Love Story 16

We’d arranged to meet by the coal cellar, when it was dark. I’d already checked. The lights in Mrs Connolly’s house were out. Apart from the one in the living room, she’d always left on. There was some boring story about leaving it on for her son, so he’d find his way home, but I never really listened to that part. It was just like when she told me that sometimes she thought he heard him coming home. That worried me. Because maybe she’d think I was his ghost if she’d caught me.

Ali was leaning with her back against the wall, smoking. She seemed smaller and wider because she’d her sannies on. Black clothing the giveaway, as if she’d thought it through and was taking the role of lookout seriously enough to dress sensibly.

‘What you doing smoking?’ I asked. ‘It’s bad for our baby.’

‘Shut up,’ she rasped, taking one last draw, stubbing it out on the wall and standing on the dout to extinguish all evidence. ‘I jist needed wan for my nerves.’

‘You always say that.’ I’d dressed in black too and my legs were shaking. I’d have lit a fag if I’d had one, but I was too nervous to think ahead and just wanted to get the job done. 

‘We’ll need to be quiet when we pass underneath our windae, cause my da will be in bed. And he hears everything.’

‘But Mrs Connolly’s is practically next door,’ she whined.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s how we need tae be quiet. Unless, you want tae call it aff.’ I coughed and slapped my chest. ‘Or even dae it another time?’

‘Nah,’ she touched my arm. ‘We might as well dae it noo that we’re here.’

I sucked in my breath. She followed behind me. We crept through the gap in the privet hedge and bowed our head as we passed underneath the window of da’s bedroom, even though it was much higher than our scalps. A few steps took us down to the back garden and even thought the kitchen was lit up— Mum was likely inside, smoking—she couldn’t see us as we kept close to the wall. But we had to be careful when we went up and down the steps. She might have been able to see us then.

The frosted glass of the toilet window was in the same place for the jerry-built houses in our four-in-a-block, between the main bedroom, lobby and kitchen. Ali stood in at the shadows of the hedge as I shuffled my feet along the concrete ledge from the kitchen window to the toilet window. I was ready to jump down and scarper if I’d heard any noises. I’d often made the same journey, clinging, white-knuckled to our kitchen window. Clambering along until I got to our toilet window until I got the knack of it.

The trick I’d learned was to shoogle the wee window at the top until the catch worked loose. Mrs Connolly’s window worked the same way. I glanced at Ali and turned my head like Frankenstein to check that no one in the other houses with their lights on could see what I was doing, and phone the police. It was pretty easy to use the wee window as a handhold, pull myself up onto the windowsill and dip my hand in and open the big window.

I stepped onto the ledge inside, careful not to knock down a mirror. The toilet stunk of bleach. I hopped over the sink at the window and onto the worn green diamond run of linoleum. Her thick bath towel was folded over the side of the bath. A blue cotton robe hanging on the door gave me such a start, I almost swallowed my tongue. I was sure Ali outside could hear how fast my heart was beating.

But when I stuck my head out the window, she stood like a blob until I saw her fingers flutter into a quick wave.

I pulled the lavvy door open and gave my eyes time to adjust to the dim exterior. I was as familiar with her lobby as our own mirrored L-shaped version. It was a different type of linoleum, thicker and more grandiose with floral patterns. Mrs Connolly mopped it every day, so the toilet smell lingered. I held my breath because my breathing was making too much noise and listened.

I thought I heard a creek from the Mrs Connolly’s bedroom. The room nearest. I turned to flee back out the window, before I realised it was the floorboards sighing under the weight of my feet.

I ducked down when I pushed open the living-room door. The slats on the Venetian blinds were shut vertical and her thick curtains were pulled over the window. The light behind the chair she sat in left a healthy glow beside the overhanging fronds of the miserable plant she didn’t like. The electric fire unplugged, but an eerie green glow crept from the radiogram. Patches of the brown rug in front of her fireplace seemed to be moving. She left her specs balanced on the brown foam arm of the chair like shiny eyes. I stuck a hand over my mouth to stop from crying out.

Her carpeted living room and furniture held the smell of cigarette smoke in its folds and curves. I shuffled forward staring at her knickknacks and china ornament on the mantelpiece with different eyes. Noting, for the first time, not how quaint or pretty they might be, but quickly making a rough estimate of how much they’d be worth and what was worth taking. The large picture of a curved bay of Loch Lomond with whitewashed cottage and picnickers in bathing suits on the sands, might have been an Old Master, but it was too hefty to take off the wall and  carry away without help. She’d left a packet of twenty regal and her gold lighter on the wee table beside her chair. I shoved them into my jacket pocket.

I thought she might have taken her bag with her purse in it into her bedroom, but there it was in its usual place by the fireplace. I grabbed it and dashed through her kitchen. Pulled open the door to the wee lobby at the back where she kept a tall ladder and her sweeping brushes: mops and a pail for tidying up. I twisted the backdoor handle, before realising I had to unlock the mortice. When I pulled the door open, sweat ran down my back and I was breathing hard. Mrs Connolly’s bag tucked under my arm like a black and shiny rugby ball with a worn gold clasp.

Ali stood shivering bunched up in her sour smelling coat. Looking up at me from the bottom stairs ‘I was shiting masell yeh got caught Alan.’ she said.  

I turned and pulled on the creaky backdoor. Felt the lock click into place, before I heard it. I stuck a forefinger to my lips and crept down the steps and stood beside her. ‘Don’t call me, Alan.’ Showed her a swatch of the bag.

She giggled. ‘Whit will I call yeh then?’

‘Don’t call me nothing. Jesus.’ I looked about to check if anybody had heard us. Apart from the faraway noise of traffic and wind blowing in the branches of rowan trees in the back garden of the street below it was quiet. ‘Just keep the noise down.’

Ali opened the bag. She picked out black-and-white photographs and tossed them aside, scattering them next to the bins.

‘Don’t do that,’ I hissed quickly scooping up the ones I could see and stuffing them into my jacket pocket. It felt sacrilegious.

‘How no?’ she said. ‘They’re old.’

‘Cause they might find your fingerprints on them.’

She grunted, but she was too far gone to pay attention. Her eyes alight as she fingered the money in the purse. ‘There’s fifty-quid notes—I’ve never seen a fifty-quid note before!’ 

You’ve never seen a bar of soap before, I muttered out of earshot. Instead, I leaned in. ‘Much is there?’

‘Millions,’ she said.

My stomach flipped. ‘We’ll need tae gee it back.’

I reached for the handbag, but she was quicker, tugging the worn leather straps and turning her back on me. ‘Don’t be so fucking daft,’ she cried aloud.

Too loud. ‘Keep it down,’ I reminded her.

‘Well,’ she said as if it was me that cried out.

I tugged her elbow and pulled her in towards where the box hedging was overgrown hawthorn and we were less likely to be spotted.

‘We can put maist of it back and she’ll no even notice. Just enough for the wee engagement ring, I promised you. Old folk are like that. She’ll just think she’s lost it and will be looking down the side of the settee.’

‘That’ll be fucking right,’ she said. ‘Ur yeh plain daft? Yer no geeing her any of ma money.’

When I made another grab for the bag, she pushed me away. Her fist bumped and grazed my nose. I touched it to check. I showed her the blood and snotters on my fingertips. ‘Don’t be such a fucking stupid cow, Ali,’ I said.

She fessed up, making herself and her voice bigger and manlier. ‘Who yeh calling a cow? Yeh’ll be wearing yer teeth for tea.’  

‘You?’

‘Yer jist a poof,’ she spat. ‘Yeh huvnae even shagged me properly.’

I could hardly speak. A tightness in my throat. ‘How did you get pregnant then?’

The question deflated her, but she hung onto the bag more firmly. ‘Yeh didnae even get the engagement ring. Yeh didnae even get aw the diamonds and jewellery yeh promised me. Aw that stuff going tae waste.’

‘My mum said it was tat.’

‘Whit does she know?’ She pulled away from me. ‘She doesnae know anything. I thought she really liked me. But she’s jist like aw the rest.’

I tried to keep my voice down, but it fluted upwards. ‘She does like you. She was dead sorry what she said. She said you’ve to sit down and she’ll gi’e you a personal apology… She said I was to tell you that.’

Ali climbed the stairs, clutching the bag and refusing to look at me. ‘I don’t care whit she thinks. I’m gonnae get they diamonds and then I’ll be rich. Then she’ll be really fucking sorry.’

Her hand rested on the backdoor handle. She squeezed her eyes into slits and cocked her head as if cracking a safe. She edged the door open and into the darkness.