A Glasgow Trilogy Read online

  The two policemen listened so attentively he was sure he had captured their interest by his gift for expression. Partly they had to concentrate to understand what he was saying in his outlandish voice, partly they knew there was a time to stop asking questions and just let him ramble. He rambled. Behind him another policeman sat at a small table taking shorthand notes, but Percy was so taken up with his defence that he didn’t even notice him.

  ‘Mind you, I see the fallacy,’ he said. He liked the word. It was an honest admission of error. ‘I like to give in to a fair thing. Money won’t make you a poet or a philosopher. You’ve got to have genius or well anyway talent and when you have it you’ve still got to work. To use it, I mean, to make anything of it, you’ve got to work. You just can’t run away with money. What did I want the money for anyway? Well, I’ll tell you. I wanted to get peace and quiet. Peace and quiet to be a poet or something. Aye, but then when you’ve got the peace and quiet you’ve got to make use of it, you’ve got to do something, you’ve got to work. Money’ll give you leisure but the leisure’s no use if you haven’t got the genius. And when you haven’t got it, money’s no substitute. I had been reading a lot of Shelley, cause he’s got the same name as me, the same colour of hair, and he had the money to do what he wanted, so I thought if I had the money I could do what Shelley done. But you see that’s the fallacy I was telling you about. The money itself won’t do it, you’ve got to be born to it. It’s all a matter of birth. You’ve got to be born to the use of money just like you’ve got to be born with genius. You take the folk that win the pools. I read an article once and it showed that ninety-nine-point- nine of the folk that win the big money in the pools never come to anything. Mind you, I didn’t want the money for materialistic purposes. No, what I’m telling you is I’ve got spiritualistic values. I wanted the money to get peace and quiet, to write my poetry, you understand. And then coming down in the train today it dawned on me I hadn’t a pome in my head. I’ve wrote nothing since I found the money. I’m not a poet, I’m not a philosopher. You’ve got to be born to these things. It’s all a matter of hereditary. There’s no use kidding and swanking. My father was only a plumber and then he was a janitor and my mother worked in Templeton’s carpet factory before she was married. You see, I’d need a different hereditary, but then I wouldn’t be me, would I? Mind you, I’m clever enough, I’m not stupid, but money won’t make you a poet, will it? It won’t even get you peace and quiet when you’re not born to the use of it.’

  ‘So you found this money?’ said the grey-haired man.

  ‘No, I never found it,’ said Percy quickly. ‘One of the Brotherhood found it, and it was reported to me because I tried to learn them and I had to take charge of the money for their own good.’

  ‘Did your father ever mention it to you?’ asked the red- haired man.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Percy, almost laughing at the idea. ‘My father never mentioned anything to me. He was a sort of quiet man. He never spoke to me much.’

  ‘Well, where do you think it came from?’ asked the red- haired man.

  ‘Now, that’s a good point,’ said Percy eagerly. ‘Now, you might think this a bit far-fetched but I feel very serious about it. I believe it came from God like the manna to the Jews in the desert. We were all in the desert. We never had a thing. And I believed God chose me,’ cause God does choose people, doesn’t He? I mean, you can’t deny it, can you? You take Moses.’

  The two policemen looked at him steadily, showing no inclination to take anybody.

  ‘Do you know El is the Hebrew word for God?’ Percy asked them in the tone of a person who is sure the answer is No. ‘And El is the sign of the pound note. You know that much, don’t you? Well, I believed the God of Moses had revealed Himself to me under the form of El. I had a regular service every Friday night, I taught piety to the Brotherhood, but they fell away, just like the Jews did with Moses. I was the only one that was true to God. I believe in God, you know. I’m not an atheist. I’m not one of your juvenile delinquents. I’ve studied things. Maybe my God’s not your God but He’s still God, and I’ll grant you your God’s God too. But my fallacy was …’

  He was off again in a circle, and the policemen let him talk till he dried up. In the morning they took him back to Glasgow.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Savage came to just about the time Percy was having lunch on the Royal Scot. He was foxed for a while to find himself in a clean bed all to himself, wearing a night-shirt he had never worn before, and he sniffed curiously at the strange smell of the place. It was an odd stink, like strong soap. Then it all came back and he knew where he was. When the nurse who saw he was conscious at last brought in a policeman to see him he was too crafty to talk. He pretended he had lost his memory.

  ‘Don’t remember,’ he mumbled in reply to every question.

  He stayed in hospital all that day, and slept there that night, still pretending to be very groggy. There wasn’t a thing wrong with him, but he knew the policeman would come back and he wanted time to think what to do.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ he called his nurse over with rude insistence at breakfast time. ‘I’ve got to get up, I’ve got to get outa here. My memory’s come back. I’ve gotta go and tell the polis what I know. They’re waiting for me to help them.’

  He was so eager, and he looked so innocent and well, they discharged him. But he didn’t go near the police, he didn’t go home, and he didn’t go to school. He wandered round the fruit-market, stole a turnip just for practice, strolled over to the docks and bought a hot pie and a cup of tea in a poky little café in Anderston. He felt thrilled with the delight of freedom, happy with a plan that was funny enough to make a cat laugh. He sang to himself with the joy of it, hopped and skipped, chuckled and rubbed his palms together. Life was good and the sky shared his pleasure, flung wide over him without a cloud in it.

  He turned up in Bethel Street at tea-time and the bush telegraph went to work so quickly that he had most of the Brotherhood at his appointed meeting-place within quarter of an hour. They came in ones and twos across the waste ground between the Steamie and the back-courts of Bethel Street, silent, worried, waiting the words of wisdom from the great Savage, Senior Claviger of the Bethel Brotherhood.

  Specky came forward with his right hand high.

  ‘Hail!’ he said with an ingratiating smirk.

  ‘Hail!’ Savage murmured, his hand barely lifted. ‘Wha- dya know?’

  ‘Garson shopped us,’ said Specky.

  ‘He did, did he?’ said Savage. He sneered briefly. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get that little lilyfaced come-to-Jesus bastard yet. I’ll tie his guts round his neck, so I will. Don’t worry. I’ll sort him all right.’

  Skinny was only a step behind Specky.

  ‘Whadya know?’ Savage greeted him too impartially, lounging against the wall of the air-raid shelter.

  ‘It’s in the papers,’ Skinny said mournfully. ‘And it was on the Scottish news on the telly there the now. They’ve got Percy. He’s been arrested. They got him in London last night. Imagine our Percy in London!’

  ‘Scotland’s secret weapon,’ Savage murmured lazily.

  ‘He stole all our money and done a bunk,’ said Skinny.

  Savage grinned wisely.

  ‘The game’s up,’ said Specky. ‘The cellar’s finished. There’s been cops there all day. You’d think the school was a police-station, the bobbies that’s there.’

  ‘You don’t want to worry about the cellar,’ said Savage.

  ‘Well, we canny get in there now,’ Specky complained.

  ‘So what?’ Savage asked, very uppish with him. ‘There’s nothing there now.’

  ‘No, it looks like Percy cleaned it out,’ said Skinny.

  ‘I cleaned it out,’ Savage boasted quickly. ‘I’ve got ten times more stashed away than Percy took. I’m the boss now, Percy’s a dead loss.’

  ‘But the game’s up,’ Specky repeated. ‘We couldny use it now. The cops is on to it. They’
ll be wanting to see you. They’ve seen us, all of us, even that nit Noddy.’

  ‘What did yous tell them?’ Savage asked.

  ‘What could we tell them? You canny kid the cops. We told them everything.’

  ‘Except where it is now,’ Savage answered, grinning round at them all. ‘Cause yous don’t know. I know.’

  ‘Well, we spent it, didn’t we?’ Skinny asked, looking at him dubiously.

  ‘We spent nothing,’ Savage derided him by his tone. ‘I told you I had it stashed. What did we spend? A couple of hundred? Five hundred? What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Skinny admitted.

  ‘We spent nothing, nothing to what’s left, nothing to what I took away,’ Savage shouted at him, almost angrily.

  He waved them to gather round and led them into the derelict air-raid shelter on the margin of the waste land, impatient to show them what he had hidden and to assert himself as their true boss because of the power he still had, the money he still had. The Brotherhood clustered in the cool dimness inside four brick walls, the floor only tramped earth, and listened to him offer them all the money they wanted. He was greater than Percy, he was smarter. He knew the cellar wouldn’t be safe for long, he had been shifting the money for weeks and weeks, he had more than they had spent, ten times more than Percy took.

  ‘There’s loads and loads of it left,’ he told them. ‘I’m willing to share and share alike, and we can keep it for years and nobody’ll ever be able to pin a damn thing on us. Yous willing? I’m willing!’

  They wouldn’t give in to him. They listened, but said nothing. They were frightened. They wanted no part of it any longer. He knew they were right. They were only behaving as he expected.

  ‘Okay then!’ he cried viciously. ‘Nobody else’ll get it.’

  He dragged out a chisel from the back pocket of his jeans and prised away four bricks from the wall near the tramped earth. When he straightened he had a bundle of fivers in his hand and he tore off the band, scattered the notes loose on the floor and then kicked them together with his foot, collecting them into a little pyramid. Specky, Skinny and Noddy, Cutchy, Pinky and Cuddy, and all the rag tag and bobtail of the Brotherhood watched him silently, suspiciously.

  ‘Anybody want them?’ he challenged.

  Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said once more, wagging a finger. ‘Yous don’t want it, I don’t want it. Okay then, nobody else’ll get it.’

  He brought out the stump of a candle from his pocket, showed it round on the palm of his hand, and when they had all seen it he lit the wick with a loose match. The Brotherhood watched him sullenly, suspiciously. They didn’t believe he would do it. He waved the lighted candle round and above his head till the flame seemed to form a continuous circle over him like a halo and grinned at the grim eyes staring at him.

  ‘Burn it then!’ he cried in an ecstasy of destructiveness and tossed the candle on to the little heap of notes.

  A long-drawn gasp, like the involuntary sob of a sick man in mortal pain came from the circle of spectators and Savage laughed at them, a wild screech of joy.

  The notes caught fire slowly, but when they burst into flame the wax of the candle melted in the heat and yellow tongues leapt high from the floor. The Brotherhood drew back a little. Those flames looked dangerous. But Savage was still cool. He went back to his cache and fetched out bundle after bundle after bundle of fivers till they thought he would never be done, all the money he had shifted secretly from the cellar since the day he had his own key made. He fed the flames carefully for a while with loose notes, a few at a time to keep the fire burning brightly, but he got impatient, he had so much to burn. He began to throw on whole bundles, without even taking the band off, and there was more smoke than flame.

  Fits of coughing spread like an infection and Savage kindly raked the smouldering heap with the toe of his shoe to encourage the flames to leap out again. He chuckled happily as he tossed a last fistful on to the new blaze.

  ‘That’s the lot,’ he turned and addressed the Brotherhood. ‘Any complaints?’

  They said nothing, but the dourness in the faces softened, dull eyes became brighter. They sagged in relief from doubt and anxiety, they breathed freely again like a patient who finds his illness wasn’t mortal after all. Savage knew he had won. He was their master. He was the unchallenged leader of the pack, he could do what he liked with them. He threw his arms up, leapt like a ballet dancer high in the air, clicking his heels, and screamed to the roof.

  ‘Yip-ee! Yip-ee! Yip-ee!’

  He was inspired by the greatness of his action and went capering round the fire, whooping Red Indian war cries, his palm bobbing against his open lips, then down on his hunkers doing a Cossack dance. The frozen Brotherhood thawed completely in the warmth of his enthusiasm. Murmurs rustled through them like a wind in high corn and their feet itched to dance with their leader and their throats ached to howl with him.

  Making a mockery of Percy’s short-lived deity Savage began to chant the immemorial counting-out rhyme of Glasgow’s back courts.

  El, el, domin-el,

  Eenty-teenty, figgerty-fel,

  You – are – OUT!

  He pounced on Specky, and Specky opened his mouth wide and let out the most blood-curdling screech ever heard in any shelter. He circled round the flaming money in his own version of a Comanche dance and drunk with Savage’s insolence he too chanted.

  Eenty-teenty, figgerty-fel,

  Percy’s in a prison cell,

  I saw the cops and widny tell,

  You – are – OUT!

  He tigged Skinny in his planetary course round the sun, and Skinny joined the dance, contributing squeakily.

  El, el, domin-el,

  Robin Hood and William Tell,

  Lawman, gunman, shot and shell,

  You – are – OUT!

  He claimed Noddy in transit, but Noddy scorned to add to the chant. The only music he loved was what he could wheedle from a mouth-organ, what he hoped to coax from a piano one day if he succeeded in keeping the money he had hidden in the lavatory cistern. Still, to prove he had the true party spirit, he did a cartwheel, walked on his hands for twenty paces, and tumbled his wulcats. The rest of the Brotherhood surged exultantly forward and soon they were all in the fire-dance, whooping and hopping in a circle, right hand on the right shoulder of the comrade in front as they all swayed to the rhythm of El-el, domin-el.

  Savage broke off at a tangent and ran to a corner where he kicked away a pile of causies, bent down lithely and came up with the big brass bell, the old school bell Percy had forbidden him to hawk. It was his now. Returning to the blaze he sergeant-majored the dancers, bawling out to inject the flagging chant with new strength.

  El, el, domin-el,

  We’ve lit the candle, now ring the bell!

  Garson shopped to save himsel’,

  Let the bastard rot in hell,

  He – ran – OUT!

  He rang the bell three times, and the Brotherhood halted and bowed their heads in mock reverence at that reminder of Percy’s ritual.

  ‘Yip-ee!’ screamed Savage and whipped them on again. They picked up the steps, roaring together rhythmically, ‘Yah! Yay! Yah-yah-yah!’ Savage herded them as an out- rider, ringing the bell at every third step.

  He rang it too often. And the ringing of the bell led to the end of their burial service for the god El and in a few moments they were scattered like leaves before the wild west wind for the stranger in the belted raincoat was crossing the wasteland just as their dance round the burning money was at its noisiest. He too was fully informed by press and radio of all that had happened, but when he learned that Percy had been lifted with about three thousand pounds on him he was far from satisfied the game was over. There was too much more still to be accounted for, too much for a gang of schoolboys to have spent in three months. He swore, and swore to find where the rest of it was.

  In the afternoon he had asked a
t the hospital for Savage, pretending to be an uncle worried about the condition of his nephew. When he was told Savage had left in the morning to go to speak to the police it was just something more he didn’t believe. Savage and not Percy now seemed to have the key to the mystery. By tea-time he was prowling round Bethel Street, Ossian Street and Tulip Place, hopefully looking for schoolboys. The trouble was he didn’t know what Savage looked like. But he couldn’t just go away and do nothing. He had to keep looking for schoolboys, because until he found them he wouldn’t find Savage. One of them might say something, one of them might lead him somewhere. But there were no schoolboys to be seen. He had never known the area so empty of boys. He stopped hanging about the back-streets and went through the closes in Bethel Street desperate for some boys he could quiz. There was no point hanging about near the cellar. Nobody would go into the cellar now. Anyway it wasn’t likely the money was still there. If Percy had run away with so little, somebody else must have already shifted more. And that somebody else was Savage.

  He was sure of his deduction, proud of his shrewdness, but it didn’t bring Savage any nearer. He went into the back-court, but there were no boys there either. He went sideways through a bent railing into the waste ground and blundered over towards the Steamie, and that was when he heard the bell ringing in the air- raid shelter. He stopped, looked and listened. He saw a thin trail of smoke coming out of the entrance, he heard the hubbub of boyish trebles, and then the bell again, and again. He moved over stealthily, peered in cautiously, saw the blazing paper on the floor, the boys dancing round it, an acrobat doing somersaults, a midget all topsy-turvy walking on his hands, whirling dervishes, howling wolves and laughing hyenas. But boys for all that. That was all he wanted. Boys. He had come to the end of the line. He knew it. He dashed in like a commando attacking an enemy outpost single-handed.