by George Friel
‘Is that a good cigar?’ Mr Alfred asked, very sour.
He was lately finding the afternoons tiring. They sent a jangle of pain round his skull. He felt he was a foreigner trying to get across to people who didn’t speak his language. The days when he enjoyed teaching seemed so far away he believed they belonged to somebody else.
Gerry rolled the cylinder between his fingers, tried to squeeze it, sniffed it, looked at it suspiciously.
‘Aw sir, it’s only a pencil,’ he decided.
‘Put it away,’ said Mr Alfred.
Gerry tapped the end of the pencil on the desk as if he was stubbing a cigarette and set it down with hyperbolic care.
Mr Alfred gave him a hard look. But he had been teaching too long to go looking for trouble. He meant his glare to be enough to show he knew cheek when he saw it and wouldn’t take any more.
He glanced at the textbook to check the place and resumed the lesson tabulated there for teacher and pupils. It was, in his opinion, a rather childish exercise in oral composition. But the boys seemed to find it difficult. They hadn’t an answer to any question. They sickened him.
‘They just sit there pandiculating,’ he said to himself. ‘Shower.’
From the day Collinsburn became a comprehensive school he had always been given the dullest classes. He resented it. The men who took the bright boys and girls to leaving-certificate level were all honours graduates. But he was sure he was as good as any of them, in spite of the fact he had only an ordinary degree. He was convinced he was better equipped to be Head of the English Department than the man in the job. He had read more widely. He had written prose and verse for the university magazine when he was a student. For a session he had been the magazine’s most distinguished poet. He had his collection of unpublished poems behind him, and he kept up with modern poetry. Given the chance he knew he could inspire some good boys in fifth and sixth year with his own abiding love for literature. But the Principal Teacher of English, a portly man prematurely bald and Deputy Head Master, was just a dunce who had never written a poem in his life. He was only a teaching-machine during school hours, and outside them he was a non-smoker and teetotaller who read nothing.
Gerry had no loose change when it came his turn to make a donation to the begging composition. He shrugged, shook his head, and put his pencil-cigar back in his mouth.
Mr Alfred let it pass. He was thinking of the year he had to give up his honours course and settle for an ordinary degree. It was all because his father died suddenly and his mother mourned so much she became a bit unbalanced.
He qualified quickly to get a job and bring some money into the house. Then his mother went and died too. If they had only lived another couple of years it would have made all the difference to his status. To his prospects of promotion. To his salary. To the classes he was given.
These cogitations on his misfortune occupied the back of his mind while the front went on soliciting sentences for the oral composition. A yelp from the pubescent anthropoid beside Gerry pulled the emergency cord that stopped both trains. He stared at the startled animal.
‘Hey sir, Provan stuck a pin into me.’
‘Aw sir, I never,’ Gerry declared.
Innocence and indignation sparkled in the young blue eyes.
Mr Alfred walked slowly across the room, stood over them both, glowered down, textbook canted.
‘Show me,’ he ordered Gerry.
‘It’s only a safety-pin,’ said Gerald.
He opened his fist and showed it.
‘It doesn’t seem to have been very safe,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘What were you doing with it?’
‘Taking it out my pocket,’ said Gerry.
‘Why?’ said Mr Alfred.
‘My braces is broke,’ said Gerry. ‘I was going to try and sort them.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Mr Alfred.
‘And McLetchie went and shoved his arm into me,’ said Gerry. ‘You see, I had the pin opened, sir.’
He lolled back, smiling up.
‘Wipe that smile off your silly face,’ said Mr Alfred.
Gerry raised an open hand to his face and drew it down over his nose and mouth. Took the hand away to reveal a straight face. The bland insolence of the obedience provoked Mr Alfred. He smacked Gerry across the nape. He knew at once he shouldn’t have done it. But he damned the consequences. It would soon be time for the peace of a pub-crawl. He sketched an itinerary and wondered if he should go and see Stella again or leave her alone for a bit.
Gerry rubbed the offended neck and drew back from any further attack though none was threatened. Cowering he shouted.
‘You’re not supposed to use you hands. I’ll bring my maw up.’
‘Bring your granny too,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘Ya big messan,’ said Gerry.
‘You cheeky little rat,’ said Mr Alfred, and smacked him again where he had smacked him before.
‘I’ll tell my maw you called me a rat,’ said Gerry.
He crouched over his desk, sullenly puffing the for¬ bidden pencil again.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Take that thing out of your mouth. Anybody would think you were a sucking infant.’
‘Oh!’ Gerry cried in delight. ‘What you said! Wait till I tell my maw.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The Weavers Lane was a good venue for a fight. Not far from the entrance it changed direction sharply, and twenty yards on it veered again before turning to the exit. Whatever went on between the zig and the zag couldn’t be seen from either end. To make it still more suitable the centre stretch had a recess of stony soil where some dockens and dandelions maintained a squalid existence.
On one side of the lane: the back walls of Kennedy’s soap factory, McLaren’s garage, and Donaldson’s paint- works. On the other: the palisade of the railway embankment.
But the fight was a flop. Gerry saw at once where he had gone wrong. He had matched a warmonger with a pacifist.
In a minute it was no contest. McKay hit Duthie once, an uppercut wildly off target. Duthie reeled against the spectators. They shoved him back into the ring. He stumbled forward a couple of steps and stopped with his head down and his hands across his face, patiently waiting the next blow. Disgusted at the lack of style in his opponent McKay pushed rather than punched him and Duthie fell down. He lay there. He seemed to think he had done his bit and that was the show over. Gerry was annoyed.
‘Get up and fight!’ he shouted. ‘You’re yellow!’
To encourage Duthie to rise he kicked him three or four times in the ribs. He made it clear he had a great contempt for Duthie. But Duthie gave no sign of caring about anybody’s opinion. He sprawled raniform in defeat and croaked upon an ugly docken. The happy boys and girls, four deep all the way round, jeered at his abjection.
Gerry sighed.
Duthie lay still, waiting and willing for death or the end of the world to come and release him from his agony. Neither event occurred at that particular moment, but his salvation came along in the shape of Granny Lyons, famous locally for the health and vigour of her old age. She used the Weavers Lane every day as a shortcut between her house and the shops, and she was never one to emulate the Levite if she saw a creature in distress. She broke the ring of fight-fans with a swing of her shopper, hoisted Duthie to his feet, and shook him alive again.
‘You stupid wee fool! You should keep out of fights.’
Duthie wept.
‘A skelf like you,’ Granny Lyons comforted him.
‘You’re no match for McKay. Oh, I know him all right. And I know that Provan there too. Some bloody widow, that one’s mother.’
The dispersed mob reformed at a goodly distance.
‘Hey missis!’ Gerry called out pleasantly. ‘Yer knickers is hingin doon.’
He was hiding behind Jamieson and Crawford, and between the phrases he ducked from a shoulder of the one to an elbow of the other.
Granny Lyons measured them all with blazing eyes.
‘Scum,’ said Granny Lyons.
She paused, swinging her shopper, thinking.
‘Human rubbish,’ she shouted, and went on her way.
Duthie tagged behind her, though it meant he would have to take a detour home.
Gerry’s disappointment with the fight stayed with him over teatime until his mother came in. Senga did nothing to make up for it. She obeyed all his orders without a word of complaint. He was a Roman slaveowner defeated by the humility of an early Christian. He tried to make her rebel so that he could batter her. She wouldn’t break. She made his tea, kept the fire going, washed the dishes, cleaned his shoes, washed his socks, and switched the TV on and off and on again whenever he told her from the command- post of his armchair. He waited for his mother.
‘Big Alfy hit me this afternoon,’ he said before she was right in.
‘Him again?’ said Mrs Provan. ‘He’s always picking on you, that man.’
‘Right across the face,’ said Gerald. ‘Hard. His big rough hand.’
Mrs Provan threw her handbag on a chair and hurried to him. She took his chin between thumb and forefinger and turned his face left and right, looking for a bruise.
‘For nothing?’ she asked like one who knows the answer.
‘I bet you were giving up cheek,’ said Senga unheeded.
‘Yes,’ said Gerald.
His mother stopped looking. She could see nothing. She was angry.
‘I’ll see about this. Teachers aren’t allowed to use their hand. There’s no hamfisted brute going to get away with striking my boy.’
‘He called me a rat,’ said Gerald. ‘And he used a bad word. He said I was a so-and-so-king infant.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ said Mrs Provan. ‘Well, I’ll call him worse when I see him. And see him I will. First thing tomorrow. Some teacher him, using that language. You leave it to me, Gerald. You’re not an orphan. You’ve got your mother to protect you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Granny Lyons had a room-and-kitchen near the prison. It was on the ground floor of the Black Building. She sat knitting by the fire and waited for Mr Alfred. The little clock on the mantelpiece ticked away between Rabbie Burns and Highland Mary. Often he just posted the money, not always with a letter. But once the dark nights came in he called about once a month.
‘It’s only a couple of days now till Christmas,’ she remarked to her needles. ‘He’ll come tonight.’
He did. In his oldest clothes. A wilted hat on his head, a muffler round his neck, a stained raincoat hiding a jacket that didn’t match his trousers, shoes needing to be reheeled.
‘You should wear dark glasses too,’ she cut at him, ‘and finish it.’
He smiled. Her he would always conciliate. He spoke flippantly of his appearance.
‘So! You don’t like my disguise? But then you never do.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s a fact. I never do.’
He saw the china-poet look at his sweetheart. He ima¬ gined they were avoiding his eyes in case they let him see they didn’t like the way he was dressed.
‘You think your boys won’t recognise you?’ she asked him. ‘Sure they’d know you a mile away.’
‘Not in the dark,’ he answered. ‘And I slip round the corner quick.’
‘I don’t know why you bother at all if you’re that ashamed,’ she said.
‘That’s not a nice thing to say. You know perfectly well I’m not ashamed.’
‘You should get a transfer to another school. Then nobody here would know you.’
‘It’s too late for that. It’s you should never have come here.’
‘I was here before you. It was the only place I could get when I lost the shop. You know that.’
They were both silent then, remembering many things. He spoke first.
‘It’s quite mild outside tonight.’
‘Aye, it’s not been bad at all today. For the time of year.’
‘The street’s very quiet for once.’
‘You mean nobody saw you? I think your trouble is you get frightened coming here.’
‘I suppose I do. But you know what they’d do if they saw me. Hide in a close and yell after me. Something obscene probably.’
‘I had a feeling you’d be round tonight.’
‘Well, I thought, seeing it’s Christmas. I’ve brought you something.’
He gave her a bottle of whisky as well as the usual money.
‘I know you like your dram,’ he said.
‘Not any more than yourself.’
She poured him a drink. The quantity showed she wasn’t a mean woman.
‘You have one too,’ he said.
‘Well, seeing it’s Christmas.’
‘To my favourite aunt,’ he said.
‘The only auntie you’ve got now,’ she replied to his toast, unflattered.
‘The only one I ever really knew. My mother’s favourite sister you were. And it was you helped me when I was a student. Don’t think I forget.’
‘I had money then I haven’t got now.’
‘If you need any more you’ve only to tell me.’
‘No, you give me plenty. You shouldn’t bother.’
‘I promised my mother. Anyway, I owe you it. For the time you paid my fees if nothing else.’
‘Well, as I say, I had it then. It was a good shop I had before all that trouble. And there was nobody else to give it to.’
‘Is your clock slow?’
‘No, it’s right. Are you in a hurry?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Not particularly? You mean you want to get away round the pubs?’
‘I’m not desperate. I was just thinking. It was you gave me my first glass of whisky.’
‘I always did my best for you.’
They laughed together.
‘I suppose it will be a lot of low dives tonight, in that coat,’ she said.
‘I suppose so. I like to mix with the common people sometimes. You know, go around incognito.’
He laughed alone.
‘You still never think of getting married?’ she asked suddenly.
‘If a man thinks about it he won’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, you either do or you don’t. You don’t think about it.’
‘You think too much. You should let yourself go. Get a good woman and marry her and get out of those digs you’re in.’
‘I’m too old for that now.’
‘A man’s never too old for that.’
‘I’m happier away from women,’ he said.
He elevated his glass sacramentally and plainchanted.
‘The happiest hours that e’er I spent were spent among the glasses-O!’
They communicated in silence after she poured another drink. The little clock went on ticking patiently because there was nothing else it could do. Mr Alfred said into himself the first line of a poem he had lately read, ‘The house was quiet and the world was calm’. It called up the small hours when he used to read poetry alone in his room and write little poems for himself. He was taken back, at peace with a glass in his hand and a verse in his head.
From a distance a merry cry rocked in the street. It rode above an advancing babble and rolled under the window.
‘Haw, Granny Lyons!’
Repeated.
Chanted loudly, chanted slowly.
‘Et ô ces voix d’enfants,’ said Mr Alfred, ‘chantant dans…’
But he was frightened.
‘I’ve been expecting them,’ said Granny Lyons.
She was calm. Mr Alfred was shaking. He forgot his whisky. There was an edge on the antiphonal voices now.
‘Granny Lyons, ye auld hoor!’
‘Sounds like Wilma,’ said Granny Lyons.
‘Why do they call you granny?’ said Mr Alfred, fretting. ‘I’ve never understood that.’
‘No idea,’ said his aunt, shrugging. ‘They always have. Since the day I came here. I’ve been old witch
and old bitch and old granny. Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Here!’ yelled a girl outside. ‘Here’s your Christmas coming up!’
‘Jennifer!’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Quick!’
She stepped smartly to one side of the window and signalled Mr Alfred to get to the other.
First, a hail of stones against the glass. Next, a long rude ring at the doorbell. Mr Alfred turned to answer it.
‘Don’t move,’ Granny Lyons whispered.
The window imploded. A half-brick landed in the centre of the room bringing glass with it. Then the gallop away of the colts and fillies. The whinnying faded.
Mr Alfred stared dumfouttered at the inexplicable half- brick lying mutely on his aunt’s old carpet.
‘They’re getting worse,’ said Granny Lyons.
‘Anarchy,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Things fall apart.’
He was pale with fright.
‘I chased a crowd of them out the back-close last night,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Boys and girls. And still at school most of them.’
‘You know who they are?’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Tell me their names and I’ll go to the police.’
‘Don’t talk soft,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘Do you think the police would welcome you? What could you prove?’
‘But you said you were expecting them. Have they been threatening you?’
‘They told me they’d be back. If you can call that a threat. I’m as broadminded as the next person but I’m not putting up with houghmagandy in my back-close.’
‘I wish you’d get out of this district,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘Where could I go? Anyway, it’s the same everywhere now.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘It’s my own fault,’ she said. ‘I ask for it. I should mind my own business. Let them take over. It’s their world now. But I never learn. That fight I stopped this afternoon. I should have walked on.’