Chapter Fifteen

Christmas for Dominic had never been a merry time, nor did he much care for the Scottish tradition of celebrating New Year with a welter of glad-handing, back-slapping sentiment and excessive amounts of whisky. Perhaps because he was himself a cold fish he tended to dismiss his neighbours’ warm-heartedness as affectation. In the dog days of December, however, he was obliged to hide his prejudices and to perform the role that fate and his family had allotted him, to pretend that he really was a jolly fellow who wished only goodwill to all men and – with discretion – one or two women as well.

Dominic kept abreast of what was happening in the world at large. He was well aware that in many towns and cities throughout Britain the Italian colonies were being brought together and given dignity by the organising powers of the fascisti. In spite of leanings towards ‘the other side’, he was just deceitful enough to keep his nose clean with the Glasgow fascio while still paying his dues to the Union of Italian Traders.

Influence and power were elements that Dominic well understood. He watched with interest as the Communities began to organise themselves. He was not dismayed by the composition of steering committees made up of honest, upstanding citizens, activists who had at last found focus for their drive and energy. He did not consider them misguided. He was, after all, primarily a businessman. The fact that he invested his money in ventures that were at best shady and at worst criminal did not seem to count against him, for unlike the Sabini or Cortesi families in London a thoroughly respectable front screened his more colourful activities.

Dominic did not think of himself as a gangster. He thought of himself as an employer, a benefactor, a responsible citizen. Consequently he did not scorn the appeal of the social clubs’ dinner dances and summer outings.

After all his papa, way back, had been a founder member of Glasgow’s Società di Mutuo Soccorso, a piece of local history that hadn’t been forgotten by older members of the Community and that added a certain piquancy to capturing the bashful young Manone for an appearance at a wedding party or a dance or an all-male smoker or in persuading him to address one or other of the associazioni in his capacity as a successful businessman.

How could he do else but pay lip-service to the principle of fascism, Onore, Famiglia e Patria – Honour, Family and Fatherland – that had always had such a grip on the southside paesani and one by which most of them had lived their lives? He was less sure about ‘Fatherland’ than most of his countrymen, though, for his dealings were with Scotsmen and Irishmen and Jews rather than upright Italians, and his loyalties were often divided.

Never more so than that evening just before Christmas when he returned from the Rowing Club with Uncle Guido to find his Aunt Teresa entertaining guests in the big front parlour.

He was cold, hungry and preoccupied. A meeting with Tony Lombard had thrown up information that he would have preferred to ignore. In fact, if Uncle Guido hadn’t been leaning over his shoulder he might have dismissed Tony’s news as unreliable and swept it under the carpet. As the Alfa drew up in the drive of the house, therefore, Dominic’s mind was on other things, churning over a situation that he hadn’t encountered before, a matter that would require from him the sort of decisions for which Uncle Guido’s training, and Uncle Guido’s advice, had left him unprepared.

Guido rang the bell. Receiving no answer, he opened the front door with his latch-key. He called out his wife’s name, upstairs and down, while Dominic took off his hat, scarf and overcoat and, still possessed by chilly thoughts, moved directly into the parlour to pour himself a brandy.

The women, all three, were sipping mulled wine.

The silver bowl that the Società had presented to Dominic’s father before his departure for America – and which his father had negligently left behind – stood on a linen cloth on a mahogany side table, steaming quietly. Hand-cut crystal glasses and filigree silver holders were lined up by it, together with a plate of slices from the rich, brown, nut-filled torta that his aunt had baked some weeks ago and which, it seemed, had at last reached maturity.

The older woman he recognised at once: a tiny, wrinkled, whey-faced nonna to whom Teresa gave an inordinate amount of respect. Her name was Columbina Trevanti. She hailed originally from Tuscany and was one of the great clan of Lucchesi that made up a large part of Glasgow’s Italian community. She was severe, hawk-eyed, deeply religious and, although her husband had been dead for forty years, still draped herself in widow’s weeds and proudly claimed not to understand a word of English – which was not, Dominic thought, much of an advertisement for her intelligence.

He put his annoyance to one side, however, and because Teresa expected it of him, bowed and kissed the back of the grandmother’s papery hand as reverently as if she were some sort of Papal nuncio.

‘Madam,’ he said, mischievously neglecting to speak Italian. ‘What a pleasure it is to welcome you into my house.’

By way of acknowledgement she gave him a hawk-like stare and a dip of the head. He continued to hold her hand just a moment longer than deference dictated. The little black lace mitten hung loose about her wrist and thumb and he was tempted to adjust it, a gesture that would have affronted his aunt and damned him for ever in la Signora Trevanti’s eyes. He put the hand down and turned his head.

The other, much younger woman was a stranger. He had never met her before; if he had he would surely have remembered it. She was the most beautiful creature that Dominic had ever seen, raven-haired, dark-eyed, with one of those noses that may have been straight or may have had about the bridge a trace of the patrician, that slight outward curve so beloved of the Venetian masters. Her lips were moist, red and unanointed. Her lashes were long, and modesty, not coyness, prevented her from lifting her gaze from her lap. She was too lush ever to model for the Virgin, though, and, now that he looked at her closely, seemed more Rubens than Titian.

In Italian, Aunt Teresa said, ‘I wish to present to you la Signora Trevani’s granddaughter. She is from Barga and has recently arrived in this country.’

Dominic bowed but did not kiss her hand.

He knew what this was, what was intended. He was grateful to his aunt for bringing such a beauty to him and, in response to the sentimental notion that some day, in forty or fifty years’ time, it might be a meeting that he – that they – would wish to recall in every detail, strove to engrave the moment in his memory.

Speaking Italian, he said, ‘What is your name, Signorina?’

She moved the hands heavily, folding one over the other, and still did not look up at him. She said, ‘Anna. I am called Anna.’

Aunt Teresa said, ‘She is Anna Casciani. She is the daughter of Nonna Trevanti’s daughter, Augusta, who is married to Gio Casciani.’

Dominic said, ‘I do not think I have met them.’

‘They do not live in this country,’ the old woman said; then added, ‘If ever you have a need to meet them you will have to travel to Barga.’

‘I see,’ said Dominic. ‘I understand.’

He was still smiling his solemn smile, mixing welcome and gravity.

The redness of the young woman’s lips had been caused by the wine and her hair, now that he considered it, was coarse.

When she finally glanced up he realised that there was no moment here, nothing that he would ever be called upon to cherish. She was lush and beautiful, yes, but he felt not one tweak of desire for her, only sadness that he must disappoint her – and himself – by reneging on the half promise that had been made on his behalf. She looked at him soulfully, heavy-lashed, jet black eyes moist. For an instant he thought he detected pleading there, a numb pleading that, at another time, on another day, might have touched his heart.

‘Do you have work, Anna?’ he asked, brusquely.

‘No, sir. I do not have work yet.’

‘I am sure that my uncle will be able to find you a suitable employment, if that is what you wish?’

‘Yes, sir, that is what I wish for.’

‘Good.’ Dominic bowed to his aunt, to the old woman, to the helpless girl from Barga. ‘I will talk to Guido about it. He will be in touch with la Signora Trevanti in due course. Now, ladies, if you will pardon me, I have a great deal of work to do this evening, so I will leave you to your conversation and your wine. It is a pleasure to have met you, Signorina Casciani. I hope that your stay in our country will be a happy one.’

Dominic turned and left the parlour, closing the door behind him.

He lingered by the parlour door for a moment but heard nothing, no mutterings, no sobs. In three or four minutes, as soon as politeness allowed, the old woman would lead her granddaughter away and he would probably not encounter the girl again; or if he did she would be keeping company with some dapper young man from the Lucchesi, son of a pasta baker or oil importer who would make her a better husband than he ever could.

With a rueful shake of the head Dominic put the beautiful girl from the old country out of his thoughts and moved softly across the panelled hall towards the stairs, thinking now of Polly Conway and how soon he might contrive to meet up with her again.

*   *   *

It was only recently that city offices and the Corporation’s sundry departments had seen fit to close on Christmas Day. Shipyard and steel workers and all those who laboured in service trades and industries were still obliged to celebrate the Christian festival as best they could, without benefit of holiday.

In the tally of hours worked and rates paid, of profit and loss, no account was taken of Christmas and Scotland did not close its doors, as it were, until noon on New Year’s Eve; at which hour the workforce streamed from yards and factories straight into bars and public houses to inaugurate two days and nights of patriotic toasts, ancestor worship and general claims of universal brotherhood that got more raucous and less convincing as the Old Year trickled away.

Lizzie and the girls had spent Christmas Day quietly at home, exchanging small gifts in a sort of embarrassed fashion, putting up a paper-chain or two and devouring a large steak pie and an even larger Scotch trifle.

Lizzie had been obliged to pay a dutiful call on Grandma McKerlie. She had taken Rosie with her while Polly and Babs used their free time to catch up on household chores, and on sleep. There had been a dreary, rather dormant feeling to it all, not just in the Conway household but elsewhere in Lavender Court, for the Hallops too were lying low, though Dennis had sold the Norton and a nice little 250cc Matchless to a dealer from Hamilton for thirty-eight pounds the pair and there was no shortage of ready cash.

On Monday evening, to Lizzie’s surprise, Bernard had appeared at the door with a box of chocolates and a half-bottle of port but he’d stayed only long enough to swallow a cup of tea before he’d hastened off again to make, so he’d claimed, a few late calls in the neighbourhood.

Of Patsy there had been no sign at all and Polly hadn’t the gall – or, indeed, the inclination – to seek him out.

Though Babs had sighed and dithered, eventually neither she nor Polly had deemed it wise to turn up at the Calcutta for any of the festive dances, and so had missed out on a gang fight that had taken place just outside the hall on Saturday the 28th, a real ding-dong affair by all accounts with blades flashing, lassies screaming and blood staining the cobbles. It was a mercy, so folk said, that nobody had got killed.

The week, the month, the year limped to a conclusion and the Gorbals, like all wards and towns in Scotland, braced itself to bid farewell to one grim year and, with a bewildering optimism, to welcome in another.

Mr Manone’s collectors were out early on Hogmanay.

It was one of the tangled rituals of the season that debtors be given ample opportunity to start the New Year with clear consciences and clean slates and, by the same token, that creditors were paid whatever trifling sums might be owed them. Thus, later, Janet McKerlie would be able to claim that she had been the last person to see Tommy Bonnar alive.

This claim, of course, was patent nonsense. Tommy had made his rounds in early afternoon, had called in at the Rowing Club well before four o’clock and was holed up in the Washington Bar shortly after five. Dozens – nay, hundreds – of men had eyeballed him and more than a few had conversed with him in the period between one and midnight. Such evidence didn’t deter Janet McKerlie, though. Showing a flair for fiction that Edgar Wallace might have envied, she stuck to her guns and announced that she had sensed that wee Tommy Bonnar was not himself and that she, and she alone, had seen the shadow of death hovering over him.

Whatever Janet had seen – tobacco smoke being the obvious answer – it certainly wasn’t her boss, Mr Smart. He had gone off for a ‘wee refreshment’ with a potato merchant from Lanark and hadn’t returned until after two.

Tommy, on the other hand, had shuffled into the shop about a quarter past one; nothing unusual in that. Sometimes it was Tommy, sometimes Irish Paddy who dropped by the dairy but one or other of Mr Manone’s insurance collectors would turn up without fail every Friday or, in holiday weeks, a day or two early to pick up the envelope that Mr Smart left under the tray in the till.

Mr Smart had been shelling out ten shillings a week for as long as Janet could recall. No, not quite. Before the war it had been five shillings and long, long ago – when she’d been hardly more than a girl and her brother-in-law had been the collector – it had been just half-a-crown. Come to think of it, Mr Smart was probably the Manones’ oldest customer and the appearance of one of Manone’s lads was a regular part of the week, like the arrival of a milk cart from Loft’s farm or egg crates from Chisholm’s.

Ten shillings was a not inconsiderable sum for a small shopkeeper to muster from takings that accumulated in pennies not pounds. Mr Smart didn’t grudge it, however, and Janet had long since stopped wondering what benefits it brought, for whenever there had been a spot of bother with local hooligans – a window broken, a barrel of English apples stolen, a daylight theft from the unlocked till – matters had been settled without summoning a constable and the inevitable appearance of Health Inspectors and busybodies from the Department of Weights and Measures.

Mr Smart had been ‘compensated’ by way of a brown envelope containing money and once by the appearance on the doorstep of a heavily bandaged young fellow lugging a sack of English apples which, out of the goodness of his heart, he’d decided to return, along with two home-cooked hams and four unplucked chickens to make up for any inconvenience his ‘mistake’ might have caused.

Small wonder that Mr Smart didn’t grudge ten shillings a week. In a neighbourhood where your laces could vanish out of your boots without you knowing it, three or four minor ‘inconveniences’ in a dozen years spoke of a protective power – slightly less than divine – that was certainly worth appeasing.

Janet McKerlie wasn’t the last person to talk with wee Tommy Bonnar before his tragic demise then, not by a long chalk. But talk with him she undoubtedly did. And if the shadow of the Grim Reaper was lurking in the doorway behind him she was just the lady to recognise it, given that she and her old mother talked of little else but death and dying.

‘Mornin’, Jinty,’ Tommy Bonnar coughed into his hand. ‘All set for the big night then, are ye?’

‘Aye, all set, Tommy.’

‘Got the gin bottles on ice?’

‘We’ll no’ be needin’ ice in this weather, I’m thinkin’.’

‘You’re right. It’ll be hot toddy for t’ toast the Auld Year awa’?’

‘Maybe just a drop,’ Janet conceded. In fact two bottles of Standfast were already reposing in the pot cupboard where her mother couldn’t reach them and two lemons were hidden in the pocket of her overcoat in the back shop. ‘We’re not much for celebratin’ in our house, though.’

‘Much like m’self,’ Tommy said, with a wry smile. ‘A quiet Hogmanay at home’ll suit me just fine this year.’

Janet handed over the envelope and watched it vanish into Tommy’s breast pocket. She said, sceptically, ‘That’ll be right.’

‘True, but,’ Tommy said. ‘Been a bad year for me. Nothin’ seemed t’ go right at all. I doubt if next year’ll be much better. In fact, it’ll probably be a damned sight worse.’ He gave a cough, a sigh. ‘Anyway, I’ll be wishin’ you an’ yours a good New Year, Jinty.’

‘An’ to yourself, Tommy, an’ to yourself,’ said Janet.

Then he’d pushed himself away from the counter and, shoulders sagging under his stained trench coat, battered little hat pulled down on his brow, the last half-inch of a cigarette hanging from his lip, he had slouched out into the street to face his final destiny.

*   *   *

Bells rang, factory hooters sounded, ships on the river whooped their whistles and the gang of Goodtime Charleys, girls as well as boys, that had gathered at Gorbals Cross let out an uproarious cheer to greet the New Year, their ardour undampened by the thin drizzle that tumbled down out of the sky.

Beer bottles, whisky bottles and glasses of various shapes and sizes went the rounds. There was much back-slapping and hand-shaking and a bit of passionate kissing around the Parisian-style monument. Impromptu choruses of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ led to a conga line that went round and round and in and out for a while. Then one serious young man leaped on to the monument and, hands clasped at his breast, sang ‘A Guid New Year to One and All’ in a rich tenor voice that brought tears to the eyes and a lump to the throat and might even have mellowed the rougher element in the crowd if the songbird hadn’t then slipped into ‘The Old Rugged Cross’, a liberty that brought glassware smashing about him and, for some if not others, robbed the celebration of much of its fun.

In No. 10 Lavender Court, Lizzie Conway’s girls leaned from the front-room window. They were excited, though for no particular reason since none of them planned on going out on the tiles; stimulated by the promise of the untarnished year ahead, a year in which they might continue to make their marks on life and receive in return – as Lizzie could have told them – such marks as life might chose to lay upon them.

Lizzie did not join her girls in the front room or share their eagerness to lay another year to rest. As always at this time she was possessed of strange wistful longings and a feeling that time, like a Highland river, had begun its tumbling plunge down off the heights. She did not toll off the years, though, did not make nostalgic tally of losses and gains, did not seek to separate good times from bad. She just preferred to be alone, all alone during the two or three unmagical minutes when the clock on the mantelpiece ticked up to midnight.

This year, though, it wasn’t so bad, not so bad at all.

When the clock chimed and the racket outside started and the first bloodcurdling yells came from the tenements and some idiot blared away on a bugle as if 1931 was thundering in upon them like a cavalry charge, Lizzie turned her head and glanced towards the kitchen door. Any second now her daughters would rush from the bedroom into the lobby and fling open the front door and the Gowers, the surly, sullen brother and sister who lived across the landing, would make the supreme sacrifice and actually exchange a few words of greeting without, of course, setting foot across the step, an act that would have been considered not just bad luck but almost treasonable to any true-born Scot.

Although she knew it would not happen, that it was asking too much of him, too soon, Lizzie toyed with the notion that Bernard might come leaping up the stairs with a bottle in one hand and a ring in the other and, throwing himself down upon his knees, demand that she become his bride.

In the two or three seconds that it took the clock to count to twelve, the thought, the wish became so strong that it seemed like its own fulfilment and left her not disappointed but rueful when instead of Bernard her girls, her three darling daughters, flung themselves upon her, crying and laughing, and demanding that she pour them a drink.

She had purchased a bottle of sweet fizzy wine to go with the bottle of whisky that tradition demanded she have on hand. She had put out plates of sausage rolls, sultana cake and crusty black bun and, with the fire blazing bright in the range, the kitchen shining like a new pin and her daughters romping about her, she was content to let the dream of becoming Bernard Peabody’s wife remain a dream, a little mirage that bobbed and floated hazily along the horizon, and to be that which she had always been, Lizzie McKerlie Conway, no wife but a widow, and mother to three growing girls. Except that they were growing girls no longer. They were women, young women. Their need of her and her influence over them would inevitably dwindle and this year or next year she would surely waken up to discover that she had lost them – even Rosie – that they had gone out to face the world on their own which was, she realised, just as it should be.

‘Mammy, are you crying?’ Rosie asked.

‘Nah, nah.’

‘She always cries at the New Year,’ said Babs. ‘Everybody her age does.’

‘Well…’ Lizzie said, helplessly. ‘Well…’

She felt Polly’s arms around her waist, Polly’s brow rubbing against her shoulder and, glancing down, saw that her oldest had a little rim of tears, clear and shimmery, in her eyes too.

‘I know, Mammy. I know,’ Polly said, very quietly.

And Babs, expertly plying a corkscrew, said, ‘Right. Who wants what?’

*   *   *

The Conways barely had time to drink one anothers’ health, to beseech the two-faced god to bestow wealth and happiness upon the family and bring abundance in the shape of full employment back to Clydeside, before a cry went up on the landing and a booming fist beat upon the landing door.

Polly and Babs glanced at each other nervously but Rosie, picking up the vibrations, grinned and said, ‘First-foots, I do believe. Will I open the door?’

‘No,’ said Polly, hastily. ‘That’s Mammy’s job.’

She looked at her mother, frowning. She had no need to put into words what was on her mind: that this was no cheerful guest bearing traditional symbols of plenty but some merchant of violence who had come to spill blood not bounty all over the kitchen floor.

‘Ahap – ahap – ahapp-ppy New Year,’ a voice yelled.

And Babs said, sighing, ‘It’s only Jackie Hallop.’

‘I’ll let him in,’ said Lizzie. ‘If you want me to, that is.’

‘I thought you couldn’t stand him?’ Polly said.

‘I can’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘But it isn’t up to me. Babs, will I let him in?’

‘Sure,’ Babs said, more pleased than not. ‘It’s New Year’s, after all.’

Jackie did not come alone. He brought his brother Dennis with him and one of the sisters, Louise, who was just about old enough to tag along. They rushed into Lizzie’s house on a wave of jubilation as if all the problems that had accumulated in the closing weeks of 1930 had vanished at the stroke of midnight and forgiveness as well as forgetfulness had descended upon all and sundry.

There was indiscriminate kissing and hugging, a sharing of drink, a mildly manic quality in Jackie that manifested itself in a need to prance about. He wasn’t drunk, not even tipsy, just filled with relief that Mrs Conway had seen fit to open the door to him and that Babs had apparently decided to forgive him his past transgressions and had even let him kiss her without protest. For Jackie this was a good start, the best sort of start to the year and his high spirits soon infected the Conway girls and even swept away some of solemn Polly’s reserve.

Rosie brought in the gramophone, wound it up, and coaxed it to play a scratchy old record of ‘Everybody’s Doin’ It’, to which Jackie and Babs danced in the space between the table and the sink and Louise, who’d been at the whisky as well as the sweet white wine, sang a version of the chorus that would have brought a blush to Lizzie’s cheek on any other occasion.

It was about a quarter to one when Jackie merrily suggested that they all go out and Babs shouted, merrily, ‘Yeah, yeah. Everybody’s doin’ it,’ and Lizzie said, ‘Where? Who?’ and Jackie said, ‘Down the Cross, Mrs Conway, just down the Cross for half an hour.’

And, after a pause, Lizzie said, ‘All right then. Polly, go too.’

And they went, all of them except Rosie who in that fickle way of hers elected to stay at home and keep Mammy company, mainly because crowds made her uncomfortable and she, of them all, retained a fear that Alex O’Hara might be out there, lurking, and that it would be better not to run the risk of meeting up with him again, face to face, no matter what Polly said about Mr Manone being on their side now.

They were gone in minutes, coated, hatted and chattering, storming off down the dank stairs out into the noisy streets while Rosie, not at all depressed at being left behind, wound up the gramophone and put her good ear to the metal sound box and listened, smiling, to the other side of the scratchy black record, and Lizzie loitered all alone on the landing, smoking a cigarette, listening to another song entirely, one that nobody else could hear.

*   *   *

For some reason best known to himself Tommy Bonnar did indeed return to the top-floor flat in Lilyburn Street at the back end of the Calcutta Road to bring in the New Year in the bosom of his family.

The fact that he was half seas over and barely able to find the close let alone the stairs might have had something to do with his decision not to loiter in the streets, but there may have been other reasons too. He was certainly in a bad way when he reached the fourth-floor landing and it was all his little nephews and nieces could do to guide him into the single-end and steer him to a chair by the fire where, still clad in trench coat and hat, still with a cigarette hanging from his lip, Tommy flopped down and instantly fell asleep.

It was then about twenty minutes to midnight and the size of Tommy’s family had been considerably reduced by Maggie’s defection several hours beforehand and by the departure of three of her offspring, led by nine-year-old Colin, on a begging spree. After all it was Hogmanay, a time when the generosity of Glaswegian drunks knew no bounds where kiddies and small animals were concerned, a fact of which Maggie’s brood were very well aware.

For this reason the little tearaways – two boys and a six-year-old girl – picked up a stray dog, a ragged mongrel too weak to escape pursuit. They carried it turn about in their arms and trailed from public house to public house, asking for pennies with a pathos that was all the more poignant for being calculated. Even after the pubs closed at ten, fish-and-chip shops and coffee stalls stayed open and there were plenty of folk about. Tommy’s nephews and niece, to be polite about it, bought chips and hot pies and ginger beer with the pennies they had wrung from passers-by. They fed the dog and stored some chips in greasy paper to take back to Lilyburn Street for the babies, the three- and four-and five-year-olds who had rescued Uncle Tommy from a night on the stairs.

Wet through, big-eyed and shaky with the need for sleep, they might even have trailed home before midnight if the lure of the gathering at Gorbals Cross had not proved too strong. Hidden in the midst of the crowd, they counted out the minutes to midnight, cheered in the New Year, listened to the singing, watched the fights and petted the dog they carried in their weary arms, turn and turn about.

Meanwhile, Maggie was sprawled on the bed of a man she had met in the back bar of Brady’s, an amiable and persuasive stranger who lodged not with a family but in a room of his own in a boarding-house near Eglinton Toll. Maggie had no idea who the chap was and by the time she staggered back to the boarding-house with him she was so topped up with gin and brandy that she might have been going off with the Man in the Moon for all she cared.

Whether the stranger had intercourse with her or whether he did not Maggie Bonnar had no clue.

Shortly before midnight she passed into a state of insensibility that was her idea of bliss, a sleep so deep and sound that nothing could waken her from it, not bells or whistles or hooters or, about ten minutes past the hour of one, the clang-clang-clang of the Southern Division fire brigade hastening to answer its first call-out of the year, a summons to a tenement fire in Lilyburn Street in the backlands of the Calcutta Road.