Chapter One

When word drifted down from Flint that Bobtail Boy would canter home at one hundred to eight in the November Handicap Polly had no option but to place a bet. Heaven knows she didn’t need the money. She had everything a woman could possibly want and if anything out of the ordinary did catch her fancy then all she had to do was snap her fingers and Dominic would have it delivered.

Seven years of marriage hadn’t diminished Dominic Manone’s infatuation with the girl from the Gorbals and so far he’d shown no inclination to acquire a mistress, an omission that suggested weakness to his colleagues on the shady side of the street. Even they had to admit, though, that a guy would be hard pushed to find a mistress who could match Polly Conway for that indefinable quality that envious wives dismissed as spending power but that their husbands perceived as class.

How Flint intended to rig the race was a mystery, for ever since Dominic had pulled out of bookmaking Polly had lost touch with racing gossip. Hot tips from John Flint were few and far between, though, and Flint would be insulted if she ignored the favour. She waited until ten minutes before the race before she sent Tony to the tote to lay a tenner on the Bobtail’s nose.

‘Splashing out, are we, Mrs Em?’ Tony said. ‘Know something I don’t?’

‘I doubt it, Mr El.’

Polly gave him a little pat on the shoulder to send him on his way.

After her husband’s Uncle Guido had retired to Italy Tony Lombard had taken over as Dominic’s right-hand man. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had dark, lazy-lidded eyes. Most women found Tony irresistible: Polly was no exception. He was smooth and cool and polished, like her husband. In fact the men might have been brothers, except that Tony carried a faint air of menace as if you couldn’t be quite sure what he would do if you crossed him, a quality that Dominic had lost over the past few years.

Perhaps she was partly to blame for the change in her husband. It was on her suggestion that he had sold off the book to Flint and had pulled out of the street rackets. Squawks of protest and a flurry of cables came from Dominic’s father in Philadelphia, of course, but to his credit Dominic had stuck to his guns.

She watched Tony climb the steps to the top of the stand.

He wore a snap-brim hat and a Raglan overcoat and walked with a straightforward, upright gait, his broad shoulders swaying as if he was just on the verge of throwing a punch.

Polly shivered a little and tucked her chin into her fur collar.

The afternoon was cold and still.

Cloud blotted out the river and the graving docks and the lights of the little townships below. The cold made the horses skittish rather than eager and Bobtail’s jockey struggled to bring the animal to the starting-gate.

Polly had no information about the three-year-old’s form or what weight he was carrying. She’d hardly had time to glance at the card before Dominic had sent her off to lunch with Tony in the grandstand bar while he went down to meet someone in the enclosure, a short, squat bullish man in his fifties whom Polly had never seen before. She had caught a glimpse of him at the edge of the enclosure just before Tony had steered her into the bar.

Polly wasn’t the only good-looking woman in the long room but everyone knew whose wife she was and heads turned when she came through the door. Even the haughty county types who commandeered the big table by the fireplace eyed her up and down.

Tony brought her lunch: a salmon mousse, filet of steak flanked by three boiled potatoes and a spoonful of buttered cabbage. He handed her a gin-and-tonic and settled with his back to the window. He’d bought no drink for himself, not even lager. He was, she realised, working at keeping her out of Dominic’s way for a while.

She glanced out of the plate-glass window in the hope that she might catch sight of her husband in the crowd below and the squat little man with the big military moustache. There was no sign of either of them at the railings or among the bookmakers’ stalls. She was tempted to ask, ‘Who is that man and what business does he have with Dominic?’ but she didn’t want to put Tony on the spot.

She sipped her gin-and-tonic and dipped her spoon in the salmon mousse while Tony slit open a meat pastry and began to eat.

Dominic didn’t join them in the bar. He was waiting on the bench in the fifth row of the stand when Tony and she returned. He seemed relaxed, almost amused, as if the meeting with the little man with the moustache had been unexpectedly profitable.

‘Nice lunch, darling?’

‘Plain,’ Polly replied, ‘but wholesome.’

‘How much did you drink?’

Tony answered for her. ‘One gin.’

‘With tonic,’ said Polly. ‘Okay?’

‘Perfectly okay.’ Dominic lifted his binoculars. ‘Flint has given us a nod that Bobtail Boy is sure-fire. What do you think, darling?’

‘If Flint says “sure-fire” then I wouldn’t doubt it.’

‘I’ve put something on, something out of the fund.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Polly.

She was supposed to assume that the moustache had brought a message from Johnny Flint, a hot tip from the horse’s mouth. Somehow she doubted it. She had no reason to doubt it: she just did. She was being brushed off again, deceived. For the best part of a year now Dominic had been lying to her, nothing drastic, just a small, steady stream of white lies – or perhaps she was just being over sensitive. Perhaps life in the little mansion in Manor Park Avenue had become too idyllic and she and her children, Stuart and Ishbel, had become too detached from the stresses that added spice and texture to the lives of ordinary folk.

Dominic’s business had held up in spite of the slump. Now rearmament programmes had brought full employment back to Clydeside and the ice-cream factory, cafés and restaurants in which he held shares were booming. She had every reason to feel safe and secure – but she didn’t. An Italian army had swept into Abyssinia and the left-wing government in Spain had been attacked by General Franco’s rebels and Chancellor Hitler had annexed Austria and like Bernard Peabody, her stepfather, she’d been dismayed by a headline photograph of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with Benito Mussolini.

Bernard was a veteran of the Great War and the prospect of another conflict in Europe appalled him, though he claimed that he’d have been off like a shot to join the International Brigade if he hadn’t been a shade too long in the tooth.

It wasn’t just Spain that bothered Polly, however, or the Italian crises or jackboots stamping through the Rhineland. Fanatical fascists rioting in streets much closer to home had her on edge too for Dominic had played both sides of the fence for so long that she had no idea where he really stood on any important issue. He subsidised the Jewish pipe band with one hand, gave money to the Union of Italian Traders and the Socialist Workers’ party with the other. He had subscribed to the purchase and renovation of the magnificent Casa d’Italia in Glasgow’s Park Circus, one of the finest fascio flagships in Britain, but had refused to become a member. He continued to back causes redder than ox-blood and causes blacker than midnight without, it seemed, being aware of the distinctions, and when she asked him to clarify his position he just smiled and politely avoided the issue.

Dominic had never set foot in Italy. He had been born and educated in Scotland and had married outside the Italian community. Even so he still paid homage to a father whom he hadn’t seen in almost twenty years, a father who, not to put too fine a point on it, was a gangster in America. In addition to all the other woes in the world, therefore, Polly had to live with the fear that one day the forces of law and order would catch up with her husband and that he would be made to pay for his past, let alone his present, mistakes.

She watched the horse-race with hardly a flicker of interest.

The jockey Flint had chosen to ride Bobtail Boy knew his stuff. He didn’t draw away from the field until the final furlong and then, with whip cracking and the crowd roaring, brought the Bobtail in by a nose from the odds-on favourite. Polly took no pleasure in the knowledge that she had just won a tidy sum of money. High up in the stands she felt remote from the excitement of the shiftless crowd. The next race would not only be the last on the card but the last of the season. Whitewashed stands would soon empty, snack bars and restaurants would put their shutters up and the judge’s box would be locked until April. The punters would mooch away into the burnt-out haze and soon – all too soon for Polly – it would be 1939 and the start of another year of uncertainty.

Dominic’s face remained hidden behind the binoculars. He wore a pale grey scarf of fine lambswool. Black kidskin gloves were tucked into the belt of his overcoat. He might have been a general studying a battlefield, all his concentration focused on – on what? Not jockeys and owners and horses, not on the winner’s enclosure or numbers posted on the wall of the judge’s lodge: he was methodically scanning the crowd, looking for someone.

Tony slid his right hand against the small of her back.

She leaned into him.

‘Well, Mrs Em, looks like you’re a winner,’ Tony said.

Without lowering the binoculars, Dominic said, ‘Tony, please take Polly home now.’

‘What about you?’ said Polly. ‘Aren’t you coming with us?’

‘No, darling,’ her husband told her. ‘I still have business to do here.’

What sort of business? Business with that vulgar little bull of a man? What are you keeping from me, Dominic? What are you holding back? Before the questions could reached her lips, Polly buried her chin in the soft, cold collar again.

Tony’s hand in the small of her back spread out like a brace.

‘Will you be home for supper, Dominic?’ she asked.

Dominic did not answer. He had found someone in the crowd.

Polly followed his line of gaze, saw the little man with the military moustache and beside him, hanging on his arm, a tall young woman with long shapely legs and a helmet of blonde hair who even as Polly spotted her, rose on tiptoe and waved.

Lowering the binoculars a little, Dominic waved back.

‘Tony,’ Dominic spoke softly. ‘Take my wife home.’

And Tony led Polly away.

*   *   *

On Saturdays the only way Babs could get to see her husband was to bump the perambulator down the steps of their bungalow in Raines Drive and shepherd her children round the long corner to the garage in Holloway Road.

In spite of the bubble-headed petrol pumps, free air compressor and tyre rack and the great oily cavern round back in which his brothers worked on vehicle repairs, according to Jackie, Hallop’s wasn’t a garage at all but a ‘Motoring Salon’ – which showed just how divorced from reality Jackie had become. Manual labour was beneath him now, of course. He had risen above all that. In the office overlooking the forecourt he fiddled with purchase and sales ledgers, licences and registration forms, aided and abetted by old Miss Dawlish who was as steely and efficient as a Rolls-Royce gearbox when it came to refreshing the pedigree of vehicles come by slightly less than honestly.

Babs had no objection to Jackie poncing about the forecourt or posing in the big bow window of the showroom or even lounging in the little kitchenette in the back listening to dance music on his Ultra 500 Magic Eye wireless set. What she did object to was Jackie out on the town, swanning it at dealership conventions or loose with a cheque-book at sales or auctions and, most of all, vanishing for entire afternoons without proper explanation or excuse.

For this reason, Babs would occasionally dress up her offspring, pop baby into the pram, throw on her beaver lamb coat and beret and sail around the corner just to check that Jackie was actually there and doing what passed for his job.

Hand in little hand May and June would walk primly in front of her, baby April would goo and gurgle in the high-sided Roxburgh pram, and Angus, age seven, would pedal furiously ahead on the tricycle that he had definitely outgrown while emitting an uncannily accurate imitation of his Daddy’s Excelsior motorbike – Brrrrrrroooooommm.

‘Ang-gus,’ Babs called out sharply. ‘Ang-gus. Stop right where you are.’

Angus obstinately pedalled on round the corner, head down, shoulders hunched, brrroooming like mad, while May, age six, and June, age five, quickened their pace to keep the daredevil in sight. On Saturday afternoons there wasn’t much traffic in Holloway Road, only a few customers puttering into Hallop’s, a coal merchant’s or greengrocer’s cart and now and then a single-decker bus that had gone astray. But the gnashing of trams from the junction with Paisley Road and distant roars from Ibrox football stadium sent little darts of anxiety into Babs’s stomach for however selfish she might be in other respects, she was heart and soul a mother and fretted about the safety of her kids.

‘There!’ June pointed dramatically. ‘I see him.’

Babs trotted breathlessly around the curve of the pavement just in time to see her son pass under the wooden archway that spanned the entrance to the forecourt. Jackie’s brother Billy had constructed the arch and fitted the wiring that picked out Hallop’s Motor Salon in coloured bulbs. Billy had made a good job of it for like all the Hallop boys he was clever with his hands. He had also erected two tall flag-poles, one at each end of the low wall that kept the motorcars from escaping into the road, but on that dreary November afternoon the flags hung limp and rubbery against their whitewashed poles.

Refusing to be beaten by the gradient Angus rose from the saddle, pumped on the pedals as if he were kick-starting a motorbike and shot up the ramp into the almost empty forecourt. The girls, the pram and Babs all followed on.

Babs had learned enough about the motor trade to separate browsers from potential buyers and she reckoned that the couple who were prowling around an almost-new BSA Scout two-seater had the air of seriously interested parties. The man was tall with curly fair hair and a frank and open face. The woman – probably his wife – was small, almost wispy and sported an off-the-peg overcoat a size too large for her. At a hundred and thirty pounds the Scout would be too expensive for the couple even on hire purchase, Babs reckoned, but further along the row was a Hillman, four or five years old but still gleaming and confident, that Jackie would knock down to sixty or sixty-five quid and negotiate on suitable terms.

She quickened her pace and caught up with her daughters. They were very well behaved, her daughters. Indeed, they emanated an air of supercilious patience and precocious disapproval that they applied not only to their brother but also to Mum and Dad.

There were no salesmen in the forecourt and no sign of Jackie.

Babs followed the tricycle up to the bow-fronted window. There were no lights in the office or showroom and she guessed that Jackie had dropped off in the armchair in the kitchenette while listening to Ambrose or Billy Cotton or a football commentary on his wireless. Billy and older brother Dennis would be back in the repair shop for they only came out front when someone rang for petrol. She braked the pram next to Angus’s tricycle and pushed open the showroom door.

Cars loomed menacingly out of the shadows: an Alvis, a Wolseley, a big black Daimler. The girls remained outside to guard the baby and Angus had already gone rocketing through the building, shouting, in his gruff, gravel voice, ‘Dad, Daddy, Dad, I’ve come to see you.’ Babs peeped into the office and found no one there, not even Miss Dawlish.

Through the windows she could see her girls, the pram and, beyond them, the customers. The man was looking up at the showroom but the wispy young woman had disappeared. A sudden frisson of apprehension ruffled the hair at the back of Babs’s neck. ‘Jackie,’ she shouted. ‘Jackie, goddamn it, where are you?’ When no answer was forthcoming, she went back through the showroom and left Angus to find his own way out.

The young man was waiting by the door. He smiled optimistically at May and June but they were not to be cajoled into talking to strangers. Baby April chewed the apron of her pram and slavered.

As soon as Babs appeared the young man looked up.

‘Are you Mrs Hallop, by any chance?’

Tinged with a Highland accent, his voice was softer than she’d anticipated but as soon as he spoke the prospect of selling the Hillman, let alone the Scout, vanished.

‘What if I am?’

‘I’m looking for your husband.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ Babs said. ‘If you’re interested in a car…’

‘I’m interested in your husband,’ the man said.

‘I’ll fetch my brother-in-law,’ Babs said. ‘He’s round in the repair shop.’

‘No, it’s Mr Hallop, Mr John Hallop, I want to speak to.’

‘Aw, really!’ Babs pushed back her shoulders: the girls watched her, eager to learn. ‘What, may I ask, d’you want him for?’

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the wispy young woman in the off-the-peg overcoat coming around the gable with Dennis. Big, solid, reliable Dennis, dressed in baggy brown overalls, was wiping his hands on a cotton rag.

‘Who is that woman anyway?’ Babs heard herself say.

‘My sister.’

‘An’ who are you?’

‘My name’s MacGregor, ma’am. I’m a policeman. I’ve come to serve warrant on your husband, I’m afraid.’

‘Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ Babs said just as Jackie, whistling unconcernedly, appeared from behind the petrol pumps, holding young Angus by the hand.

*   *   *

It was dark now and the street lamps had come alight, shop fronts blazed and even the dingy pubs looked warm and inviting in the chill wintry haze. Football supporters spilled from side streets jeering and rough-housing or trudged in the direction of tram stops or waded through the traffic heading for the Clutha or the Bon Accord or some other favourite pub. They jostled the women shoppers on the pavements and crabby old widows, flighty young girls and wives burdened by poverty and child-rearing had sense enough to clear out of their way for on Saturday afternoon their men folk were numbed by football and a thirst for hard liquor and cared nothing for common courtesy.

Polly had been raised in streets like these but had remained oblivious to the scars that gender and class can leave on ordinary people. It was only after she’d moved out to Manor Park Avenue that she’d come to realise how much difference money could make and had begun to resent the heartless industrial machine that ground men down until there was nothing left but a few rare sparks of courage and endurance. Her mother had endured, of course: her mother had struggled bravely against the odds all her born days until, thank heaven, she’d shaken off the chains of poverty by marrying Bernard Peabody.

Tony had taken the main road into Ibrox via the proud old weaving town of Paisley which had staunchly preserved its independence through every phase of boom and slump. Heading east now, he turned off into the parkway and the harsh street lights were abruptly screened by trees and the sedate Presbyterian mansions of Belville Road.

Tony hadn’t said a word since he’d steered out of the field behind the racecourse. Polly occupied the rear seat as a rule but tonight she sat up front. The family Alfa had been traded in when the first anti-fascist riots had broken out and a few hotheads and Clydeside Bolsheviks had stoned Italians in the streets and smashed up their cafés and fish restaurants. Jackie had found them a nice Triumph Dolomite to replace the Alfa and Tony said he preferred it. Polly didn’t care one way or the other for neither she nor her sister Babs had ever learned to drive.

She watched the trees loom behind the pleasing curve of high iron railings. In the park in the half dark she saw a man with a dog, two small boys playing with a rubber football, a couple kissing behind a chestnut tree, and the town was replaced by an air of rustic seclusion. She caught the thumb and forefinger of her glove between her small sharp teeth and tugged off the glove. She dropped it into her lap and let it lie there. She put out her hand and spread her fingers on the leather seat. The car was moving slowly, ornate street lamps and the lamps in the porticoes of the mansions marking Tony’s face with light and shadow in a queer, lazy, dreamlike rhythm.

He took a hand from the steering wheel and covered her hand with his.

‘Will you come in with me tonight, please?’ Polly said.

And Tony, loyal Tony, answered, ‘Sure.’

*   *   *

Jackie Hallop had hardly changed since Babs had first clapped eyes on him nine years ago. He had been leaning from a ground-floor window when the Conways had arrived in Lavender Court packed into the back of a Sanitation Department van along with their few sticks of furniture. He had been wearing nothing but an undervest that had shown off his pale, undernourished body to worst advantage and had given Babs – ‘Blondie’ he’d called her – a real good eyeful of all he’d had to offer which then as now hadn’t been much.

Anything less like husband material would have been hard to imagine even for someone as young and impressionable as Babs had been in those days. During the erratic course of their courtship, however, Jackie had proved to have plenty of steam in his boilers and his willingness to spend money and enjoy a good time had eventually lured Babs into sacrificing a girl’s most precious possession. Then, like many a girl before her, she had wound up pregnant and married to a guy she hardly knew, a guy who made his living renovating stolen motorbikes in a junk yard off the Calcutta Road.

Dominic had done all right by Jackie, however, and Jackie had done all right by Dominic. Regular exchanges of money between them kept the relationship cordial. However good Jackie and his brothers were at managing the salon, at home her husband could be a sore trial at times.

According to Rosie, Babs’s deaf but outspoken little sister, Jackie fancied himself as Peter Pan, just a boy who refused to grow up. But Peter Pan had never got up to half the things that Jackie got up to, especially in the bedroom where Babs and he joined in raptures so careless that both May and April had been conceived without forethought and if nature had been able to keep up with the hectic pace there would have been three or four more babies to add to the heap.

Though he spent more on clothes in a month than the average man earned in a year, Jackie still retained such a boyish appearance that unwary folk assumed he was either innocent or daft and even his daughters had already begun to suspect that there was something odd about Daddy. And they had their names to prove it.

‘April, May and June!’ Rosie declared in her clicky, deaf person’s voice. ‘Dear God, Babs, it is as well for Angus that he was not born in August or September or you would have been saddled with an Auguste or a Septimus. Have you stopped now, by the way? Have you put a sock on it yet?’

Fortunately Rosie didn’t know the half of it. It wasn’t Jackie’s organ of generation that needed muzzling so much as his mouth for when he became excited or upset he would prattle on and on in a quasi-American drawl that made him sound vaguely like the film star James Cagney.

On that particular Saturday Jackie arrived home at a quarter past seven. The crunch of the Ford’s tyres on the gravel and her husband’s voice seemed to merge even before the car braked to a halt. Ranting, he entered the kitchen by the back door, paused long enough to lift the lid on the pan that Babs had left simmering on the gas stove, then came on through the hall, ranting again. He fired several remarks in the direction of his son who, fed, watered and wrapped in a blue woollen dressing-gown, was lying tummy-down on the rug in the lounge looking at the pictures in Motorcycle Weekly. Then, without waiting for Angus to respond, he danced through the hall into the bathroom where, in the absence of a nursemaid, Babs was bathing the baby while May and June, dressed in pink dressing-gowns and floral slippers, observed.

The baby was having a high old time of it playing with a big yellow sponge while Babs, kneeling, supported her and tried to direct suds to unreachable parts of the plump little body.

Red-cheeked, straggle-haired, Babs was smouldering with resentment at having been summarily dismissed as soon as the copper flashed his ID, not politely requested to make herself scarce, mark you, but hastily escorted off the premises by Dennis as if she were an accomplice instead of the innocent wife of an innocent man.

‘… and told that bugger where to get off. He wouldn’t have been throwin’ his weight around if Dominic had been there, I can tell ya. Dominic would’ve told him to stuff his so-called warrant up his…’

‘Jackie!’ Babs rolled her eyes in the direction of the girls.

‘Well, yeah, point taken.’ Jackie touched each of his daughters on the crown of the head as if conferring a blessing. ‘But I mean t’ say, it’s the truth, Babs, ain’t it? Got no respect for an enterprisin’ businessman, these guys. Jeez-zus…’

‘Jackie!’

‘Well, they ain’t. It’s bloody Percy Sillitoe an’ his new broom sweepin’ clean at police headquarters. Coppers runnin’ scared if they don’t make enough arrests old Perce’ll have them back directin’ traffic at Tolcross. Sure, our new Chief Constable might’ve put the fear o’ God into the Irish and the Bolshies and got rid o’ half the wild men out o’ the gangs but Jee – I mean, cripes – we’re not that breed o’ person, not me an’ not Dominic, so why are we bein’ persecuted?’

‘Are we being persecuted?’ Babs said.

‘We’re honest citizens. We pay our taxes an’…’

‘What did he want with us?’

Jackie fell silent for several seconds then said, ‘Nothin’.’

‘I thought he was wavin’ a warrant for your arrest.’

Jackie laughed. ‘My arrest? What the heck would they be arrestin’ me for?’ He looked down at June. ‘Why would they be takin’ your Daddy in, honey?’

June shook her head and May, not to be left out, shook hers too.

Angus and the girls had known no life but that of the bungalow. They had never suffered hunger or cold or bullying, had never lived in fear of anyone or anything, which was all well and good when things were running smoothly but what would she tell her children, Babs wondered, if Daddy was snapped up by the jaws of the legal system? How secure and self-assured would her children be if they had to trail up to Barlinnie prison on visiting day to peer at Daddy through the bars?

‘A search warrant, was it?’ said Babs.

‘Naw, it wasn’t even a search warrant,’ Jackie said. ‘Even if it had been a search warrant the bastard wouldn’t found anythin’ incriminatin’ at the salon. Is she ready for dryin’ yet? Take her out an’ I’ll powder her while you serve my dinner.’ He waited while Babs fished for baby April, then he went on. ‘I think they’re closin’ in on Dominic. The woman wasn’t a copper. She was only the copper’s sister. He brought his sister along to scare me! Take more than one Highland nance and his sister to drag me into the dock, I can tell ya.’

‘Jackie,’ Babs said. ‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘You’re frightenin’ the girls.’

‘They don’t look frightened to me. You’re not frightened, are you, sweetheart?’ May shook her head. June followed suit. ‘Here, gimme the baby an’ the big towel an’ I’ll get her into her gown. By the way, if you think I got the wind up today, think again. They’ve nothin’ on me. Let the buggers lean on Dominic if they like.’ He reached past Babs, plucked the baby from the bathwater, lifted her, dripping, into his arms and hugged her to his chest. ‘They’ve leaned on Dom before, remember. If things get too hot Dominic’ll fix them. He knows how to handle coppers. Why should I worry?’

‘Yeah, why indeed!’ said Babs.

He glided away, the baby, towel-wrapped, in his arms.

May and June trailed their father into the nursery, their feet pattering on the parquet. Babs heard the baby’s whimper then a petulant wail as her father laid her on the changing table in front of the gas fire.

She leaned on the rim of the bath and listened to her daughters giggle at Daddy’s efforts to talcum April. Jackie might be no prize as a husband but he was more willing than most men to take a hand in raising his children. Sighing, she hoisted herself to her feet and mopped at the puddles on the lino-tiled floor with a damp towel. Luisa, the day-maid, didn’t work on Sunday: Sunday was not a day of work but a day of worship, Luisa said. Babs had no alternative but to concede the point, particularly as she had no religious belief to fall back on.

She knew that Jackie was rattled. He couldn’t disguise it. Some time next week she would have to have a word with Dennis to find out if the tall, fair-haired policeman was chancing his arm or if the eagle eye of Chief Constable Percy Sillitoe had finally fallen on Dominic Manone and by association on the Hallops.

‘Jackie,’ she called out. ‘Why don’t you telephone Dominic?’

Silence in the nursery.

‘Call Dominic, let him straighten it out before it gets any worse.’

Jackie appeared in the bathroom doorway, jacket and waistcoat damp, hair ruffled. The baby rode high against his chest, one bare arm about his neck, a nappy pinned snugly about her.

He frowned and said, very quietly, ‘Naw.’

‘Why not? Dominic will…’

‘Naw, Babs. No Dominic.’ He shook his head emphatically, making April rock in his arms. ‘Not a damned word to Dominic about what happened this afternoon, nor to your sister neither. You hear me, Babs?’

‘I hear you,’ Babs said meekly and drying her hands on the towel hurried through to the kitchen to serve her husband his meal.

*   *   *

The cook was Irish, the day-maid Jewish. Patricia, the little red-haired nanny, was a shy young thing from the Isle of Arran who had taken a course in Domestic and Resident Child Care and thought herself no end of a swell to be working for a well-to-do family like the Manones. There were no Italians on the staff and the bills-of-fare that Mrs O’Shea put up for Polly’s approval every Monday contained few traditional dishes though, when the Manones entertained, Mrs O’Shea could produce a magnificent tagliatelle or a cannelloni the very smell of which would make your mouth water.

Most Saturdays the Irish woman and the girl from Arran were given the evening off. They would stroll out arm-in-arm for a fish tea at the Embassy Café before heading off to the pictures. Polly and Dominic would eat supper at the deal table in the kitchen and enjoy having the place to themselves.

If Dominic had been looking forward to a quiet supper alone with his wife when he returned from the racetrack, however, he was doomed to disappointment. Tony was already seated at the kitchen table, making inroads into a fish pie that Cook had left in the oven.

Saying nothing, Dominic slipped off his jacket and loosened his necktie. He pulled out a chair, seated himself, reached for the grappa bottle, poured a shot into a whisky glass and knocked it back.

‘Are the children in bed?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Polly answered.

‘I’ll go up to kiss them goodnight.’

‘No need,’ Polly said. ‘They’re asleep.’

‘Did you remember to collect your winnings?’

‘Of course.’

She watched him pour a second shot. She was supposed to be the drinker in the family and it was unusual for Dominic to take anything before dinner. She wondered what had shaken him, if the long-legged blonde had anything to do with it, but she had more sense than to question him in front of Tony, for she was not without secrets of her own.

She laid down her fork and knife and took the pie dish to the oven and put it inside to warm. Tony had taken off his jacket and loosened his neck-tie too. It pleased her to have both her men in the basement kitchen at the same time. Unlike the dining-room the kitchen was an intimate place. A solitary barred window looked out into a garden set higher than the basement and all you could see was a wall, an apron of grass and now and then a cat slinking by.

She waited by the oven while the temperature gauge crept up and observed her husband and his counsellor from the corner of her eye; like brothers, yet not like brothers. She had never met Dominic’s brother, or his mother or his father; the American Manones were mere shadows as far as she was concerned. She watched Tony cut through the pie crust with the edge of his fork. He used his knife hardly at all and ate without the finicky mannerisms that Dominic had acquired.

At length she removed the pie dish from the oven and served a helping on to a warm plate. The plates were oval and decorated with vine leaves, the cutlery silver. A fat bottle of frascati and a slender bottle of grappa stood in the centre of the table. Everything in the kitchen was the best that money could buy. Even the fish under the pie-crust was plaice and sole not the scrapings from the bottom of a fishmonger’s barrel. The potatoes had been rolled into little crusty balls, spiced with herbs, the salad bowl trimmed with thinly sliced avocado, a vegetable that her mother had probably never heard of let alone tasted.

Polly sipped wine, ate a mouthful of fish.

‘How did you get back from the Park then?’ Tony asked.

‘Flint’s boy gave me a ride,’ Dominic answered.

‘Flint’s boy? Which boy would that be?’ Polly heard herself say.

Tony looked up at her out of the tops of his eyes but Dominic, working the pepper-mill over his plate, did not seem to notice.

‘Skanks, I think his name is,’ Dominic said. ‘A youngster.’

‘Arthur Skanks’ boy?’ Tony said. ‘He’s not so young as all that. He has a kid of his own, a girl name of Kate.’

‘Really!’ Dominic said. ‘I don’t know how you find out these things.’

‘My business to find out these things,’ said Tony, not seriously.

‘How old is Kate?’ said Polly.

‘Thirteen, fourteen,’ Tony said.

‘A little too young even for you,’ Polly said. ‘Is she pretty?’

‘Sure,’ said Tony, still not seriously. ‘Very pretty.’

‘She isn’t Italian, by any chance?’ Polly said.

‘Nope.’ Tony loaded his fork again. ‘Unfortunately she isn’t Italian.’

Dominic gave a little huh of amusement and said, ‘It seems my wife is determined to marry you off.’

‘No I’m not,’ said Polly.

She knew that he was trying to draw the conversation away from the events of the afternoon and wondered what soft, waxy secrets he might share with Tony.

‘All you wives are the same,’ Dominic went on. ‘You think that marriage is the answer to all your problems and you believe therefore that it should be the answer to all our problems too.’

‘I didn’t know you had any problems,’ Tony said.

‘Not me,’ said Dominic. ‘You.’

‘I got all the trouble I can handle without looking for a wife. What is this? Some feudal rite from the old country, you’ve got to find me a wife.’ He wiped the corners of his lips with his knuckle. Stubble showed dark on his chin, rough to the touch, Polly knew, like a cat’s tongue. ‘You don’t have to get me hitched. I don’t need hitched. I don’t even want to be hitched.’

Polly laughed. ‘If we make another killing like we did today, we can club together and buy poor Tony a wife.’

Dominic explored the pastry with his fork in search of tender flakes of sole. Later Tony and he would go upstairs to the living-room to smoke cigars and drink more grappa and chew the fat, while she washed up. She resented her husband’s hold over Tony Lombard, though she had no reason to be jealous of anyone, least of all her husband.

‘We could all club together,’ Tony was saying, ‘and buy us a racehorse.’

‘Bobtail Boy, maybe?’ Dominic suggested.

‘Wouldn’t be a bad buy, unless Flint’s already sold him for horse meat.’

They were keeping her at a distance. Something had happened today and Dominic and Tony didn’t want her to know about it. If she’d been more like her mother she’d have adopted a good old, straight-from-the-shoulder, hands-on-hips approach, direct as a punch on the nose: Who was she, Dominic? Who the hell was that woman at the racetrack? But she hadn’t been winnowed by years of hardship. She wasn’t big-boned and big-hearted and stuffed with character like Mam. She was a dainty, intelligent, obedient wife who in the opinion of everyone who knew her had everything a woman could want – everything except the one thing she really wanted, the one thing that Dominic could not buy her.

They continued to talk casually about horses, what stabling and training would cost and how, between them, they might turn a profit.

Even Tony had backed away from her.

She got to her feet more abruptly than she had intended, lifted the empty plates from the cloth, reached for the pie-dish and salad bowl and balancing them on her arm looked down at the enquiring faces of her husband and her lover.

‘What’s it to be, gentlemen?’ she said. ‘Cake or canary pudding?’

‘Why not both?’ said Tony.