annoyed him. Without Bobo he had no links with them. They were two steady lads with a trade and he was a lapsed delinquent out of a job. He soured on them. The old crowd, Bobo’s crowd, was useless. He wouldn’t even hang around for a chat with Tommy Partridge. It might have saved him from the upshot. Tommy was born to be the intermediary between two warring powers, a true Red Cross type. But Dross knew nothing of the conventions and probings of poker- faced diplomacy or the channels of neutral compassion. He hardened against making up. He looked elsewhere for his nights and found nowhere to go but back to Tiger. He did another job for him. And then another. And another. In a few weeks it became a way of life he seemed to have led for ages. The raid that upset Bobo was only an accident to him, a simple ploy agreed to for the immediate thrill of it as much as for the sake of putting money in his pocket. He never meant to do it again. It was just something he could boast about to Bobo to show what a devilmaycare fellow he was, out for a spot of excitement in life. He thought it would keep her in love, keen to reform him. Now he had to go about with Tiger to spite her.
‘Know what I’d like to do?’ he told a blurred Tiger at the bar. ‘I’d like to walk right up to her and say, See that post office do was in the papers last night? See! See me? It was me done it. Me and my mates Tiger and Chocolate.’
He wrapped an arm round Tiger’s neck and an arm round Chocolate’s neck, swaying between them while they waited for Hardnut, and away down deep inside him he wished both arms were round Bobo’s lovely neck.
‘Wheesh, ya goat,’ Tiger growled.
But Dross was well away, a pintman not used to the large whisky that was Tiger’s milk.
‘Ach, tell with the moll,’ he waved his arms wide. ‘There’s nay shoppers here.’
He aimed a hand at the glass in front of him and pounced just in time before it shifted right and left at once.
‘Bloody denna thieves this place. Just take a ganner. Stupit buggers anyway keepin a wee post office open below an empty hoose. The whole buildin’s to come doon. They ast furrit, they folk, so they did.’
Entered then Hardnut, former apprentice to a joiner in a building site, an undersized ned, but tough, strong and humorous, a wee comic. He was the one that had never been caught, the one who tidily cut a hole in the floor above the post office, knowing exactly what to do and how to do it, where to start and where he’d land when he dropped through.
Dross raised an arm high to summon the barman.
‘Glashnapine furma frenhere.’
He was happy when Hardnut turned up. He liked him.
He was good fun. He could make a crack in one word that gave you a better laugh than ever you got from Yoyo and Yowyow trying to be clever. And as for Bobo, she was welcome to those two clowns. This was a man’s world.
Standing at the bar drinking the hard stuff in the right company was a sight better than sitting in a sloppy lounge listening to a lot of rot. This was the real world, not the weans’ world of the Phoenix with Yoyo and Yowyow and their two bits popping corny jokes all night. When he strolled down town on an idle afternoon, welldressed, wellfed and wellpleased with himself, he wanted to stop people in the street and tell them just who he was.
‘See me? I’m the bloke they’re looking for. That job on the front page last night that was me. I’m not one of your common nits. I’ve got the old grey matter under the tiles. I can live without clocking in.’
But what had they got from the wee post office? The postal orders were no use to them and there wasn’t all that much cash. Less than a hundred. And four into a hundred didn’t leave you with much once you kept something to put in the pocket of the suit you bought. That was one of Tiger’s rules. Don’t blow it, don’t bet, don’t gamble, don’t drink it all the next day. Set yourself up first. Look smart, buy good stuff. Specially shoes. He was always laying it off about good shoes. It suited Dross. He loved the latest styles. But after the post office they had to find another place. So they did a wee pub next. Then a wee dairy, and then a wee draper’s. Always the wee shops. The shops in the old tenements south of the river, with a window in the backcourt or a side door in the close.
‘Maybe not much at a time,’ said Tiger. ‘But still and all. It builds up.’
‘Every little helps,’ said Chocolate.
‘As the wee boy said when he peed in the sea,’ said Hardnut.
‘Small profits quick returns, that’s my motto,’ said Tiger. ‘That’s how Cochrane and Lipton started. And see where they are the day.’
‘Dead,’ said Hardnut.
‘Aye, but before they died they were worth a couple of bob at least I bet you.’
‘You’re not on,’ said Hardnut.
Chocolate did the reckies. He had the seeing eye. He picked up in his wanderings the shops that were taking the money. From them he sorted out the shops that closed too late to bank it. Then he cut it down to the shops where the takings were left on the premises overnight. Hardnut was the acrobat, the gymnast, first in if entry was awkward. Tiger was the bossman with scores of keys, jig keys, hall keys, keys as trig as his head, the born leader and the brains. Dross was only the brave one, ever ready with the trusty blade of his strong right arm if they had to knock anybody out. They were a team. They boasted they were organised.
But now Lil
lie, Alexander, was sighing for new worlds to conquer. He wanted to do a snatch. Hardnut didn’t. He said breaking and entering was his street. He felt safe and sound in it because he always made sure beforehand what he was breaking in for and where it was. He always knew how he was going to get in and how he was going to get out. Nothing elaborate. Just a wee sweetie shop here and a wee paper shop there would do him. S.P.Q.R., he quoted back at Tiger.
‘Maybe a snatch’ll get you mair but I don’t see myself. Honey, you stay in your own backyard, dat’s what dem white folk say. And that’s my motto. We get in, we know what we’re looking for, we get it, we get out. Wur time’s wur ain. We’ve all got a job. Could do it with wur eyes shut. Could walk oot. Nay hurry. But a snatch! Who does the snatchin? And whit aboot the resta us? We canny just walk away either. If you have a snatch you’re bound to have a hue and cry as well.’
‘Hugh and who?’
That was Dross, glasseyed, remembering Bobo, reminded of Main.
HARDNUT: Ach belt up ya ignorant bastart. Tiger knows whit I mean.
TIGER: Ay well but. When we get a snatch fixed we can easy fix how we blow. Wan thing at a time. Anyway Dross can drive.
HARDNUT: Drive what? He couldny even drive a pram if you havny goat a pram.
Chocolate finished his whisky and reached to his pint. Raised it. His mates bowed in reverent silence. He sipped. He lowered. He thought before he spoke.
CHOCOLATE: Don’t like a snatch.
HARDNUT: That’s two of us.
TIGER: Bloody rebellion. I’m no sayin we must. I’m only sayin it’s worth a thought.
They thought.
HARDNUT: Well but.
CHOCOLATE: Aye, sa thought.
TIGER: Of course if yous two huvny the nerve. Dross has. Huvent you, Dross?
Dross was anxious to contribute his mite. But he made a joke of it in case they laughed at the very idea. Behind the idea was Bobo. He had to talk about Bobo even if it was only in the shape of an idea. She bobbed in his liquid mind like a cork on the waves, up and down and up and down, but never drowned, never even washed away, insoluble, and he found comfort in saying her name, but grinned to disown what he was afraid wasn’t worth the telling.
DROSS: Funny yous talkin about a snatch. We had the idea for a snatch once, just in fun it was, it was when I was gaun wi Bobo and there was this auld dame, she’s the wages clerk in a laundry, was always callin Bobo names. Oh she had a wicked tongue, the batty auld bitch! calling Bobo a hoor, she little knew Bobo. Bobo? Bobo might do it for love but she’d never do it for money, not Bobo. I got the idea for it one night in the Phoenix when Bobo was that bloody mad at this auld dame she appealed to us and we were all kiddin Bobo we would roll her in the pen when she was comin back, she goes to the bank every Friday morning as regular as a wean’s bum, comin back wi the wages through the pen to the laundry, and snatch them just to give her a fright, just in fun you know, to learn her to lay off Bobo but Bobo wouldn’t hear tell of it. Smatter of fact I even kidded Bobo I was goin to get yous to do it for us. Christ you should have seen Bobo’s face the minute I mentioned your name and of course the resta them was just makin a cod of it anyway but mind you even at the time I thought to myself there could be something in it if it was done right only I wasn’t seein so much of yous in they days and I never thought of it again till there the now.
TIGER: Give us that again.
Dross sobered a little when he saw Tiger was taking him seriously. He answered questions. The name of the laundry. The location. The size. The address of the bank. The time of collection. The road Wee Annie took there and back again.
TIGER: She knows you?
DROSS: She’s saw me often enough. Every time I was nearly there wi Bobo she turned up.
TIGER: That’s you out then. Chocolate’ll tail her for a couple of weeks.
CHOCOLATE: What’s it always got to be me for?
TIGER: She doesn’t know you.
CHOCOLATE: She doesn’t know you and Hardnut either.
TIGER: That’s why Dross will be the driver.
HARDNUT: Drivin what? That’s what I was askin you.
CHOCOLATE: Drivin me crazy.
TIGER: I’ll get something.
HARDNUT: Six months.
TIGER: Hawnaw, it won’t be like that. This is gonna be takin toffy affa wean. It’s the same every Friday. Jist you look at the papers on a Friday night. They send kids, lassies o seventeen and boys jist oot the school, or else it’s some auld wabbit spinster. The same road the same time every week. To pick up the wages. Nutta soul wi them, nutta hander even on the way back. Then they wonder why they lose the lot. Ma heart bleeds fur them.
They wandered round the town on a pubcrawl, exploring mean dens in dim streets from the Hangman’s Rest in the Fruit Market to the Homos’ Bar in Hope Street. It was Tiger’s idea. He had a joke he liked to make. He stood back from the bar flanked by Dross and Chocolate with Hardnut behind him and declared, ‘Gentlemen, let us observe the proprietaries.’
Then he would survey the gantries to see the whiskies available before he gave his order. Leaving aside the single-malt whiskies there are over a thousand proprietary blends and Tiger had the fantastic ambition of sampling them all. The singlemalts he frankly admitted he couldn’t take.
When they met again sober, Dross had forgotten but Tiger remembered. Every word, every detail. That’s why he was the boss. His head was always clear, no matter what he had been drinking. Chocolate was willing after all and Hardnut agreed to agree.
‘Am no prepared to be the odd wan out if yous are for it,’ he explained magnanimously.
‘There’s all the time in the world,’ Tiger said to him over their snooker. ‘Let it lie. It’ll be all right. Don’t worry, don’t hurry.’
Dross had to take Chocolate over the route and point out Wee Annie to him, lurking together in a close across the street. Then one Friday Chocolate trailed her alone. An¬ other and another, and he was still tailing and timing her and Tiger was still trying to borrow a car for Dross to drive. They paced the pend with Hardnut late one wet and windy night when the laundry was closed and they satis¬ fied themselves that at the bend where they meant to jump her they were covered from the street and from the yard in front of the laundry. Chocolate and Hardnut would wait there and Tiger himself would follow Wee Annie in, not too far and not too close behind her. They worked it out often at one o’clock in the morning in Hardnut’s back- close. Dross acted Wee Annie and Chocolate practised the sudden push that would knock her off her feet, Hardnut where the cosh would land and Tiger the lightning coincidental snatch. Dross, the supposed strongarm man, was bored to be only the driver waiting round the corner.
‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ he said peevishly. ‘She’s only a shauchly wee thing. A good fart would blow her over.’
‘What do you think we’re going to use, chemical warfare?’ Hardnut asked.
He was joco. He could handle it. He knew where to strike with the haft of a coal hammer so as to leave her paralysed long enough to let them get out of the pend and into the car.
‘That skelf’ll no give us any bother,’ he laughed. ‘It’s in the bag, Mac.’
They took a month to get ready to stage it, drinking to it every night at the bar, rehearsing their silent parts in Hardnut’s back-close, enjoying their conference like actors discussing a new dramatist’s first play. This was the life. This was their craft. This was their lively art.
CHAPTER NINE
Tommy Partridge was worried again that winter. Fraternally, miserably, friendlessly, morbidly worried. Every Sunday he went to see her she was worse. To take her back to the happy days when they were brother and sister growing up together in trust and affection with a wonderful world waiting for them the day after tomorrow, he tried calling her Anna again, the name she liked when she was young and pretty because Annie sounded too plain, too common, ill-suited to her dainty frills and laces, buttons and bows and flimsy petticoats, her first nail varnish and lipstick,
but she wouldn’t go back to those green times with him. She couldn’t. She had long forgotten those seasons and dressings. She was looking forward now, prophesying war and evil. She made him a spectator standing on the touchline, watching a game that would have bored him and made him want to go home to his own fireside out of the cold if it hadn’t been his own sister was out there, and to her he knew it was no game. She was in earnest, taking on herself to judge a wicked world.
The misgivings that had driven him in the spring to speak to Grace’s parents were overlaid by a new and different anxiety. He feared for Grace less and more for his sister. He could maybe prevent her harming Grace. But he didn’t see how he could stop her harming herself. Provoked, or in a panic, he might just have managed to talk to her straight about Grace and tell her to leave the child alone, though he knew she would say he was the mad one to think she would hurt Grace. She never meant harm, only good, till the fit came over her, and then she didn’t know what she was doing. But in cold blood to ask her not to commit suicide was altogether too absurd.
He thought of working round to it by talking to her about Grace. But he knew that if he ever did dare remind her of the danger she was in by getting too fond of the girl she would hate him for breaking the understanding that they were never to say she had once been put away. She might show him the door, banish him for ever in anger. He couldn’t have that. He couldn’t leave her to die alone. She was still his sister. The only kin he had.
And anyway it wasn’t Grace he was so much worried about now. It was months since she had made much of Grace in conversation, and he thought the child had lapsed in her wandering affections. But still she had him sore upset. He couldn’t put his finger on it, couldn’t say precisely what was wrong with her that made him think she was ready to end her life by her own hand. When he tried to make sense of the way she talked he felt he was going mad too. Time and again he was on the point of hinting to her that she should go inside again as a voluntary patient for her own good, but his nerve always failed him.
