by James Green
He put on his shoes, opened a cupboard, and took out his anorak.
‘You’re not going to wear that, are you?’ laughed Eddy, standing up. ‘We’re not going fucking trainspotting.’
Jimmy was beginning to like his anorak. It really did make a statement. ‘It’s camouflage. In this I become invisible.’
‘Please yourself.’
Downstairs, Jimmy stopped at the dining room door. Janine was deep in conversation with an old lady. He went over to them.
‘Sorry to interrupt, dear,’ he said to the old lady.
‘Don’t you “dear” me,’ she snapped in a half-crazy voice. ‘Bloody cheek.’
‘Now, now, Mrs Lally,’ said Janine, ‘it’s only Jimmy. You know Jimmy?’
‘No I don’t. He’s no right to creep up and listen to what people are saying, wherever he works.’
‘He wasn’t listening, were you, Jimmy?’
‘Didn’t hear a thing. I’m off out for a quick pint.’
‘It needn’t be a quick one. Take your time, we all need a break.’
‘You know, I might take your advice.’
He went back to the corridor, joined Eddy, and they both left.
Clarke was right about The Falcon, it was about a five-minute walk and it was quiet. They took their pints and sat at a corner table.
‘How long’s that inspector of yours been here?’
‘Boy? About two years, he came from Kent, somewhere like that.’
‘Is he any good?’
‘Depends what you mean. His clear-up rate is all right.’
‘Is he going to give me trouble?’
‘I was coming to that. He doesn’t know anything about you but he’s taken a dislike to you, he’d be happier if you moved on. Will you be moving on, Jimmy?’
‘Last thing he told me was not to go anywhere, stay put, and keep the nick informed of my address.’
‘That’s just form, it was afterwards that he thought about moving you on.’
‘And did you plant that bright idea in his head?’
‘Not me, it’s nothing to me whether you go or stay.’
Jimmy drank his beer thoughtfully.
‘Will you be going, then?’ Clarke pressed on.
‘It’s still none of your fucking business.’
They sat in silence.
‘Nothing changes, Eddy, nothing fucking changes.’
‘Don’t you believe it, nothing’s the same. Different faces, places opening and closing, you never know where you are or who’s doing what.’
Jimmy took another long drink. It was good beer. ‘Nat’s the same, though, he hasn’t changed. He was always smart and clever.’
Clarke nodded. ‘Yeah, I remember.’
Jimmy finished his pint. He had enjoyed it and felt a bit better.
Clarke finished his. ‘He’s about the only thing that is the same though, everything else has changed. I’m not saying it’s not for the better, but I don’t like changes. Another pint?’
If they were drinking together they might as well do it properly. Jimmy nodded. Clarke went to the bar and came back with two more pints. ‘Cheers.’
‘You know, Eddy, a clever bloke once said everything in life has to change, that’s what it’s all about, living is changing, and if you change often enough everything can be OK.’
‘I know the sort. Some up-and-coming smart-arse university copper, like Boy, had an education and lets everyone know it. Do it right, do it my way.’
‘Sort of.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Who?’
‘Who said all that about change.’
‘Bloke name of Newman.’
‘Which nick did the smart-arse work out of?’
‘Oxford.’
‘Oxford! What were you up to in Oxford? No, I know, it’s none of my fucking business.’
They both sat and drank, each with their own thoughts.
‘You know, Jimmy, I sometimes think I should get a transfer to Oxford or somewhere like that. Go for something quiet.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Well, you know how it is, all the bother of the move, new faces, it would be just another change. Anyway, I’ll be able to retire in two years and then me and Sharon will make a proper move, somewhere warm and sunny.’
‘Still with Sharon?’
Eddy nodded.
‘You’re too young to retire, and a copper’s pension won’t keep you warm in the sun.’
‘We’ll do all right,’ Jimmy laughed.
‘I was right, Eddy, nothing changes. Somewhere quiet like Oxford might be nice but London’s where the money is. You’d never get rich working out of a nice quiet nick in Oxford.’
Clarke grinned. ‘Here’s to crime, Jimmy, and fair shares for all.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
And they both lifted their glasses and drank.
Kilburn, December 1962
‘Look Jimmy, nothing can go wrong, it’s just sitting there asking for someone to pick it up. It’s a sin to leave it.’
George sipped his Coke. Jimmy was thinking it through. It was a sin to steal. Even if you didn’t get caught God would see you, God always caught you because he knew as soon as you did what it was you were up to. But, then, God always gave you a way out. You did your sin, decided you were sorry, really sorry, went to Confession and everything was all right again. But you had to be truly sorry. Jimmy decided he would be. After all, it wasn’t as if the money was for himself, at least, not all of it. Trying to save on the wages of a bus conductor was impossible and Bernadette’s wages from her job at the post office mostly went to her mother, a widow with two children younger than Bernadette and still at school.
‘How much?’ he asked noncommittally.
‘Don’t know, but definitely no less than a ton.’
‘Each?’
‘Each.’
The money was in a locked drawer overnight. No one would be on the premises, so no one would get hurt. Getting in and out was no problem. The place and the money were insured and hardly any damage would be done forcing a window and a cupboard door. Jimmy could understand how George saw it. The money was almost being given away. If George knew about it, others would, if not now, then soon.
Someone would do it. So why not them?
But if they got caught, during or after, it would definitely mean prison. He could accept that as a risk but what he was not sure he could accept was how going to prison would affect his family and Bernadette.
Bernadette had long ago told him what she called her awful secret. Her mother was not a widow. Her father was alive, somewhere. The police had come and told her mother that her father had been arrested. The rest was straightforward but vague in her memory. A trial, a twelve-year sentence and her father was gone, sent to prison somewhere in the north, Manchester or Durham, she thought. Her mother visited at first, took Bernadette twice while somebody looked after her brother and the baby. But it wasn’t any good. Her father swore at her mother and it always ended in tears.
The visits used up far too much of what little money they had. They had moved and her mother had begun the fiction that she was a widow. Nearly all the women in their new community of Kilburn came to know it was fiction, but no one ever challenged it. They all knew only too well it could just as easily have been their husband, their son, their brother, their father. No need to make the shame worse or last longer. To all the women at Mass, at the shops, in the street or market, Mrs Callaghan was a widow whose fine husband had suffered an early and tragic death. The men accepted the women’s decision and minded their own business. Children old enough to know something was not quite right made no jokes or comments, it was a grown-up thing, of no interest.
Bernadette had not been humiliated in the playground, or anywhere else. She never tired of thanking God for his goodness to her. Others might have survived the humiliation but she knew she never could. God had spared her and in return she would devote her life to God.
In another age, not long ago, but utterly gone all the same, her domestic accomplishments, her skill at looking after the two younger ones, her carefulness and ingenuity, all of these things would have made her a desirable wife. But now it was hairstyles and makeup, stylish clothes and dancing that the boys wanted, and whatever else they could get.
It was explained to Bernadette that nuns lived enclosed lives in communities, apart from the world. Theirs was a life of prayer. Sisters took vows and belonged to communities but they worked in the world. Theirs was a life of service, showing God’s love by serving people in many ways. Bernadette’s mother was happy to be guided by Sister Angela who told her that while Bernadette was healthy and strong, she didn’t have the brains or aptitude for any serious academic training, so becoming a teaching Sister was out of the question. But she might make a very good nurse and as a nurse she could go on the foreign missions. Mrs Callaghan thought long and hard about what Sister Angela had told her.
‘I don’t know, Sister, all those black people. I know we’re all God’s children and He loves us all, but it would be terribly different in Africa, wouldn’t it?’
‘It wouldn’t have to be Africa, it could be South America or India, anywhere she was sent. Nurses are needed all over.’
‘But it would be somewhere foreign. You know what I mean, it wouldn’t be like being among your own, would it?’
Sister Angela nodded in agreement. She knew what Mrs Callaghan meant. Hadn’t she left Donegal to come and live and work in London? She knew all about being an alien in a foreign land all right.
‘You know, they say that when God created mankind, first He made black people, but He wasn’t satisfied, so then He made the white people, but still He wasn’t satisfied, so then He made the Irish and said to Himself, “Well, I’m glad I’ve got that right at last.”’
They both laughed.
Eventually a decision was arrived at.
‘So, an enclosed order, Mrs Callaghan. Well, you can’t do better than one of the Benedictine convents. I’ll talk to Bernadette about it and we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, pray for her. A vocation is a very important thing and needs lots of prayer.’
But God’s plans for Bernadette, if indeed He had any, lay in quite another direction, the direction of Jimmy Costello.
A few years before God, according to Sister Angela, was providing for Bernadette Callaghan, God – or at least His Church – was also providing for a young woman in the West of Ireland beginning her novitiate with an order of missionary teaching sisters. Her vocation, however, was less a response to God’s plan than an escape from a weak, worn-out mother, a drunken, violent father, and a brood of younger brothers and sisters. The convent was a haven from rural dirt, poverty, and brutishness.
She had decided on her vocation at the age of sixteen in the kitchen of her home, when she had stabbed her father with the big carving knife.
It wasn’t a serious wound but it was bad enough.
Her father had stood sullenly holding his arm while the blood seeped through his fingers and his daughter shouted at him, ‘I swear by the Holy Mother of God if you ever touch me again I’ll kill you. You’ll never lay your filthy hands on me again.’
Her father had left the kitchen muttering.
He would go and get drunk and he would come home and knock her mother about and maybe some of her brothers and sisters. But he wouldn’t touch her again. He was big and violent but he wasn’t stupid. He knew she was as good as her word. Nothing was worth getting a knife stuck in your belly for.
As she sat in the kitchen with the blood-stained knife on the table she had made up her mind. She couldn’t protect her two younger sisters but she could save herself. They might be black savages in Africa but they could be no more savage than what she had already seen and experienced.
Next day she announced to the parish priest she had a vocation to become a missionary Sister. The priest knew the family and understood. It wasn’t the best reason to become a Sister but it was better than anything he had to offer or suggest. The arrangements were set in motion and the girl who was to become Sister Philomena left her home and cast everything about it from her mind.
It was early Saturday lunch-time in The Hind, and things were still quiet.
‘Show me,’ said Jimmy.
‘What do you mean?’ asked George.
‘Let’s go round the back, look at the windows, hang around and see what it’s like.’
‘What for? Why queer it by messing about? In and out is what we want.’
‘If it’s safe, a visit won’t do any harm, will it? Or is it not so safe?’
‘It’s as safe as sitting in church.’
Jimmy waited. He was careful. He wasn’t going to take any chance he didn’t have to. So he waited. Then George said, ‘OK, we’ll visit, you can have a look.’
‘We’ll both have a good look,’ said Jimmy, ‘and if anyone wants to know what we’re doing round the back, we’re hiding from some lads who are out to give you a smacking for nicking one of their girls.’
George shrugged. ‘If anyone asks, we just tell them to fuck off.’
‘And if it’s a copper? Do we just tell him to fuck off?’
George thought about it. Jimmy was careful, maybe he was right to be careful. ‘You’ve got a brain as well as talent. Jimmy, you’re wasted on the buses.’
‘Don’t get ideas, George, I like the buses. I want to be a bus driver and marry Bernie. This is just so that me and Bernie can get married a bit sooner.’
‘Want it nightly instead of weekly?’ George gave a leer, then stopped smiling. He didn’t like the way Jimmy was looking at him.
‘Want to repeat that, George?’ asked Jimmy slowly.
‘No, it was a stupid crack, it just came out. I know you and Bernie are …’ he looked for the right words, ‘sort of special.’
He relaxed as Jimmy relaxed.
‘You’re all right, George, but you’ve picked up some nasty ways. I like you but it’s you I like, not your language or your friends or what they do.’
‘Do you know what they do?’
‘No, and I don’t want to.’
‘So, when shall we go?’
Everything went just as George had said. A few nights later, they broke into the laundrette under the jazz club in the early morning, forced open the drawer, and took away the cash box. It was easy.
‘He’s loopy, the old bloke who runs the place.’
George was excited and cheerful as they walked down the street with the cash box in a carrier bag under some overalls and a full sandwich box. The excitement made him talkative.
‘He thinks if he empties the machines on a different night each week, nobody will know when he does it, but it’s easy to know, ’cos he always stays twenty minutes longer to count it.’
‘Why doesn’t he take it to a night safe?’
‘Afraid of carrying money at night, I suppose. He comes back next day, opens up and gets the money, and takes it to the bank then.’
They came to a junction and stopped.
‘See you,’ said Jimmy, turning in the direction of his home.
‘Don’t you want your split?’
‘No, not now. I’ll see you tomorrow after work. Bring it to The Hind in a plain envelope. It’ll all be coin and I don’t want coin. Change it and I’ll see you tomorrow, about eight.’
‘OK, Jimmy,’ and George watched him go.
It was typical of Jimmy to trust him. And he was right to trust him, they were mates, he wouldn’t gyp Jimmy, it would be 50:50. Well, 60:40, which was almost as good, everything considered. George liked the overalls an
d sandwiches. A nice touch, that was. Jimmy was someone to bring on.
About ten past eight the following night Jimmy arrived at The Hind. George was sitting at a table with some of his friends, men Jimmy didn’t want to know. They were talking and laughing, George seemed well settled amongst them. Jimmy went to the bar. Mr Lonsdale himself came to serve him. It was the first time he had got such personal attention.
‘It’s Jimmy isn’t it, and you drink mild, yeah?’ He was being friendly. ‘Have this on me. A good story’s always worth a pint. Seven pound, fifteen shillings and sixpence, that’s good, Jimmy.’ He laughed as he pulled the pint. Then he put the pint on the bar and laughed again, ‘A good story,’ and he walked away.
Jimmy felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know Jack Lonsdale and he didn’t want Jack Lonsdale to know him. He didn’t know a funny story and he didn’t know where seven pounds, fifteen and six fitted in. He looked across at George. He was talking and the others at the table were laughing. Jimmy’s mind turned things over slowly. He stayed at the bar, sipped his mild and began to make connections. After a while, George came over and joined him.
‘Here we are then.’
He held out a brown envelope and Jimmy took it and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Did I get a hundred quid or seven pounds, fifteen and six?’
George paused. ‘How did you know?’
Jimmy remained silent.
‘On my oath, Jimmy, there was only just over fifteen quid in the cash box and where the bloody sixpence came from I don’t know.’
Jimmy was still looking at him. ‘That’s it? I get seven pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence?’
‘We both do. You can’t have what’s not there.’
Jimmy looked at the men at George’s table. They weren’t looking at him but they weren’t talking either. Jimmy nodded at them.
‘They know about it, about me?’
‘Sure, but they’re all right, they don’t talk to anyone except each other.’
‘And Lonsdale, he knows?’
‘Well, I had to tell Jack. Look, it’s not the money. We’ll score some other time, but it’s the way we did it, all the touches. They’re impressed, Jimmy, they know talent and brains when they see it. We’ve done OK, seven quid odd each in money but fucking hundreds in respect, a few more like that and we’ll have some real dough, and then we’ll get taken on board.’
