Chapter Twenty

The announcement of intention to marry came as no surprise. Banns were read in St Margaret’s Church in June and the minister, Mr Heatley, was thoughtful enough to have a ‘signer’ by him so that Miss Rosalind Conway could share the moment. A handful of dark souls in the congregation muttered that ‘girls like that’ should not be permitted to marry and should in fact be sterilised to prevent them passing on their defects. But for the most part all went well and Rosie, and Lizzie too, were happier than they had been in a very long time.

If she ever thought of her father and regretted that they hadn’t met, Rosie did not speak of it. Kenny’d had a word with her, a quiet, loving but informative word and whatever he’d told her – and what he told her was Rosie’s secret – it somehow settled her mind and, in a curious way, matured her.

There had never been any question of her not wanting to marry Kenny.

All it took to bring about a reconciliation was for Kenny to eat a just a little slice of humble pie and Fiona to take the girl out to lunch and do a bit of finger-wagging. Fiona MacGregor, stern and rather spinsterish, put the arguments for marriage so convincingly that she sent Rosie rushing back into Kenny’s arms to patch up what was now referred to as ‘a tiff’. Some tiff: it was perhaps as well that Rosie didn’t know a half, not a quarter, of what had taken place out on Blackstone Farm that night in May or how cleverly Dominic had plotted to send her father back from whence he came.

From Polly, Rosie learned that Dominic had taken the children to seek sanctuary in America, that Tony Lombard, Dom’s right-hand man, had vanished off the face of the earth and that her father’s new bride had also disappeared. She was too prudent to ask Bernard if his transfer from Lyons & Lloyd’s to Breslin District Council’s housing department had also been part of Dominic’s devious and elaborate scheme to thwart justice.

What she did not know, because neither Kenny nor Fiona were willing to breach their oath of confidentiality, was that Home Office Special Branch, acting on a package of information received from Glasgow CID, had discreetly netted thirteen persons, including five women, who were alleged to have threatened the security of the nation. There was no press coverage of the arrests or trials, but all thirteen, several prominent British nationals among them, served short custodial sentences and were still behind bars when war broke out.

By that time Kenny had been promoted to the rank of Detective Inspector and was involved in rooting out Republican terrorists and there was no possibility of his being released to serve in the army.

The wedding, however, came first.

It was a hot July Saturday, blisteringly hot in fact. The tyres of the hired car in which Rosie and Bernard drove to church hissed on melting tarmac and Bernard, clad in the better of his two blue suits, looked as if he were melting too.

Only Rosie appeared cool, perfectly poised and beautiful in a bridal gown of icy-white satin. The veil draped her brow in a delicate little glissando and her cheeks were paler than the carnations in her bouquet. She stared reflectively out at the streets during the short journey – not at the drab, towering tenements of her girlhood but at wide tree-lined boulevards – and held Bernard’s hand.

Tonight she would be with Kenny in a little hotel overlooking the Firth of Clyde and would give herself to a man for the very first time. The prospect of lovemaking did not frighten her. Kenny, like Bernard, was kind and thoughtful, and would not demand too much of her. On Tuesday they would return to the flat in Cowcaddens which they would share, at least for a little while, with Fiona. It was the sensible thing to do with everything so uncertain and Fiona talking eagerly of ‘joining up’ as soon as war was declared.

Rosie had imagined that she would weep in Mammy’s arms on the night before her wedding, that the old childish need for security and protection would rush at her out of the shadows. It didn’t happen, though: perhaps because she was the last of Lizzie Conway’s wayward girls to leave the nest and she would soon be Mrs Kenneth MacGregor not poor wee lonely Rosie, the little sister.

She could see St Margaret’s against the skyline, its tall steeple like a tower, parched grass, parked nearby the car that Jackie had borrowed from the salon to drive Babs, the children and Lizzie to church. They would all be inside, her family and her friends. Albert, old Mr Feldman, her teacher, her nieces May and June dressed as flower girls, Angus, in kilt and sporran, as a page. Babs was her matron-of-honour and Bernard would give her away. On the bridegroom’s side were Kenny’s mother and father, down from the island, Fiona, and several policemen, including DC Galbraith who had been persuaded to perform the duties of best man.

There would be no Aunt Janet, though. Rosie had written to invite her and Kenny had even threatened to arrest her and bring her along in a Black Maria but Janet had not deigned to reply. With Frank gone she had crept back into her shell, retreated into the shrivelled little world of hope and habit in which she had eked out an existence for far too many years.

Polly would be there, however: Polly all alone, Polly stripped of her family, watchful now and cautious but still exuding that effortless air of class: Polly with her limousine, her chauffeur, her Paris dress, and a hat that cost the earth: Polly who had encouraged her husband to take the children out of harm’s way, who had sacrificed her happiness for their sakes and who, with an indomitability that was entirely false, would keep the home fires burning and business ticking over until the war was over and Dominic Manone returned: so Rosie thought, sadly, as the hired car turned at the crossing and drew up before the church.

Bernard released her hand and reached for the door handle.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Please, Daddy, wait.’

He turned to face her, his eyebrows raised. ‘Cold feet?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Oh, no.’

‘What then?’

She brushed aside the veil and, reaching up, kissed him.

‘Just that,’ she said, then let him help her from the motorcar and escort her, proudly, up the steps to the church.

*   *   *

She lied only to save face, of course.

‘My God!’ Babs said. ‘You mean he just grabbed the kids an’ skipped? I’d kill Jackie if he did somethin’ like that to me.’

‘Dominic did not just skip. We discussed it,’ Polly said, ‘and I agreed it would be safer for the children to be abroad than trapped here under a rain of German bombs.’

‘Did Dominic have to clear out?’

‘No, but it seemed the sensible thing to do, to go with the children.’

‘Go where?’ said Babs.

‘New York,’ said Polly, without hesitation.

‘I thought his old man lived in Philadelphia.’

‘He isn’t staying with his father, or his brother. I doubt if they’d make him welcome even at this difficult time.’

‘An’ here I was thinkin’ all Eye-ties were one big happy family,’ Babs said. ‘Will you be goin’ to join them?’

Polly shook her head. ‘Someone has to stay and look after our interests.’

‘What’s Dom gonna do for money?’ Babs said.

‘He has funds,’ said Polly. ‘He sold most of our assets.’

‘Planned it all in advance, eh? Wish my Jackie could be more like him sometimes,’ Babs said. ‘What happened to Patricia?’

‘Patricia has been paid off,’ said Polly.

It was easy to lie, to elaborate and embellish, hide that which she did not wish to reveal, even to herself. Had she learned the trick from Dominic or had it been lurking in her genes all along? She’d always thought of herself as her mother’s daughter: now she was not so sure. Mammy had been ruthless when she’d had to be but there was a softness in her mother that Polly did not possess. She recalled her lost loves, young men she had known before Dominic swept her off her feet, remembered them without sentiment, wondered where they were now and what they had made of themselves, if they were happy, happier than she was.

‘Who paid Patricia off?’ Babs said. ‘You?’

‘Dominic.’

Easy, all too easy to write your own version of events, for the past was strangely malleable when you got right down to it. Lies told to her sister were not malicious or damaging, were merely intended to deceive. She had to save something from the debacle, something apart from the responsibilities that Dominic had thrust upon her, something that was uniquely her own.

‘Well,’ Babs said, ‘I suppose Tony will help out?’

Polly pressed her lips together. ‘Tony? No, no, no. He’s gone too.’

‘Aw, really! Babs’s eyebrows arched. ‘Gone with Dom, has he? Didn’t want to be left behind?’

‘I don’t know where Tony is,’ Polly said, trusting that her tone would imply that she didn’t much care. ‘I don’t need his, or anyone’s, help.’

‘Not even mine?’ said Babs.

Polly gave no answer.

Babs had sense enough not to persist. She laughed. ‘Bloody hell, won’t be a guy left if this goes on. Dominic, Dennis, your Tony, the old man. Billy too. Billy’s had his call-up papers. Jackie’ll be back in the pit in his overalls come Monday, and he ain’t gonna like that one bit.’

‘You mean you’ll continue to run the garage.’

‘Salon,’ Babs said. ‘Aw hell – garage. Yeah, we’ll stay open as long as we can. I’ll take over the book-keeping an’ Jackie’ll do the repairs. Spot of hard graft’ll do the bugger no harm an’ I’ll be on the premises to crack the whip. I take it,’ she paused, ‘I take it we won’t be needin’ to give you a cut any longer?’

‘No, your debt’s cancelled,’ Polly said.

‘Is that you speakin’, or Dominic?’

‘Me,’ Polly said, firmly. ‘I make all the decisions now.’

‘I see,’ Babs said. ‘You really are gonna go it alone, aren’t you?’

‘You bet I am,’ said Polly.

*   *   *

There was no mystery as to where Dominic had taken them. He had left a letter with Carfin Hughes which the lawyer delivered into Polly’s hand less than twelve hours after Dominic’s departure.

By then she had been to Tony’s apartment in Riverside and had found it locked. She’d gone at once to the tenement where Tony’s parents lived and had learned from them that Tony had left the country. His graceless old father approved; he didn’t want to see Tony interned or, worse, forced to fight on a side that was doomed to defeat. Polly left the Lombards strengthened by resentment, and returned home to keep her appointment with Carfin Hughes.

Dominic’s letter contained no mention of Tony, Penny Weston or for that matter of Patricia. Polly allowed Hughes to console her, to tell her it was all for the best and that it surely wouldn’t be long before war started and, God willing, war ended and Dominic and her children would be able to return to Glasgow. He watched Polly read the letter, trying to gauge by her reactions just how much support she would require in the difficult months ahead and just how far he might push her. She seemed calm enough, well in control of herself. She even had the temerity to indicate that she’d agreed to Dominic taking the children abroad and said that she would far rather have them with their father in the United States of America than evacuated to some remote corner of Scotland.

Soon after Hughes left, Polly drank a single gin-and-tonic and, steeling herself, went downstairs to interrogate Mrs O’Shea about her part in the deception.

Mrs O’Shea would have none of it: her friend Patricia was only concerned with the children and had no designs on Mr Manone, Cook declared indignantly. Polly could tell by the woman’s manner that Leah and she, Patricia too for that matter, had all been well aware what had been going on upstairs when Mr Lombard had dropped in for tea.

That night, her first alone, Polly cried herself to sleep.

She missed Dominic more than she missed the children, missed Tony most of all. She was haunted by a sense of failure, of finality, like a great weight pressing upon her. She wept, and whimpered apologies to the empty wardrobe and vacant chairs then, just as dawn light stained the curtains, curled up on top of the eiderdown and fell into a dreamless sleep.

*   *   *

Leah did not turn up for work next morning; Polly never saw the girl again.

Mrs O’Shea also handed in her notice, one week, as stipulated by the terms of her employment. Polly accepted without hesitation. The Irish woman’s departure would remove the last of her guilt, the last lingering shreds of conscience. Carfin Hughes would find her another housekeeper, some efficient widow or retired domestic who would take over management of the household, a task rendered all the easier by the absence of children.

Polly was not in total control of herself, however, not yet. She was tempted to drink herself into oblivion and for that reason hurried out of the house and went walking, all alone. She walked twice around the park and then out into the streets, striding on though her calves hurt and her shoes chafed and she felt as if her heart would break at the loss of all the good things Dominic had given her; why, she wondered, had it not been enough?

As she limped back through the rain to the empty house, though, she began to construct the lies that would protect her, lies that would in time become truth, to alter the reality of her situation so that she was no longer an abandoned wife or an adulteress but a woman ennobled by her own virtues, martyr to circumstance and the selfishness of men.

By the time she felt strong enough to admit to her mother and sisters that Dominic had left her, a postcard arrived from Southampton. It depicted an ocean-going liner with a cheering crowd on the rail and a flutter of bouquets and bunting. Three laborious lines of print in blunt pencil expressed her son’s excitement at the voyage that lay ahead. He signed himself ‘Yours Sincerly, Stuart,’ a piece of copybook formality that made Polly smile.

Her children might no longer be with her but she hadn’t lost them entirely and she was tempted to believe that they would come back one day stronger and more mature – more interesting too – for their experiences.

In the course of that warm, unpredictable summer Polly received many postcards and letters from her children, prosaic little essays composed no doubt at Dominic’s insistence. Only one communication came from her husband. In a brief transatlantic telephone call he informed her that he had rented a family house on Staten Island, a big clapboard house with spectacular views over the Hudson. He had brought his aunt Teresa over from Rome to housekeep and the children were settling down remarkably well and would go to the local school at the start of the fall term.

Polly asked after Patricia.

Dominic told her that Patricia was well, and in love with America.

He did not enquire about the state of the business which did not surprise her for she was sure that he was receiving regular reports from Carfin Hughes. It was odd hearing his voice, though, so thinned and roughened by a transatlantic cable that he no longer sounded like Dominic, like her husband.

She did not have the gall to ask about Tony.

Day and daily she waited to hear from Tony, to receive a telephone call, a letter, some scrap of information to assure her that only necessity had driven him from her and that she was absolved from blame. From Tony, though, there was nothing, only silence – and that silence was her punishment.

*   *   *

Five days after her sister’s wedding, Polly called Hughes to a meeting in the office in Central Warehouse. So far the lawyer had been generous with his time. He was polite and courteous, a man of good breeding, though he was never less than punctilious in posting the itemised bills for his services. He had even charged her for advertisements in the Glasgow Herald, though they had failed to turn up a satisfactory housekeeper.

Polly was inclined to take up Babs’s suggestion that Miss Dawlish, the clerk from the garage, might fill the bill, for the Hallops were finding it more and more difficult to balance the books and might soon have to let the clerk go. Miss Dawlish was interested in becoming Polly’s housekeeper and had assured Babs that she was a good plain cook and had looked after her ageing father long enough to know how to manage a household. Polly had too many other things on her mind to rush to an immediate decision on a mere domestic matter, however, for she had received a telephone call from an unexpected quarter, a call that demanded not just her attention but guile and forethought too.

Carfin Hughes arrived promptly at half-past four o’clock. He looked a shade more harassed than usual for he had been presenting a court case that had dragged on to the point where his punctuality was challenged. It was also hot and smelly on Clydeside and the cab-driver had been garrulous and had shouted the odds about what he would do to Hitler if he ever got his hands on him.

Hughes spent a good five minutes in the washroom, carefully removing all traces of sweat from his brow, before he ascended to the office on the upper floor.

Victor Shadwell was already present. He was seated before the desk, facing into the glare of sunlight.

Shipyards and docks seemed awfully far off in the motionless haze that overhung the river, and the river itself had the listless viscosity of mud so low and sluggish had the water become.

‘I would like to point out, Polly, that I do not usually make house calls,’ Carfin Hughes began, not testily, ‘not even warehouse calls.’

‘She’s had an offer, Fin,’ Victor Shadwell said.

‘An offer?’ Hughes said. ‘What sort of an offer?’

‘For the warehouse,’ Polly said.

‘Lease or purchase?’

‘Purchase.’

‘From whom did this offer come, and why was it not made through me?’

‘It wasn’t made through you, Fin, because the gentleman who made the offer believes that I am a softer touch,’ said Polly.

‘Who is this “gentleman”?’

‘John Flint.’

‘Flint!’ Hughes exclaimed. ‘My God! That villain!’

‘Is he?’ Polly said. ‘Is he any more of a villain than any of us? He was investigated recently, as you no doubt recall, and in exchange for his co-operation all charges against him were dropped.’

‘I cannot say about that,’ said Hughes.

‘Did you not represent him in the hearing?’ said Polly.

‘It wasn’t a hearing,’ Hughes said.

‘Negotiation then,’ said Polly.

‘I – I was present, yes, during the interviews.’

‘Would it be straining confidentiality too far to enquire if Johnny Flint is your client? Polly said.

‘I am not his legal representative.’

‘Then why were you present at the interviews?’ Victor Shadwell said.

He wore a light linen suit and had a Panama hat upturned on his lap. He was so desiccated and wispy now that he appeared to be hardly there at all.

Carfin Hughes was not deceived. ‘I was brought in, invited.’

‘By whom? By Johnny?’ Polly asked.

She too looked slight, almost frail in the glare from the window. The glass had been masked with a lattice of brown sticky tape but the sunlight was strong enough to cast shadows on the floor and desk. In the bright light, the woman seemed to be little more than a voice, a quiet, decisive, almost inflexionless voice that unfortunately reminded him of Dominic Manone.

Hughes shifted the position of his chair and brought Polly into view again. She was prettier than ever in a summer dress, make-up perfect, hair cut short and styled to show off the shape of her face; not for the first time he felt a tug of desire, a perverse longing to strip away the lady-like trappings and reveal the tart from the Gorbals that Polly Conway Manone had been before Dominic got his hands on her.

‘I was brought in by Flint’s solicitor,’ Hughes explained. ‘Be that as it may, tell me about this offer Flint’s made for the warehouse. I mean to say, what can a fellow like Flint possibly want with a warehouse?’

‘We were hoping,’ Victor Shadwell said, ‘that you would tell us.’

‘I?’ Hughes said, ungrammatically. ‘I? What makes you suppose that I would be au fait with some bookmaker’s underhand schemes?’

‘Is it underhand, Fin?’ Polly said. ‘On the surface at least, it seems to be perfectly legitimate. Johnny hopes to purchase the Central Warehouse as a going concern on behalf of the Lincoln Stephens Small Arms company who, not unsurprisingly, are obliged to expand to cope with massive government orders.’

‘A factory?’ said Hughes.

‘No, a warehouse,’ Polly said, ‘to stock stores and supplies for their main factory at Corkerhill.’

‘Did Flint tell you all this?’ Carfin Hughes said.

‘Absolutely,’ Polly said. ‘There seems to be some urgency in the matter and a decision and an agreement on price have to be reached within the next few days. He suggested that I consult you as soon as possible.’

‘Flint told you to consult me?’

‘Oh, come on, Fin,’ Polly said. ‘Just because I’m female and new to this game doesn’t mean to say that I can’t smell a rat in all of this? Johnny Flint’s connection with a long-established firm like Lincoln Stephens is tenuous at best. Dominic has no stake in the company, at least none that Victor knows about.’

‘None,’ Victor Shadwell said. ‘And I would know, you know.’

‘But you do, Fin,’ said Polly. ‘You do have a stake in the Lincoln Stephens.’

‘I emphatically deny that to be the case.’

‘What therefore would you advise me to do, Mr Hughes?’ said Polly. ‘Submit to a first offer for the property, take what Flint offers?’

‘In six months the property will have no value whatsoever. It’s situated in the midst of the most productive shipbuilding yards in Britain, a fact that will not have escaped notice. There’s little or no imported stock arriving from Italy. I can tell you that Dominic was only too well aware that the warehouse would soon be no more than an empty shell.’

‘Perhaps,’ Polly said. ‘But I’m not, I’m no empty shell, Fin. And you haven’t answered my question yet.’

‘Yes, Fin,’ said Victor Shadwell, ‘please do answer her question.’

‘I would advise you to take Flint’s offer.’

‘Sell at any price?’ said Polly.

‘Yes.’

Polly wished that her sister had been here. Babs wouldn’t have been so lady-like, so polite. Babs would have given the not-so-old devil a tongue-lashing.

‘The building’s in sound condition,’ Polly said. ‘All the floors are equipped to carry non-combustible small-wares of whatever description and the location is ideal for a company that needs ready access to the docks. As for air raids – well, if the yards go up in flames then half of Glasgow goes with them.’

‘Who told you that?’ said Carfin Hughes.

‘Nobody told me,’ Polly said. ‘I looked, and saw for myself.’

‘I suppose,’ Hughes said, ‘you’re going to be stubborn and let a prime asset go to waste rather than get what you can for it before it’s too late.’

‘On the contrary,’ Polly said, ‘I’m perfectly prepared to talk terms.’

‘With John Flint?’

‘With you, Fin,’ Victor Shadwell said. ‘She means with you.’

‘I’m not empowered to…’

‘You’re a registered stock-holder in Lincoln Stephens, are you not?’ Polly said. ‘Victor was kind enough to check the records. John Flint is nothing but a front, put in by you to broker the sale, so that on your advice I’d sell the place below its actual worth. I wonder what the Law Society would have to say if told them what you’re up to?’

‘I do believe,’ Hughes said, ‘that the Law Society is best left out of it.’

‘I won’t sell,’ Polly said. ‘I will, however, lease the warehouse.’

‘Lincoln Stephens do wish to purchase.’

‘I will not give up ownership,’ Polly said. ‘Nominally the property may be mine but we both know that it’s Dominic’s and one day he’ll come back for it.’

‘If there’s anything left,’ said Carfin Hughes.

‘A blackened patch of ground,’ Polly said, ‘will still be his.’

‘What sort of rental would you be looking for?’ Carfin said.

‘Two hundred and forty pounds a month,’ Victor Shadwell said.

‘Oh, come now!’

‘Two-year lease,’ Polly said. ‘Insurance to be met by the tenant.’

‘That is usurious. Insurance rates have doubled in the past three months.’

‘There are eight senior staff on the payroll,’ Polly said. ‘I would expect them to be employed by the new management.’

‘No, no. You’re asking too much,’ Carfin Hughes said.

‘If,’ Polly said, ‘if you weren’t an interested party, if you were acting exclusively and objectively on my behalf, wouldn’t you consider it a good deal?’

‘I might,’ the lawyer admitted. ‘I might at that.’

‘Will you put my proposals to the appropriate party?’

He laughed, an odd little haw-haw-haw. She knew that she had been tested and had passed with flying colours and that Carfin Hughes was gentleman enough to acknowledge it.

He said, ‘Is there room for negotiation, may I ask?’

‘None,’ Polly said. ‘Would you like the terms in writing?’

‘That would,’ Carfin said, ‘be handy.’

‘Good,’ Polly said. ‘Thank you for your time, Fin.’

‘You mean…’

‘You may go now.’

She rang the bell on the desk and the secretary opened the door to show the lawyer out. Carfin hesitated before he got to his feet.

‘Am I to assume,’ he said, ‘that my services to Manone Enterprises are to be terminated and another legal adviser employed in my place?’

‘Certainly not,’ Polly said. ‘Better the devil you know, Fin. In fact, if you aren’t otherwise engaged you may take me to dinner on Saturday evening.’

‘May I really?’

‘You may.’

‘Eight o’clock?’

‘Eight will be ideal,’ said Polly. ‘Will you send a car?’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘Of course I will.’

Then, smiling sardonically, he gave her a little bow and left.

Polly closed the glass-panelled door then turning to Victor Shadwell pulled a face and burst out laughing.

‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t say it, Victor, please.’

‘Don’t say what, Polly?’

‘That Dominic would have been proud of me.’

‘The thought,’ the old man said, ‘never even crossed my mind.’

*   *   *

On that Thursday morning the newspapers were filled with the latest developments on the border of Poland and Silesia and the wide-ranging powers that the British Prime Minister had been granted to ‘arrange’ for war. Mobilisation had begun in earnest and Central Warehouse had lost all but a handful of its staff to call-up. In consequence the change of management had been effected much more efficiently than Polly had anticipated.

She had got what she’d asked for; Fin Hughes had seen to that. Unless the British economy crumbled completely at least she wouldn’t starve. She was relieved to be rid of the warehouse. It smacked too much of Dominic, was too much his domain. She also nurtured a certain patriotic pride in having surrendered the building to a small-arms manufacturer and felt that by her sacrifice she had already made a contribution to the defeat of the Nazi dictator.

Evacuation of women and children was inevitable. In August, after the schools reopened, little was being taught but discipline and drill. Babs had no scruples about keeping her three out of class for an afternoon. In fact, she was dying to get behind the wheel of the big Wolseley, to try her hand at driving something more powerful than a three-wheeled Beezer. She jumped at the chance to take the family on a picnic and allow Polly to do a little business at the same time. She guessed, of course, that Polly was up to something, but Polly was always up to something these days.

Polly was waiting in the driveway when Babs and the children arrived. Miss Dawlish, Polly’s brand new housekeeper, had packed a hamper and stowed it carefully in the luggage boot along with rugs and cushions. It was a magnificent afternoon, hot and still, the sky cloudless. The children, Angus in particular, were excited at the prospect of a drive into the country with Mummy, Granny Peabody and Aunt Polly. Baby April had recently found her voice and babbled happily and gave her aunt coy, twinkling smiles from beneath her sun bonnet.

Babs tugged on her driving gloves, knotted a scarf over her hair and, leaving Miss Dawlish and Polly to settle the children into the back seat, slid behind the huge steering wheel and cautiously surveyed the array of dials and switches. She had no intention of making a fool of herself or of imperilling the lives of her children. She turned the key in the ignition and with Angus scowling critically over her shoulder, checked the petrol and water gauges.

Doors slammed; Babs hardly noticed.

Polly said, ‘Now are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Aw yeah, absolutely,’ Babs said.

Miss Dawlish leapt back into the doorway as Babs released the handbrake, depressed the clutch, tapped the accelerator and, tearing leaves from the hedge en passant, lurched the car through the gate into Manor Park Avenue and swung its long snout towards the Paisley Road.

‘Nothin’ to it,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Piece o’ cake really.’

An hour later Lizzie was installed in the back seat. Bolstered by her grandchildren and with April on her knee, she gazed out at stretches of moorland and hill ridges that she had seen only from a safe distance, a landscape that seemed very different now that she was part of it.

Signs of war were everywhere; little regiments of school cadets marching along pavements in peaceful suburban villages, a troop of volunteer fire-fighters struggling to tame the ferocious flow from a water main, a convoy of camouflaged lorries weaving down a back road, an open-sided truck with ten or a dozen girls clinging to ropes, all waving, all shouting, their cheeks reddened by unaccustomed sun; also raw brick shelters, emergency water tanks, policemen who weren’t policemen riding about on bicycles, and overhead, floating high above the hills, the first silvery barrage balloons that any of them had ever seen.

‘Elephants,’ Angus cried out. ‘Look, Granma, elephants in the sky.’

There were no flowers left in Bluebell Wood which lay behind the decaying gates of the Garscadden estate, but the trees were old and shady-cool. The Wolseley was parked in shadow, the picnic things spread out on a rug under the boughs of an oak that Polly said had been there for two hundred years, though no one, not even Angus, was going to swallow that tale.

They could no longer see elephants in the sky, no longer hear the pam-pam-pam of an artillery battery practising in the depths of the hills, could no longer smell the cloudy metallic reek of Clydeside foundries or the tang of the sea from the river, only the hot, fecund odour of weeds and wheat fields and hedgerows rife with flourish and the bland dog-rose.

‘I thought you’d business to do,’ Babs whispered to her sister as they set out sandwiches and cake and unscrewed the tops of tea flasks and bottles of ginger pop. ‘What sort of business can you have in the middle of nowhere?’

Polly got up from her knees and smoothing down her dress looked uphill through the trees to the crest of the ridge.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said. ‘I’ll be about an hour or a little longer. Keep me something to eat, please.’

‘Goin’ for a walk?’ Babs said. ‘I’ll come with…’

‘Alone.’

‘God, it’s a guy. You’re meetin’ a guy. Is it Tony?’

‘I’m not meeting anyone,’ Polly said. ‘No one, you understand.’

Babs wrestled with the stopper of the ginger pop. Angus was lying full-length close by, ostentatiously licking his lips. May and June were prowling around the hamper like two demure little predators. There were flies too, black flies. Lizzie flapped her plump hands to shoo them away from April’s face and tried not to listen to her daughters’ conversation which, she felt, was not for her ears.

‘Where are we, exactly?’ Babs said. ‘Are we near Breslin?’

‘No.’

‘My God, Poll, you’ve pulled some stuff before but this…’

‘If you must know, Dominic has property near here,’ Polly said. ‘If I’ve read the map correctly I can get to it by taking a path up through the wood.’

‘I’ll drive you there by the road.’

‘No,’ Polly said. ‘I’d prefer you to stay with Mammy and the children. Please, don’t make a fuss, Babs. It’s something I have to do on my own.’

‘Is that why you brought us here?’

‘Yes, partly.’

‘An’ I thought you just fancied a nice day out in the country. I should’ve known better.’

‘Mother,’ Polly said, ‘I’m going for a little stroll. I shan’t be too long.’

Lying was easy, lying was simple. She looked at her mother, big and comfortable even in the heat of an August afternoon, at her cheap floral-patterned dress, moth-eaten straw hat, wrinkled cotton stockings and shoes with worn heels, and felt a transient wave of remorse pass through her, the lie within the lie.

‘Where?’ Lizzie said. ‘Where is there to go round here?’

‘The top of the hill,’ said Polly.

*   *   *

The footpath led over a stile and across an empty back road. Garscadden wood lay behind her, ahead a field of ripe barley whispering in the sun. She followed the path by the side of the field, climbing gradually towards a line of conifers, dense and dark above her. She skirted the plantation, emerged on the edge of another field, and suddenly the valley of the Clyde was spread out below her, from the braes above Paisley to the mountains of Cowal, faint on the horizon and shimmering in the August heat. How small and contained Scotland was, she thought, how precious; then she heard laughter and, moving on, caught sight of the girls she had passed in the truck on the road.

Bare-armed and bare-headed, one was driving an ancient tractor while the others, six or seven in all, followed along in its wake, dropping seeds into shallow furrows. Polly had no idea what the crop would be. She gave the energetic crew a wide berth, slid between the strands of a fence and headed up the flank of the pasture towards the farm.

He was leaning on a gate. At first she took him for a farmer. He wore a faded cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a hat, a fedora of all things, set back from his brow. He was smoking a cigarette and a drowsy, rather dusty tabby cat was perched on the gatepost beside him.

‘Afternoon,’ the man said, amiably.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Polly.

‘Are ye lost, lassie?’

‘I’m looking for Blackstone Farm.’

‘Ag’n’Fish?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Are you,’ he spoke clearly, affectedly, ‘from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries?’

Polly laughed, shook her head. ‘What gave you that impression?’

‘You’re too dolled up to be here t’ dig for victory. Welfare?’

‘Welfare?’ Polly said.

‘Aye, the girls’ve a welfare officer. I’ve never met her so I reckoned it might be you.’

‘It isn’t,’ Polly said. ‘Is this your land?’

‘It used to be, aye.’

‘May I ask,’ Polly said, ‘who you are?’

‘Dougie Giffard’s the name.’ His hand went to his hat, a finger flicked the brim. ‘I think you’re Dominic Manone’s good lady wife. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s mine, the farm,’ Dougie said. ‘All legal. I have the papers in the house.’

‘I know it is,’ Polly said. ‘I’m not here to dispute your ownership.’

‘Very generous,’ Dougie said. ‘Dominic – Mr Manone – was very generous.’

‘What are the girls doing?’

‘Ploughin’ an’ seedin’,’ Dougie said. ‘So they tell me.’

‘On your land?’

‘Naw, I sold most of it off. Fifty shillin’s the acre, thirty-three acres. I kept the farmhouse.’

‘Do the girls lodge here?’

‘No room here. They’re billeted temporarily down the road in Drumry church hall until better accommodation can be found for them. I give them a bit of dinner at midday an’ let them use the you-know-what, those o’ them who are too modest t’ go into the woods.’

‘What do you do for a living, Mr Giffard, now that you’re no longer employed by my husband?’

‘I suppose I’m what you’d call a man o’ means.’

‘Eighty pounds won’t keep you for ever,’ Polly said.

He turned away, propped an elbow on the gate and looked towards the farmhouse. There was laundry on a rope in the yard and, in spite of the heat, a thin spiral of smoke rising above the chimney.

He said, ‘Would you care t’ come over to the house, partake o’ a glass o’ somethin’, take a look round?’

‘Thank you all the same,’ Polly said, ‘that won’t be necessary.’

‘What will be necessary then?’ Dougie said. ‘What is it brings you here?’

‘I’m looking for Tony Lombard.’

‘Tony’s gone,’ Dougie said. ‘Long gone.’

‘Do you know where he went?’

‘Nope.’

‘I think you do, Mr Giffard.’

‘Have you not heard from him?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Ask your husband,’ Dougie said. ‘He’s bound to know.’

‘Please,’ Polly said, ‘just tell me where Tony’s is.’

‘He went away with the girl, with Penny.’

‘Oh!’

She was less than surprised, less than dismayed.

‘Tony never told you anythin’ about her, did he?’ Dougie said.

Polly shook her head.

‘He’s goin’ to be a daddy,’ Dougie said.

‘A daddy?’

‘Aye, sometime fairly soon, I think. October or November.’

‘I see,’ Polly said.

‘They sailed for Canada when the balloon went up then moved on pretty quick to the United States,’ Dougie said. ‘The last I heard, Tony was lookin’ for work on the docks in Seattle.’

‘Not New York?’

‘Nope, not New York.’

‘Does he write to you?’ Polly said.

‘She does. Penny does.’

‘Why does Tony have to work? I thought – doesn’t he have money?’

‘Not near as much as he might’ve had,’ Dougie said. ‘Aye, there was money. We were rollin’ in money for a week or two, a lot more money than the police ever confiscated. They took away my printer, though.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I could’ve had a nice wee jobbing line set up if they hadn’t took all my stuff away. Still, I suppose I got off light, all things considered.’

‘How much money didn’t the police confiscate?’

‘Thousands, thousands an’ thousands. None o’ it real, alas.’

‘Where is it now, Mr Giffard?’

‘Search me,’ Dougie said innocently.

Polly didn’t care enough about the counterfeit money to press him.

She said, ‘He can’t marry her, of course. Tony, I mean.’

‘Can’t he?’ Dougie said. ‘What’s stoppin’ him?’

‘She already has a husband. She’s married to my father.’

‘Is she?’ Dougie said then casting pretence aside, turned to face Polly. ‘She’s not married t’ anyone, not now. Even a good Roman Catholic boy like Tony Lombard can marry her wi’out a qualm o’ conscience.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he? My father’s dead?’

‘He might be.’

‘Did Dominic – did my husband murder him?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Was it Tony?’

‘Who knows!’

‘You were here, damn it. You know, don’t you?’

‘He was kind t’ me,’ Dougie said, ‘your husband, more generous than I’d any right to expect. He left me well provided for. I don’t need much, just enough to keep me an’ the cat fed. I can sit out the war right here, quite comfortably.’

‘And do what?’ said Penny. ‘Do what?’

Dougie thrust out his under lip, shrugged. ‘Keep an eye on things.’

‘What things?’

‘Just things.’

Polly closed her hand on his arm.

Dougie didn’t draw away. He wouldn’t meet her eye, though. He stared across the corner of the field at the land-girls and the tractor, hardly bigger than a toy, churning up the pasture under a milky blue sky.

‘He’s buried here, isn’t he?’ Polly said. ‘My God, Dominic’s paying you to make sure he stays buried, that he’s never found?’

‘That, Mrs Manone,’ said Dougie, ‘is pure conjecture.’

‘Oh yes,’ Polly said. ‘Pure conjecture. Am I right, though? Am I not right?’

‘You might be,’ Dougie said. ‘An’ then again…’

‘I might not.’

‘You don’t really want t’ know what happened here that night, do you?’

She turned this way then that, looking at the plantation, at the shallow furrows that scored the clay, at the knoll above the farmhouse. Anywhere: he could be anywhere. It mattered not. She didn’t want him back, whatever was left of him. She felt only relief that Giffard’s little lies and evasions had finally exposed the truth. Her father was gone for good this time, lost not in Flanders but here on the fringes of the city he had scorned and abandoned.

She couldn’t mourn and would not condemn. She would take it no further, not one step beyond this place, this point in time. She must leave her father – and Tony – behind, and move on.

Polly shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to know what happened.’

‘Then go away, Mrs Manone,’ Dougie said. ‘Go away an’ do what I’ve done.’

‘And what is that, Mr Giffard?’

‘Dig in, lass’ he told her. ‘Dig in.’

*   *   *

When she reached the shelter of Garscadden wood she stopped running, running from where her father might lie, crashing through fern and bracken as if she feared that he might reach out of the earth and catch her still.

Only when she had crossed the back road and entered the shelter of the trees did she finally slacken her frantic pace. Boiling hot, dripping with perspiration, her dress clinging to her skin, she was tormented now by an irrational fear that when she arrived at the top of the hill and looked down she would find that they had gone too; Babs, the children, Mammy vanished as if they had never been. But they were not gone, had not vanished. They were precisely where she had left them, picnicking on the grass under the shade of the oak tree.

Relief, vast and exhausting, flooded over Polly. She slumped shakily against the trunk of an elm and, screened by its leaves, looked down at the car, at the little girls, at Angus, like a monkey, swinging from a branch, at Babs scowling as she peeled an orange; at Mammy, Mammy with April on her lap, woman and child both drowsy, both hovering on the verge of sleep.

As she knelt in the grass at the base of the elm tree, looking down, Polly knew that a part of her life had drawn to a close. She was no longer Dominic’s wife, no longer Tony’s lover, no longer a mother to Stuart and Ishbel. She had allowed herself to be replaced. For that she had only herself to blame.

Dig in, Giffard had told her. Dig in.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps that was the only way to survive and she had better heed his advice. She had asked too much of life, more than her mother had ever had or ever wanted, and she had paid dearly for her greed; yet in the lengthening shadows of that hot August afternoon something quite unexpected happened, something so strange that it took Polly’s breath away: there, on the very eve of war, she felt at peace with herself at last.

And calmly, almost serenely, she walked the rest of the way downhill to join her family and take tea in the shadow of the oak.