Chapter Twelve

Polly did not know why she was so relieved to see the rent collector that Friday evening. She had harboured feelings of resentment against him ever since she’d learned that Mammy was eyeing him up as a potential husband. She didn’t jump to conclusions, like Babs, or dismiss him as a fool but none the less she considered him too weak to be worthy of a woman like her mother.

When she thought about Mr Peabody – which wasn’t often – Polly thought of a man who had never been young, who, stuffy and prissy and lacking conviction, was already trapped in perpetual middle age. She had lied only to flatter him and to please Mammy, had stated ‘absolutely’ that she thought that rent-collecting was a manly occupation. She did not really consider it so, any more than she considered clerking a manly occupation or set any store by the neat brown suits and trilby hats of the young surveyors who frequented the Burgh Hall offices or by the navy blue three-pieces of pompous burgh councillors who confused their petty power with masculine appeal.

When she tried to tally up the qualities that made a man what a man should be, Polly inclined towards the boys who lived close to the edge; not the dumb or lazy but those hearty young males who flooded out of shipyard gates or poured, running, from under the steelworks’ towering gantries, their faces grimed but not grim and who, if unemployment caught up with them, joined the back of the dole queue with the same gruff optimism with which they had squared up to wage-slavery. She liked the look of them, liked the dirt on their cheeks, the sweat on their brows, their callused hands, their vigour; the fact that they would never willingly trade independence for security and that, in them, the muscles of revolt were still firm enough to slither and tighten.

In some – Patsy Walsh for one – she detected an astonishing absence of meekness and a willingness to risk freedom for the right to be free. Some, like Patsy, would die before they would settle for servitude and that, for Polly, made them seem daring and, in a curiously disembodied way, desirable. But on that Friday evening less than a week before Christmas, less than a fortnight before the old year ticked into the new, Polly was relieved when Mr Bernard Peabody entered the kitchen and in his usual fumbling, self-conscious manner removed his hat and scarf and spread his books upon the table.

‘I’m sorry, Bernard,’ Mammy apologised, ‘but we’ve had a wee bit of an upset an’ I haven’t had time to start your supper.’

‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Con – Lizzie.’ The agent cleared his throat and, twisting stiffly from the waist, looked round at Polly’s mother with genuine concern. ‘Is there – is there anything I can do to help?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said. ‘No, thank you. It’s a family matter.’

‘If it’s a question of not having the rent…’

‘It isn’t that. Even if it was I wouldn’t expect you…’

‘I know,’ Bernard Peabody said. ‘I know you wouldn’t but…’

The conversation was halting, not lame. Behind each inconclusive phrase Polly detected intimacy. Her mother often referred to Bernard Peabody, had even waxed humorous about him but Polly hadn’t suspected that there was also a warmth in the relationship now that superseded the small favours for which her mother might have once been angling.

‘I could poach you an egg,’ Lizzie suggested.

‘No, really…’

‘Babs could go out for a fish supper if you…’

‘No. Honestly!’ Bernard Peabody said.

Polly noticed how her mother’s eagerness embarrassed him, as if the rapport between them was a mutual secret that they did not wish to share. If he had witnessed Mammy’s tantrum twenty minutes ago, Polly thought, he might not have been so enamoured. She watched him fuss with his pencil and notebook. Mammy put the coins on the table and stood close to him while he counted them into his purse. He made out a receipt and stuck a gummed label into the Conways’ rent book. Given the circumstances, he didn’t seem inclined to linger and Polly guessed that the ‘romance’ between the factor’s agent and her mother would progress no further tonight.

He rose, closed his books and put them in his case, buttoned his overcoat. ‘No collection next Friday but I’ll be here the day before Hogmanay. Tuesday. You’ll be due two weeks then, I’m afraid.’

He reached for his hat and scarf and, for the first time, looked directly at the girls. To Rosie, he said, ‘I’m reading that book you recommended. Great Expectations. It’s very interesting.’

Rosie smiled, and nodded bleakly.

‘You don’t look very well, lass,’ Bernard said. ‘Is it the flu?’

Rosie, reading his lips, shook her head.

A knock upon the landing door caused all of them, even Bernard, to look up. It was not a heavy sound, not urgent, not threatening. Even so, Polly felt her stomach contract with apprehension.

‘Who can that be?’ Lizzie said.

‘Aren’t you expectin’ anyone?’ said Bernard.

‘No one I can think of,’ said Lizzie.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Bernard said.

‘I suppose I’d better,’ Lizzie said.

Bernard did not follow her into the hall. He put on his hat and wound his scarf loosely about his neck then waited, watching the door until Alex O’Hara eased himself into the kitchen.

‘Hello, Rosie,’ O’Hara said. ‘Did you forget t’ tell them I was comin’ round tonight?’

‘Leave me alone.’ Rosie stood up. The shawl slipped from her shoulders, revealing a school blouse, a pleated skirt, bare legs. ‘Just leave me alone.’

‘Ain’t you I’ve come for, sweetheart,’ O’Hara said. ‘It’s her.’

‘Polly?’ Lizzie said. ‘What do you want wi’ our Polly?’

O’Hara was not a large man but his presence seemed to fill the kitchen. His movements were cat-like, not clumsy. He ignored Bernard completely.

‘You lied to me, Polly.’

‘I did not,’ said Polly.

It had come in at last, come in from the streets.

Polly stared in horror at the flat sweating face, the frozen mouth and icy eyes. This was the myth, the legendary beast that they had always been taught to fear. They had known of its existence, of course. They had dwelled within its shadow, had heard it screaming in the night in the dark alleyways behind the tenements. They had read of its violent excursions in newspapers and heard the mean tales that gave Glasgow its evil reputation. But they had never been forced to look it dead in the eye before, to confront it face to face and acknowledge that they were part of it.

Polly had never seen a cut-throat razor laid open. She had seen how men used them; tiny blood-flecked tabs of paper stanching shaving cuts first thing in the morning, a steel blade whisking blithely on a strop viewed through the window of a barber’s shop, the glimpse of a bone handle peeking from a waistcoat pocket – and scars, many scars, the unmistakable badges of assaults too cold-blooded to contemplate or fights so fierce, vicious and prolonged that no decent person could imagine them. It was from this that they had been taught to run and hide. Now it was here, O’Hara was here in their kitchen and they, in a sense, had invited him in.

The razor didn’t look like a weapon. In spite of its ground blade and the black handle snuggled into O’Hara’s palm it seemed old-fashioned, almost quaint, and too delicate to be harmful.

Polly stretched out an arm and elbowed Rosie deeper into the corner by the side of the range. She pressed her knees together, made ready to leap away. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Babs hunched against the niche bed.

‘You shouldn’t have lied to me, Polly,’ O’Hara said. ‘Me an’ mah wee friend here have a way o’ gettin’ at the truth.’

‘I told you,’ Polly said. ‘I told you the truth.’

He was resting now, or seemed to be. He leaned an elbow upon the table and held up his right hand, wrist laid back as if balancing a glass on his palm. She could see the razor clearly, the knuckle of steel where it joined the handle, the concave shape of the blade, even the Royal Crown and patent number engraved along its length. He allowed her to contemplate it for several seconds until she could almost feel its scald upon her cheek, its cold kiss upon her lips.

‘You weren’t wi’ Patsy Walsh on Wednesday, were you?’

‘Yes, I was.’

He inched forward, came within striking distance. Polly fixed her gaze upon the blade, watching it twist so that the edge was towards her. He fashioned a little strike, a slithering dart like a snake’s tongue. Polly flinched but made no attempt to defend herself.

‘Walsh done the warehouse, didn’t he?’ Alex O’Hara said. ‘Him, Jackie Hallop – an’ who else? Bonnar, Tommy Bonnar?’

‘Why don’t you ask them that question?’ said Bernard Peabody.

‘Who the hell’re you?’ O’Hara, distracted, enquired.

‘A friend of the family,’ Bernard said. Lizzie touched his arm, plump fingers spread. Neither he nor she knew what the signal meant. He took a wild guess. ‘Why are you botherin’ these young ladies? Shouldn’t you be out askin’ Walsh and the Hallops? Or are they a bit too much for you. Are you the sort that prefers bullying girls to squaring up to men?’

O’Hara was still bewildered. Polly could see the grinding of his sluggish intellect.

‘Who sent you here?’ Bernard said. ‘Not Mr Manone, surely?’

‘Aye, Mr Manone.’

‘What – to carve up Mrs Conway’s girls?’

O’Hara swore. He had been rendered indecisive, his threat made impotent. Polly noticed that her mother continued to rest her hand on Mr Peabody’s arm as if it were he not Alex O’Hara who needed to be restrained.

‘What the bloody hell d’you know about it?’ O’Hara demanded.

‘More than you might think,’ Bernard said. ‘Maybe I did the warehouse job and these ladies know nothin’ about it. Pause an’ think about that.’

Polly watched the flat face writhe with concentration, twist into folds like the skin of some rare breed of dog. She felt a little gulp of premature relief but when O’Hara lunged at her, arm raised, she flung herself backwards, taking Rosie and the armchair with her out of range of the razor’s arc. He swiped again, grunting in frustration. She heard Babs scream, Mammy shout. Crouched behind the armchair Rosie uttered little squeaks and chitterings, more like laughter than fear. The next thing Polly knew O’Hara’s left arm was bent up behind his back, his cheek was squashed flat upon the table and the hand that held the razor was ensnared in Bernard Peabody’s fist.

Bernard had gone for the wrist but had found the hand instead. He had closed his fist over the razor, gripping the blade instead of flesh. She watched O’Hara’s smothered, ineffectual struggle as Bernard leaned over him, levering his arm up until it seemed that it would snap. Saw too how Bernard clung to the razor, encompassing it as firmly as if it were made of rubber, not steel. Saw blood well up like jam between his fingers.

‘I think,’ Bernard said, ‘that’s enough of that, Mr O’Hara, unless you fancy havin’ your arm broken.’

It came away not abruptly but stickily, both fists so weltered with blood that Polly could not tell who had released it. Then she saw that Bernard had gained full possession of the razor. He held the razor high, the black handle waxy with blood, then he tossed the weapon at the window. It struck the glass and fell, tinkling, into the sink.

Bernard stepped back from the table and allowed O’Hara to crank himself to his feet. The bent arm remained bent, slung across his belly. He hugged it, nursing it, his face not just bloodless but spongy with pain.

‘I want mah razor back,’ he said.

‘You’re not gettin’ your razor back,’ Bernard told him. ‘If you’re thinkin’ about trying to fish it out of there, I’d advise you to think again.’

‘Who the hell are you?’

Bernard lifted his damaged hand to his mouth, put the wound between his teeth and bit down on it. Nothing showed in his face, nothing except a trace of arrogance, not even arrogance, Polly thought, but an odd sort of satisfaction as if dealing with Alex O’Hara had taken him back to another time when he had also been obliged to deal with the realities of life. When he took his hand away from his mouth his chin was streaked with blood. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I’m a friend of the family.’

‘Mr Manone’ – O’Hara crabbed towards the door – ‘Mr Manone’s gonna hear about this.’

‘Too damned right he is,’ Lizzie declared. ‘I’m goin’ to tell him. I’m goin’ to tell him what you did,’ and then, because she had every excuse for forgetting herself, aimed a kick at Alex O’Hara’s rump to speed him on his way downstairs.

*   *   *

Under the flow of tap water the wound became visible. It was clean-lipped but deep, so deep that Polly thought she could see bone at the bottom of it. She stood by him and did exactly what he told her to do while her mother poured him a glass of whisky from the bottle she kept for emergencies.

Bernard drank it in a single swallow.

‘Another?’

‘No thanks, Lizzie. I still have my rounds to do.’

‘Your rounds?’ Lizzie said. ‘With that hand you should be going to the hospital not out on the streets.’

He extended his hand into the running water again and examined it with astonishing objectivity. He flexed his fingers, making blood well from the wound.

‘I don’t think any tendons are severed. Lucky really.’

‘You call that lucky?’ said Babs.

Polly said, ‘It looks to me like it needs stitches, Mr Peabody.’

‘If I go for stitches then I’ll have to report it.’

‘Tell them you were attacked on the stairs,’ said Babs.

‘I think,’ Bernard said, ‘that a lint pad an’ a tight bandage will do the trick until I get home.’

‘What’s your mother gonna say?’

‘I won’t tell her,’ Bernard said. ‘Well, not until tomorrow.’

Polly said, ‘How many more calls do you have to make?’

‘Five.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘Couple of hours.’

‘If I might ask’ – Lizzie unearthed the biscuit tin that served as a medicine chest – ‘what do you do with the money, the money you collect?’

‘Put it in a night safe in the bank next door to our office. I make out a deposit slip, put it in a bag with the money and slide the lot into the chute.’

‘Can you write with your left hand?’ Polly asked.

‘I can manage a legible signature,’ Bernard answered.

He had taken off his overcoat and bloodstained jacket and instructed Polly to cut away the sleeve of his shirt at a point above the elbow. It was an old shirt anyway, so he said. He told Polly to take off his tie and showed her how to fashion a temporary tourniquet. She noticed that when she touched him Mr Peabody did not display any of the shyness that had been, until then, his hallmark. He didn’t preen either, though, didn’t seem particularly proud of what he’d done or aware of how brave he’d been. He was quietly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, Polly thought, and gave no hint of the pain he must be suffering.

At length the flow of bright red blood eased and began to coagulate. With a towel under his forearm Bernard transferred himself from the sink to the table where Lizzie had laid out lint, bandages and an iodine bottle and where she dressed the gaping wound exactly as Bernard told her to do.

Babs lit a cigarette and gave it to him.

He took it, smiled his thanks, and drew in smoke.

‘Is that chap liable to come back?’ he said. ‘If you’d like me to stay…’

‘Oh, Bernard, Bernard.’ Lizzie laid down her sewing scissors, wrapped an arm about his neck and kissed him on the ear, on the cheek, on the side of the mouth. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t been here.’

Bernard took another draw on the cigarette and blew smoke away from Lizzie’s tear-stained face. ‘I’m just glad I could be of help.’

Polly sluiced away the blood in the sink. She washed her hands, plucked a towel from the hook, turned, and said, ‘I think we owe you an explanation.’

‘Not necessary,’ Bernard said.

He glanced at Rosie who had come to the end of the table and was staring at him as if he’d suddenly acquired a halo and wings. The shawl was draped about her shoulders and, in the aftermath of her terror, she seemed to have shed four or five years from her age, to have become a child again, round-eyed and uncomprehending. Bernard winked at her. She smiled wanly.

Polly came to the table and seated herself on one of the chairs. Bernard was seated too, his bare arm laid upon newspapers while Lizzie worked upon the bandage, cutting two long tails and wrapping them firmly around his wrist.

‘Too tight?’ she asked.

‘A wee bit tighter, please.’

She applied pressure, tied a knot and then another.

Polly said, ‘I think you’re entitled to be told what all that was about.’

‘It’s none of my business,’ Bernard said.

‘Don’t you even want to know who that guy was?’ said Babs.

Bernard hesitated. The Conway girls were all around him. He was the centre of attention, no longer an object of teasing scorn and mockery. He had no difficulty in hiding his pain. He had endured much worse than this. They claimed you couldn’t remember pain but he certainly did and how good it had made him feel when it finally subsided.

In a field hospital at Hazebrouck they had given him morphine and had sent him back to recuperate at a place near Cassel. They hadn’t sent him home. He had got himself off the morphine p.d.q. because he had seen what it did to others, worse than the drink. He was back at the Front in a fortnight because they thought he might be malingering and, anyway, they were down to stemming the Boche advance with cooks and storemen, anyone who could carry a rifle.

‘He’s one of Dominic Manone’s boys, isn’t he?’ Bernard said.

‘His name’s O’Hara,’ Polly told him.

‘Oh!’ Bernard said.

There had been enough nameless enemies in his life; he didn’t need another to add to the list. When he looked at the girls around the table and at Lizzie Conway he felt a curious sense of separation from the grey-clad figure that had walked behind him all these years, tugging at his greatcoat tails and urging him to keep down, keep low, and take no chances.

‘O’Hara is a bad one,’ Rosie said.

‘I rather gathered that,’ said Bernard.

The iodine was biting. Cold sweat started on the back of his neck and down his breastbone. Polly Conway was right: the gash probably did need a stitch or two. He certainly wouldn’t be doing much work with a pen for the next few days. He wondered what sort of tale he could tell Mr Shannon that would absolve him from culpability and keep his wage coming. Perhaps Mr Shannon would find something else for him to do; unless he managed to make his left hand work as well as his right? He thought about that, vaguely, while – less vaguely – he became conscious that Polly Conway was holding his arm and that Lizzie was hugging him about the neck.

He searched his soul for the primness that had always protected him, discovered that it had evaporated. He could smell whisky, iodine, even blood but also the comforting aroma of Lizzie Conway’s kitchen, distinct and womanly. He leaned his head against Lizzie’s hip for an instant then righted himself and said, ‘Are you in debt to O’Hara?’

‘’Course we’re not,’ Lizzie replied.

‘Come on, Mammy, no use trying to hide it,’ Polly said. ‘We’re in debt to Dominic Manone and probably always will be. My daddy ran off with hundreds of pounds of the Manones’ money and got lost in the war. Since then we’ve been paying it back in monthly instalments.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Bernard said. ‘What a burden!’

‘A debt of honour,’ Polly said, ‘that’s what the Manones call it.’

‘Rubbish!’ Bernard said. ‘It’s plain extortion.’

‘That’s why O’Hara turned up here tonight,’ Polly said.

Bernard had been tramping the streets of the Gorbals for years and had heard lots of rumours about Guido Manone’s nephew. He knew just how much power the Manones held not only in criminal circles but in the community at large.

‘I can lend you something if you really need it.’

‘Oh, Bernard, no,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ve done enough for us.’

‘Would you really give us dough if we were stuck?’ Babs said.

‘Yes. I don’t like bullies, you see,’ Bernard explained.

Mammy was brusque suddenly. ‘We couldn’t possibly accept your money, Bernard.’

‘Well, if you do need it you know where to come.’ Bernard pushed himself to his feet, looked round for his jacket. ‘You know what they say: It’s no loss what a friend gets.’

Polly and Babs helped him struggle into his jacket and overcoat. He wound the scarf around his neck and put on his hat. He looked shaky but claimed that he was strong enough to do his rounds, deposit the takings and survive the long rattling tram ride out to Knightswood.

They all accompanied him into the hall and out on to the landing.

‘I hope he’s not waitin’ down there,’ Babs said. ‘Bloody O’Hara, I mean.’

‘He won’t be,’ Bernard said. ‘He’ll have had enough for one night,’ and then, quite boldly, stepped across the landing to the Gowers.

*   *   *

Dominic had dined in Goodman’s Restaurant near St Enoch’s Square with four old school chums. Three were practising solicitors, the other a dental surgeon. A convivial bunch, they set more store by the fact that they had shared an alma mater than by anything that had happened since. They were well aware how Dominic earned his living but, being men of the world, did not hold it against him and carefully steered the conversation away from topics that he might find embarrassing.

It was after eleven o’clock before Dominic decanted himself from a taxi-cab in Manor Park Avenue and after drawing in a few lungfuls of damp night air walked to the front door of the mansion and rang the bell.

Uncle Guido opened it.

‘Tony is here. He is waiting to speak with you.’

‘What about?’ Dominic asked.

‘The robbery.’

‘How long has he been waiting?’

‘Half an hour, maybe less.’

Sobriety came upon him quickly. He felt a twinge of annoyance that an enjoyable evening would end with family business but the feeling soon passed and by the time he entered the living-room he had all his wits about him.

Tony was seated on the sofa, a plate balanced awkwardly on his lap and a coffee cup and saucer held in his hands. Aunt Teresa was urging him to eat the last of the smoked ham and pickled cucumber sandwiches that she had prepared for him, an effusive display of hospitality that even Uncle Guido had been unable to prevent. Aunt Teresa had also been quizzing Tony about his girlfriends and fishing to find out if her nephew had his eye on anyone in the Community. Even Tony had a hard time dodging the woman’s questions without seeming rude and his relief at seeing Dominic was palpable.

Aunt Teresa might take a chance with Tony Lombard but she was far too shrewd to risk offending her nephew and, within seconds, had cleared the cups, saucers, plates on to a tray and had vanished from the room, leaving the men alone.

Tony wiped crumbs from his chin with a handkerchief and lighted a cigarette. He spoke Italian, a blurred, drawling version of the language that he had picked up from the Sicilian grandmother who had been responsible for bringing him to Scotland and who had raised him to be a helper to the Manones. She had been Guido’s mistress a long time ago and might even have wound up as Guido’s wife if she had been younger and better looking. She lived with a granddaughter and her Scottish son-in-law downriver in Skelmorlie now and rarely came up to town.

Tony said, ‘It seems that Walsh might have pulled the job.’

‘Go on,’ said Dominic.

‘That is O’Hara’s opinion,’ Tony continued. ‘He telephoned me from Brady’s public house and asked me to meet him there.’

‘Did you go?’

‘Certainly, I went.’

‘Was Alex sober?’ said Dominic.

‘No, he had been drinking for some time before I got there.’

‘What did he tell you?’ said Guido. ‘Tell Dominic what he told you.’

‘He told me Walsh pulled the job but that Tommy Bonnar organised it.’

‘Tommy?’ said Dominic, surprised. ‘Does O’Hara have proof?’

‘None to speak of,’ said Tony.

‘Then he is whistling in the darkness,’ Dominic said.

‘Tell him the rest of it,’ Guido said.

‘According to O’Hara,’ Tony went on, ‘one of Lizzie Conway’s daughters knows all about it and can put the finger on those involved.’

‘The blonde daughter who works at the warehouse?’

‘I think it is another one, the older one.’

‘Is this O’Hara’s proof?’ said Dominic. ‘Gossip from some girl?’

‘You should listen,’ Guido said. ‘You know how these things happen.’

‘Her name is Polly,’ Tony said. ‘You obtained work for her three or four years ago, I think.’

‘So?’

‘She is Patsy Walsh’s girlfriend,’ Tony Lombard said.

‘Do you see?’ said Uncle Guido. ‘You should be listening.’

‘I am listening,’ Dominic said. ‘I am just not sure who I am listening to.’

‘I am only telling you what O’Hara told me,’ Tony Lombard said. ‘You want that I should do something about it? Go see Walsh, maybe?’

‘Or the girl, go see the girl,’ said Uncle Guido.

‘Did she also put the finger on Tommy Bonnar?’ Dominic asked.

Tony shook his head.

‘Obviously the girl knows something,’ Uncle Guido said. ‘Someone will have to go talk to the girl.’

‘You want me to do that?’ Tony Lombard said.

‘No,’ said Dominic, after a pause. ‘I will talk with her myself.’

‘When?’ Guido asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ Dominic replied.

*   *   *

His mother’s Co-op calendar was tacked up behind the door of the kitchenette. This late in the year steam from wash-tub and cooking pots had done its worst and the cheap paper was wrinkled like old parchment. Bernard could barely make out the illustration – a kitten playing with a ball of wool – let alone his mother’s pencilled script and it took him several seconds to decipher the code that told him she had gone to a Guild carol concert in Partick.

Bernard had no idea who she had gone with. Few of the names that his mother scattered in his direction ever stuck and he had no wish to become embroiled with her chattering acquaintances. Over the years his mother had often tried to match him up with a long-toothed spinster or a comparatively youthful widow, daughters of Guild friends who were on the look-out for husbands. Bernard would have none of it and switched his primness up to full volume whenever one of the poor, desperate creatures was thrown in his path.

Partick Halls? A late night, probably. Chips afterwards, or tea in a Merkland Street café. The last tram out to the suburbs.

Bernard had eaten nothing since lunch. Although he had no appetite to speak of, he poached a couple of eggs and brewed a pot of tea. He ate at the table in the living-room and felt better afterwards. He had about half an hour, he reckoned, to do what he had to do.

First he sponged the blood from his jacket and applied a little of the stain-remover that his mother favoured. He put the jacket on a wire hanger and hung it to air on the wardrobe door in his bedroom. It was cold in the living-room. He would have re-lighted the fire in the grate but he did not think that he could manage to lug coal from the shed in the back garden. From the chest of drawers in his bedroom he extracted a metal box and carried it to the table in the living-room. Scissors, a fresh pad of cotton wool, a long bandage. Seated at the table, he cut off the dressing that Lizzie had put on.

The wound had bled considerably and the lint pad was soaked. He carried the pad into the kitchen along with the remains of the bandage and stuffed them into the pail that his mum used as a dustbin. He worked left-handed, found it less difficult than he had anticipated. He bathed the wound with warm water from the kettle then examined it again. It hadn’t occurred to him that a deep, clean, almost surgical incision could be so insulting to human flesh. He was concerned about infection, of course, and about damage to the median nerve which, if he remembered his first-aid training correctly, bridged the radial and ulnar bursa. He still hadn’t lost sensation in his fingers and could wiggle his thumb effectively; good signs, he reckoned.

Tomorrow afternoon, however, he would take himself round to Dr Begg’s new surgery and have it properly examined. Stoical he might be, but stupid he wasn’t and he could ill afford to take time off work, not even a day or two, to let the damned thing heal. He worked quietly, awkwardly, cleansing and dressing the wound as best he could. He used his teeth to tug the bandage tight, to help him draw the knot. When that was done he put everything away again, removed his torn and bloodstained shirt and hid it in a newspaper parcel under his bed. He would get rid of it tomorrow, like evidence.

When Mrs Violet Peabody, reeking of chips and vinegar, came breezing into the living-room at twenty minutes past eleven o’clock, she found her son seated at the living-room table clad in pyjamas and an old donkey-brown dressing-gown that had once belonged to his father. He had a mug of strong tea by him and a big lined jotter open before him and was diligently scripting numbers and names in pencil across it, his brow furrowed in concentration, the tip of his tongue protruding between his lips.

‘What are you doin’, Bernard?’

‘Nothing. Just some work. How was the concert?’

‘I’ve heard better. The baritones were off key all night long,’ his mother said. ‘What happened to your arm?’

‘Hand,’ Bernard said, not looking up. ‘Caught it in the paper cutter at the office. It’s not serious.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No, hardly at all.’

He waited for her to come to him, to display a little concern, a little peek of interest, to take his hand and lift it, roll back his sleeve, see what sort of a job he’d made of the dressing. He waited vainly for sympathy, her touch, a quick fond peck upon the cheek to comfort him and help with healing. He knew, of course, that it wouldn’t come, that she would do as she always did – nothing; that she would scurry off into the kitchen to make herself cocoa and toast a bread roll, or prance off into her bedroom to the left of the narrow wood-panelled hall to take off and brush her best tweed coat or ease off her shoes, that her routine comforts would take precedence over his.

He did not hate her, did not resent her, did not even dislike her. He was just disappointed in her, tinged by the feeling that somehow she had let him down. The feeling was far from novel. It had lain stale within him since the war; until he had met Lizzie Conway, in fact, Lizzie and her pretty daughters, until he had touched and been touched by a loving woman, and the heavens hadn’t opened and judgement hadn’t come zigzagging down from the clouds.

He listened to his mother singing in the kitchenette, energetic, bustling, utterly self-absorbed. He knew that she would not ask about his wound again.

He went on writing left-handed, practising left-hand disciplines.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with young men these days,’ he heard her call out. ‘It’s the same all over. Mrs Tennyson’s daughter nearly got married to a baritone. Did I tell you that?’

‘No.’

‘Clydebank male-voice choir. Big chap. Plater in Brown’s.’

‘No!’ Bernard murmured, as his mother’s cheerful little voice continued to echo from the kitchenette, brittle and shallow as the tiles themselves.

‘No!’ he said. ‘No, no, no!’

‘Bernard? Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ Bernard said, and went on writing quietly, quietly dreaming of Lizzie Conway and what life might be like for him in Lavender Court, taking care of Lizzie and her pretty, wayward girls.