Mr Alfred, MA Page 13

  Mr Briggs went on, man-to-man. If it came out that a teacher was in the habit of kissing a girl in his class, that could lead to many misunderstandings. Admittedly there were innocent caresses and innocent kisses. Paternal or pastoral attentions to children. But as Mr Alfred himself must be well aware Scotch reserve looked askance on kissing even between kin. And there were always people eager to make trouble, like the person who had written that malicious letter. Once they heard the word kissing they would be only too ready to impute sexual intentions to the teacher, especially if they heard the teacher was giving the girl money. In a position of trust, which every teacher occupied in regard to the pupils in his care, one must take great care to be like Caesar’s wife.

  Mr Alfred felt no ambition to be like Caesar’s wife. He preferred to remain male, however inadequately. Yet while Mr Briggs was lecturing him he felt guilty enough of what he was charged with. There came into his mind the Gospel text that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. He didn’t like that text. He thought it unfair. But he knew how he had often looked on Rose. So the anonymous letter could claim the support of the Gospel for what it said about him.

  He said nothing of that to Mr Briggs. He went dumbly back to his class unfit to teach again that day. He was hot with vexation, as if he had been surprised in an absurd position, like being caught in his shirt-tail and long hairy legs. His high love for Rose had been reduced to the occasion for a condescending homily from Mr Briggs, a man too discreet to kiss a growing girl who offered affection.

  He stayed in town till the pubs opened. He wasn’t bothered about going home. His landlady was used to his irregular returns. He drank till the pubs closed, not to get drunk but just to brood. Still, he finished up not sober and walked the streets till past midnight.

  Mr Briggs had his expected visit from the Director, who wasn’t inclined to judge Mr Alfred harshly. He understood him. But because of the letter it was decided to transfer him to another school.

  When he saw nothing in the papers Gerald shrugged.

  ‘Ach, don’t worry, maw,’ he said. ‘We’ll get the old bastard yet.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Senga heard about the letter. The whole school heard about the letter. Miss Ancill told the janitor and the janitor told the cleaners and the cleaners told the parents. But Senga knew more. She knew who had written the letter, though the writer never mentioned it.

  Having made her own good guess, Rose wouldn’t speak to Senga for a week. She walked past her in the street. She changed her place in class. But Senga was too articulate to let it go on. Her hurt was great, but it would be less if she was forgiven. She waylaid Rose and had her say. She didn’t waste time suggesting the writer could have been anybody. She wouldn’t make a mystery where they both knew there was none. She admitted her share. She explained how a few unwise words had been picked up by Mr Alfred’s enemy. She couldn’t tell how sorry she was.

  Her unhappiness made her eloquent. The affection that had been dammed for a week overflowed in her eyes. Rose was hard. But she couldn’t quarrel. She couldn’t rant and rave and accuse and denounce. She hadn’t the voice for that kind of part. She listened. She gave in. They became friends again.

  Still a bitterness stayed with Senga. She had sued for peace with Rose, but she waged a civil war at home. The cause of it was never alluded to by either side, though both knew what the other was thinking. The week she was in disgrace with Rose she went on a modified hunger strike to annoy her mother. It comforted her to refuse food from an adverse party. She never missed a chance to be sarcastic. She had come to have a sharp tongue, and she used it to cut those who wounded her. Perhaps it was guilt kept her mother from using heavy artillery to discourage these bayonet charges. Anyway she got away with them. Even Gerald had nothing much to say for a time. Senga didn’t enjoy her victories. They were too easy. She wanted stiffer opposition, then she would really show what vengeance could be.

  She criticised Gerald’s clothes and the shoes he wore. She derided his haircut, even his walk. She mocked the way he spoke. His enunciation was poor. He swallowed half his words, he used a glottal stop, and he spoke so quickly that every sentence came over like one enormous agglutination of syllables. It pleased Senga to make him repeat what he said the few times he dared speak to her.

  ‘Pardon. What did you say?’

  She gave a demonstration of clear speech in her very question.

  ‘We’ll have less of your airs, madam,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t you try and make a monkey out of Gerald.’

  ‘If people can’t speak properly they can’t expect to be understood,’ said Senga.

  ‘Feudcleanyurears,’ said Gerald.

  ‘Pardon,’ said Senga.

  ‘Do you think there’s nothing wrong with the way you speak?’ said her mother, crushing her with tone and glare, ironing handkerchiefs for Gerald. ‘You should hear yourself sometimes. But we’re not good enough for you. Oh no! You’re that superior.’

  ‘To him and his pals anyway,’ said Senga.

  She was loaded with venom, ready to strike.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Gerald’s pals,’ said her mother.

  ‘Not much,’ said Senga. ‘Crowd of apes.’

  ‘Hoosapes?’ said Gerald.

  ‘And he’s in a gang,’ Senga tossed at her mother.

  ‘Hoosnagang?’ Gerald shouted.

  ‘You are,’ Senga turned, shouting back.

  ‘Oh, hold your tongue, you little besom,’ said her mother. ‘You’re aye nagging. What shirt do you want to wear tomorrow, Gerald?’

  ‘Mayella,’ said Gerald.

  ‘You don’t like the truth,’ said Senga. ‘Either of you.’

  ‘Gerald sees his friends after a hard day’s work,’ said her mother. She flattened the last handkerchief, stacked the lot. ‘They go out and enjoy themselves, and you choose to call it a gang.’

  ‘Because so it is,’ said Senga. ‘He’s in a gang all right. I’m telling you. You’ll find out.’

  ‘What gang?’ her mother demanded. Voice raised. Angry. ‘You let your imagination run away with you, you do.’

  ‘Just ask him,’ said Senga. ‘Ask him what they call his gang.’

  ‘Amnoinanygang,’ said Gerald.

  He rushed across the kitchen with fist raised to thump his sister as he used to do. Senga hurried to a corner, turned her back to him, hands at her ears, reverting to her childish kyphosis at the threat of assault.

  ‘She’s not worth it, Gerald,’ said the mother. ‘Just ignore her.’

  But Gerald was in a gang. It was called the Cogs. Nobody knew why.

  Gangs were no novelty in the city. Between the wars they did some shop breaking and demanding money with menaces, but that was only on the side. They were never started for criminal purposes. They had no big boss in the background planning even petty crime. They were the local expression of religious sympathies amongst the irreligious. Their main activities were mutual aggression and breach of the peace. Like ancient Constantinople, the city had its factions of Blue and Green, his devotion to either depending solely on the adherent’s accident of birth. There were gangs that had a special loyalty to the memory of William Prince of Orange for beating the papishes at the Boyne in 1690. There were gangs that professed a particular reverence for the Holy Father and a great dislike to King Billy. It was a matter of complete indifference to both sides that the Pope and the Orangeman were allies in that famous victory.

  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 coul
d 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 Paw 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 Pog
gy 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.