Mr Alfred, MA Read online

  ‘It was me thought it up,’ said Tod. ‘Me and nobody else. All my own work. Alone I done it.’

  ‘Did,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Coriolanus.’

  ‘Did,’ said Tod. ‘An act of poetic creation so it was. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Tod stood behind the kitchen table, hands pulling lapels, and lectured.

  ‘The careful student will appreciate the vowel music and consonantal vigour of these remarkable words. He will hear the sublime derision of the street urchin’s Yah, a primitive ideophone, modulated into the polite plural You, pronounced Ya in the dialect of our northern poet. This striking economy of address is immediately followed by the masterly brevity of Bass, a monosyllable with more vehemence and malevolence than the full form Bastard, found in the work of the more cultured poets who wrote in the southern dialect. Only someone with a great poetic talent could have invented such language in a society as yet hardly civilised. It is from such vulgar eloquence that a great vernacular poetry arises.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Dante. De vulgari …’

  He was feeling frightened again. He wanted to please the lecturer.

  Tod came round the kitchen table.

  ‘I’m glad you like Ya Bass,’ he said. ‘It’s my best poem so far. But I’ve a lot more coming up.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll like them all,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘You’d better,’ said Tod.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Tod smiled. He was pleased.

  ‘You used to take notes wherever you saw Ya Bass, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘And you cut bits out the paper about all the fights I fixed, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Ah, you’re a great man,’ said Tod. ‘A real documen-tarian.’

  ‘Docs, ya bass,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It was just the last two words I thought up,’ said Tod. ‘I left the rest to the lads themselves. It only needed a few of them to start it off.’

  ‘Then the sheep,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tod. ‘I know mine and mine know me. It gave me variety in uniformity.’

  ‘Unity in diversity,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘All the same only different,’ said Tod.

  ‘The formula is xYB,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Where YB is a constant and x has an infinite number of values.’

  ‘And xYB equals CR,’ said Tod. ‘Where cr is a Cultural Revolution.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Well, the start of one anyway,’ said Tod. ‘And if I’ve got Cogs fighting Fangs and screaming Ya Bass at each other it’s all in a good cause surely.’

  ‘What cause?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Disorder,’ said Tod. ‘You can’t have a revolution without disorder, now can you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘What we want,’ said Tod, ‘is liberty. And there’s no liberty in order. And you just think for a minute. The wars of religion were fought with men screaming Ya Bass at each other. In their own language of course. The same with the wars of nationalism. All I’ve did is reduce human conflict to its simplest terms. My boys from the north get killed fighting my boys from the south? So what? Dulce et decorum est pro housing-scheme mori.’

  ‘The territorial imperative,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘All you’ve done, you mean, not all you’ve did.’

  ‘I’ll do more before I’m finished,’ said Tod. ‘I’m young enough yet. Who’s going to stop me? Mind you, I’m proud of what I’ve did so far.’

  ‘What you’ve done,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘You have every reason to be.’

  ‘Those intellectuals,’ said Tod. ‘Small fry. They misunderstood me. They wrote Brecht Ya Bass and Beckett Ya Bass. I didn’t mean it that way at all. Some folk thought it meant Brecht and Beckett were bastards in my opinion. I never meant no such thing.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘I’ve nothing against Brecht or Beckett,’ said Tod. ‘Or any of the big guys. They have their place in literature and I have mines.’

  ‘Mine,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Indeed you have.’

  ‘Another thing,’ said Tod. ‘The intellectuals, they only wrote it once in the one place. That was no use. They missed the whole point of the operation. I wanted Ya Bass to be ubiquitous. Like those bloody young Cratchits in that thing you read to us the week before Christmas one year. I still remember that, you know.’

  ‘Oh, it’s ubiquitous all right,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Thanks to me,’ said Tod. ‘These things isn’t accidental. It was me made it ubiquitous. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Wordsworth.’

  ‘Shelley,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Pedantic old bastard, aren’t you?’ said Tod.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘I’m a teacher as well as you only better,’ said Tod. ‘I gave a course of lectures to a few of the lads. I told them what to do. Where to do it, like. I don’t mean just writing on walls everywhere. That was only the basic training. No, I mean action. I got Action Groups going. You know, like revolutionary cells. Three principles. Deride, deface, destroy. It was me suggested scattering the catalogues from a library for example. You saw that one yourself. And it was a good one, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that was a very good one,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘My lads,’ said Tod. ‘They’re all nice fellows. When you get to know them. Maybe not so bright some of them. But you can teach them. You can organise them. That’s what I done. I put it to them.’

  He went behind the kitchen table again, arms waving, voice raised, and put it to them.

  ‘Do you want to be nobody or somebody?’

  ‘Somebody,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Do you want to be pushed around or do the pushing?’

  ‘Do the pushing,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Do you want to have nothing or do you want to have power?’

  ‘Power,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Destroy, destroy, destroy!’

  ‘It’s quite safe,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Nobody will touch you.’

  ‘The old folks at home will blame themselves.’

  ‘They’ll say it’s all their fault,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It’s the fault of society.’

  ‘They must have failed you somehow, somewhere,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It’s not your fault, lads.’

  ‘On my head be it,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!’

  ‘Julius Caesar,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘You are the little people,’ said Tod. ‘You are sent to rule the world.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Somewhere. I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I’m the new Pied Piper,’ said Tod.

  ‘So long as you’re new,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  ‘It was you taught me,’ said Tod. ‘Remember? In Hyderabad I freed the Nizam from a monstrous brood of vampire bats. But you know what I done when I went to Hamelin. I’ll do the same here. Lead all the weans away from you.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘What you did.’

  ‘Don’t forget I’m only starting,’ said Tod. ‘Every revolution is brought about by a determined minority. You take the twelve apostles.’

  ‘Take the Bolsheviks,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Lenin and Trotsky.’

  ‘Take John Knox and the Scotch reformers,’ said Tod. ‘Think what they done to bonny Scotland. Nothing to what I’m doing.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘What they did.’

  ‘I’ve got friends,’ said Tod. ‘Friends in high places. You know that. You’ve met them. Your bosses. This is a New International, so it is.’

  ‘We’ve had four already,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘All failed.’

&
nbsp; ‘Ah, but this is the best yet,’ said Tod. ‘This one won’t fail. From Aberdeen to Vladivostok. From Omsk and Tomsk to Kirkintilloch, you’re all on the way out. All you literary bastards. It’s the end of the printed word. Everything’s a scribble now. The writing’s on the wall. I know. I got it put there.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen it,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘You wait,’ said Tod.

  ‘I’ve no choice,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘I’ve got a new campaign coming up,’ said Tod. ‘I’m starting a League Against War. I’m going to call it law.’

  ‘An acronym,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Like POISE.’

  ‘I’m working on a monogram for it,’ said Tod. ‘Something simple the lads can slap up quick wherever there’s a blank space.’

  ‘There are still a few left,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Even if there’s not I can do a palimpsest, can’t I?’ said Tod. ‘LAW everywhere. Suddenly appearing overnight. That’ll fox the public, eh? For a while anyway. I’ll let out later on what it means.’

  ‘I saw LAW somewhere,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘A great while since, a long, long time ago.’

  ‘Not so long,’ said Tod. ‘I tried it out on a couple of my fellows. But they didn’t take to it. And I was too busy with Ya Bass to follow up. But I’m getting on to it again now. I’m finished with YY.’

  ‘I never understood that one,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Why YY?’

  ‘If the world belongs to the Young,’ said Tod, ‘then still more it belongs to the Young Young. I get them at school. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’

  ‘Proverbs,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘But I’m more interested in my League Against War now,’ said Tod.

  ‘I’m glad you’re against war,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘That’s always something.’

  ‘I’m against everything,’ said Tod. ‘To end war you’ve got to fight. I’ll get the yungins to fight against war because the aldyins are past it. You’ve had the war to end war. It didn’t work. I’m going to give you a League Against War, a LAW to end law. Instead of Cogs and Fangs and Tongs and Toi you’ll be seeing law everywhere you go. I’ll have a new wave of destruction in the name of LAW. I’ll have LAW YA BASS and LAW OK and YY LAW. The poor public won’t know what’s going on. They never do till it’s done.’

  ‘What good will it do you?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘I’m not a do-gooder,’ said Tod. ‘I believe in the dialectic. The unity of opposites. Law is anarchy. That’s what I’m after. I’ll do it the way I done Ya Bass. Just a scribble here and a scribble there to start with. Nobody’ll bother. But it will spread and spread till the whole city’s covered with it. That’ll be something. The quantity becomes quality. You said that yourself.’

  ‘But not necessarily a good quality,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Who said anything about good?’ said Tod. ‘It’s new.

  That’s all that matters. You admitted that a minute ago. And that’s how I’ll get revenge.’

  ‘Why do you want revenge?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Badness is all,’ said Tod. ‘You made me what I am today, I hope you’re satisfied.’

  ‘If they had slapped down Gerald Provan the first time he stepped out of line this would never have happened,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘But you don’t know it was Gerald Provan rolled you,’ said Tod. ‘You saw nothing, you heard nothing. They came up behind you. You’re only guessing. You’ve got a spite at Gerald Provan. You’re aye picking on him.’

  ‘The way they ought to have stopped the young ruffians in Germany,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Before Hitler came to power at all. Terrorising decent people in the street. But no. They even said Hitler himself was all right. He just needed sympathy.’

  ‘The Hitlerjugend weren’t ruffians,’ said Tod. ‘They were good lads. They were organised. I could organise my lads like that. As a matter of fact I’m doing something better. Because you can’t pin a thing on me. I’ll destroy Europe without a war. You wait. You won’t get me in a bloody bunker waiting for a bomb. I’ll live to laugh.’

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ said Mr Alfred. ‘A new Schickelgruber?’

  ‘Who?’ said Tod.

  ‘Skip it,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘You talk the slang of the thirties,’ said Tod.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Mr Alfred. ‘You weren’t born then.’

  ‘Was I not?’ said Tod. ‘I was, I am, and I always will be.’

  ‘You think you’re God perhaps?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘No, the other One,’ said Tod. ‘The Adversary.’

  ‘The devil seeking whom he may deflower,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Der Geist der stets verneint.’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Tod. ‘I say No to you and your likes.

  I’m nibbling away at the roots of your civilisation. I’ll bring it down. The felt-pen is mightier than the sword.’

  ‘You’ve made my city ugly,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Apart from all the stabbings and fighting in the street, this writing on the wall everywhere – it’s an offence against civilisation.’

  ‘Civilisation means class distinction,’ said Tod. ‘To hell with it. Life is more important than civilisation. Life is a comprehensive school. Every child is equal.’

  Mr Alfred raised his hand for permission to speak.

  ‘May I say a poem, please?’

  ‘If you like,’ said Tod. ‘So long as it’s not one of yon there was a young lady of things. Can’t stand them.’

  Mr Alfred elocuted.

  ‘My heart sinks down when I behold the boys and girls go by.’

  He stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That is all I can remember.’

  ‘You’re getting past it, mac, that’s your trouble,’ said Tod. ‘You should be like me. Young, keen, eager. Accept the challenge. Always learning. I’ve been thinking I might even learn something from China. You know, the Red Guards. They’re fairly knocking the old ones. Taking over the trains. Go where they like. Causing alarm and dismay. I must ask the International Secretariat for more information.’

  ‘You really believe you have an international movement?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘You can see I have,’ said Tod. ‘Don’t you ever read the papers, mac? I can’t lose. I’ve got a fifth column. You know that. What folk say about me and my lads, it’s like what you were saying they said about wee Adolf and his lads. They feel rejected. Give them love. Treat them nice and they’ll be nice. Treat them nasty and they’ll be nasty.’

  ‘It doesn’t work out that way,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Yes, you know that and I know that,’ said Tod. ‘But you mustn’t ever say it.’

  ‘They made that mistake about Hitler,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It wasn’t just wee Adolf,’ said Tod. ‘Don’t forget there was Poor Old Joe as well. He was a great pop figure too in his day before folk decided he was as big a bastard as wee Adolf. You’ll remember the pair of them were aye having their picture took with a wee lassie in their arms. You know, cuddling her. They were fond of wee girls, just like you.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘One only, if you don’t mind.’

  Tod conceded the correction with a placatory bow and resumed his argument.

  ‘They failed to conquer Europe between them because they were too crude. But see me? I’m subtle. They were there to be named. Not me. I’m nowhere.’

  ‘Everywhere,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘They’ll never catch me,’ said Tod.

  ‘No, they won’t, will they?’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Those two stupid bastards wanted a State,’ said Tod. ‘I don’t. I don’t want a thousand-year Reich. I don’t want a New and Higher Form of Civilisation. I don’t want to be the Big Führer Brother Secretary-General. I don’t want to conquer Europe. I want to destroy it. Destroy its schools and libraries and public telephones. You can fight an army invading your territory. But you can’t fight me. I’m not invading
you. I’m already inside. And I’m nobody.’

  ‘Everybody,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘When I look at what you’ve done to this city!’

  ‘Go thou and do likewise,’ said Tod.

  He faded rather than went away.

  Mr Alfred found himself out of The Flat as abruptly as he had found himself in it. He teetered at the closemouth.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ said the gentle voice.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Now are you sure?’ said the young man. ‘Are you sure you’ll manage?’

  ‘I’ll manage fine,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It gets worse every night,’ said the young man.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Will you get a bus all right?’ said the young man.

  ‘I can get one round the corner,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘I’ll leave you then,’ said the gentle voice. ‘I go this way.’

  ‘I go that way,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Good night. And thanks very much.’

  ‘No bother,’ said the young man. ‘Good night then.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Mr Alfred.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When Tod left him Mr Alfred wasn’t sure where he was. He was with himself but outside himself, as if there were two of him. He looked up at the nightsky like an ancient mariner trying to take his bearings from the stars. But he couldn’t see any stars in the narrow vault between the buildings. All he saw was a crescent reflector hanging in the dark void.

  ‘A falcate moon,’ he said.

  He repeated the words. They seemed to promise the start of a poem, but the promise wasn’t kept. He was distracted from the abortive lyric by a fear he had lost his way. When he went round the corner to get a bus there wasn’t a bus to be seen. There wasn’t even a bus-stop. He tried another corner and wandered into a hinterland of mean streets. He veered, and got into a tangle of lanes and pends. At that point he wasn’t just afraid he was lost. He knew he was lost. He was tempted to panic, but the man with him said it didn’t matter, there was always a way out.

  The coffee and hamburgers he had taken in the Caballero were meant to sober him. But now he felt drunk again, and always he had the idea he wasn’t walking alone. Perhaps it was the crack on the head when he was rolled in the close. Perhaps it was his alarm at losing his way. He thought of going back to the close and starting again from there. But he had zigzagged so much he didn’t know if he was walking towards the river or away from it, going east or going west. He plodded on and round about and back again, looking for a main road, one man in him trying to hear the tape of a conversation another had recorded.