Mr Alfred, MA Page 19

  Yet for all his confusion he remembered his money. He searched every pocket three or four times. But there was no change. They were all empty. He felt he had been insulted rather than robbed. That most of his month’s salary was still safe in his hidden pocket was only what he expected. Had it been gone too he would have groaned in agony. It would have meant the end of his little private world of self-esteem, a mockery of his boast that nobody could ever rob him. The loss of a couple of pounds and a handful of silver was no hardship. It was the degradation of being a victim hurt him.

  Now he had a problem. Even if he found a bus going his way he had nothing but fivers to pay his fare. It took him some time to see a taxi was the answer. He wasn’t much given to taking taxis. But it had to be done. Instead of looking for a bus route he began to look out for a cruising taxi. Nothing passed.

  He tripped at a dark corner and fell on his knees. He got up shakily. He was frightened. But the other man didn’t mind in the least.

  The tenements he passed looked shabby, the closes looked slummy. Peeling paint, litter, and dim lights. Everything was dim. Dim and dirty. He longed for the sun and a blue sky and a clean city. He searched his pockets again, still unwilling to believe he hadn’t even been left his bus fare. All he found in one pocket was the thick cylinder he had felt before. The felt pen, he remembered. And a thin cylinder his fingers recognised as a piece of chalk. He was always finding bits of chalk in his pocket.

  ‘Talk and chalk,’ he said. ‘That’s me. Out-of-date. The child is master of the man. New methods. Visual aids. Projects. Research. Doesn’t matter half the bastards can’t read. Do research just the same. Discover Pythagoras’ theorem for themselves. Could you?’

  He stumbled. The flagstones of the city’s pavements were seldom flush. He reeled.

  ‘Oh no! Not again!’ he cried as he lurched, head down, arms out.

  But he didn’t fall. He straightened just in time and kept going. And more and more sharply as he wandered through the empty night he was aware of being outside himself, watching himself, listening to himself, not owning himself.

  He twisted and turned, corner after corner. He prayed for guidance. Suddenly he came round to shops and neon lights. Then there were hoardings on one side and on the other desolate tenements with all the windows broken, a shuttered pub left standing as the stump of a demolished block, and bulldozers parked in the backcourts of vanished closes. There was nobody about. He went on. And everywhere he went he saw it.

  The writing on the wall.

  The writing on the wall.

  Everywhere he went he saw the writing on the wall.

  The writing.

  The writing.

  The writing on the wall.

  TONGS YA BASS GOUCHO PEG OK

  FLEET YA BASS YY TOI

  TOWN OK

  HOODS YA BASS CODY YYS

  SHAMROCK LAND

  TORCH RULE OK YY HAWKS MONKS YA BASS

  On his right in an all-night urinal cogs ya bass.

  On his left as he rocked YY FANGS ok.

  Outside again, still no taxis. No buses. No people. Nothing but the writing on the wall. On every phone box, junction box and pillar box, on every shop front, bus shelter and hoarding, on every board and paling, on every bridge and coping stone there was the writing. Scrawled, scribbled, sprayed, daubed. Yellow, red, green, white, black and blue. Six, eight, ten and twelve inch letters. More writing.

  REBELS YA BASS YY GRINGO TIGERS

  BORDER RULE OK

  YY TOON TUSKY

  UZZ RULE YY CUMBIE GEMY TOI LAND

  Some old inscriptions too he saw in passing, the weather-faded lettering chalked by children in ancient times.

  FUCK THE POPE

  SHITE

  CELTIC 7–1

  1690

  FUCK KING BILLY CUNT

  But since they seemed as out-of-date as himself he accepted them without complaint.

  He saw a bus-stop with a route number that would suit him. On the metal frame of the windowless shelter there was slapdashed PRIESTY TOON TONGS. PRIESTY he identified as the name of a housing scheme the bus crews refused to service on Saturday nights because the passengers either showed a knife when asked for their fare or kicked and butted the conductor when they jumped off without paying. He swayed and grued.

  He had an idea. He would phone the Lord Provost, the Daily Express and the University Principal, Mrs Trum- bell, the Curator of the Art Galleries and the Secretary of State for Scotland, he would even phone the President of the Educational Institute of Scotland. He would lodge a formal protest. He assumed he could speak to them all at once on the same line. He was all set to ask them for a start, ‘Do you folk know what’s going on?’

  But the first phone-box he went to was out of order. The phone was there in its cradle, sleeping peacefully, never to waken. The cord had been ripped away. His brilliant idea left him. He edged out of the box and waited on the pavement for something to happen. The Muse visited him and he recited aloud impromptu under an arc-lamp.

  Was it the same in Carthage, Rome,

  Babylon and Ephesus?

  To hell! I might as well go home,

  If only I could get a bus.

  He moved on, wearied. He longed to see again what he had seen as a young soldier with the British Army of Liberation, the gilded buildings of Brussels, the Meir in Antwerp, the Dyver in Bruges, any handsome street in any gracious city. He was no countryman. He liked cities. He longed to live in one.

  He forgot he was looking for a taxi. He didn’t know where he was going. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was standing still. He found that piece of chalk in his pocket again. He fumbled for it. Then he remembered the felt- pen. It was a better instrument. He took it out, unscrewed the cap, held it ready for writing. He heard Tod.

  ‘Go thou and do likewise.’

  On a wall he wrote. Carefully, a good scribe. In bold block capitals. Four inches high.

  MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN

  He stepped back and looked at it. He looked at his work and he thought it was good. He walked along the site, looking for another empty space. But not unnoticed. Two policemen in a patrol-car had seen him. The driver stopped at the kerb. With his mate he watched. They both watched. Frowning one. The other smiling.

  ‘The old bastard’s drunk,’ said King.

  ‘A foreign bugger,’ said Quinn. ‘What lingo’s that?’

  ‘No idea,’ said King. ‘He’s not a Paki, is he?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like one,’ said Quinn. ‘What’s he up to now?’

  ‘Go thou and do likewise,’ said Mr Alfred.

  He wrote on the wall again.

  GLASGOW YA BASS

  ‘Ah, now,’ said King.

  ‘We can’t have that,’ said Quinn.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen anybody right in the act,’ said King. ‘I mean seen him write.’

  Mr Alfred turned away from the wall and shouted to the sky the words he had written.

  ‘Glasgow, ya bass!’

  He shouted them so loudly he seemed to want to waken the whole sleeping city and make it listen to him. He nodded and nodded, went back to the wall and ticked off the phrase.

  ‘Right,’ he said quietly. ‘Next, please.’

  He held out his left hand for the next pupil’s jotter, his felt-pen in his right ready for marking.

  ‘The old scunner,’ said Quinn.

  ‘He didn’t look the type to me,’ said King. ‘Too old I’d have thought.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Quinn. ‘Once it starts, every bloody fool.’

  ‘Go and get him,’ said King. ‘Before he falls down.’

  ‘Right,’ said Quinn.

  King sat back and waited.

  Quinn eased from the car and crossed over. No hurry.

  ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘Good evening,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Now don’t try and be
funny,’ said Quinn. ‘Know what time it is?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not being funny,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘There’s nothing funny about it. That’s my point. It’s not a pantomime joke, not in my opinion.’

  ‘You should be in your bed, old fella,’ said Quinn. ‘It’s after two.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I wondered why I couldn’t get a bus.’

  ‘What are you writing on the wall for?’ said Quinn.

  Mr Alfred had no answer. He felt wedged in a cleft. The writing on the wall had been done by someone occupying his body in space and time, someone not identical with himself, someone who had suddenly gone away and left him to answer for what had been done. And while he knew he wasn’t responsible for all this writing on the wall he knew he had to answer for it. He didn’t mind. He was willing to answer for it, if he was pushed. This young policeman could do what he liked with him. Nothing mattered any more. He had done what he was told to do. He remembered an old word cherished in his youth when a dictionary was his bedside book. Ataraxia. The indifference aimed at by the stoics. That was all he felt.

  ‘Come on,’ said Quinn. ‘You’ve had too much I think.’

  He took Mr Alfred by the elbow, led him to the car. Put him in the back seat. But gently.

  Settling well back Mr Alfred muttered away.

  ‘Since that lout defied me. Nothing but. Schools, libraries, parks, railways, buses, cemeteries. Since that day that lump. All vandalised. The child is master. All natural piety gone. Insolence, be thou my courtesy.’

  His head lolled. He jolted and came up again.

  ‘Taught them language. And the profit on it is. Caliban shall be his own master. That blonde bitch Seymour. She should say less. What the inspectors want. Do-it-yourself poetry. Matthew Arnold was an inspector too. What would he say now? Culture and anarchy. Anarchy. Every child a poet, every child a painter.’

  He shook his head. He felt sleepy. But he wanted to speak.

  ‘Insolence, violence,’ he said. ‘It’s the black-ground of those torrible grousing-schemes.’

  ‘I told you he was drunk,’ said King to Quinn.

  Mr Alfred leaned over and tapped Quinn on the shoulder.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘you can pick up a lunar probe but you can’t pick up a phone.’

  ‘You’re right there, pop,’ said Quinn.

  King braked at a red light. Mr Alfred fell back on his seat and talked to himself.

  ‘Standards must be maintained. We must pass on our cultural heritage. The tongue that Shakespeare spoke, that Milton. Though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen and evil tongues, in darkness and with dangers compassed round, and solitude.’

  ‘He’s got an educated voice,’ said King to Quinn.

  ‘He looks a real scruff to me,’ said Quinn to King.

  Mr Alfred was comfortable in the back seat. It was better than any bus. He thought he was being taken home in a taxi. He wondered how much it would cost. He wondered how they knew where he lived.

  Quinn half-turned, speaking over his shoulder.

  ‘What did you want to go and do a daft thing like that for?’

  ‘Wir mü ssen aussprechen was ist,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Quinn shrugged back to King.

  ‘I told you he was a foreign bastard,’ he said.

  ‘That’s German,’ said King to Quinn. ‘Maybe he’s a refugee from the Iron Curtain.’

  ‘Iron curtain my arse,’ said Quinn.

  King drove humming along the empty road in the small hours.

  Peering through the window Mr Alfred saw the writing on the wall again.

  ‘This great warm-hearted friendly city,’ he said. ‘The dear green place. The corn is green. How green was my valley. A lot of balls.’

  ‘What’s that you were saying?’ Quinn turned to ask.

  ‘That it could so preposterously be stained,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Quinn kept turned round.

  ‘Are you all right, pop?’ he asked. ‘You know, you’re in trouble. Defacing property. Drunk and disorderly. A man your age. You ought to know better.’

  ‘We all ought to know better,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Eh?’ said Quinn.

  Mr Alfred said nothing.

  ‘Nothing to say for yourself, eh?’ said Quinn.

  Mr Alfred remembered something to say. He said it solemnly.

  ‘For nothing this wide universe I call, save thou, my Rose, in it thou art my all.’

  Quinn turned back to King.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said.

  King took a quick glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Steady up, old fella,’ he said. ‘Get a hold of yourself.’

  Mr Alfred fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sheriff Stairs wasn’t impressed by Mr Alfred. He didn’t like the look of him at all. It was bad enough when irresponsible juveniles went about writing on walls, but it was intolerable when the culprit was a grown man, and above all a man in Mr Alfred’s position. If he was an alcoholic he shouldn’t be teaching. If he was suffering from a nervous breakdown he shouldn’t be teaching. If he was a harebrained eccentric he shouldn’t be teaching.

  Mr Alfred had nothing to say. He had a return of his old feeling that he was the man outside somebody else. There was a man there in the dock with his face, answering to his name, but it wasn’t him. It was another man he had been forced to keep company with, a fellow traveller who was getting by on a borrowed birth certificate.

  Sheriff Stairs had him remanded for a medical report. The doctor found him sound in wind and limb, but noticed a recent prosthodontia which may have accounted for his pyknophrasia when he was arrested. Heart in good condition, no vd, reflexes, blood count and urine normal, weight about the average for his height and age, a slight presbyopia. He also found evidence of a femoral hernia, and arranged for a surgeon to operate within a fortnight. Until then, he passed him on to Mr Knight, psychiatrist.

  Mr Knight was unofficially accompanied by Mr Jubb, a psychiatrist from England. Mr Jubb had published a paper on Some Common Phobias of Metropolitan Man.

  He had come north with letters of introduction in search of material for a supplementary paper. He found nothing in Edinburgh to detain him and cut west across country to more fertile ground. Mr Knight grudgingly let him sit in on his interrogation of Mr Alfred. Mr Jubb called it an interesting case. Duly silent, he sat in a corner with a big looseleaf notebook and a ballpoint.

  ‘Is it because you’re not happy in your work you drink so much?’ said Mr Knight. ‘Don’t you like children?’

  ‘Not in bulk,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘They frighten me.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘You’re out round the pubs every night, aren’t you?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Oh yes, every night practically,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘No matter what the weather?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Not in fog,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I hate fog.’

  Mr Jubb made a note. ‘I’m afraid to cross the street then,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Indeed. I’m afraid to cross the street at any time these days.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have any social life,’ said Mr Knight. ‘Don’t you like meeting people?’

  ‘Can’t say I do,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I don’t take to strangers easily.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘You prefer to be alone?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I have a great horror of crowds.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘I hate to feel people knocking against me, touching me,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘You’re not afraid of anything happening to you when you wander round like that?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘I’ve always had a fear of being robbed,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘But I take care. I’ve got this pocket, you see.’

  He showed it. He wanted to prove he was a wise old man.

  Mr Jubb made a note.
<
br />   ‘I’ve never been attacked before,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I was terrified. I thought I was going to die.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  Mr Alfred bit the nail of his index finger. He wasn’t given to biting his nails. But there was a ragged edge annoying him. He had felt it catch on the cloth when he was showing his secret pocket and he tried to bite it off.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘Not that I should like to live till I’m senile,’ said Mr Alfred.

  He smiled. Mr Knight didn’t. Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘Did you have much to drink the night you were attacked?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Not much,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Not really. I’ve had more. Often. Say seven or eight pints and seven or eight whiskies. Maybe more. But then I’m used to it. I remember one night—’

  He stopped. He didn’t want to tell too much.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘You’ve no friends apparently,’ said Mr Knight. ‘But have you no pets? A cat or a dog for example.’

  ‘Oh no, I can’t stand animals,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘Least of all cats,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘They give me the creeps.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘Even insects,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I loathe spiders.’

  He wanted to chat to Mr Knight, to help him. He felt sorry for a man who had to ask all these questions as part of his job, with a supernumerary stuck in a corner listening in. He supposed the stranger in the corner was putting Mr Knight through a test.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘I gather you’ve been rather upset by new schemes of work in your profession, new methods,’ said Mr Knight. ‘Now why is that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Alfred, very judicial. ‘All that’s said in their favour is that they’re new. I don’t like that. It’s not a reason.’