‘I’m afraid that’s right,’ Specky conceded sadly. ‘You’ve got to keep the agreement, for a bit anyway. Percy’s right enough in a way. Ye canny give pound notes to folk like Pinkie and wee Noddy and Cuddy.’
‘What could they buy?’ Skinny asked earnestly. ‘If they started spending big money where could they put whatever they bought? Folk would be bound to notice. What could Noddy put in a single-end for example?’
‘Him?’ said Savage flippantly. ‘He’s that stupit he’d buy a grand piano and try and hide it under the kitchen sink. He’s real daft about music. Give him a tune he’s never heard before and he’ll play it for you right off on the mouth-organ.’
‘He’s got a super one now all right,’ Skinny remarked. ‘Made in Germany. He got one made in Germany because Percy said the Germans were the best in the world at music like the Spaniards at football.’
‘Percy patted him on the head when he said what he was going to buy with his ration and told him he was a very wise boy for putting it to a good use,’ Specky said, and shook his head at the memory.
‘Ach, the Rangers could beat them any time,’ Savage bridled.
‘Don’t talk wet,’ said Specky. ‘They never even qualified to meet Real Madrid, sure Eintracht slaughtered them.’
‘They were lucky,’ Savage said, and waved his hands in front of Specky’s face to wave the topic away. ‘A ten-bob mouth-organ’s all right for Noddy, but I want mair nor that. I want ready cash in my pocket.’
‘Aye, it would be rare,’ Skinny said.
‘Instead of this percy-monious weekly ration,’ Specky said brightly, looking round for a laugh but the word was unknown to his comrades, and he sighed at the company he had to keep.
Percy was worried. He knew what they were thinking, he could guess what they were saying. He slept badly, wondering how to control them, and the solution came to him in disturbed dreams. But he didn’t tell them he had dreamt of the solution, he told them that what he had to do was revealed to him in a dream. Maybe it was because his mother had laughed at him for comparing himself to Moses, but he had a dream about Moses and found help in it. He dreamt he was on a mountain top and the clouds were all around him and he couldn’t see anything but a grey mist that chilled him to the bone. Then suddenly the mist was gone and there was a risen sun and everything was made clear to him though he couldn’t put it into words. He went down to the plain by a winding stony path, running sure-footed like a mountain goat, full of zest for the new way of life revealed to him. He found the Brotherhood anxiously awaiting him and he raised his hand and blessed them and they were sheep and he was their shepherd, and somehow he was holding a crook in his hand though he hadn’t been holding one before.
A sheer coincidence gave substance to his vague dream. Turning the pages of the same dictionary where he had found that claviger meant a keyholder he saw the word ‘bethel’ and stopped at it because it was the name of the street where he lived. The dictionary said that bethel meant a Methodist church and came from the Hebrew Beth-El, the House of God. The discovery set him trembling with excitement, for he knew that as a poet he must believe in the magic of words, and it came to him in a flash of inspiration that El wasn’t only the God of the Hebrews, it was also in one of its forms the sign for the pound note. It was more than a coincidence to him. It had a meaning. It was a revelation, completing the revelation of his dream. The street called the House of God contained the cellar that contained the pound notes, and the pound notes were El and he was the prophet of El just as much as Moses was. He felt the burden of the elect upon him.
He intimidated the Brotherhood by the force of his will for power over them, by the nagging of his cracked voice, by the solemnity of his face. He gathered them in the cellar and spoke to them like a preacher.
‘Yous has all been poor neglected boys all your life, without a good suit to your name or a good pair of shoes, but God has a special care for the poor and underprivileged, and sometimes He reveals Himself to them, like He done to the Jews. He chose the Jews and that’s what He’s did to you, He’s chose you to get the good of this manna from Heaven to help you in the desert,’ cause you see this life is like a desert. He chose you, He didn’t choose boys from Govan or the Gorbals or Maryhill or Partick or Whiteinch, no, He chose you. Just think about that. Just think what that means. It might have been anybody and it was yous. Now that proves you are the chosen people, only you need a lawman like the Jews had Moses. Well, I’m your lawman, and you have got to do like I say or else.’
He believed they had been chosen because he believed he had been chosen, and they had to believe it too. There was a halo round his head, a vision in his eyes, authority in his voice. They were only children, he frightened them – especially when he threatened what would happen if they committed the sin of disobedience. The youngest weren’t sure if he meant they would go to hell for ever or go to jail for ever. He made them all take a new and more elaborate blood oath, and when they had taken it they had to make the sign of the El. He showed them how to do it. They drew the index finger of the right hand across the eyes from left to right, up over the brow in a loop, and down the line of the nose to the chin. Then they traced another loop to the left and came back along the jawbone and up to the right ear. The sign was completed by drawing two parallel lines across the tip of the nose and upper lip. It was the sign of the £ drawn on their face, the symbol of the god they were now to serve.
He had written the oath on a little card he held in his hand, with a bar between the phrases to keep him right as he read it out.
‘Repeat after me,’ he said, and they repeated the phrases.
‘I solemnly swear – I solemnly swear – not to reveal – not to reveal – the place of the treasure – the place of the treasure – to anybody – to anybody – and I solemnly swear – and I solemnly swear – not to speak of the treasure – not to speak of the treasure – outside this cellar – outside this cellar – nor to touch the treasure – nor to touch the treasure – without permission – without permission – of the Regent Supreme – of the Regent Supreme.’
They took the oath standing. When they knelt down he said the rest for them, making it sound more frightening than they could ever have managed in their own unguided treble.
‘And if I break this oath may the Brotherhood break the bones of my thighs. If I speak of the treasure outside the cellar let my tongue be burnt with a soldering iron, and if I touch the treasure without the Regent’s permission may the hand that commits the offence be eaten by the rats in the cellar and may my arms be paralysed, withered and shrivelled till they drop off like a dead leaf from the trees in autumn.’
He made the Clavigers take the same oath, to remind them that they were his subordinates and they too could touch the money only with his permission.
Zealous, sincere and worried, oppressed by his responsibility for them and for so much money, he never thought what he himself might do with it. He was too busy driving them far beyond a mere gentlemen’s agreement, imposing on them a religious attitude, a true piety, towards the uncounted wealth.
He was surprised how quickly and easily he got it all going the way he wanted. He declared the word ‘money’ tabu. They were never to use it to say what was in the cellar. They were to say ‘El’. He told them it was the only safe word to use. The other word would give away their secret and bring a terrible punishment. He said they would all get scabies, chickenpox, dysentery and measles if they ever used it.
Savage was just as frightened as the rest of them by Percy’s talk, but he couldn’t entirely conquer his natural flippancy, even for blood oaths, candlelight, hymn-singing and bell-ringing. Halfway through one of Percy’s early sermons on the almighty power of El he nudged Specky and whispered, giggling, ‘If you want anything, go to El!’ He chanted audibly a counting-out rhyme used by Glasgow children, an obscure rhyme from an unknown source, supposed by local antiquaries to be of Druidic origin.
El, El, Domin – El,
Eenty, teenty, figgerty – fel!