by George Friel
But now instead of the gangs that flourished in the slump, the Norman Conks, San Toy, Billy Boys and Sally Boys, Cheeky Forty, Calton Entry and Baltic Fleet, all with explicit or latent support for the Orange or the Green, there were the gangs of the affluent society, the Toi, Tong, Peg, Monks, Fleet, Gringo, Goucho, Cody, Cumbie, Town and many others.
Orange and Green no longer mattered very much, though even in a period of ecumenicity colour prejudice couldn’t be entirely obliterated. It could still be heard at some football matches, where the fans believed King Billy supported the Rangers and the Pope supported Celtic. But with the decline of religion the new gangs had merely secular loyalties. They were the result of a rationalisation of production in keeping with a technological society. Instead of a district manufacturing two gangs with different colours each district turned out one gang with no colour.
The members lived like bushmen, treating anybody from a different part of the forest as if he belonged to a different species. Strangers were stopped and challenged, assaulted with boot and knife, and killed if they resisted. If no aliens turned up they went out to look for them. They went by bus and train in the summer season to the seaside resorts and county towns, travelling in the autumn as far south as Blackpool, where the natives deserved to be beaten up for not belonging to Glasgow. Between vacations they invaded each other’s territory. They fought in dance halls, pubs, the Queen’s highway, discotheques and corporation parks.
The Cogs were in the news a fortnight after Senga named them. They were the budding talent of Tordoch, and it was thanks to Gerald they got headlines and Wilma got her name in the papers.
It all started at a party in Jennifer’s house.
Jennifer and Wilma were amongst the dozen or so girls in the Cogs. If nothing was cooking it was the girls lit the gas. When they went dancing they would either pick a quarrel in the powder-room with any dame that looked sideways at them or they would tell the Cog-commander they had been insulted by their escort. If it came to a battle they played their part. The only weapon they used was a steel comb.
Of course nobody expected any trouble the night of Jennifer’s party. They weren’t out on the town looking for anything. They were all tadpoles in their own pond.
Jennifer’s parents were away at Ayr for the week-end visiting relatives, and Jennifer fixed a record-session. She invited a mixed company, mostly Cogs. Everyone knew she kept open house on such an occasion, and some of the boys and girls brought other guests. There must have been forty or fifty young ones in that four-roomed council house that night.
It was never found out who brought Alec McLetchie, but brought he was. He was a darkeyed boy of Gerald’s age, with long chestnut hair down to the collar of his newstyle jacket. He had a broad face and a big hanging- lipped mouth. He looked just like a pop singer or one of a beat group. At least that’s what Wilma thought. She was thrilled with the cut of him. She was getting tired of Gerald. His blond head seemed shallow beside the dark depths of Alec’s rich waves.
The trouble was Wilma liked boys of any colour. She liked to make up to boys, to lead them on and then tease them by wriggling out of it. She was amused when she saw they were excited. It always surprised her to see how easily a boy got excited. She wanted to see if Alec was easily excited. She called him Alec rightaway to put him at his ease, because it gave her the giggles if a boy was stiff when she spoke to him. If he wasn’t easily excited he might be her true mate instead of Gerald. She sat beside him on the settee when the first record was being played and clasped his hand between her left thigh and his right. She felt switched on, she felt a higher voltage coming through, she began to glow.
Jennifer’s guests had brought cans of beer and bottles of coke. A young syndicate, with a simple theory of seduction, had clubbed for a bottle of vodka to go with the coke. Jennifer was disc-jockey as well as hostess. She had a good line of patter at each record and everyone was happy. The liquor flowed, the guests were all keen to show they were sophisticated in spite of the burden of being young, and the party was swinging.
Alec solemnly nuzzled Wilma and Wilma played with his chestnut hair in a five finger exercise. The fetching of drinks and the parking of empty glasses caused some irregular rising and sitting and changing of seats. After one of those moves Wilma found she was being crushed to one end of the settee by an extra occupant who shouldn’t have been there. She took the chance to sit on Alec’s lap. He fondled her knees and put his hand up her miniskirted thighs a little distance. Not eagerly, but rather as if going through a drill expected of him. He still looked solemn, kind of faraway, his big mouth drooping with the weight of the lower lip. But in Wilma’s opinion he was smouldering like a dross fire that would burst into flame at the least touch. She put one arm round his neck, then both. Robust they were and shapely, naked from the shoulders of her sleeveless blouse. She bent her face to his, silently asking. They kissed.
Across the room at the same time Gerald was kissing Davina Gordon. She was a chubby girl he had never met before. When they were introduced he chanted as a joke, ‘A Gordon for me!’ He was stuck with her after that. But he wasn’t annoyed. He didn’t mind what he did because she didn’t. It was her first time at one of Jennifer’s parties and she wanted to get invited back. But Gerald was too much for her. She was too untrained to have the stamina for his long kiss. She had to come up for air. So Gerald was idle while Wilma and Alec were still busy. He saw them mouth to mouth as if they were stuck together by a new super-adhesive. He was shocked. Her infidelity offended him. Wilma caught the dagger of his glare in a corner of her eye as she squinted to see how other lovers were getting on. She palmed Alec away, smacked his hand and lifted it from her thigh. She pulled down her skirt.
Gerald wasn’t the boy to let it be smoothed over as easily as that. His honour demanded satisfaction. When the party was starting to break up at two in the morning he slipped out ahead with Poggy and Smudge and a couple more of his handers. He knew Wilma was fixed to stay overnight to keep Jennifer company and he told his mates what the situation demanded. When McLetchie came round the corner alone he was ambushed and beaten up. No weapons were used. Just five pairs of ringed fists against one, five pairs of sharp shoes on one huddled body. McLetchie went home a bruised and bloody mess and told his big brother.
And who was his big brother? He was Peter McLetchie, known as Big Paw, one of the Fangs from the Auchenglass scheme. Gerald was furious when he got the buzz.
‘Who the hell brung a Fang’s kid brother to Jenny’s?’ he asked his assembled company.
No one answered. They were all troubled in spirit. But the threat of invasion and the slogan ‘Cogs!’ raised them to the high pitch of dare-and-die required for battle. All they lacked was a claymore and kilts and someone to play the bagpipes. They fought long and bravely when the Fangs attacked them in the Ballochmyle Road, the main pass into the highlands of Tordoch. Gerald was working late in the garage that night and was sorry he missed it he said, but he couldn’t get away. Even without him the Cogs managed to drive the Fangs away in a late rally. The buses on Ballochmyle Road were held up for twenty minutes before the fighting ended, but the police got there in time to pick up some warriors who were slow in leaving the battlefield. That was when the Cogs got headlines. SIXTEEN HELD AFTER COGS FIGHT. Wilma’s turn came a few days later.
The defeat of the invasion didn’t discourage Big Paw. He knew it was hard, if not impossible, to conquer someone else’s territory. And he was an old hand at drag-fighting. He sent a challenge by under-ground. Let any one of those who had given his brother a doing come out on Sunday morning and he would take him on, all in.
A signal was returned by the same route. Message received and understood.
Big Paw came into the Weavers Lane from the Ballochmyle Road with a posse of grim hombres. Poggy came in from the Tordoch Crescent end, with Gerald and Smudge and half-a-dozen anonymous backers behind him. Poggy enjoyed the limelight. The sun was shining. He walked slowly to Big Paw and Big P
aw walked slowly to him. High Noon in the peace of a Scotch Sabbath.
‘G’ on, Poggy, take him,’ said Gerald.
Poggy stopped, chest out, and waited. The captain’s hand on his shoulder smote.
‘Easy meat,’ Gerald whispered. ‘You can do him.’ ‘Fancy yer chance, day ye?’ Big Paw drawled.
‘Could take you anyway,’ Poggy said, and spat at Big Paw’s feet. ‘Any time.’
It started mildly enough, just a rough-house warm-up, until Big Paw got Poggy on the ground and gave him a kicking. Poggy fumbled to get at a knife in his waistband before rising. Big Paw drew smoothly from his braces, ready for him. To save time Gerald bent quickly and shoved his own knife into Poggy’s shaking hand and Poggy scrambled up with it clenched in his right fist. But Big Paw had his chisel out. And while Poggy was still trying to get balanced on his feet and make up his mind where and when and if to strike, Big Paw struck first. It was a swift, savage, powerful thrust. The whole weight of his body sent it in and down. Poggy fell down again, bleeding. Big Paw and his posse let it go at that and ran off to get a bus on the Ballochmyle Road. They knew when it was the end of a programme. No point waiting for the commercials.
Poggy pulled at his shirt. It was his best shirt. He always wore his best shirt on Sundays. It was soaked with blood. His hand was red to the wrist. He was amazed. He gasped an appeal.
‘Gerry, help! Help me! That bastard, he’s got me, so he has!’
But Gerald was in as big a hurry as the other fellow.
‘Yill b’aw right,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Hang on! Ah’ll phone fur a namblance.’
He decamped with Smudge and the rest of the backers.
Poggy died alone there in the Weavers Lane that quiet Sunday morning under a clear sky. The only person who got any pleasure out of the business was Wilma. When the pressmen came into Tordoch looking for a story she gave them one. She said Poggy had been her boyfriend. She told them she had foolishly tried to make him jealous by letting another boy kiss her at a party. The two boys had gone and had this fight over her. She was heart-broken it ever happened. She would never forget Poggy. He was a kind, gentle boy.
‘IT’S ALL MY FAULT’ said the thirty-two point caption above a picture of her smiling pretty face. She cut it out and kept it with a bundle of holiday-snaps in her handbag.
Part Two
The Writing on the Wall
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mr Alfred didn’t like his new school. The old journey to Collinsburn was long enough, but this was twice as long. He had to change buses in the city centre, and if he missed one by a few seconds he had a long wait for another. It meant he had to rise a lot earlier to allow for delays. He soldiered glumly on, suffering life patiently.
He was still in mourning for the loss of Rose. Even before he left Collinsburn she was taken from him. There was a quick alteration made in his timetable and someone else was given her class till his transfer came through. He gained free time by the adjustment, but that was no compensation. He still felt she had treated him badly, and yet he wanted to see her again. He hoped for her every day, but she never came near him.
Rather than tell his aunt the truth he said he had asked for a transfer.
‘You were always saying that’s what I should do,’ he reminded her.
‘It took you a long time,’ said Granny Lyons. ‘And why so sudden? Are you sure there’s not something behind it you’re not telling?’
‘No, nothing,’ he said. ‘I just got fed up with Tordoch.
That’s all. Collinsburn used to be a good school, but not any longer.’
He changed the subject. He was afraid he would give himself away if he said any more.
The transfer made his visits to her less frequent than ever. If any of his old pupils saw him in Tordoch any night they would think he was looking for Rose. That’s how he saw it, for he believed his love was common knowledge. He believed a rumour of it had preceded him to his new school. He knew his very appearance when he entered the staffroom for the first time would make him seem an oddity. He was sure the teachers already there saw him as a tall, grey, haggard old man who came sidling in unsociably. And he was sure they talked about him behind his back and said a man of his age wouldn’t be shifted from one school to another unless he was no use at his job.
He took more and more to drink in the evenings. He found he had to drink more to get the right effect of not worrying about anything. He drank in different parts of the city, in a kind of judicial assizes, to observe the customs and customers in a variety of bars. To prevent any barmaid seeing how much he took he never spent the whole night in one pub. His circuits helped him to get over Rose. He recovered as from an illness, with diminishing relapses.
It wasn’t just the tedious journey to an outlying housing scheme made him dislike Waterholm Comprehensive, called Watty Compy by its pupils, with an ah and a glottal stop in the Watty. It was also the boys he had to teach. They frightened him. He had never been frightened in a classroom before.
It started the day he arrived and came to a climax at four o’clock. He left promptly because he wasn’t sure about the times of the buses. He never left promptly again. A mob of boys at the stop outside the school tried to board the first bus that came. A score of them jammed the platform and the staircase to the top deck. The rest milled between the bus and the pavement. The Pakistani conductor was angry. The boys were merry. Especially to have made the conductor angry. The driver came out of his cabin and announced he wasn’t going on till the surplus boys got off. The boys wouldn’t get off. They were in good spirits. They jeered at the driver, they called the conductor nigger boy, they argued with the passengers.
Mr Alfred was shocked. He hated disorder and bad manners. He raised his voice. He told the boys to line up quietly in a proper queue. Nobody bothered. Nobody knew him.
‘You’re wasting your time, mac,’ said an old-age pensioner watching the world go by from the kerb. ‘The young ones the day! They’ll no’ listen to anybody.’
A fresh wave of boys surged on to the platform, leaping joyously on their schoolmates’ backs.
‘Come on, get off!’ the submerged conductor shouted. ‘Some of you get off.’
The adults already on the bus grumbled at the hold-up. They said the conductor should put the boys off. They said the driver should drive on. They said they didn’t know what the world was coming to. They made remarks about modern education when the boys gave in and the bus moved off.
‘Makes you wonder what they learn them at the school nowadays,’ said a stout lady with a labrador under the seat.
‘It’s all these free travel passes,’ said the conductor. ‘They should take them from them. Make them walk. All I get is cheek.’
A squad of boys ran alongside the departing bus, chanting.
‘Watty Compy! Cha-cha-cha!’
They straggled behind when the bus gathered speed, and one of them picked up a stone and threw it at the conductor who was leaning from the platform giving them the v-sign Gerald had given Enrico.
Mr Alfred walked on to the next fare-stage to get away from the remnants of the mob. He was in a bad temper. He saw why he was the only teacher who had waited with the pupils for a bus. Most of his new colleagues had a car, and they had given a lift to those who hadn’t. Nobody had offered him a lift. He didn’t mind that, but he thought somebody should have warned him what he would walk into if he went to the stop outside the school.
He tried to settle down in Waterholm. It seemed an ugly place. He was familiar with the pupillary scribblings that raped the virgin flyleaves of textbooks. He had seen them countless times in Collinsburn and he wasn’t surprised to see them in Waterholm. There was nothing new in the otiose curves intended to represent the female breasts, waist and hips, in the crude sketches of the male organ, and certainly nothing new in the four-letter words whose use in print was sometimes supposed to prove the author had a literary talent never attributed to the boys who wrote them in thei
r schoolbooks. What was new was the sheer quantity of obscene scribbling. And the quantity became quality. It gave Waterholm a peculiar aura, increasing his dislike and fear of it.
What was also new, and what puzzled him, was the frequent occurrence of the word ‘Hox’. He saw it everywhere in Waterholm. In textbooks, in exercise books, cut on the desks, scratched on the twelve-inch rules, pencilled in the corridors. The janitor told him it was in the lavatories too, chalked on the walls, scrawled in the cubicles, chiselled on the doors. Sometimes it was ‘Yung Hox’.
He unfroze far enough to ask what it meant when he was alone in the staffroom with a brighteyed tubby little man known to the boys as Wee Bobby. This was Harry Murdoch, a man of Mr Alfred’s age. Though unknown to Mr Alfred he had been his contemporary at university, and like him had taken an ordinary degree in Arts and trained for teaching. The day Mr Alfred arrived at Waterholm he recognised him as the student who had been famous for the amount of poetry he contributed to the university magazine. Murdoch had found the poems unreadable, but in middle age he was willing to be pleasant to a contemporary. He laughed agreeably at Mr Alfred’s question.
‘Hox?’ he said, echoing Mr Alfred’s precise rhyming of it with Box and Cox. ‘It’s really Hawks. That’s our local mob.’