Hannah Massey Page 6

  ‘Dave Hewitt went out of his way to call in at the shop.’

  ‘Hewitt? Then the pollis is on to it. Name of God!’ She jerked her head round and looked at Rosie, who was standing now; then turning back to Hughie, she asked, aggressiveness back in every inch of her, ‘You’re not just putting the wind up me, are you?’

  ‘Why should I take the trouble to do that?’

  It was not an answer Hannah expected from him. The quality of his voice, which touched on indifference, brought her eyes narrowing, and she said, ‘Why should Hewitt go out of his way to help me?’

  ‘I don’t think that was his intention; but he was a friend of mine, and still is in a way, and he knew that I wouldn’t want Barny to be caught red-handed.’

  Rosie was staring at Hughie; she had never heard him speak so boldly to her mother before. It was as if he didn’t care a damn for her mother’s reactions any more, as if he was freed from something. That his attitude was also puzzling her mother was very evident. She hoped it wouldn’t arouse her anger against him still further.

  But Hannah had something more serious on her mind at the moment than to dwell on Hughie’s attitude. She said rapidly, her words running together, ‘How’ve they got on to Barny? He’s not the only one; every man jack of them’s at it.’

  ‘They’re on to a number. As far as I understand they’re going to make a house search.’

  ‘They could come here, you think?’

  Hughie didn’t answer, he just stared at her. And she put her hand over her mouth as she exclaimed, ‘God in Heaven!’ Then she asked, ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. It could be tonight or tomorrow morning, I don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Again her body shivered; but now with strength and purpose, and flashing her eyes to Rosie, she said, ‘Go and get your da down.’ It was as if her daughter had never left the cover of her domination. Then turning to Hughie she ordered, ‘Get down to the club and get Barny back here as fast as his legs’ll carry him.’

  As Rosie went from the room she saw Hughie still standing in the doorway. He hadn’t moved, and her mother was staring at him. Then Hannah’s voice came to her, still loud but in the form of a request, saying, ‘Well, will you go for me?’

  Rosie heard the back door bang before she reached the bathroom, and there she called, ‘Come quickly, Da, me ma wants you.’

  ‘She can just wait.’

  ‘No, Da, there’s trouble; come quickly.’

  As she ran downstairs again Broderick was on her heels, drying himself and exclaiming loudly. And when he entered the kitchen he demanded to know what was afoot, but Hannah silenced him with ‘Less talk and more action, that’s what we want in the next hour or so. The pollis is on to Barny and the wireless bits.’

  ‘Good God!…Who told you this?’

  ‘Hughie; he got it from Dave Hewitt.’

  Broderick looked frantically around the kitchen, as if searching for hiding places; then turning to Hannah, he cried, ‘But there’s no place where we can stick that stuff, woman. We can’t bury it in the garden, the ground’s like flint underneath the slush.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of the garden. Only a numskull would think of the garden. We’ll have it upstairs in the box mattress.’

  ‘The box mattress! Oh, aye, begod. Aye, yes.’ Broderick nodded his head. ‘That’s the place for it. But will it stand it? Those bits are a sight heavier than tea and sugar and clothes and the like.’

  ‘We’ll have to take that chance. But don’t stand here wasting breath, let’s get down to the shed and get as much loose stuff up as we can. An’ we’ve got to do it with as little narration as possible or else Nebby Watson’ll have her nose hanging over the wall sniffing like a mangy retriever. And Alice Parkman is not above lifting the blind on the other side. So I’m telling you.’

  The shed at the bottom of the garden was fitted up as a workshop. When her mother switched the light on, Rosie stood gazing above her at the pieces of electrical equipment and half-finished wireless and television sets that took up every inch of the bench that ran the length of the shed, and overflowed onto the shelves beneath and those above it. Barny had started at Teefields factory before she had left home, and she hadn’t been able to close her eyes to the fact that the stock in the shed had rapidly mounted, or that Barny made quite a bit on the side making wireless sets. But if it had troubled her, she had thought along the lines of her Catholic training—well, what Barny did was between him and God. It was a nice easy way to prevent herself from thinking of Barny as a hypocrite, one who wouldn’t miss Mass on a Sunday, nor his duties once a month.

  ‘Here now!’ Her mother thrust a box of valves into her arms, hissing, ‘Get up with them. Be careful how you go, and don’t spill them. Leave them on the bedroom floor; we’ll attend to the bed when we come up.’

  They had made some inroad in the transportation when Barny came pelting into the house. He looked not only worried, he looked frightened, very frightened. ‘This is a to-do, isn’t it?’ His voice was hoarse. ‘I’m for it if they find this lot.’

  Hannah had met him in the hall, her arms full. ‘Less crack,’ she said, ‘and get going. Take that big set down there to pieces, and do it quicker than you’ve ever worked in your life afore. Go on now.’

  As he went to run from the hall she shouted, ‘Where’s Hughie?’

  ‘He’s gone back to the shop.’

  ‘He would, the sod, knowing how we’re fixed for an extra pair of hands. Oh, I’ll see me day with that one. Yes, by God, I will.’

  She was mounting the stairs when Barny, dashing back into the hall, cried at her under his breath, ‘Don’t be so bloody vindictive, Ma; you’re always at him. But the night you should go down on your knees and thank God for him givin’ us the tip, for if he wasn’t a pal of Dave Hewitt’s we’d have known nowt until they were on top of us.’

  ‘An’ they likely could be that at any minute, and you standin’ there defending him. Get going, you young fool!’

  In an hour the shed was clear except for a few tools and some garden implements, but Hannah’s bedroom looked, as she put it herself, like Paddy’s market. The mattress from the bed was standing up against the wall with the top of the box spring leaning against it. The box resting on its iron support should have been full of springs, but these had been disposed of many years ago; in 1940 to be exact when Hannah went into the black market. Now the bottom of the box was covered with wireless parts, on top of which were spread blankets, and into the hollows and dales of the blankets went further pieces, until the floor was clean of every last piece that had been brought up from the shed. Then the lid was screwed on again. The lid had attached to it an overlapping padded cover, and it would have taken a very clever detective to realise it was detachable from the box itself. On top of this the two men lifted the mattress, and then Hannah at one side and Rosie at the other made the bed up.

  ‘There, let them find that if they can…Now away downstairs, the both of you.’ She looked towards her husband and son. ‘And get yourselves to the club, for if they should come on the hop, it’s better they find you spending the evening normally.’ She nodded at Broderick.

  ‘Spendin’ the evening normally!’ Barny said. ‘I’ve got the jitters. But if I’d had any bloody sense I’d have known somethin’ was going to happen, for every man jack in our shop’s been at it lately; all except creeping Jesus.’

  ‘You mean Harry Boxley?’

  Barny nodded at his father.

  ‘It wouldn’t be him who’s given the show away?’ said Broderick.

  ‘No, no; Harry wouldn’t do that. Come and give you a sermon on the quiet about the evil of covetin’ thy neighbour’s goods…Neighbour’s goods be buggered! An’ that firm makin’ millions a year profit. Keeping old Lord Cote sitting pretty in his marble-floored mansion on the Riviera. Even the bloody manager’s got a yacht…Thy neighbour’s goods!’

  They were in the living room again when Hannah said, �
��Where’s Karen in all this? She must have known we could do with help…Where is she?’

  ‘Aw, she went out a few minutes ago; I saw her on her way downstairs,’ said Broderick.

  ‘And never a word.’ Hannah bristled. ‘She’ll have the back of me hand across her lug one of these days, will that madam. Well now, get yourselves off’—she waved at the men—‘an’ I’ll deal with anybody should they come. But I pray to God—’ her voice dropped now, ‘aye, I do sincerely pray to God we’ll have no-one comin’ to search the house, because it’ll be down the length of the street afore they are over the step…Go on, get yourselves off.’

  When the men had gone, Hannah turned to where Rosie was sitting staring into the fire, and going slowly towards her, she said apologetically, ‘Aw, lass, I wouldn’t have had your first night home spoiled for the world, but it was an emergency; it had to be done; you could see for yourself.’

  ‘It’s all right, Ma.’ Rosie’s voice was reassuring. ‘It’s all right, don’t worry. I only hope Barny doesn’t get the sack.’

  ‘The sack! Why should he get the sack?’ Hannah was bristling again. ‘He’ll get no sack. They’ll find nothing here, not so much as a nut.’

  Rosie, looking back at her mother, did not answer. She had worked for eighteen months in the London office of a Midland firm. From that distance men were just numbers. When an order came to cut down, numbers one, two and three were the same as four, five and six to an executive who had never seen the man behind the number. She remembered, too, that their firm—she still thought of it as their firm—stood to lose twenty thousand pounds a year through pilfering. They made allowance for that sum, yet every now and again they would clamp down on the general practice, as Teefields were doing, and there would be dismissals, sometimes followed by lightning strikes…‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.’

  Hannah, now pulling a big leather chair towards Rosie’s, seated herself in it before leaning forward and saying, ‘There now, we’re settled. Let’s forget all that’s happened. Isn’t this nice, just you and me and the house to ourselves?’ She kicked off her slippers and held out the soles of her feet towards the blazing fire. ‘You know, when I got up this mornin’ I had the feeling it was going to be a good day. I always go by me feelin’s first thing in the mornin’ an’ I said to meself, “Hannah, you’re goin’ to get a surprise the day,” and what better surprise in the world than seeing you, lass.’ She stretched out her hand and squeezed Rosie’s knee; then leaning back, she said in a casual tone, ‘We mightn’t get another opportunity like this to have a crack; the morrow mornin’ Betty’ll be in with the bairns; she always drops in on a Saturda’ mornin’ as you know. So when we’ve got the chance, let’s have our chinwag now, eh?’ She hunched her thick shoulders up around her neck in a questioning attitude.

  Rosie turned from her mother’s waiting glance and looked towards the fire. A heat came surging up through her body and showed in moisture on her upper lip. She dabbed it with her mother’s handkerchief and said, ‘Aw, well.’ Then went on, ‘There’s not much to tell, not really. Well, you see, I had words with a girl in the office. It…it was about promotion, but she had been there longer than me. And anyway things got unpleasant and I gave me notice in.’

  ‘When? When was this? You never said a word in your letters.’

  ‘Oh…oh about three months ago. I— I didn’t ask for a reference; because I had had words I didn’t like to go back, sort of climb down, you know. And it’s difficult to get set on anywhere, at least in a good job, if you haven’t a reference.’

  ‘Was that why you haven’t written for weeks? I was worried sick at times. An’ gettin’ your da to write is as hard as gettin’ him up in the mornin’s…Was that why you moved to the new address?’

  ‘Yes…yes, Ma.’ Rosie was looking into the fire as she spoke. ‘I couldn’t keep up the rent of the flat and so I went into rooms…with a girl I knew. We…we shared everything; she was to pay the landlady. Then about three weeks ago she went off without a word and I found she owed a lot of back rent and the landlady said I was responsible for it. Well…well I had the flu as I told you and I ran out of money altogether, all I had saved, and the landlady said she was entitled to keep my things until I could pay. And so’—Rosie turned towards her mother but didn’t look at her—‘there…there was nothing for it but to come home.’

  ‘Aw, lass.’ Hannah was gripping her hands now. ‘The heartless bitch of a woman, she should be spifflicated. All your beautiful clothes and your cases. Your fine dressing case an’ all, with all the bottles and things in, she’s kept the lot?’ Her voice seemed to be pushing up her arched eyebrows and raising her thick grey hair from her scalp.

  ‘Yes. Yes, Ma.’

  ‘Well, the morrow mornin’ you’ll send what you owe her and she’ll send those things on or else me name’s not Hannah Massey.’

  ‘No, no, Ma; I don’t think I’ll do that. I’d rather buy new clothes and cases than write to her. I…I don’t want anything more to do with her, or London. I just want to forget everything. I…I’ll get a job and soon stock up again.’

  ‘Well, I for one wouldn’t let her get off with—’

  ‘Oh, Ma, just leave it…Please. I’m tired of it all, London and everything.’

  ‘Aw, all right, all right, lass, have it your own way. As long as you’re home that’s all that matters to me. But I’ll say I wish her luck with your things; I hope she falls down an’ breaks her blasted neck, I do so. What will she do with them, do you think?’ She peered at Rosie through narrowed lids.

  ‘Oh…oh, I think…Well, she’s my build, perhaps she’ll wear them. It…it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t matter.’ Hannah was shaking Rosie’s hands firmly between her own, each movement being accompanied by a word. ‘But listen to me. Don’t let on about a thing you’ve told me to any of them. Do you hear me? An’ tomorrow we’ll work somethin’ out. You said your stuff was coming on. Well, it’ll have to come on. We’ll go into Newcastle and get you rigged out, two or three rig-outs for that matter.’ She winked. ‘An’ some cases, one exactly like the other I bought you. And when we get off the train we’ll put them in a station taxi and say we’ve collected them on our way. How’s that for strategy?’

  Rosie smiled faintly. ‘It’s marvellous, Ma.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a good liar.’

  As Hannah shook her head proudly at herself, Rosie thought sadly, But not such a good one as your daughter.

  Saturday

  Rosie was sound asleep when her mother brought her breakfast up to her room. ‘That’s the ticket,’ Hannah said. ‘The rest will do you the world of good.’

  ‘Oh, what time is it, Ma?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Well, turned nine. You’ve slept the clock round, me girl.’

  Rosie hadn’t slept the clock round. It had been five in the morning when she had finally fallen into troubled sleep.

  Hannah sat with her, demanding that she ate every scrap of food on the tray, and before she rose to take the tray away she nudged her, saying, conspiratorially, ‘Don’t forget we’re goin’ out this afternoon, hail, snow or blow.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back, Ma.’

  ‘Who’s talkin’ of payin’ back? Aw, lass, I get paid back with interest every time I look at you.’ She lifted the rumpled mass of gleaming hair between her fingers and felt it. ‘Like spun bronze, it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen the like.’

  The shiver went through Rosie’s body again. Such admiration was fear-filling, terrifying.

  ‘Look,’ said Hannah now, excitedly. ‘Get into your things an’ come down to me room when we’ve got the house empty, for it won’t be that for long, an’ I’ll show you somethin’.’ She paused; then bending over the tray and bringing her face down to Rosie, she said, ‘Your mother’s no fool.’

  As Rosie looked up silently into her face, Hannah winked broadly. Then walking sideways towards the door, the tray balanced on one hand, she said, �
�Come on down with you now, and look slick. Get into anythin’.’ She paused, then added, ‘Put on your new suit; the other things are not you, not you at all, at all.’

  Slowly Rosie got from the bed and put on the new suit. All her movements were slow and laboured. She felt very tired, not only from the lack of sleep but from the reaction of the whole of yesterday. She went down the stairs, and as she was going into the bathroom her mother opened the bedroom door and called, ‘Let that wait a minute, come on in here.’ And when she entered the room Hannah locked the door behind her, and pointing to the bed, said, ‘Sit yourself down there.’ Then she went to a short chest of three drawers that stood in a recess.

  The chest did not match the modern suite. The edges of the drawers were all scarred, and the bottom and deepest drawer and the bulbous legs showed the imprint of hard toecaps. It was not a chest at all but an original Charles the Second walnut desk with flat top which Hannah had picked up forty years ago for two pounds ten. The sum then was a small fortune and she thought she had been done; she was unaware of its present-day value, but the chest held something even more valuable than itself. After pushing her hand down inside her jumper she brought out a small key and, unlocking the bottom drawer, she lifted it right out of its socket and carried it to the bed. Dropping it down next to Rosie she sat at the other side of it and pointed at its contents.

  Rosie’s wide lids hid her expression as she looked along the lines of neatly rolled bundles of notes. Line after line of them, some two deep, covering the bottom of the drawer. Then her lips falling apart, she lifted her eyes to her mother, and Hannah, whose every feature was expressing triumph, said softly, ‘Can you believe your eyes?’

  ‘But, Ma, where…Whose is it?’

  ‘Whose is it!’ Hannah pulled her chin inwards, making a treble row of flesh down her neck. ‘Whose is it, do you ask? Why, it’s mine of course. An’ don’t look like that, lass; I haven’t stolen it. Oh, begod!’ She put her hand up to her cheek. ‘Did you think…did you think I’d pinched the stuff? Now, where would I be findin’ a place to pinch pound notes except in a bank? An’ I wouldn’t be up to that.’ She laughed. ‘An’ I can assure you, not one of me children have soiled their hands at thievin’ either.’