was talking to your son the other night,’ he said abruptly. ‘A big fella with splay feet.’
‘You can leave my son’s feet out of it,’ Mrs Phinn objected with dignity. ‘He canny help his feet. At least he’s no’ a wee Glasgow bauchle like you.’
‘Aye, all right,’ said the stranger huffily. ‘I’d rather be a Glasgow bauchle than a big drip like him. Oh, la-de-da. Called after Percy the poet says he. He could do wi’ a haircut at that.’
‘He never told me,’ said Mrs Phinn.
‘That’s funny,’ said the stranger. ‘Maybe it’s him that knows and he’s keeping something back from you.’
‘My boy’s a big simple soul,’ said Mrs Phinn proudly. ‘He wouldn’t do anything that’s wrong. He was never brought up to it.’
‘I could see he was kind of dumb,’ the stranger agreed neutrally. ‘He talks a lot but he doesn’t say very much. He’s not all that bright I don’t think. That’s why I never told him what I’m telling you. I wanted to see if he knew anything first. But I don’t think he knew a thing.’
‘He knows as much as I know then,’ said Mrs Phinn.
‘Unless he was acting it?’ the stranger suggested.
‘I can assure you he had nothing to act about,’ said Mrs Phinn.
The stranger brooded into Mrs Phinn’s thin sour face before he spoke again.
‘You see, missis, when Sammy left us at the Saltmarket he told us he’d cellar the money till it was safe to divide it. Aye, he was the boss. He liked acting the big shot. Wouldny trust us. No’ to spend it daft-like right away I mean. No, he’d take care of it. Don’t yous worry, he said. Ye can trust me. I’ll cellar it safe and sound where it’ll never be found. Now what did he mean, cellar it? The only bloke Sammy saw when he left us was your Hamish, and your Hamish has a cellar in the school there, hasn’t he?’
‘My Hamish is dead,’ Mrs Phinn reminded him with a widow’s proud sorrow.
‘Aye, but the cellar’s no’,’ the stranger commented.
‘Yes, the cellar is,’ she retorted. She was a contrary woman. She wasn’t going to have this layabout telling her about the school cellar. It had been the bane of her husband’s last years, it was in such a state, and she wasn’t going to have it talked about by any stranger. ‘That cellar hasn’t been used for twenty years or more. It isn’t a cellar at all now, not since they stopped the steam heating.’
‘But there’s a door there in Tulip Place,’ the stranger waved a hand. ‘That’s the door to the cellar, i’n’t it?’
‘That door?’ said Mrs Phinn, sneering at his mistake.
‘That door’s blind. There’s a brick wall behind it. Has been since the school went all electrical. That’s where they delivered the coal in the old days.’
She didn’t know her contrary mixture of fact and fiction was a repeat of Percy’s story to the stranger, and she didn’t understand why he seemed to sag and surrender. She supposed his early morning fit of madness was leaving him.
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