want Tom, Dick and Harry wandering in there. I’m fair ashamed of it. It would scunner you. It’s a real Paddy’s market, I’m no’ kidding.’
Mrs Phinn glared at him through her NHS spectacles.
‘Aye, it’s all very well for you,’ Mr Green said jovially to avert a quarrel, ‘but your man left that place in some bloody mess, so he did. Christ, it’s even got a piano in it! How the hell he ever got a piano down those stairs beats me. And what a stupid place to put a piano anyway!’
‘Where else was he to put it?’ Mrs Phinn asked indignantly. ‘That’s where he put everything there was no room for. That’s where he was told to put things when Mr Gainsborough was headmaster. That was years before your time, of course.’
‘Aye, and before Noah’s time too by the look of the place,’ Mr Green muttered, rather less jovial. ‘Did you ever take a look at it? I bet you you’d find St Mungo’s report card down there.’
‘St Mungo would never have been at this school,’ said Mrs Mann, only half-joking. ‘He’d have went to a Catholic school.’
‘If you think my husband’s to blame for the state of that cellar, I’m quite willing to work on Saturday and tidy it up,’ Mrs Phinn declared, standing straight and noble between her pail and her brush that leaned against the door of a classroom.
‘Oh, so you’re after some overtime, are you,’ Mr Green clapped hands, rubbed them, and smiled. ‘I couldn’t put you through for overtime. The Office would never wear it.’
‘Not for overtime, for my husband’s sake,’ Mrs Phinn answered, and drew surplus mucus up her nose in the way that always annoyed Percy. ‘If you think you can run him down. He was a janitor before you were born.’
‘I’m not running anybody down,’ Mr Green soothed her. ‘I’m only passing the remark that the cellar’s in a bloody mess. Many thanks for your kind offer of course. Nevertheless, notwithstanding, I’d better see to it myself. The trouble is the key’s lost.’
‘I know all about that piano,’ Mrs Phinn said aggrievedly. ‘My man told me all about it. He filled in a white requisition to have it uplifted and he was still waiting for them to come when he went and died.’
‘Oh, well, ye canna blame him for that,’ Mr Green said kindly.
‘Maybe wan o’ the boys has took it,’ Mrs Mann suggested. ‘Ye know whit boys is like.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Mr Green, nodding his head and tutting. ‘They found a kid here the other day with forty- seven keys in his pocket. They pick them up and steal them and borrow them and get another one cut and then they try them on the shop doors and up closes where they think there’s nobody in. Oh, ye canna be up to them!’
‘Well, I hope you find your key,’ said Mrs Phinn, stooping to her pail of sawdust. ‘But we can’t stand talking to you all night. Some of us has got work to do.’
Mr Green found the missing key back on its nail in his cubbyhole two days later. He never found out that Savage had pinched it and had a duplicate cut in Barrowland quick.
‘I’m fly, you see,’ Savage boasted to Specky and Noddy. ‘I didn’t steal that key. I just took a lend o’ it and put it back before wee Greeny had time to miss it. You see the idea is you’ve got to make sure you’re not suspicious.’
‘So you’ve a key to get in by Tulip Place and you’ve a key to get in through the school,’ Specky nodded in admiration.
‘You’re going to cause a lot of trouble,’ Skinny muttered sadly. ‘Percy’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘It was for Percy’s sake I done it,’ Savage grinned. ‘I think he dreams mair nor he sees. But maybe he’s right about somebody watchin the door round the corner. So I can get at the money—’
‘You’re not to say money!’ Skinny cried, anguished.
‘Well, I can find the road to El through the basement then,’ Savage amended unctuously. ‘Is that better?’
‘And how do you get past the janny’s house?’ Specky asked. He was offended that an ape like Savage had managed to do more than an intellectual like himself.
‘I put my sannies on,’ said Savage. ‘I know when wee Greeny and his wife are watching the telly, and I just creep across the playground. It’s as safe as the Bank.’
‘How much have you taken?’ Specky asked bluntly.
‘Enough,’ Savage laughed at him. ‘Do ye want to come in? Percy’s daft. Ye canna leave it all to him, can ye? I’ve got enough put away for life.’
‘Well, don’t you ever boast to Frank Garson or he’ll shop you to Percy right away,’ warned Specky. ‘I think he’s suspicious already.’
Mr Green wasn’t suspicious.
‘Just one of those things,’ he said to his wife when the key turned up. He never made mysteries out of the inexplicable, he never brooded over how, why and wherefore. He simply put aside every anomaly in daily life as ‘just one of those things’, and went on living his busy life. So far as he thought about the return of the missing key at all he supposed one of the cleaners had taken it in mistake for another, forgotten about it, and put it back in its place rather than own up after he had asked questions about it.
He went down to the cellar alone on the Sunday afternoon, not meaning to do any work, just to estimate how much work would be needed to put the place in order and get rid of the lumber – once he was sure what was lumber and what wasn’t. As on his previous visits, a glance was enough to depress him. He went sadly up the narrow steps, shaking his head and far from saying a prayer for the repose of the soul of the late Mr Phinn.
‘What a janitor!’ he muttered as he locked the door. He felt he had an enormous cupboard there, with countless skeletons. ‘It must have been worrying about that place killed him.’
He was quite unwilling to tackle the job of tidying the cellar himself in spite of what he had said to Mrs Phinn. He took her at her word and got her to come in the next Saturday afternoon and work for nothing. To help her, he drafted in another cleaner, Mrs Quick, promising her a few bob out of his own pocket. Mrs Mann heard of the job and offered her services too for a mere tip. Mr Green didn’t mind. He knew Mrs Mann was just being nosey and hoping to come by pickings, but he couldn’t see what pickings there could be in a cellar full of school rubbish. He stood in at the start of what he called jocularly Operation Underground, gave the three cleaners a general idea of what he wanted done, and when they were started he stealthily slipped upstairs and went out for a pint.
The cleaners were good workers. By shifting the position of the various items, putting like with like, marshalling everything along the walls and sweeping and mopping a central area they created an illusion of tidiness. The cellar certainly looked different when they were finished, and to that extent they had made an improvement in it. Mrs Mann found the three tea-chests hidden behind a rank of broken desks along the darkest wall where the roof of the cellar descended to meet the rising floor halfway under the playground, and rummaged in the first of them. Maybe there was something would never be missed.
‘Nosey!’ cried Mrs Phinn, scowling from the centre of the cellar, and drawing the back of her rough hand across her sweating brow. She had
