Mr Alfred, MA Page 12

  ‘I wish somebody liked me that much,’ said Senga.

  ‘I can remember my dad used to kiss me like that at bedtime. When I was wee. But then he went away. Sometimes I don’t wonder.’

  ‘I can just see my dad kissing any of us,’ said Rose. ‘Mind you, he’s not bad. Even when he comes in with a drink on him on a Saturday night he’s not drunk. I suppose he’s fond of us all right. I know he thinks the world of Martha.’

  ‘Martha’s a lovely girl,’ said Senga. ‘Anybody would know you two were sisters. It’s just Martha’s hair is different. It’s really gorgeous.’

  ‘Funny thing,’ said Rose. ‘Talking about kissing. You know, I’ve never seen my dad kiss my mum.’

  The bell rang and they snailed out. Wanda slipped stealthily behind them, kicked Rose on the bottom and bounced off to her line. Rose turned to identify the assailant and sighed patiently.

  She didn’t mean to be disloyal when she told Senga Mr Alfred had a habit of kissing her. She didn’t mean anything. She was only talking. Perhaps she had an urge to boast she had an elderly admirer, perhaps it was the intimacy induced by a tête-à-tête in the toilet made her say too much.

  Whatever its reason, her casual confidence to Senga had a result neither of them expected. Senga wasn’t exaggerating when she said her mother and brother were always on about Mr Alfred. They were at it again that night. She had made a mixed grill of bacon, egg, sausages and black pudding for tea, although she herself had no appetite. She was in the middle of a difficult period. She felt sick of living and eating. The only person who gave her any sympathy was Rose Weipers. She had vowed to be faithful to Rose for ever. And since Rose was Mr Alfred’s favourite, she was committed to defending Mr Alfred too.

  At first she said the minimum when she was asked as usual about the day’s events at school. She knew they were hoping she would bring home some grievance that would let them make another complaint about Mr Alfred. Her inscrutable crosseyed face concealed how much the idea amused her, and the brevity of her answers made Gerald determined to annoy her.

  ‘You mean to say he hasn’t strapped you yet for nothing?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Senga.

  ‘It’s only because he’s feart,’ said Gerald. ‘He knows what would happen now if he did.’

  ‘He knows better than to put a finger on a Provan,’ said Mrs Provan. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Aye, we sorted that big bastard all right, didn’t we, maw?’ said Gerald.

  ‘That’s not a nice word,’ said Senga.

  ‘He’s not a nice man,’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘He’s just as nice as anybody else,’ said Senga. ‘Nicer than some I could mention. Anyway, all the girls in my class like him.’

  She knew she was getting heated, she knew she was liable to be provoked into some indiscreet remark if they heckled her too much, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘Ho-ho, she’s going to start a fan club for big Alfy,’ said Gerald.

  He laughed. With a lycorexia that offended her he forked bits of bacon, egg and black pudding together and bent his muzzle over his plate as he shoved them into his wide mouth.

  ‘I don’t need to start anything,’ said Senga.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ said Mrs Provan. ‘I don’t want that man’s name raised in this house.’

  ‘It’s you keeps on raising it,’ said Senga. ‘You say he’s mean. That’s one thing he’s not.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Mrs Provan. ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Rose Weipers,’ said Senga. ‘He gives her money every week. Just for going to a shop for him.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘He treats her like a father,’ said Senga. ‘Something I haven’t got.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘If she had no father,’ said Senga, ‘he’d take her home he said.’

  ‘He’d what?’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘Adopt her,’ said Senga. ‘Of course you wouldn’t understand. Somebody being fond of somebody. Him kissing her, you’d think he was just a sloppy old man. The idea of affection, of anyone showing affection I mean. It would never occur to you two.’

  ‘Kissing Rose Weipers?’ said Gerald. ‘Haw, maw! Did you hear that? Big Alfy kissing the girls and giving them money. The dirty old man!’

  ‘I heard her,’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘Ee-ya! Rose Weipers!’ Gerald howled.

  He gloated over the name with teenage lust, a loaded fork at his mouth.

  ‘And who’s Rose Weipers, tell me,’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘Martha Weiper’s wee sister,’ said Gerald. ‘You must have seen Martha, maw. She’s the talk of the district. Doing a line with a toff student lives in wan o’ the big hooses oot in Old Tordoch. A right wee snob, so she is.’

  ‘She’s not,’ said Senga.

  ‘She’s a smashing blonde, maw,’ said Gerald. ‘Rose is no’ a blonde but she’s a good-looking wee bit. They’re both sexy dames.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Mrs Provan.

  Gerald leaned across the table and flicked a finger under Senga’s nose to hit her plumb between the nostrils.

  ‘I bet he doesn’t kiss you,’ he said.

  ‘I never said he kissed Rose Weipers,’ Senga wriggled. ‘All I said was if he did what you two would think.’

  ‘He’s a dirty old man, isn’t he, maw?’ said Gerald.

  ‘He’s not a man should be teaching girls,’ said Mrs Provan. ‘And I’m the very one will let that be known.’

  Senga wept.

  ‘You keep out of it,’ she wailed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll keep out of it all right.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mr Briggs read them both twice, the Director’s letter and the enclosure, the one leading him to the other, forward and backward.

  ‘Oh, my God! Not that man again!’ he cried.

  He handed them to Miss Ancill. She was always with him first thing in the morning. She opened his mail, gave it to him in descending order of importance, and stood by in case he needed her help while he took it in.

  The senior members of his staff resented not so much the confidence he put in Miss Ancill as the confidences he gave her. They didn’t mind her opening his mail if that was part of her job. What they didn’t like was his habit of discussing it with her, of making her his chief counsellor in every problem and the first recipient of his intentions concerning administration and staffing. She had only a diploma in shorthand and typing, but they had an Honours degree in this and that, and some of them had double degrees in Arts and Science. They thought they had a higher claim to be consulted.

  But Mr Briggs always needed Miss Ancill at his side when he dealt with his correspondence. After all, she was his secretary. She was there for him to talk to. He couldn’t think unless he was talking. And in time of trouble he liked talking to a woman.

  ‘What am I to do about that, tell me,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  Miss Ancill of course had read the Director’s letter and the enclosure when she opened the mail before Mr Briggs came in. But she read them again as if she hadn’t, taking her time, very slow and very serious. The Director’s letter asked the headmaster for a prompt investigation and report on the charges contained in the accompanying anonymous complaint which accused Mr Alfred of giving money to girls in the school and using indecent practices with them, particularly one Rose Weipers. The anonymous letter was a rambling piece of vernacular prose without punctuation. Some words were badly misspelled. But the errors were so uncommon they seemed to arise from the writer’s desire to support anonymity by bogus solecisms.

  Miss Ancill wrinkled her nose the way anyone does at a bad smell.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Mr Alfred? Never! When could he do these,’ she quoted distastefully, ‘these “indecent practices”? Where? It’s a piece of nonsense.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it myself,’ said Mr Brigg
s. ‘But I’ve got to make sure. I can’t just ignore the Director’s letter. I’ll have to ask questions. Oh dear! The trouble that man has given me! If this gets in the papers it will put me in a fine position!’

  Miss Ancill advised him to call in Mr Brown and Mr Campbell for a conference.

  ‘I’d question the girl first,’ said Mr Campbell.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Mr Brown. ‘I don’t believe there’s anything in it. But I must say I think he has brought this on himself. He has been far too thick with one girl at least.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘Rose Weipers,’ said Mr Brown. ‘The very one named. He has her in his room every day at lunchtime. And he locks the door. He doesn’t know, but I’ve seen him.’

  ‘There’s your where and when answered,’ said Mr Briggs sadly to Miss Ancill.

  ‘Let’s get this girl Weipers in,’ said Mr Campbell.

  ‘Get the truth out of her, and you’ll get a line on the others.’

  ‘If any,’ said Miss Ancill.

  ‘I’m not questioning any girl alone on a thing like this,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘That could put me in the cart too. Improper talk alone with a schoolgirl? No, thanks. I’ll have her mother here.’

  ‘Yes, I think you should,’ said Miss Ancill.

  ‘Or her father,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Or both,’ said Mr Campbell.

  ‘Just the mother, I think,’ said Miss Ancill.

  The attendance-officer opportunely arrived and was immediately sent away again to tell Mrs Weipers to come to the school at once on an urgent matter.

  ‘All we can do now is wait,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘I expect we’ll have the Director or one of his Deputies out here sometime today. I’d better have something definite for him. Because if that letter’s true, well, it’s a very serious business. There will have to be official action rightaway.’

  ‘I’ve never known a teacher suspended on the spot,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Quite an event, eh?’

  He clapped his hands and rubbed them.

  Rose’s mother came in bewildered, ushered by the janitor. Jean toddled plumply at her heels.

  ‘I had to bring the wean,’ Mrs Weipers said.

  She looked at the three grave men and the single woman. They frightened her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said humbly. ‘But I’ve no one to look after her.’

  Jean, aged three when Martha mentioned her to Graeme Roy, was now turned five and waiting to be admitted to the infant school when the new session started. She ambled round Mr Brigg’s room, stopped at a shelf of specimen copies and pulled the books out one by one to use them as building-bricks. She dropped one.

  ‘Jean! Behave yourself, you!’ Mrs Weipers said. A worried woman. Not well.

  She rose, stopped, and dragged Jean over beside her.

  When they were both settled Mr Briggs resumed the explanation Jean had interrupted. But he was so indirect and allusive that Mrs Weipers wasn’t sure if he was telling her Rose had been assaulted by a teacher or a teacher had been improperly approached by Rose. When she was thoroughly confused he gave her the anonymous letter to read.

  ‘You’ll understand why I had to send for you,’ he said, going on talking even as she was trying to make it out.

  She was a poor reader at the best of times, with the best of print, and the scrawly handwriting, bad spelling and lack of stops made it trebly difficult for her.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ she whispered when she took in the meaning of ‘indesent praktises’.

  ‘I’ll have to question Rose,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘It’s my duty. I can’t ignore such a terrible letter. And I’m sure you’ll want to exercise your right to be present.’

  Rose was as baffled as her mother. When she saw the drift of the headmaster’s questions she froze. At first she said she hardly knew Mr Alfred. She only got him three periods a week. Mr Briggs asked about money. She admitted Mr Alfred sometimes gave her money. Mr Briggs asked how often. She said once a week. She didn’t like the way he kept glancing at a piece of pale-blue notepaper. She guessed somebody had written something that wasn’t nice about her and Mr Alfred. The girls were always writing something about somebody.

  ‘But why should he give you money every week?’ Mr Briggs asked.

  He pretended he was puzzled.

  ‘It’s for going to the shops for him,’ said Rose.

  ‘Just for going errands for him, you mean?’ said Mr Briggs. ‘And that’s all? He doesn’t ask you to do anything else when you come back? When you’re alone.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  She was only beginning to see what he was thinking.

  There were tears in her eyes. Her lower lip was wobbling.

  ‘Did you tell anybody Mr Alfred was giving you money?’ Mr Briggs encouraged her to speak.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I told Senga Provan.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Briggs.

  He wagged his head wisely.

  ‘It was no girl wrote that letter,’ said Mrs Weipers.

  Rose was just as intelligent as any headmaster. She saw it the moment Mr Briggs saw it. If that bit of pale-blue paper wasn’t the usual scribbling of some girl in her class but a letter from outside she knew how it came to be written. And remembering what else she had told Senga she hurried to get her story in before she was asked any more questions about things that seemed to be known anyway.

  ‘I told her he kissed me,’ she said. ‘But I just made that up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mr Briggs asked. ‘That’s rather hard to believe. A sensible girl like you. Why on earth should you do that?’

  The brimming tears overflowed. She began to cry. She knew it made her look guilty, but she couldn’t help it. Mr Briggs went on probing. If she had made it up she had been very naughty, telling lies about her teacher. But was she telling the truth now? He kept at her. Was she quite sure Mr Alfred had never kissed her?

  Rose blubbered. She nodded her head and shook her head, not knowing what she was doing. All she knew was she couldn’t speak. Mr Briggs watched and relaxed. He had plenty of experience in asking questions and assessing witnesses. He saw through Rose. He knew why she wept. He saw the innocence in her that had heard of evil but never met it. He was convinced the charges in the anonymous letter were false. But he was curious about Mr Alfred’s behaviour. He took his time. He let the mother have a word.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Rose,’ said Mrs Weipers. ‘Your mammy’s here. Tell the master the truth.’

  Rose admitted Mr Alfred had kissed her. Yes, often.

  ‘At first he just held my hand!’ she tried to suggest how things start and then you can’t stop them.

  She couldn’t explain it better for crying. She wept for herself and for Mr Alfred too. She hated them all, even her mother, for finding out Mr Alfred loved her.

  ‘What kind of a kiss?’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘Just on my brow,’ said Rose. ‘It was nothing. I hardly knew.’

  ‘Did he ever lift your dress?’ said Mr Briggs. ‘Even once.’

  Rose turned to her mother to hide her face on the breast that had nursed her.

  ‘No, no!’ she screamed.

  ‘Wheesht,’ said Mrs Weipers.

  Jean began to cry and tried to hug Rose round the legs.

  ‘Did he ever touch you?’ said Mr Briggs. ‘Anywhere he shouldn’t, I mean.’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘Some of these people,’ said Mrs Weipers. She stroked Rose’s thick untidy hair from crown to nape as Mr Alfred had often done. ‘If they have anything to say why can’t they come out into the open and say it? Wheesht, ma wee hen! Your ma knows you’re a good girl.’

  Mr Briggs apologised.

  ‘It’s an unpleasant task, Mrs Weipers,’ he said. ‘But it had to be done. I’m sure you would be the first to agree we can’t afford the least suspicion that a girl of Rose’s age could come to any harm here. Even an anonymous letter, it’s got to be investigated.’

  ‘The fire�
��s the place for it,’ said Mrs Weipers. ‘Not a word of truth in it, not a scrap of evidence.’

  He spoke to Mr Alfred alone later. He didn’t ask him what he had been doing. He told him. He told him he had seen Rose and her mother and knew he had been kissing the girl and giving her money. He let him see the anonymous letter and gave him some fatherly advice though he was the younger man.

  He sprawled back in his swivel-chair to set the tone of an informal, friendly chat. Mr Alfred sagged before him in a position vaguely suggesting a soldier standing to attention before a superior officer.

  It would be a bad thing, Mr Briggs said, if one had a class with nobody in it one could like. To find that some pupils were loveable was one of the rewards of a poorly-paid profession, though one was very properly shy of mentioning love. But there must be no favouritism. It was a bad teacher that had favourites. If one found oneself becoming fond of one pupil in particular one must force oneself to give more attention to other pupils, who were probably more in need of affection. It was a bad thing to allow oneself to be emotionally involved. A bachelor was sometimes prone to do that. A man with a family would find it easier to maintain a sense of proportion. He would know girls could be little devils as well as angels. One mustn’t see girls through rose-tinted spectacles. He apologised for the pun. He hadn’t intended it. They could be as nasty as boys, yes, and even nastier. He could tell Mr Alfred things about girls that would shock him, things he had learnt as headmaster of a mixed comprehensive school, the things girls wrote on the lavatory walls for example. Worse than boys. It was a pity Mr Alfred wasn’t married. Of course he himself and Mrs Weipers were completely satisfied there was no truth in the anonymous letter as far as Rose was concerned, and there was no other girl actually specified. The accusation that Mr Alfred was guilty of indecent practices with any girl was something neither he nor anyone else who had seen the letter believed, nonetheless …

  He saw he had slipped there. The words ‘nor anyone else who had seen the letter’ made Mr Alfred wonder how many people had been shown it. Miss Ancill for one he was sure. And probably Mr Brown as Deputy Headmaster. He jerked as if prodded. He was humiliated. Once more a harsh reality had invaded the privacy of his dreams. He remembered that in the poems of his youth he had tried to negotiate with reality. But in his middle age reality was no longer open to negotiations. It was bulldozing him. It tore up the love he had hidden under the soiled surface of his public life and heaved it aside like so much rubbish that was merely in the way of new buildings. He felt destroyed. He had no idea who had written the letter and Mr Briggs gave him no clue. All he could make of it was that Rose must have talked to somebody, somewhere, sometimes. She had wilfully made him look ridiculous.