Free Prized Possessions by Jessica Stirling Page B

an’ all?’ said Babs.
    â€˜Yeah, why not?’ said Jackie. ‘Show any picture I liked, any time.’ He spread his arms, balanced on one thin leg. ‘How about you, Den? What’ll you buy when we make our pile?’
    â€˜Brady’s,’ said Dennis, grinning. ‘Brady’s an’ maybe the Parkhead brewery to make sure we never run out.’ He gave a little rat-a-tat with the file on the top of the vice. ‘An’ a car, a big Italian car like Mr Manone’s.’
    â€˜What sort is that, Tommy?’ said Babs.
    â€˜Alfa.’
    â€˜Buy a bettah Alfa,’ said Jackie. ‘Yeah!’
    With a surge, Patsy Walsh flung himself to his feet. ‘You’re all – all…’
    Even articulate Patsy could find no words to express his disgust at their cheapness. He had attempted to open them to the future but they had refused to see anything except the gains it would bring them. It wasn’t the first time their indifference had infuriated him, their inability to realise that decent housing and the right to work were far more important than what they could buy.
    Polly sympathised with his frustration. She too was tempted to despise her peers more than she despised the red-necked hordes who fought each other with knives and bottles and razors: the Tongs and the Norman Conks, the San Toy, the Redskins and the Bully Boys, the street gangsters with their comical names and childish pride. When she heard the yapping of the new breed, however, she doubted that no matter how the world changed there would never be equality.
    She watched Patsy grab his cap and stalk out into the yard.
    â€˜Hoi, Patsy, don’t take the huff,’ Jackie called after him.
    â€˜Where you goin’ then?’ Dennis shouted.
    â€˜Work to do,’ said Patsy, and kicked the door behind him with his heel.
    *   *   *
    Patsy let the night air soothe him. He loved the night. In the night you couldn’t see the city’s appalling squalor. He had no illusions. He knew what was out there. He had lived all his life in the sink-holes of despair that hid behind the old Victorian façades. He had visited the new suburban villas too, however, and had flitted stealthily through the drawing-rooms of the well-to-do, had peeped into bedrooms at clean, sleeping heads and had suffered not only anger but shame, shame that the city he loved was content to remain divided.
    He had no job lined up for tonight. He’d wanted to stay inside, to talk to them, to try to make them see sense, but they had offended him and insulted his intelligence. What did Jackie Hallop and Dennis and the Conway girls really know about pride? They were hopeless cases, hopeless.
    Hands shaking slightly, Patsy lit a cigarette and climbed the ash ramp towards the tunnel mouth.
    The sky was coated with cloud, like a huge dirty blanket. Away below was the silver of the river, like a polished piece of metal, a spanner or chisel, say, or the blade of a cut-throat razor. Hands in pockets, he hunched his shoulders against the snivelling little wind that escaped from the empty tunnel and let his anger drift away.
    â€˜Penny for them, Patsy Walsh,’ Polly said.
    He started.
    She had come upon him as lightly as a wisp of smoke, as silently as a shadow. He couldn’t have done better himself.
    â€˜What do you want?’ he said.
    â€˜My sister just doesn’t understand what politics means to you.’
    â€˜She isn’t the only one.’
    Polly had put the Scotch tammy back on her head, had buttoned her overcoat to the very top button. She was slim and tall, almost military-looking in the high-buttoned coat. To Patsy the reeking haze that lay above the Gorbals seemed suddenly brighter.
    â€˜I shouldn’t take things so seriously, should I?’ he said.
    â€˜Oh, yes, you should,’ Polly told him. ‘Somebody’s got to.’
    He paused. ‘Aren’t you