Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘You do know what he does, though?’

  ‘I was brought up in the Gorbals,’ said Rosie. ‘I have probably seen more monkey business than you have. I know what my brother-in-law used to do but since he married my sister he has gone on to the straight and narrow. He buys and sells imported goods and has a warehouse in Govan, all perfectly above board.’

  Kenny pressed his lips together and frowned. ‘That’s just not true, Miss Conway, not true at all.’

  ‘Prove it,’ she said. ‘Go ahead then, prove it.’

  Kenny reached into his jacket pocket, brought out a photograph and placed it on the tablecloth. ‘Have you ever seen this woman before?’

  The head-and-shoulders snapshot was faded but quite clear. The woman was young, hardly more than a girl. She had a slender neck, high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and looked, Rosie thought, like a film star.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘That’s immaterial. Have you ever seen her before? At your brother-in-law’s house maybe?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Is that No?’

  ‘I have never seen her before.’

  ‘Are you telling me the truth?’

  ‘I am.’

  The sergeant cupped his hand over the photograph and put it back into his pocket. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Now, tell me about yourself.’

  ‘I thought there would be no more questions.’

  ‘That isn’t a question. Well yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Oh-kay,’ said Rosie. ‘Let me ask you one first.’

  ‘I can’t answer any questions about the girl in the photograph.’

  ‘It’s not about her.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Sergeant MacGregor, are you married?’

  ‘No, I’m not. And the name, by the way, is Kenneth.’

  ‘Well, my name is Rosalind,’ said Rosie. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

  And they shook hands as if everything that had passed between them was forgotten and, as Kenny and Rosie, they were about to begin again.

  * * *

  Tony hadn’t been sorry when Dominic had sold the bookmaking business along with most of the other rackets that had provided Dom’s father with the basis of the family fortune. He had wearied of violence and the toll it took on your nerves and did not want to return to the old days or to the old ways of settling disputes and stamping your authority on the community.

  Once, long ago, his father had been Carlo Manone’s bodyguard and they had fought side by side for control of the Genoa fish market and when things got too hot for them in Italy his father had been one of the tempestosi who had escaped with Carlo to set up business in Scotland. Dominic and Tony had been boys together in spite of the fact that the Lombardis were staunch Catholics and Carlo Manone had renounced all forms of Papal domination. Tony had heard tales about how young Carlo and the priest in one of the hill towns had been at loggerheads over a girl and how the girl had finally killed herself and the priest had called down the wrath of God on Carlo and his brother Guido and how the boys had burned down the chapel of Santa Esta and the priest’s house and the farm that the priest’s brother owned, and had fled to Genoa not into the arms of the law but into the waiting arms of the Protestant church.

  Tony wasn’t sure he believed all his papa’s stories but at least he had an inkling where his coldness came from.

  So far he hadn’t murdered anyone, though. He’d ordered men killed, watched men killed, had disposed of bodies and covered up afterwards but he’d never had to draw the knife and do the deed himself. For that small mercy he was thankful now, for conscience was the key to success in his line of work, conscience and control. If you could keep one separate from the other then you could do your job and sleep sound at night; if not, then you were in trouble and not God or the Virgin or even Dominic Manone could protect you from the consequences. He had always accepted that fact even while he was falling in love with Dominic’s wife.

  He would never forget the night when he’d first kissed Polly, thrusting her against the panelling in the hallway in the half dark in Dominic’s house in Manor Park Avenue: how she’d cried out in a low, hungry voice and to his astonishment hadn’t pushed him off: how she’d put her hand down and touched him between the legs: how he’d lifted her skirts, slipped inside her panties and entered her: how by that hot, wet, trembling act he had sacrificed his ability to separate conscience and control, and how, soon perhaps, he’d have to pay the price.

  God knows it had been difficult enough to manage an affair with Polly under Dominic’s eagle eye but now that Dom had taken a mistress and had put him in charge of her welfare everything was bound to become more complicated.

  There had been frost in the night, a sifting white frost that had compacted the mud in the fields around Blackstone and turned the building site into an obstacle course. Bonskeet’s trucks were slithering on the gradient up to the brick-piles when Tony, driving cautiously, came past. On the eight or ten big villas that were already shrouded in scaffolding he could see slaters clinging to the roof ridges. He had never had to work like that, in all weathers, with dirty hands, and the rackets had given him a hundred times more than dog labour ever could.

  He had picked the Weston girl up in Glasgow, on the corner of Woodside and St George’s Road. Even muffled in a swagger greatcoat and a hat like a guardsman’s busby she’d attracted more than her fair share of attention. She’d slid into the Dolomite almost before it came to rest and once inside she’d twisted round and peered through the rear window as he’d steered down Woodside Road then, satisfied that they were not being followed, she’d given him a little slap on the arm and said, ‘Tony, how are you?’ as if they were old friends.

  He had been leery of her that night in the road-house at Rutherford when Dominic had introduced them, for Penny Weston was arrogant and challenging in a way that Polly was not. He had resisted the temptation to try to question her, to tease from her some of the things that Dominic hadn’t told him, how she’d travelled to Glasgow, for instance, and why Dom was hiding her away on the city’s north-western fringe. Tony was uncomfortable north of the river. His stamping ground was among the tenements and bars that nuzzled behind the Govan shipyards. In new garden suburbs there were few pubs and no closes or dark alleyways where a man could do business out of sight.

  He said nothing about any of that and let the girl do the talking.

  Penny Weston was no Garbo, not the silent type. She interrogated him about where they were going, what these buildings were and how one road linked to another. She’d taken off her fur hat and had run a comb through her hair – which Tony knew wasn’t a ladylike thing to do – and she’d opened her overcoat to show off her tight white sweater and her pointed breasts.

  He answered her questions curtly, concentrated on finding his way.

  Eventually they reached the turn-off to Blackstone Farm. Tony was relieved that he’d manage to find the place first time. He coaxed the car along the rutted track into a cobbled yard flanked by sheds as clean as farm sheds ever could be. He drew up in front of the handsome stone-built farmhouse.

  ‘I want to look around,’ the girl told him: her accent was more apparent this morning: ‘I vaunt to look arrr-ound.’

  Tony got out of the car, opened the boot, took out a pair of rubberised ankle-boots and fitted them over his shoes. He carried a second pair to the passenger door and held them out to her. ‘You’ll need these if you’re going for a walk.’

  ‘Ah, you have thought of everything.’

  He had thought of everything or, rather, Dominic had thought of everything. In the boot was a basket of cooked chicken pieces, bread rolls, flasks containing hot tea and soup, bowls, forks and spoons wrapped in a chequered cloth. He lit a cigarette and waited for Penny to emerge from the car. In his overcoat pocket were the five keys locked on a ring that Dom had brought to his flat last night. Dom had told him that he wanted the girl treated well and that anything she required Tony was to supply. Couple
of years ago he would have quizzed Dominic or made a joke out of it: ‘Hey, this girl, you didn’t bring her in from Italy,’ but he couldn’t joke with Dominic about the girl now, for the ironies were too obvious to ignore.

  The girl swung round on the car seat, stretched out her long legs and stamped her feet into the boots.

  ‘What is it you call these things?’ she asked.

  ‘Galoshettes.’

  ‘How funny!’

  ‘Don’t you like them?’

  ‘I like them because they are useful.’

  The greatcoat was wide open, showing off her figure. Even in the grim November light her hair gleamed like polished metal.

  ‘Do you want me to open the house?’ Tony said.

  Hands on hips, she surveyed the horizon’s bare beech trees and blackthorn hedges, looked up at the sky as if she were looking for stars, Tony thought, or aircraft, then she said, ‘We will inspect the barn first of all.’

  He took the key ring from his pocket but she had gone ahead of him. The door to the largest building was apparently unlocked. She threw it open and vanished into the gloom.

  Tony followed as far as the threshold. Cold came up through his feet and the taste of the farmyard was musty on his lips. Inside the building were beams, high wooden partitions, a stone floor with a drainage channel, but no rats, no hay or mouldering straw.

  ‘Stables,’ Penny said. ‘Can you not smell the horses?

  ‘Wouldn’t know what a farm horse smells like,’ Tony said.

  He remained in the doorway while she walked down the length of the stables and back up again, back and past him and out into the daylight.

  ‘Very well, now I will go inside the house,’ she said.

  It had never occurred to him that Dom would betray Polly and the kids. He wondered if this was revenge, if Dom had manacled him to this imperious bitch just to teach him a lesson.

  He unlocked the main door and, stepping back, let the girl enter the farmhouse before him.

  ‘Are you not coming too?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure I am’, Tony answered.

  And flipping away the cigarette, he followed her indoors.

  * * *

  Soon after marriage, and before she became pregnant with Stuart, Polly had joined the Sicilian Circle, a group of second and third generation Italian women who had hired a professore to improve their knowledge of the old language.

  Few if any were from Sicily; the majority came originally from Lucca or Siena or the hill towns round about. They met one afternoon a week in the hall of St Francis’ church. Sometimes Father Giorgio would pop in and tell them about Barga and Picinisco, Cassino and Atina, where some of them had family connections, and it didn’t take Polly long to realise that learning a few Italian phrases wouldn’t make her an Italian or allow her to share the sense of campanilismo that united students, teacher and priest. She would always be an outsider, not just an outsider but an outlaw, despised and envied for being Dominic Manone’s wife but without power or identity of her own.

  ‘Signora, Signora Manone,’ the smiling, full-lipped Italian matrons would say, ‘Is your husband well? Are your children well?’

  They never asked about her, about Polly née Conway, who didn’t have an aunt in Barga or a cousin in Cassino or a brother who had thrown everything up to go home and farm in the old country. What she had and what she held on to was Tony Lombardi who was worth more than all the decrepit contadini in the Province of Lucca put together. If only she could have informed the Italian wives what she had made of herself once she had abandoned the Sicilian Circle, how she had learned a language that no professore could possibly teach and no priest condone.

  Tony was everything that Dominic was not, a rough and urgent lover who took her as he willed.

  On the rare occasions when they found an opportunity to lie together in bed, he thrust into her with such force that she felt as if she would split apart. Afterwards, though, he would he take her in his arms, kiss her breasts and shoulders, tell her that she was the best he’d ever had, that he loved her and would never let her go. Then suddenly Tony was no longer there. The regular schedule of shopping and school and dropping by the house in Manor Park Avenue ceased abruptly and with it the opportunities for lovemaking. Tony had been summoned back to Dominic by Dominic – and she hated him for it.

  ‘Where’s Tony? I want him to drive me into Glasgow?’

  ‘He has other things to do,’ Dominic told her. ‘I’ll find someone else to drive you to town. What day would be suitable?’

  ‘I want to go now. Today. Who else can drive me?’

  ‘Charley Fraser, perhaps.’

  ‘I’d prefer to catch a tram than be driven anywhere by Charley Fraser,’ Polly said. ‘Where is Tony? What have you done with him?’

  ‘He’ll be back eventually.’

  ‘Is he out of town?’

  ‘He has work to do.’

  ‘What’s going on, Dominic?’

  He smiled, patted her hand. ‘Nothing is going on.’

  ‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

  ‘I am talking to you.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re not giving me answers.’

  ‘I told you, Tony is…’

  ‘Are you having trouble with Flint?’ Polly said.

  ‘Flint? Why would I have be having trouble with Flint?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Polly. ‘Suppose you tell me.’

  ‘I’ve no truck with Flint now. We move in different circles.’

  ‘Different circles!’ Polly said scathingly. ‘You mean, he doesn’t have to pay you off any more, therefore you don’t have to fight with him?’

  ‘Fight with him? What the devil are you talking about?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten what happened to Tommy Bonnar.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s time you did,’ said Dominic.

  They were alone in the oblong dining-room at the back of the house. Patricia was sitting late with the children. Ishbel had been nursing a head cold and was out of sorts. Stuart and Ishbel had separate bedrooms now, for the boy, a troubled sleeper, was prone to nightmares.

  Dominic had been delayed at the warehouse. He had arrived at ten minutes to eight and had asked Cook to serve supper at once. He’d hurried upstairs to kiss his son and daughter and talk to them for a little while or, rather, to let them prattle on about their day at school. Polly had been cast in the role of firm hand to Dominic’s conciliator. He was never bored by their childish fears or enthusiasms and seldom lectured them. Sometimes when she saw her husband kneeling on the playroom carpet or seated on the end of one of the children’s beds she resented his patience not only with the kids but with her too.

  ‘I don’t like not knowing where Tony is. Stuart’s been asking after him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Is he chasing after that girl?’

  ‘Girl? What girl?’

  ‘The blonde, the girl at the track?’

  ‘Ah, so that’s it.’ Dominic shrugged. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Who is she? What’s her name?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘She waved to you.’

  ‘Did she? She’s probably one of Flint’s girls.’

  ‘Not one of yours?’

  ‘I don’t trade in girls. You know that, Polly.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re up to these days, Dominic. I resent being kept at arm’s length.’

  She expected him to placate her with meaningless endearments and was surprised when he said, ‘You’re not in any danger.’

  ‘Danger? Who said anything about danger?’

  ‘You don’t need Tony any more.’

  ‘I damned well do.’

  ‘He’s too valuable to be a chauffeur. If you require a driver I’ll find you one. One I can trust.’ He paused. Fright prickled Polly’s spine at what might come next. ‘We’ve come in off the street now, all of us, even Tony. You need not be afraid that anyone will do anything to you or the children. I did as you as
ked, sold the book, sold the collection agency. Now we’ve moved on to bigger things and I must have Tony’s help in the matter.’

  ‘In what matter?’

  He shook his head.

  Once she’d interpreted his implacability as ruthlessness but she had been too young then to appreciate the quality of independence that she’d inherited from her mother. Besides, she was no longer the girl she’d been in her mother’s house: she was the woman that Dominic had made.

  ‘Have you packed him off to Italy?’ she said.

  ‘Italy?’ Dominic said. ‘Why in God’s name would I send Tony to Italy?’

  ‘To talk to Il Duce.’

  He laughed. ‘Il Duce has more to do with his time than talk to business men from Scotland. Who put that daft idea into your head, darling? Don’t tell me Bernard…’

  ‘I just thought that you might be contributing.’

  ‘To what? A war?’

  ‘Don’t say that, please.’

  ‘There’s one thing about a war that seldom gets into the history books, Polly. Wars make money,’ Dominic told her. ‘If you choose the right side and keep quiet about it, yes, there’s lots of money to be made from a good-going war.’

  ‘Is that what you’re up to, Dominic, making ready for a war? Is that why you’ve taken Tony away?’

  ‘I haven’t taken Tony away. He’s just too busy to be your bodyguard. Anyhow, you don’t need a bodyguard. You might need a gas-mask and a tin helmet pretty soon but a bodyguard – no, no.’

  ‘So it’s only business that’s keeping Tony away?’ Polly said.

  ‘Yes,’ Dominic said. ‘Only business.’

  * * *

  Dennis Hallop’s wife was a fusspot who gave her poor man no peace. No sooner would Dennis arrive home from a hard day’s graft at the garage than she would hand him a paint pot or a screwdriver and demand that he do something about the house. What Gloria needed, Jackie said, were three or four kids running around to take her mind off her damned wallpaper and her bathroom tiles. In spite of appearances, however, Gloria was not fertile. She was a dumpy, big-chested brunette with pouty lips and huge dark eyes whose mothering instinct had been diverted – perverted, Jackie called it – into turning her brand-new bungalow into an ideal home.