Chapter One

Friday night had never been Bernard Peabody’s favourite time of the week, for then, rain or shine, sleet, hail or howling gale, he would be sent out into the streets of the Gorbals to collect what he could of the rents. This was the price he had to pay for being a humble factor in Shannon, Peters & Dean, the estate agents, who had been kind enough to employ him back in 1919 and who had rewarded eleven years of unstinting service by piling more and more responsibilities on to his narrow shoulders.

Mr Peabody did not complain. In fact if these little ‘promotions’ hadn’t come his way he would have been disappointed. Every additional name in the tenants’ book meant another tiny increment in his tiny wage and gave him – so he fondly imagined – a wee bit more status in the office. Not for him the genteel stairways of Shannon, Peters & Dean’s West End apartments, the hot commercial properties of Glasgow’s city centre or the leafy suburban estates that Mr Shannon had recently added to the books: the bungalows, the de-luxe apartment blocks that were springing up, arms akimbo, south and west of the river. His territory remained as it had always been, the vigorous old route that ran from Glasgow Cross through the Saltmarket and – holding on to its hat – across the Clyde by the Albert Bridge and into the district known as the Gorbals; or, to be a shade more precise, into that unpicturesque part of the Gorbals that everyone referred to as the Calcutta Road.

Nobody, least of all Mr Peabody, knew why the stubby thoroughfare that linked Keane Street and the infamous Lavender Court had been named after a city in India. No Indians, give or take the odd Lascar, resided in the area. Poles, yes, Italians, yes, Jews, certainly; plus a multitude of the Irish-Scots who had been left behind when the nineteenth century ran out of steam. All of those and even the odd Englishman, but not an Asian in sight.

Why then Calcutta Road? Only old Mr Dean could have provided Bernard Peabody with an explanation – ‘Called after a clipper ship, laddie’ – but Mr Dean was far too venerable to be approached by a mere clerk in whom curiosity would not be regarded as a virtue.

Names were not uppermost in Mr Peabody’s mind as he trudged into the Gorbals, however. For the past five months no mental games or conundrums had soothed the agent’s apprehension as he crossed the Albert Bridge and headed towards No. 10 Lavender Court, where the widow Conway and her three unmarried daughters lived.

It wasn’t the girls who made him nervous so much as the widow herself. Although she seemed friendly, certainly to Mr Peabody, Mrs Conway had a reputation for scaring the breeks off every tallyman, tinker and tout who set foot in her close or knocked upon her big glossy brown door.

Why, Mr Peabody wondered, as he passed the window of Brady’s pub, did Mrs Conway’s door seem so much larger than anyone else’s? It was, he knew, exactly the same size as all the others in the building. He could only put it down to the fact that within days of taking occupancy she’d not only changed the mortice-lock for a Chubb but had painted the woodwork a rich chocolate brown and embellished the surface with a series of wavy little lines that reminded him, for some reason, of maidenhair.

Strictly speaking she wasn’t allowed to make alterations to the property without written permission from the factor. Therefore he could have exercised his authority and had her grovelling. But he could not imagine Mrs Conway grovelling to anyone, let alone a mere rent-collector. So he had said nothing except, ‘Very nice. Aye, very nice, Mrs Conway,’ when she’d drawn his attention to the luminous oblong that added such distinction to the third-floor landing.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to enquire where she’d found the money to pay for such expensive luxuries as gloss paint and Chubb locks when she was for ever complaining how hard it was for her to make ends meet. He had put that question to one side too, however, for the eyes of the girls had been upon him, so sleek and speculative that he’d been only too anxious to scoop up the coins that Lizzie Conway had counted from her purse and beat a hasty retreat across the landing to the Gowers.

Now it was Friday again, and cold.

In mid-afternoon the first of the November fogs had come snuffling up from the Clyde. Mr Peabody had peeked from the windows of the office in St Anne’s Street in the touch-and-go hour between three o’clock and four nervously awaiting the onset of a real pea-souper. He disliked the Gorbals at the best of times, more for its reputation than its reality, but on foggy nights, when the boys of the neighbourhood appeared like wraiths out of the murk, his nervousness would bring on a stomach ache that not even a nip of brandy or a tot of rum could ease. But, thank God, the fog had not settled and by the time he had strapped on his collection pouch, buttoned his overcoat and adjusted his bowler, the wind had stiffened and the sky over the city was as clear as it ever got at this time of the year.

It was cold, though, very cold. You could feel it pinching your nostrils, the tips of your ears and all around your mouth. Mr Peabody regretted that he had not heeded his mother’s advice and brought along his muffler, the long grey woollen protector that his mother had spent weeks knitting for him but that he, a dab hand with the needles himself, could have knocked off in a couple of nights. He hadn’t brought the muffler, though; a kind of stubborn pride had prevented it, the feeling that he would be regarded as a weakling by the office juniors, though it was mainly in the hope of impressing his hardiness on the Conways that he strode out into the November twilight ungloved and unscarfed.

To poor Mr Peabody – a thirty-four-year-old virgin – any girl who lived in one of Shannon, Peters & Dean’s slum properties had to be ‘bad’.

Naturally that was part of the attraction that Polly – particularly Polly – and Babs Conway held for him: the notion that their flirtatiousness indicated the possibility, remote though it might be, of some form of sexual activity.

Small wonder then that he approached the close-mouth at No. 10 trembling with excitement as well as trepidation and, clutching his collection pouch tightly against his thighs, began a cautious ascent of the stairs.

*   *   *

Unlike most of the main streets of the Gorbals which, contrary to repute, were broad and airy and flanked by old but solidly built dwellings, Lavender Court had an overwhelming narrowness that made the tenements seem particularly menacing. It wasn’t much of a street in any case, eight buildings, four on each side, racked together on a steep incline that ran up to the weeping brick wall of the shunting yards of the Kingston Iron Works above which, day and night, black smoke and white steam curled up into the slot of the sky.

The westward trek of affluent and aspiring citizens just after the war had created a vacuum into which had flocked the poor and shiftless. Overcrowding was rife, nowhere more so than in the region of Calcutta Road.

The Lavender Court tenements, for instance, were owned by a host of different landlords, many of whom were almost as poor as their tenants and none too particular when it came to obeying the letter of the law in regard to health and safety, especially when infants, small children, itinerant lodgers and relatives were added into the equation.

Even with the best will in the world the good-wives of the close couldn’t possibly cope with the rivers of sewage that leaked down the stairs from the half-landing lavatories. They had to endure choked drains, backed-up pipes, leaking eaves, smashed windows, and, unfortunately, puddles of urine and vomit that appeared mysteriously in the dark and noisy hour after the pubs got out. No amount of mopping and scrubbing could keep the common stair clean and after a time even the most fastidious soon gave up and accepted that if things weren’t going to get any better they certainly couldn’t get much worse.

Then one fine June forenoon, a rusty little motor van rounded the corner from Keane Street, bounced over the cobbles, braked to a halt in front of No. 10 and Lizzie Conway emerged from the passenger seat and, aided by her good-looking daughters, began unloading furniture.

Windows all up the front of the building, most of which had been propped open against the stifling heat, suddenly bloomed a crop of fat arms and fatter faces, while out of the back courts packs of small children appeared as if summoned by a piper.

The sight of a motor vehicle of any kind was unusual in Lavender Court – in this neighbourhood the horse and cart still held sway – and the sight of a motor vehicle, even a battered van, with four females inside was rare enough to be regarded as a phenomenon.

Polly, the oldest and most sensible of the Conway girls, was well aware of the neighbours’ scrutiny. Even before she clambered out of the back of the van she sensed their disapproval. She leaned against the back of the worn seat and looked past Mr McIntosh’s head. The van, in fact, had been temporarily borrowed from the Department of Sanitation’s laundry and Mr McIntosh, the driver, was doing Lizzie a favour by transporting her family and her goods and chattels from one tenement to another.

Polly watched through the windscreen as her mother clambered from the van and came around to the rear.

‘Not much of a place, is it?’ Mr McIntosh murmured.

‘Better than where we came from,’ said Polly.

‘Is this what your mam calls goin’ up in the world?’ Mr McIntosh said.

‘It’ll do us fine,’ Polly said, ‘until something better comes our way.’

‘If it ever does,’ said Mr McIntosh.

‘It will,’ said Polly, cheerfully. ‘You’ll see, it will.’

Lizzie opened the rear door and eased a small chest of drawers from the van while Mr McIntosh kept the engine running in case, for some reason, a fast getaway was required.

‘You comin’ here for t’ stay, missus?’

Lizzie lowered the chest to the pavement and leaned an elbow on top.

She had a manner to her, not hoity-toity exactly but so confident and assured that the youngster who had asked the question backed away even before the woman opened her mouth.

‘Oh, no,’ Polly whispered to her sister, Babs, ‘Mammy’s going to get us off on the wrong foot again.’

‘Rubbish!’ Babs said. ‘She’s just makin’ her presence felt.’

‘What’s your name then?’ Polly heard her mother say, in precisely the same tone a copper might use to interrogate a murder suspect.

‘Me? I never said nothin’,’ little Billy Hallop declared and, though he was all of ten years old and built like a small tank engine, turned on his heel and raced away into the close, yelling, ‘Mammy, Mammy, Mammy.’

A split second later Polly saw a male face appear in the window of a ground-floor bedroom, a small, round, squashed sort of face with features so flat that they might have been pressed in a vice. There was no curiosity in the young man’s watery blue eyes, only annoyance.

He barked, ‘What are you doin’ then, scarin’ oor Billy?’

Lizzie Conway ignored the young man and, with a little smile, drew a long length of carpet from the van.

‘Right, girls,’ she said. ‘You can get out now.’

Polly followed her sisters as they scrambled out of the hot, uncomfortable interior of the van where they had been packed behind the chairs. Without further instruction she began to extract huge cardboard boxes and small items of furniture, handing them to Rosie who passed them in turn to Babs who piled them up on the pavement.

In the ground-floor window Jackie Hallop’s head protruded from the shell of the bedroom. He wore a grubby cotton undervest and in the dusty June sunlight his chest and shoulders were white enough to suggest that he seldom emerged from the bedroom in daylight.

His bark this time had a shrillness that made it sound more like a yap.

‘Hoi, you. I’m talkin’ t’ you.’ He singled out Babs. ‘You, blondie.’

Still with that odd little smile on her lips Lizzie Conway turned and stared. Polly followed the line of her mother’s gaze.

All up the height of the tenement, windows were filled with arms and faces, with bosoms large and small. A strange silence descended upon the onlookers, even upon the ring of children who had gathered round, a silence pierced only by the shrieking of an infant and, like an echo, the hoot of a shunting engine behind the iron works wall. Then with a wonderfully deliberate swagger, Polly’s mother strolled over to the window and, leaning forward from the waist, whispered to young Mr Hallop.

‘What did you call her?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Blondie?’

‘Her name’s Babs,’ Lizzie said. ‘But it wouldn’t matter if she was the Queen of Sheba, that’ll be the first an’ last time you’ll talk to one o’ my girls without talkin’ to me first. Do I make myself clear?’

‘I’ll talk t’ who I like,’ the young man mumbled.

Lizzie leaned closer still.

She bent her arm and closed her fingers, making a fist, a rather large fist, which she placed one inch from Jackie Hallop’s nose.

‘Oh, will you?’ Polly heard her mother say in a dangerously affable tone. ‘How’d you like to be talkin’ through a mouthful o’ broken teeth?’

‘You,’ Jackie said, swallowing hard, ‘an’ what army?’

Polly saw her mother lean closer, so close to the young man that there was no more than the breadth of the fist between then. She could not hear which of the choice threats her mother used, which of the unladylike pieces of local jargon that would indicate to the young man, and to the neighbourhood, that she, Lizzie Conway, had the sort of connections that demanded if not respect at least a modicum of caution. Whichever one it was, whichever name Mammy Conway invoked, the effect on Jackie Hallop was startling.

Polly watched his pale face turn even paler. He jerked backward, bumped his head on the frame, vanished. A moment later, like the blade of a guillotine, the window slammed shut.

Mammy walked back to join her girls, her round hips rolling under the skimpy floral-print dress, that odd little smile still on her lips, a smile that seemed to signify not triumph but contempt.

‘God, you’ve done it again, Mammy,’ Babs hissed.

‘Done what?’ said Lizzie.

‘Got us off on the wrong foot,’ said Babs. ‘Who’s gonna talk to us now?’

‘You don’t want to talk to the likes of him,’ Lizzie said.

Just behind her ear, Polly heard Babs murmur, ‘Oh, I dunno. He looked pretty tasty to me.’

‘Polly, Babs,’ Lizzie said, pointing a warning finger. ‘No back-chat, please. Get this van unloaded. Mr McIntosh doesn’t have all day.’

Polly sighed, followed Babs to the back of the van, took a two-handed grip on a kitchen table and carefully extricated it.

‘Good,’ Mammy said, smiling again. ‘Good girls.’

Five minutes later the contents of the van were piled on the pavement. Boxes and battered hampers were built round the table and chest of drawers, with Polly and her sisters sitting on or among them while the vehicle, with Lizzie Conway in the passenger seat, sped down the hill and, tilted on two wheels, disappeared into Keane Street.

They sat back to back, Rosie, Babs and Polly, all bare legs and bare arms, and scowled at the crowd around them.

To those urchins who had larceny constantly in mind, Polly reckoned that the big walnut dome of a Mullard wireless set protruding from one of the boxes must surely represent temptation. But the sight of three alert, unintimidated girls was enough to put them off. They were impudent and bold, Polly decided, but not that impudent and bold, not daft enough to tamper with the possessions of a stranger who had already made one of the local hard men back down.

She sat back a little, quite unafraid now. She had been reared in worse places than this and had gone to school, at least for a time, with kids who made this lot look like angels. They watched from a safe distance, watched and speculated with the unrevealing expressions of savages who do not know quite what the tide has washed in, while on the corner a little group of adult layabouts gathered, attracted no doubt by the smell of thievable property and three fresh young skirts.

‘Don’t look in that direction, Babs,’ Polly said, under her breath.

‘Why not?’ said Babs, looking in that direction.

‘We don’t want to bring them down on us, do we?’

‘Maybe you don’t,’ Babs said. ‘Personally I wouldn’t mind.’

‘It’ll only cause trouble when Mammy gets back.’

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’

Polly was by no means unaware how magnetic she and her sisters looked, seated there on top of the furniture. She was a shade less vain than either Rosie or Babs, but she was not so modest as to consider herself unattractive. She was tall and had long chestnut hair pulled back into a bunch behind her head, and a sharp little chin and, though she was still short of her twentieth birthday, had good legs, especially when, as now, she wore rayon stockings and a pair of patent leather shoes with half heels.

She lit a cigarette and took several long fulfilling drags before she passed it to her sister Babs, mouse-coloured but not mousy, short but not stocky, who when she inhaled showed off a figure that Jean Harlow herself might have envied. Finally, because Mammy wasn’t around, Babs carefully passed the last half-inch of the Woodbine to Rosie who, at sixteen, looked dainty and cool in spite of being clad in a woollen jumper and a grey pleated skirt.

Even Rosie knew how to smoke, opening and closing her mouth over the cloud of tobacco smoke, toying with it until, at last, one perfect ring was formed, a transient O that floated up on the heat wave from the pavement and dissolved overhead while everyone, except Polly, watched in fascination.

‘Give’s a drag on that, then, eh?’ said one young reprobate who, even at twelve, was well on the way to becoming a nicotine addict. ‘G’an, give’s a puff.’

Mouth still open and half filled with smoke, Rosie stared at him blankly. She shrugged and glanced at Babs who, kicking out one foot, snapped, ‘Piss off, sonny,’ and gave a slow, arrogant flick of the head that made her short-cropped hair toss and shine in the sunlight.

Ten minutes later Polly was relieved to see her mother hurrying on foot up the hill from Keane Street.

Five minutes after that Lizzie Conway turned the key in the lock of the third-floor room-and-kitchen and the family without a man moved in.

*   *   *

Mr Peabody had never visited a bordello – well once, in Amiens, but he had only gone there for a beer – but when he thought of the word in its French form he imagined a place not a million miles removed from Mrs Conway’s room-and-kitchen, which just goes to show how little Mr Peabody really knew of the world.

Perhaps it was the fragrance of perfume, nail varnish and setting lotion that lent a sinful air to the house, or the quantity of clothing that was scattered about, intimate female garments of all sorts draped from the drying pulley or over clothes-horses in front of the range.

Even in the narrow hall just behind the front door there were items that seemed calculated to take a man’s mind off his rent book. A fancy china doll with painted cheeks and arms stretched out to welcome you sat on top of the coal bunker. On an upright table shaped like a Greek column, a lamp with a round pink globe poised on the fingertips of a lady whose nude body was curved into a position so supple and inviting that Mr Peabody could hardly take his eyes off it; unless, that is, Polly happened to open the landing door to his tentative knock, for then he would be unable to take his eyes off Polly and would wonder if she, lithe and slim as a willow, might be able to achieve such an extreme position if she wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Left of the tiny hallway lay the girls’ bedroom, the door never quite open, never quite closed; a mysterious haven from within which, some Friday nights, he could detect silky little sounds or faint strains of dance music or, once, a girl’s unaccompanied voice dreamily crooning ‘One Alone’.

To the right lay the kitchen into which he was admitted or, to be more accurate, into which he was dragged, for his shyness was such that he could hardly bring himself to cross the threshold even although he had every right to be there. The kitchen was totally unlike any tenement kitchen that Mr Peabody had ever entered before.

It had a cluttered, overstuffed feel to it, less cosy than claustrophobic. There were cushions everywhere, even on the kitchen chairs, and thick quilted blankets that reminded Mr Peabody of Mexican bandits in cowboy films. And a smell not of gas or paraffin, of Brasso or black lead, kippers or burned toast but a sweet flowery fragrance laced with cigarette smoke that seemed to poor Mr Peabody like the very essence of decadence.

It was, in fact, soap, for, overstuffed or not, there was no cleaner kitchen in the whole of the Gorbals than Lizzie Conway’s and none on his route more welcoming.

‘Will you not be taking your coat off then, Mr Peabody?’ Lizzie said.

‘No, I think…’

Babs said, ‘Go on, Mr Peabody, take your coat off.’

Polly said, more politely, ‘Stay and have a cup of tea.’

‘No, really. I’ve only just started the round. I’ll need to be gettin’ on.’

‘At least sit yourself down,’ Lizzie said. ‘Take the weight off your feet for a minute while I go an’ find my purse.’

‘Is it all right?’

‘Is what all right, Mr Peabody?’

‘I mean, do you have the…’

‘The rent money? Aye, of course I have the rent money,’ Lizzie said and went rolling out of the kitchen into the bedroom across the hall.

She was gone for several minutes, during which time Mr Peabody perched himself on one of the heavy cushions on one of the kitchen chairs and unbuttoned his overcoat just enough to bring his pouch into his lap, for although the pouch was still empty – Mrs Conway’s was indeed his first port of call – he was wary of letting the money bag be seen.

‘What are you fiddlin’ with down there, Mr Peabody?’ Babs said.

‘I’m – I’m getting out my pencil.’

A very straight-faced question: ‘Is there lead in it?’

‘I sharpened it before I left the office.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Babs. ‘I prefer a really sharp pencil m’self.’

Mr Peabody failed to pick up on the innuendo or even to credit the girls with sufficient worldly experience to know what sex was about. He imagined that their seductive poses were entirely unconscious and so, to protect their innocence, tried not to stare but concentrated on arranging the rent books on the table. No plain pine for Lizzie Conway’s table, no cork matting or chequered oilcloth; a genuine tablecloth, a good, whole piece of Irish linen embroidered with forget-me-nots and trimmed with lace.

It had a sleek, smooth feel to it, the sort of texture that invited stroking. Mr Peabody resisted. He closed his fist over the pencil, peered at the page, at the name Mrs Elizabeth M. Conway and wondered, in a vague way, what, if anything, the M stood for, who her husband had been and what had become of him.

He didn’t have the temerity to put the question or request any sort of confidence that might be construed as special interest.

The golden rule for rent-collectors – ‘Never have a tenant for a friend and never have a friend for a tenant’ – was one to which Mr Peabody subscribed. It seemed to him a sensible philosophy, given the sort of liberties that some clients tried to take to wriggle out of paying their dues.

Purse in hand, Lizzie returned.

Mr Peabody glanced guiltily over his shoulder.

She stood close to the chair, pressing her stomach lightly against the crown of his shoulder. She still had her figure which, given that she had borne three children and must be all of thirty-seven or -eight years old, Mr Peabody found remarkable in itself. She was hardly a sylph, of course, but the curves of her bosom and stomach were generous rather than ponderous.

She touched his shoulder.

‘Are you sure you it’s money you want, Mr Peabody?’ she said.

It was a clumsy joke that he’d heard a hundred times before. Usually he managed to laugh it off, say something jokey in return. But there was nothing humorous about Mrs Conway.

‘I’m afraid I have to insist that…’ Bernard Peabody began.

‘I know you do. Aye, I know,’ said Mrs Conway. ‘We wouldn’t be wanting Shannon and Whatsit to be out of pocket, would we?’

Mr Peabody experienced an automatic dart of loyalty to the firm that paid his wages and, confusingly, a simultaneous tweak of sympathy for the woman with the open purse in her hand.

Lizzie Conway placed the coins upon the table.

Ten single shillings. Eight brown pennies. He counted them where they lay, not daring to insult her by scooping them swiftly into the bag. He pencilled the sum in the appropriate column in his book, filled out a receipt, initialled it, licked the gummed tab with the tip of his tongue and stuck it into the green linen-backed booklet that Mrs Conway passed to him.

She said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d ever let me off?’

‘I wish I could,’ Mr Peabody said. ‘But I can’t.’

‘Never?’

‘No. Never.’

The girls were still watching him. Motionless. Solemn, but not sour.

‘More than your job’s worth, I suppose,’ Lizzie Conway said.

He got to his feet, the lid of the pouch snagging on the edge of the table, the tiny brass stud catching on the cloth as he tried to step back.

He felt ashamed of himself. It was as if she’d forced him into admitting his selfishness, as if he were betraying his own kind. She wasn’t his kind, though. He struggled to remind himself that she was not his kind at all. If she had been his kind she wouldn’t be living off the Calcutta Road in a property that, if the Department of Health and Sanitation had its way, would soon be condemned.

The rugs, the cushions, the tablecloth, the fancy ornaments, the new lock in the newly painted door could not disguise the fact that Mrs Elizabeth Conway lived in a slum and that he, Albert Bernard Peabody, did not. He lived far across the river in the new garden suburb of Knightswood which, he thought, gave him a certain distinction.

He put the coins into the empty pouch, fastened it, buttoned his coat and reached to the table for his bowler hat and rent book.

She covered his hand with hers. The taunting little smile had gone from her lips. Her brown eyes were calm and compassionate. She looked more striking than ever, Mr Peabody thought, not pretty the way her daughters were but with that long-chinned face, candid brow and curly brown hair caught above her ears with two tiny velvet ribbons, undoubtedly attractive.

‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ she murmured, squeezing his knuckles. ‘These days a man has to take what he can get to keep body and soul together. Besides’ – another gentle squeeze before she released him – ‘I’ve got nothing but respect for what you do, Mr Peabody, nothing but the greatest respect.’

‘What I do? What do I do?’

‘Collecting rents from the likes of us can’t be easy.’ She handed him his hat. ‘It’s a manly art, in my opinion.’

‘I’m not sure I see what’s ma—’

‘No, it is. A manly art. Right, girls?’

‘Too true,’ said Babs.

‘Absolutely,’ said Polly.

For a moment Bernard Peabody thought they might be ribbing him. He glanced from one to the other in search of a telltale smirk but found nothing to indicate that Mrs Conway’s compliment had not been sincere.

All three were looking at him now with something bordering admiration. He felt himself swell up. He straightened, pulled back his shoulders the way he’d done on the parade ground or, more especially, that morning when the battalion had marched through the streets of Glasgow to entrain for Flanders.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Conway,’ he said. ‘I do my best. The times are hard for all of us, I know, but – well, I do my best.’

A minute or so later he stepped across the landing to confront old Mrs Gower and her alcoholic brother while Babs Conway waved bye-bye from the pink-lit hallway and then, to his regret, closed the glossy brown door.

*   *   *

Behind the glossy brown door Babs and Polly lingered in the glow of the lady-lamp. Babs laughed aloud and even Polly could not help but smile at the poor man’s bashful confusion.

‘What do you think then, girls?’ Lizzie asked as she herded her daughters back into the kitchen.

‘He’s an idiot,’ Babs declared. ‘A complete bloody idiot.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Polly said. ‘I rather like him.’

‘Aye,’ Lizzie Conway said, ‘and if push comes to shove, will he do?’

And Polly, not laughing, said, ‘Yes, Mammy. He’ll do.’