Jack had said he was looking forward to sleeping in a ‘proper bed’. Not a hole-in-the-wall bed, as the one in the tenement flat was called. So was she, but it hadn’t occurred to her what a ‘proper bed’ would cost. Then there was the paint and wallpaper needed. Not to mention new carpets and furniture for the extra bedrooms. It obviously hadn’t occurred to Jack either. And she hadn’t the heart to worry him. She even got into the habit of quoting prices less than what she paid.
He said she couldn’t hang up her rusty-looking utensils in their lovely, newly-painted kitchen and so she’d even had to buy new kitchen equipment. In no time, their small savings account was empty and she had to order all the big stuff like furniture and carpets from a wholesale warehouse. She imagined that in the two or three months that the warehouse might take to send in their account, she would have saved up enough again to cover it.
Jack loved the new house and was so proud of it.
But then the warehouse account came in and she nearly died of shock. She had never been faced with such a huge bill in her life. She felt so dazed by it that she could hardly pay any attention to a very posh neighbour, a Mrs Charlotte Arlington-Jones from house number five – a tall woman with a long nose. She had come to tell her of the ‘ghastly neighbours in number three and four’ and how they should all get together and complain to the authorities until the ‘ghastly creatures’ were removed. Apparently number three housed the Shafaatullas, a Pakistani Muslim family. Two gay men lived in number four.
Letters about the warehouse bill began arriving, threatening court proceedings and all sorts of awful things if the account was not paid immediately. Mae became distraught. She wandered about in a daze. She didn’t know how she managed to carry on with her normal housework. She even attended a meeting organised by Mrs Arlington-Jones from house number five. Others at the meeting were Mrs Jean Gardner from number six – another posh lady but with a kind face and gentle voice. She was immaculately turned out with dark hair piled on top of her head and face carefully made up and long artificial nails painted deep red. There was also Doris McIvor and her mother from house number two, Mae’s next door neighbour. Elderly Mrs McIvor was obviously suffering from serious dementia. The man from number seven was a tall skeleton of man with wild-looking eyes. He was called the Reverend Denby and was a retired minister from the Highlands.
The meeting took place in Mrs Arlington-Jones’s sitting room – a curious group of neighbours chatting in a desultory manner while Mrs Arlington-Jones bustled about.
‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve called this meeting to complain about the new tenants in our exclusive little enclave here. I believe that it will lower the tone of the place with that large family of Asian people moving in here. I shudder to think how many of them there are. And I dread to think what they’ll be getting up to. Everyone knows they have ghastly bad taste. They are likely to paint the outside of that house a bright pink or purple or something – and as for that awful smell of curry! Well, what more can I say?’
She sat back and folded her arms, waiting for a response from the others. Quite a lively debate ensued.
Mae Kelly and Doris McIvor worriedly said, ‘Now, we don’t really know that they’ll be in any way offensive, do we?’
Mrs Jean Gardner said gently, ‘They come from the Gorbals, dear, and we all know what a rough place that is. I wish them no harm, of course, but I do believe they won’t be happy here, being so out of place. It’s just not right for them.’
The Reverend Denby called things to order rather tetchily.
‘But what about the poofs? Surely someone else noticed them.’
‘I think you’ll find their house immaculate and if I may say so, in rather good taste,’ Mrs Gardner said in her quiet, gentle tone. ‘They are both teachers, you know. And artists. Mr Clive Westley is an art teacher in a private school.’
‘They are wicked, dirty poofs. They get up to disgusting perversions behind their closed door. They are worse than those non-believers you’re on about.’
After more arguing and deliberation, it was decided that they should protest discreetly about all of the new tenants.
Doris gave in because her mother was beginning to misbehave and repeat everything endlessly to everyone’s annoyance.
Mae’s mind was so desperately worried about her own business that she just agreed for peace. She even agreed to Mrs Gardner’s suggestion that she should ask Jack to write a letter to the Council because, being a police officer, his letter would be taken notice of more than a letter from any of the other tenants.
The meeting closed on that ‘satisfactory note’. She kept her promise and said to Jack, ‘There’s been a meeting and the woman in number five wants you to write a letter to the Council asking them to get rid of the Pakistanis in number three and the two gay men in number four. Mrs Arlington-Jones says, and I quote her, “They are totally unsuitable and unacceptable.”’
Jack flicked her an impatient glance from over the top of his newspaper.
‘Tell them to go to hell. The Pakistanis and the gay blokes haven’t broken any laws.’
She tried to keep an active mind, filling it with garbled prayers about somehow being able to pay the warehouse bill. She tried to keep her body active as well. She scrubbed floors all over the house, over and over again, as if by keeping so wildly and frantically active, she could scrub her terror away.
Then, as if by some miracle, her prayers were answered. As she madly thrashed about with a scrubbing brush in the hall cupboard, a splinter of wood shot up under her fingernail, driven by her frantic scrubbing. Eyes watering with the pain, she furiously battered at the split wood on the floor to relieve her anger and pain. It was then she noticed she had loosened one of the floorboards. She thought she caught a glimpse of something coloured through the crack. After sucking her finger free of its hurt, she gingerly lifted the loose board.
She would never forget her astonishment at what she saw underneath. There were several neat bundles of used £5 notes. Hysterical gasps of joy careered around the cupboard in which she was kneeling. God had answered her prayers after all. She snatched the piles of notes and stuffed them into her apron pockets. She got up and gave a wild dance of delight.
Then gradually, caution crept over her. She mustn’t tell Jack, or anyone else, about her find. Not yet. Not until she’d paid her warehouse bill and then saved up and conscientiously put back every penny she’d taken. Then she could tell Jack, as if she’d just newly discovered the money. The police could then make the necessary enquiries as to how it got there and who it had originally belonged to.
Probably it was the previous tenant of the house who had died, some old miser perhaps, or an eccentric who didn’t trust banks. She’d heard of people like that.
Replacing the board, she struggled to her feet. She would pay the warehouse bill immediately. Her terrible problem was solved, that was the main thing. She felt joyously, hysterically relieved and happy.
And yet … Not only caution but a strange uneasiness darted about like mice in the darkest corners of her mind.
With a hasty, furtive gesture, she shut the cupboard door. And as she did so, her hand trembled. Somehow she felt she had far more reason to be afraid now than she ever had before.
5
Mrs Jean Gardner from number six had begun to visit Doris and Mrs McIvor at number two nearly every day. She spoke gently to Doris, telling her not to worry. She’d help her get to the root of the problem and everything would be all right.
‘Do you think, dear, you could have done something?’ she asked with a worried expression. ‘You might have, quite unintentionally of course, done something to the poor helpless old lady to have caused her to withdraw from the world. Probably she imagines she’d doing it for her own safety, dear.’ Mrs Gardner added, ‘Do you think she’s even afraid of you?’
‘Oh no,’ Doris protested. ‘There could be no need for her to feel afraid of me. I’d never do her any harm. She knows that.
I’ve always been as kind as I could to her.’
Mrs Gardner placed a soft white hand on Doris’s knee, her long scarlet nails shimmering in the light from the standard lamp.
‘Now, my dear.’ Her voice was so gentle, it was almost a whisper. ‘Look into your heart and remember I care about you and am trying to help you in any way I can. But try to search in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Ask yourself if you’ve ever been impatient or angry with the poor helpless old lady. Have you never been tempted to lash out at her?’
Doris felt herself begin to tremble with distress. Haltingly she admitted, ‘I suppose there have been times when I’ve been so frightened and upset by some of the things Mother does – like running out of the house. It’s just … It’s just that I’m afraid she’ll come to some harm.’
‘But my dear, why does the poor helpless old lady run away from you?’
‘She’s … she’s ill. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. But she keeps doing things and I can’t help getting impatient and upset and … And …’
‘Harm her?’
‘No, no, I’d never harm my mother. She was so good to me when I was growing up. I’ll never forget that.’
‘My dear.’ Mrs Gardner’s voice became quietly accusing. ‘I saw you yesterday grab her roughly by the arm and drag her back into the house. You jerked her off her feet. I heard her cry out in pain. That’s why I’ve been so worried and want to help you.’
Tears gushed up to Doris’s eyes. ‘But I’d got such a fright. I’d gone to the bathroom and when I came back out, she’d disappeared from the sitting room, where I thought she’d dozed off to sleep in the arm chair. I was afraid she might fall into the river. I found her quite near the river. She could have fallen in.’
‘There’s a little footbridge, dear. She was trying to reach the little footbridge and escape from you. I hear her saying that, or words to that effect.’
Doris was weeping helplessly now.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’
Mrs Gardner sighed. ‘So you did harm her?’
‘No, I mean … I grabbed her arm but I didn’t mean to hurt her.’
Mrs Gardner patted Doris’s hand. ‘Try to calm yourself, dear, and forgive yourself. I’ll come back tomorrow to help you. We’ll work this out between us, don’t worry. I know you’re a good daughter. We just must find a way to calm you down.’
Doris, still weeping, saw her neighbour to the outside door and watched the elegant, beautifully dressed figure with glossy dark hair and little pearl earrings and designer suit walk along Waterside Way. Only when she had disappeared into the garden, then the house at number six did Doris retreat back into her own house.
She ached to speak to Mrs Gardner again to try and convince her that she had never done her mother any harm. What she secretly agonised about, of course, was that there had been times recently when she felt like throttling her mother. She prayed Mrs Gardner would save her from herself and save her mother. Guilt about her violent feelings had begun eating into her very soul. Her mother had been so good to her when she was little and while she was growing up. Her loving kindness could not be denied and Doris didn’t want to deny it. But her mother now was like a different person. It wasn’t only that she kept disappearing, often in the middle of the night, but she kept repeating everything. She kept asking the same questions over and over and over again. Doris feared it was driving her mad.
Mrs Gardner had been able to read her innermost secret mind, the part of her mind that wanted – dare she admit even to herself – to kill her mother.
Mrs Gardner was a beautiful kindly woman who would do her best to help her and prevent her from doing anything dreadful. She ached for Mrs Gardner to come back and help her. She ached for anyone to help her.
She truly loved her mother and was desperately afraid of doing her any harm.
6
Mae was trying her best to save enough five pound notes to replace the money she’d stolen. She needed tights and new pants, to mention just a couple of things, but she denied herself them and everything else. In the middle of all this worry, it didn’t help when Mrs Jean Gardner, the neighbour from number six, began coming in. First she’d go into Doris and Mrs McIvor’s house next door and then she’d come knocking at her door. Mae didn’t like her, couldn’t take to her, even imagined there was something suspicious about her. Of course, it could just be, Mae secretly admitted, that she was too worried about the awful things she herself had done and was just transferring her own guilt on to this very caring, kind and perfectly innocent woman.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Mrs Gardner asked gently once they’d settled into the black leather easy chairs in the sitting room.
‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be all right?’ Immediately the words were out Mae felt ashamed of their sharp tone. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I’m feeling a bit stressed just now.’
‘Well, I don’t blame you, my dear,’ Mrs Gardner stretched over a soft white hand and patted Mae’s knee, ‘with the worry you have to contend with just now.’
Mae suddenly felt faint. Did this woman actually know about the theft of the five-pound notes? But how could she?
‘I … I …’ she stammered in distress. ‘I don’t … I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You poor thing,’ Mrs Gardner sympathised. ‘It must be awful for you.’
‘How do you … How do you know? I don’t understand.’
‘I saw it, dear, with my own eyes.’
‘You saw it?’ Mae really believed she was about to lose consciousness. ‘When did you see it? How could you?’
‘This morning, dear.’
‘But you couldn’t have.’
‘Oh, but I assure you I did, dear. And of course it made me very sad.’
‘But I’ve been in the house all morning.’
‘I know, dear. I know.’
‘Then how could you? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Your husband, dear. What an unusually handsome man he is.’
‘My husband?’ Mae felt a wonderful wave of relief engulf her. She collapsed back into the scarlet satin cushion of the chair. She even managed a smile. ‘Yes, he is handsome, isn’t he? I’m very luck to have him.’
‘Yes, dear, and you want to keep him, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Mae began to feel uneasy again. What was the woman on about now?
‘So you’re doing something about it, are you?’
Mae gasped with impatience. ‘About what?’
Mrs Gardner patted Mae’s knee again. ‘The other woman, dear.’
‘The other woman?’ Mae couldn’t help a laugh escaping. What a bloody menace Mrs Jean Gardner was. A real stirrer of trouble. Mae could believe that she was the one behind Mrs Arlington-Jones calling the meeting and getting all het up about the gay men and the Pakistanis.
‘If you’re suggesting, Mrs Gardner, that my husband is having some sort of secret affair, I can assure you you’re wrong.’
‘I do admire your faith and loyalty, dear,’ Mrs Gardner said gently, ‘but I’m sorry to say that I saw them together.’
‘My husband is a police officer. People approach him all the time for help and advice. He knows lots of women through his work.’
‘I understand he only works inside the local police station, dear. He doesn’t go out on the beat.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I saw this woman get into his car outside the police station, dear. A very attractive young woman she was.’
‘Mrs Gardner, the woman would have been in the station asking for help and advice. No doubt she was so upset with her problem that my husband felt it his duty to see her safely home. That’s why she’d be getting into his car.’
‘I do admire your faith and loyalty, dear,’ Mrs Gardner repeated. She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go now. I promised to pop in and see Mrs Arlington-Jones. But don’t worry, dear. I’ll see you again tomorrow and I’ll do what I
can to support and help you.’
Speechless at the cheek of the woman, Mae saw her to the door but didn’t return the wave of the scarlet-nailed hand. She went back to the sitting room and collapsed into her chair.
‘Well,’ she said out loud, ‘could you beat that? What a creep of a woman. No, a wicked woman. Wait till Jack hears about this.’
Then she thought, no, probably Jack would be furious and she had enough worry and trouble to contend with without stirring up any more.
7
The long-nosed woman was watching him – white women were very cheeky. He could never quite get used to how free they were. How they made eye contact. Mahmood was still shocked by this. It was most disconcerting. He prayed to Allah that the woman would go away.
He was examining the outside of the house. It was structurally sound but it seemed very sad and dilapidated. The last tenant, an old grandmother, had lived in it alone and could not have been expected to clean and paint it. He had met her and her family before she moved out. Or rather, before her family moved her out and put her in an institution. That was another thing about the British life he would never get used to and which shocked him most deeply. They did not care for their families.
In the whole of India and Pakistan, there would not be as many abandoned and lonely people as there were in this one Scottish city of Glasgow. In Britain, widowers and widows, grandfathers, grandmothers, unmarried uncles and aunties by the million lived separately from their relations and were lonely. They lived in dingy slum tenements like those in the Gorbals, or in nice places in the West End.
What did it matter where you were if you were lonely and abandoned and no one paid you any respect?
They had gone to pay their respects to the old grandmother who had been the previous tenant in number three. Rasheeda, the mother of his children, could not speak much English so she sat very quietly but his teenage children, Zaida and tall, handsome Mirza, spoke most politely. Bashir, his son-in-law, was at work and could not be with them. They owned a successful grocery business. It wasn’t a very large shop but it had a splendid variety of groceries and newspapers too. Bashir worked hard and conscientiously in the shop since he’d lost his wife, Mahmood’s dear daughter, in a gas explosion in which his parents had also died. The house had been completely destroyed, along with everything in it.
The Kellys of Kelvingrove Page 2
