Читать книгу A Glasgow Trilogy - George Friel - Страница 15

CHAPTER NINE

Mr Garson was a lonely man, a dour man. He wasn’t given to complaining and he suffered many daily injustices rather than make a fuss, but when he came home from the garage that evening and saw his son’s black eye and puffed lips he was just a little bit angry. He was willing to take it as natural that boys should fight now and again, but this hadn’t been a fight, it looked more like assault and battery. He wanted to know what had happened, but he couldn’t get anything out of the boy, so he shook him by the shoulder in an impatient attempt to make him speak. The boy winced and yelped.

‘Take your shirt off,’ said Mr Garson sharply. He hadn’t grasped him all that roughly, there was no need for such a cry of pain unless the damage was as great elsewhere as it was on the face. He suspected it was, and he wanted to make sure.

Garson stripped grudgingly to the waist, embarrassed to be half-naked in the kitchen under the glowering eye of his unfriendly father. His shoulders were bruised, and his flanks were black and blue where Savage had kicked him.

‘You tell me who did that to you or I’ll give you worse,’ said Mr Garson, quite cold.

The boy would have told him gladly if he had been thawed by a warm sympathy, he would have enjoyed weeping out the name if he had been consoled and pitied, but the cold threat froze him.

‘I’m warning you,’ said Mr Garson with a frightening sincerity, ‘You’d better tell me.’

The boy had a brief fantasy of his father fighting Savage’s father to avenge the family honour, but he knew that was absurd. His father was too proud even to speak to Savage’s father, far less fight him in the back-court or the waste land. Nor would he rush out to look for Savage and smack his ear. That was just as absurd. He just wanted to know for the sake of knowing. All right then, why shouldn’t he tell? He kept his silence for a little longer till he didn’t feel quite so frozen inside and then he told.

Mr Garson took time off from the garage on Monday morning and went to the school. He didn’t know what he wanted exactly, he certainly didn’t want vengeance, but he did want to make a protest and get some kind of assurance it wouldn’t happen again. He thought he was likelier to get that from the headmaster than from the parents. Mr Daunders promised to look into it, he offered to have Savage brought in right away and invited Mr Garson to remain and see the boy for himself. Mr Garson said he would rather not.

‘So long as you promise me to make sure he gets a lesson, I’ll leave it to you,’ he said respectfully. He was only a motor-mechanic, and he looked up to Mr Daunders as an educated man.

‘I’ll give him a lesson all right,’ Mr Daunders promised cordially. ‘We could do with more pupils like your boy, always clean and smart and industrious, but you see every school has its Savages and that’s what makes our job so difficult. It’s one long struggle against the jungle here.’

They parted at the door of the headmaster’s room, both talking at once in polite expression of mutual trust.

‘I’ll leave him to you,’ said Mr Garson.

‘You can safely leave him to me,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘I wish we had more decent parents like you, Mr Garson.’

He sent for Savage at once and lectured him on the immorality of bullying. For all his confident promises to Mr Garson he wasn’t sure of the best way to handle it. He was a good man, a reasonable man, unwilling to damn any boy till he had tried hard to save him. He saw little sense telling Savage it was wrong to think that the use of superior physical force was a good thing, and then going on to give him a lathering with a Lochgelly. It was the use of force he had to discredit. He spoke sternly but reasonably. He tried to make Savage see the dangers of living by jungle law. Savage slouched insolently, his black leather jerkin, with the zip unfastened, bulging out in front of his broad chest. He was a big boy, but Mr Daunders was a man. He looked down on him.

‘I’ve told you before not to wear that belt,’ he said severely, ‘Take it off. You don’t need it.’

Savage took off an Army webbing belt and rolled it in his hand. Many a fight he had won with it.

‘Where did you get that jacket, by the way?’ Mr Daunders asked curiously. He knew quality when he saw it, and he knew that Savage’s father could never afford the price of it. ‘I haven’t seen you wearing it before.’

‘My Granny bought me it,’ said Savage.

‘For your birthday?’ Mr Daunders asked, a vague memory of something he had heard before putting an ironic edge on his question.

‘ ’Sright,’ Savage nodded willingly, leering up as Mr Daunders looked down. He understood too late what the headmaster was staring at. The bulge of the jacket exposed the lining.

‘And what’s that you’ve got in there?’ Mr Daunders asked gently, simply gesturing to the lining of the jacket. He was too careful ever to touch a boy’s clothing.

Savage’s hand flashed to the four pound notes he had pinned inside the jacket that morning.

‘Let me see it,’ said Mr Daunders.

Savage knew when he was caught. He unpinned the notes and handed them over. He wasn’t bothered. He had plenty more.

Mr Daunders scowled at the notes. He didn’t like it at all.

‘What are you doing with these pinned in your jacket?’ he cried in bewilderment. It was always the same. One inquiry always led into another you hadn’t expected. You started to question a boy who had simply played truant and before you had finished finding out where he went, you were on the track of a series of thefts from shops and lorries.

‘That’s where Maverick keeps his money,’ Savage stalled.

Mr Daunders wouldn’t admit to a scruffy schoolboy that he too followed the adventures of Maverick.

‘Whose class is he in?’ he asked judicially.

‘He’s no’ in a class, he’s on the telly,’ Savage explained.

‘That hardly tells me what you’re doing with four pound notes pinned inside a very expensive leather jacket, does it?’ Mr Daunders murmured.

Savage said nothing.

‘Where did you get this money?’ Mr Daunders asked wheedlingly. ‘Come on, you’ll save a lot of time, and save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me the truth. Where did you get it?’

‘Wee Noddy gave it to me to keep for him,’ Savage answered. He was quick in his own way. He knew it was safe to mention Noddy, because Noddy wouldn’t give anything away. He couldn’t, because he couldn’t speak. To tell about the cellar was far beyond Noddy’s powers of speech.

‘Who?’ said Mr. Daunders, just as unwilling to admit he knew nicknames as to admit he knew Maverick.

‘Nicky Mann,’ said Savage, ‘in Jasper’s class.’

‘In whose class?’ Mr Daunders asked gently. He knew quite well who Jasper was. He had often commented on the amazing knack schoolboys had for giving a teacher a nickname. Jasper was an admirable name for the blue- jowled, villainous-looking young man with the lock of jet- black hair always falling over his right eye.

‘Mr Whiffen’s,’ said Savage. ‘Nicky Mann in Mr Whiffen’s class.’

‘Oh no!’ Mr Daunders groaned, his compulsive act of judicial ignorance over. He had to face it.

‘I’m keeping this money,’ he said. ‘Send Mann to me.’

He knew he had blundered the moment Savage crossed the door. He should have kept Savage incommunicado and had someone else fetch Noddy. But he was tired. Tired of evasive, deceitful, dirty-faced schoolboys. He had another spasm of longing for his retirement and his Horace.

Noddy arrived, briefly but efficiently warned by Savage, and Mr Daunders knew he was beaten before he started.

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

‘But he says you gave him it,’ said Mr Daunders.

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

‘Where did you get it?’ asked Mr Daunders.

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

‘Are you saying Savage is telling lies then?’ Mr Daunders asked.

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

‘Well, where do you think Savage got it?’ Mr Daunders asked.

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

‘You’re not answering my question,’ Mr Daunders said.

‘Just listen to me. Now—’

‘I never,’ said Noddy.

Mr Daunders gave in. He had to admit it was impossible to get a statement from a boy who was inarticulate, but that was only what Savage had seen before him.

He kept the four pound notes, though he wasn’t happy about it. He insisted on seeing Savage’s parents, but it was no use. They never answered his letter inviting them to call, for Savage made sure he got his hands on it first. The loss of the money didn’t bother him, he had plenty more. He was more concerned to keep his father out of it.

Mrs Mann was no help either. Noddy told her no more than he told Mr Daunders, and she was too cautious to claim the money. She had a nose. So had Mr Daunders.

‘It smells very fishy to me,’ he told his chief assistant, a superior person from a Border family with the double- barrelled name of Baillie-Hunter. ‘There seems to be a lot of money floating round this school just now. Miss Nairn told me she found McGillicuddy with a pound note inside his reader. He was apparently using it as a book- mark.’

‘He always reminds me of those odd mountains in Ireland,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter, sniffing languidly. ‘McGillicuddy’s Reeks.’

‘He does smell a little,’ Mr Daunders conceded. ‘You see, they never wash all over, and they sleep in their shirt, these boys.’

‘And McCutcheon had money last week,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter.

‘Yes, Mr Whiffen caught him passing a ten-shilling note to Morrison when they were supposed to be doing their sums,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘And Miss McIvory found out Somerled was paying McIntosh and Crombie five bob a week each to do his homework for him. One of them did his arithmetic and the other did his grammar. There he was, getting his homework right every time and couldn’t get a thing right in class. The deceit was as gross as a mountain, open, palpable. They’ve no craft, these boys. His mother was up to see me only yesterday. Quite cross because I hadn’t approved him for a full senior secondary course. She wanted to argue he was a clever boy. Always got his homework right. She damn soon changed her tune when I showed her his dictation book. Forty, fifty and sixty errors in dictations of less than a hundred words.’

‘Oh, we could never send him to a senior secondary school,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter, appalled. ‘Why, he doesn’t even know his tables.’

‘Ah, they’re a great lot!’ Mr Daunders sighed. ‘I don’t know what I did to be sent here as headmaster in my declining years. I might as well be in the CID, the things I’ve got to investigate. And what am I to do about this four pound? It isn’t mine, and I’m damn sure it isn’t Savage’s. Do you think they could be selling what they steal? There’s a sort of gang there, you know, Savage – he’s the ring-leader, I’m sure – and Noddy and Cuddy and Cutchy and Somerled. Wherever you find trouble in this school you find they’re mixed up in it.’

‘What about Tosh and Crumbs?’ Mr Baillie-Hunter asked.

‘No, they’re not in it,’ Mr Daunders was sure. ‘They’re just a couple of sycophants. Anyway, Somerled was paying them. He wouldn’t be paying them if they were in the gang. They would have their share of whatever money’s going. Whatever it comes from.’

‘Gambling?’ suggested Mr Baillie-Hunter.

‘I hardly think so. What kind of odds with the money a schoolboy has would let Savage win four pounds?’

Mr Baillie-Hunter finished his mid-morning coffee with his headmaster and returned to his class for a poetry lesson. He was reading to them ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’ and acting it well, changing his voice to be the chief of Ulva’s isle, the boatman and Lord Ullin, and even the raging storm itself. He ended solemnly in a good rolling Scotch voice.

’Twas vain! The loud waves lashed the shore,

Return or aid preventing.

The waters wild went o’er his child,

And he was left lamenting.

He indicated the rise and fall of the waves by an undulation of his right hand, and in the sorrowful hush that followed his dramatic reading he looked round the class with gratification. He knew he had a good delivery, and he found a certain pleasure in giving such a touching rendering of corny ballads that children were thrilled to unshed tears. He expected to see here and there a hand furtively brushing a wet eye. Then he exploded at the dry- eyed inattention of a boy in the back row.

A minute later he barged into Mr Daunder’s room and slapped down a dozen or so bits of paper on the headmaster’s desk.

‘I just found Wedderburn playing with – with these,’ he gulped, agonized.

‘What are they?’ said Mr Daunders, putting the stock book aside. He had an annual return to make to the office, and he was puzzled to see the stock book showing him as having a piano more on hand than he thought he had. For any other item he would have balanced the discrepancy in the usual way by putting ‘i’ under the ‘Consumed’ column, but he wasn’t sure he could properly claim to have consumed a piano.

‘They’re bits of a five-pound note,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter moaned. ‘All the bits! Wedderburn was playing with them.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ Mr Daunders breathed devoutly, a pious ejaculation for divine assistance, his elbow on his desk, his brow on his hand, the stock book and the mysterious extra piano forgotten.

‘He was doing it as a jig-saw puzzle,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter complained miserably. ‘You see, it’s all there! Somebody has cut it in little pieces. You see how clever it is.’

He fitted two or three of the geometric fragments together. ‘It was just a jig-saw to Wedderburn, it wasn’t money, it was a puzzle. He says he found it inside his poetry book. You see, I don’t let them keep their poetry books. I give them out when I take poetry. So anybody could have left them there if he’s telling the truth. And he knows we can’t prove he isn’t.’

‘We’ll have to get to the bottom of this,’ Mr Daunders muttered, and rubbed his palm wearily across his aching eyes. ‘This can’t go on. Ten-shilling notes, pound notes, a five-pound note. Where is it going to end?’

He brooded.

‘Yes, as I told you, I’ve got a very strong feeling there’s too much money floating around this school. Do you know, I’ve had about a dozen parents up lately. Complaining. Their children can’t sleep at night, or when they do they have nightmares. And they’re off their food. They seem to think Jasper’s frightening the weans. Then they say, “Oh it must be all these sweeties they’re eating between meals.” But they can’t tell me where the money’s coming from to buy sweets to that extent. They talk as if it was my job to stop them eating sweets!’

He brooded again.

‘Garson!’ he cried, slapping his desk so hard that the phone tinkled for a moment or two. ‘I’ve got it. Garson knows the answer.’

‘Garson wouldn’t be mixed up in anything dishonest,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter objected indignantly. ‘Garson’s a good boy. He grasped decimals right away.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘But he’s in on this money epidemic I’m sure. That’s why Savage gave him a beating. Garson knows where all this money’s coming from, and he was going to talk. I’ll make him talk all right! You get him in here now.’

But Garson wouldn’t talk. He still believed that what Percy was doing was wrong, he was still afraid a day of reckoning must come, and he still wanted no part of it. But he was quite clear in his own mind that the discovery of the hoard would never come through him. He had his own code. He was loyal. Loyalty was all that was left to him, even though it was loyalty to a gang that had never completely accepted him. He was worried about Percy most of all. He believed Percy should have taken his side against Savage and not been so neutral, but he still loved him. Percy was the leader and the organizer. He was the eldest. Whoever had to pay one day, Percy would have to pay most. And he wasn’t going to have Percy’s punishment on his conscience. Since it had to come sooner or later let it come later, through the inevitable gathering of circumstance, not because of any words he ever spoke. He had been long prepared to cope with an interrogator who knew much more than Mr Daunders.

‘Now you didn’t just fight about nothing,’ Mr Daunders kept at him, stubbornly drilling through his stony silence. ‘Something must have started it. Tell me what it was.’

Garson recognized it was time to answer. His fingertips went to the bruised and swollen bone under his eye.

‘It was a private matter,’ he said.

‘How private?’ Mr Daunders asked. ‘You can surely tell me. I’m trying to help you.’

‘My family,’ said Garson, warmed to a confidence by the old man’s kind wheedling voice.

‘What do you mean, your family?’ Mr Daunders pushed at him.

‘He-he-he insulted my mother,’ Garson answered, his rosy cheeks rosier, his engaging stammer appearing for a moment. ‘So I hit him and he hit me back, and we-we-we started to fight. It was a fair fight.’

‘I see,’ Mr Daunders murmured, as embarrassed as the boy. He felt he had blundered. He should have known better than to go on once Garson mentioned his family. You never knew what scandals you were going to stumble on if you asked too many questions about a boy’s family in this school. He remembered the muddle he had failed to sort out when he tried to discover why a boy was called Addison, his mother was called Mrs Mappin, and the man she was living with, whose name was on the doorplate, was called Tanner. Mr Tanner called one morning after it was proposed to send Addison to a special school, a school for the mentally handicapped, and Mr Daunders tactfully queried his relationship to the boy.

‘Oh, I’m one of his parents,’ Mr Tanner answered lightly. ‘In a sort of way, you see.’

‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders, wondering who Mr Mappin was if there ever was one, and what had happened to Mr Addison.

The trivial incident had been a lesson to him, but he still felt he should probe Garson. He still felt there was more to the fight with Garson than a schoolboy’s routine insult to a classmate’s parent. He remained convinced Savage was afraid of what Garson knew and had given him a beating to keep him quiet. He believed if he kept on asking questions he would come to the real sore, distinct from the wound about an insulted mother though perhaps connected with it.

‘And what did he say about your mother that annoyed you so much?’ he tried.

Garson looked at him and trembled with a strange pity. The man seemed to want to be shocked. He surrendered. He would repeat just what he had suffered and let this grown-up suffer too. Why should he bear the cruelty of the world alone? But he couldn’t use Savage’s words. He answered in the book-English a bright Scots schoolboy uses when he talks respectfully to his teachers.

‘He accused my mother of eloping with a Negro,’ he said.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Daunders sadly. He knew a dead-end when he came to it. But he couldn’t stop worrying away like a dog at a bone. He turned the topic over and attacked it another way.

‘You’re sure it wasn’t because you knew something about Savage that he doesn’t want anyone else to know?’

For all its directness the question missed the target. Garson certainly felt guilty about the money, but the money meant Percy and the whole Brotherhood, not specifically Savage. He answered with a candour that was totally convincing because it was genuine.

‘I don’t know anything about Savage.’

‘He’s not afraid of anything you know?’

That came a little nearer. Garson was uneasy for a moment. He wondered if Old Daundy could possibly have got on to the money in the cellar. He put the idea away. If he knew about the money in the cellar he wouldn’t be wasting time asking a lot of silly questions. As for the question just put to him, he couldn’t see why Savage should be afraid of him when the rest of the Brotherhood knew all he knew. Surely Savage knew he would keep the oath as faithfully as the rest of them.

‘There’s nothing I know that other folk don’t know,’ he answered carefully. ‘Savage has no reason to be afraid of me.’

Mr Daunders let him go, but unwillingly. He felt he had neared the brink of the abyss where the mystery was buried.

It was a day of interrogation for Garson. His father started too after their silent evening meal together. From the casual way he spoke the boy guessed he had been thinking about it all day.

‘You never told me what you were fighting about anyway. What started it?’

What made grown-ups ask questions they wouldn’t like to hear answered, the boy wondered. He had had enough. If he could tell Mr Daunders he could tell his father. It was only right people should get what they asked for.

‘Savage said my mother ran away with a darkie,’ he said sullenly, and waited for it, ready to cower. And indeed his father’s hand went up before the words were fully spoken. The boy moved round the kitchen table to safety. His father put his hand back in his pocket and let him be.

‘That’s not true,’ he said walking from the kitchen sink to the kitchen door and back again, rubbing his nose, rubbing his lips.

The boy watched him alertly and waited.

‘It’s not true,’ his father repeated. ‘That’s gossip. I know what they say. But it’s not true. Your mother didn’t run away with anybody.’

‘What did she do?’ the boy demanded, his battered face twisted to choke the tears that the memory of Savage’s taunt brought back to his eyes. ‘Why is she not here?’

‘Aye, as far as you’re concerned she just disappeared,’ his father muttered, still walking up and down, still rubbing his face and thrusting his fingers through his hair in a private misery. ‘That’s all I know myself.’

‘Why?’ said the boy, determined to keep at it. He was going to find out something he wanted to know, he was sure of it. People had asked him too many questions. It was his turn.

‘Because she – because she wouldn’t do what I told her,’ said his father. He was started, his tongue was loosened after years of silence. He had to tell himself now, not just his son. ‘She took a job on the buses. She was a conductress. I didn’t want her to. But I let her do it because she said she needed the money for new this and new that. I don’t know what the hell she didn’t want. She wanted new curtains, that was all to begin with. Just work for a wee while, she said. Then she wanted a washing-machine, then she wanted a television, then she wanted a fridge. It was going to go on for ever. I told her to stop. Her place was in the house. But oh no, her place was wherever she liked. She liked being out working. The house was just dull, she was nobody’s skivvy. She was going to go on working just as long as it pleased her. I ordered her. A man’s the head of his own family. But she wouldn’t obey me.’

‘You sent her away!’ the boy saw the truth of it, and he was gripped by a hatred of his father’s masculine authority.

‘I told her to come back into the house or leave the house,’ his father admitted.

‘And where does the darkie come in?’ the boy asked, feeling a black cloud between himself and his father.

‘There’s no darkie,’ said his father wearily, resting from his walking up and down and standing with his hands wide apart on the kitchen table as he looked across at his bitter son with unhappy eyes. ‘Your mother’s driver was a West Indian, that was all. She was always on the same shift with him. They got on but that was all. He’s been in this house since your mother went away. He tried to help. He’s got his own wife and family. She never ran away with him. That’s nonsense. People said that because they were pals but it’s not true. Any conductress on the buses is pally with her driver.’

‘But you must know where she is,’ the boy complained. Now the darkie was explained he didn’t matter. What mattered was that his mother had been allowed to stay away. ‘You could find out easily enough. You could find her depot and get her address.’

‘She changed her depot.’

‘You could find out.’

‘I’m not going to run after anybody,’ his father shouted. ‘She made her choice. She wants to work, well, she can work. If she wouldn’t agree her place is here, then this is no place for her.’

He stared down at the table, his eyes on a dirty plate of ham and eggs.

‘I’m sorry,’ he conceded to his son. ‘Maybe she’s sorry. I don’t know. But there’s some things can never be put right. But that’s a lot of nonsense about a darkie. There was nothing between them. Just because she left me when she was working with a coloured driver some people liked to make up a story and they ended up believing it themselves. But it’s only a story. That wasn’t the trouble. Your mother never had that fault. It was just she said she could help the house by working and I told her she could help it better by being the housewife. I told her if I couldn’t keep a wife I didn’t deserve a wife. My mother never had to go out to work. And she had a hard time of it. My father never had the job I have. That’s what it was about.’

‘I want my mother back,’ the boy cried, but only to himself. He couldn’t say it aloud.

The father waved a hand over the dejected tea-table.

‘Come on! You get this table redd and get these dishes washed and stop greeting.’

‘You did what was wrong,’ the boy muttered, moving to his chore with the speed of a snail. ‘I’m not greeting.’

‘Maybe I did,’ his father answered. ‘Well, you’re damn near greeting. You’ll have to learn not to. It doesn’t get ye anywhere. Maybe I did, but sometimes you’ve got to do what’s wrong to be right.’

The boy stopped listening. He was thinking. What kind of a house was this, where he had to do the washing and cleaning and shopping and make up the laundry and do the cooking? If his mother had stayed at home he could have lived like other boys instead of having to live like a girl. A rebellion was gathering in him. The road to open insurrection appeared before him as he lay snivelling in bed that night, and when he was doing his paper-rake the next evening he loitered on the stairhead and looked at the advertising pages of the Evening Citizen. If his mother had gone away because she wanted to get more money then a promise of plenty would surely bring her back. Money seemed to be the eternal question and the universal answer.

He was the only member of the Brotherhood still working after school hours. Everybody else had given up delivering papers, milk, and rolls, and going round with the fruit-lorry or the man with the float of coal-briquettes. Why should they break the law forbidding schoolboys to work, just to earn a few bob, when they had pounds for the lifting? They despised the tips they had once gloated over, but Frank Garson still depended on them. His father gave him little, and what he gave him he gave irregularly. The boy had no grudge. He handed over his wages every week with pride. He couldn’t help being faithful. It was the way God had made him. But he kept all his tips. They were his own the way he saw it.

And now he pouted thoughtfully, childish brows furrowed, as he read the small ad rates. His father never bought an evening paper, so he felt he could proceed in safety. The prices interested him. It was like sending a telegram. Intimations (Births, Marriages, Deaths) two and six a line; Property, three shillings. Holiday Guide, three shillings, Situations Vacant, three shillings, Personal (Private), four shillings, and Personal (Trade), four and six a line. He wrote his appeal four times on a sheet of jotter- paper before he got it right, and asked Percy to let him use the portable typewriter to type it out fair. He knew Percy was too much of a gentleman to ask what he was typing. He did it in the cellar, alone in a corner, before the start of a mid-week service. GARSON, he jabbed with one finger, and went slowly on, searching the keyboard grimly for the necessary letters. HELEN, he assembled. Come home. Admit was wrong. Money no bother. Frank has loads. Bob.

He knew his father’s Christian name was Robert and he supposed his mother must have called him Bob, but he couldn’t hear her in his mind. She seemed to belong to that other world he had lived in when he was young. Now he was old, living in a real world, a hard, solid world where things were enemies. He felt he was trying to call up a ghost. But for all his doubts he went to the Citizen office alone, wandered round fearlessly till he found the right counter, and tholed the squint glance of the clerk who counted the words. It cost him sixteen shillings. He paid it with a pound note Percy had thrust on him to make up for not giving him better support against Savage. He took it as a gift from Percy. It came privately from Percy’s pocket, not from the chest in front of the Brotherhood, so he claimed before his conscience that he still hadn’t taken any share of the hoard. It would be time enough to demand his rights in it when his mother came home.