Mr Alfred, MA Read online

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  Mr Knight turned the pages of Mr Alfred’s dossier.

  ‘You live in lodgings, I see,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘On the ground floor. It’s an odd thing that. I’ve always had my digs on the ground floor and I’ve always had my classroom on the ground floor. Just as well. I hate stairs. I don’t mean Sheriff Stairs.’

  He smiled to encourage appreciation of his little joke. He got no smile back. Mr Knight in front of him looked past him. Mr Jubb behind him kept his head down and made a note. Mr Alfred was afraid he had said too much and said it too quickly. But he only wanted to let them see he was quite at ease.

  ‘These new thirtytwo-storey flats,’ he said slowly. ‘I wouldn’t like to live in one of them. I hate heights.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘Why don’t you take a holiday abroad?’ said Mr Knight. ‘You told the police you liked foreign cities, but I understand you haven’t been to any of them for years. Why is that? You have a long holiday in the summer.’

  ‘The trouble is I’ve got lazy,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘All the bother you have travelling, the customs and all that, it puts me off.’

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  ‘But if you like to be alone,’ said Mr Knight, ‘why do you stand in a pub every night? You’re hardly alone there.’

  Mr Alfred was getting rattled at the probing. He answered a bit impatiently and spoke too quickly again.

  ‘I’m a townsman,’ he said. ‘I’m not keen on the wide open spaces. Mind you, I don’t like to go into a pub and find nobody there. You feel too conspicuous, all that empty space at the bar. Depresses me.’

  Mr Jubb made two notes.

  ‘I like to move about where there’s people,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘But not get mixed up with them. See what I mean?’

  He moved his chair away from the radiator behind him. It was too near. He felt it scorching his bottom.

  Mr Jubb made a note.

  Mr Alfred saw him when he shifted his chair. He guessed there had been notes taken all the time behind his back. The suspicion that the stranger was testing him and not Mr Knight made him angry. He spoke impulsively.

  ‘It’s all these stupid buggers I’ve got to work with,’ he said. ‘They give me nightmares. You’ve no idea. I hate them all. All these brainless bastards and bloody bitches.’

  Mr Jubb was stuck for a moment. He turned to an index page at the back of his looseleaf notebook before he made another note.

  Mr Knight sighed. He stopped for coffee. As a matter of courtesy to a guest colleague he had a word with Mr Jubb. Mr Jubb was grave.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe to let him do his own –’ he paused, looked across at Mr Alfred, whispered to Mr Knight – ‘pogonotomy?’

  ‘I see no reason why he shouldn’t shave himself,’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘But this fellow’s not right,’ said Mr Jubb. ‘He’s not right at all. Look at what we’ve found out.’

  ‘What have we found out?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Children frighten him,’ said Mr Knight. ‘He hates fog, he’s afraid to cross the street, he doesn’t like strangers, he has a horror of crowds, he hates to feel people touching him, he likes to wander off on his own, he has a fear of being robbed, he was afraid of dying, he bites his nails, he wouldn’t like to be senile, he drinks eight pints of beer and eight whiskies, he can’t stand animals, cats give him the creeps, he loathes spiders, he doesn’t like what’s new, he hates climbing stairs, he hates heights, he hates travelling, he speaks too quickly, he’s not keen on wide open spaces but he doesn’t like empty spaces, he can’t stand heat and he hates bees.’

  ‘So?’ said Mr Knight.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ said Mr Jubb. ‘I’ve got enough for another paper.’

  He read off softly, softly, from his notes.

  ‘The man’s got pedophobia, homichlophobia, dromophobia, xenophobia, ochlophobia, haphephobia, planomania, kleptophobia, thanatophobia, he’s an onychophagist, he’s got gerontophobia, but notice he has no dysphagia, he’s got zoophobia, gataphobia, arachnophobia, kaino- phobia, climacophobia, acrophobia, hodophobia, he suffers from intermittent tachylogia, he’s got agoraphobia and kenophobia, thermophobia and melissophobia.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Mr Knight. ‘He’s in a bad way.’

  ‘He’s in a very bad way,’ said Mr Jubb. ‘You could have him committed for care and attention on this evidence.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mr Alfred went inside for his operation while Sheriff Stairs was still considering sentence. He might have been all right, laughed at Mr Jubb, and got back to work if he hadn’t taken a bad turn towards the end of his convalescence. He wakened early one morning and saw his window welcome the sun and a blue sky outside after many grey mornings. He was glad to be alive. He rose promptly and took off his pyjama-jacket. It was his habit then to put his vest on, take off his pyjama-trousers and put his pants on. This time he lifted his pants in mistake for his vest and put his arms through the legs. He knew at once there was something wrong but he wasn’t sure what. He persisted in his error, trying to achieve a victory of mind over matter by simply willing the pants to become a vest. They didn’t.

  A nurse found him reeling and writhing round his bed, his head hooded by his pants, his hands waving blindly through the brief legs. No matter how hard he butted he couldn’t get his head through the crutch of his drawers. He was worried.

  The nurse watched him. Hegave up struggling and sat on the edge of his bed, defeated, resigned, waiting for release. He flapped his arms above his hidden head and giggled.

  The nurse had met it before. She was quiet and tactful. She slipped the pants over Mr Alfred’s head, drew the legs away from his arms and put him back into his pyjama-jacket and back into bed. Mr Alfred smiled and nodded. His hair was all tousled from his battle with the cul-de-sac of his drawers. He looked at the nurse with a show of intelligent interest. She tucked him in. His lips moved between his nods and smiles but he didn’t really say anything.

  The nurse went out. A doctor came in. Mr Alfred was sitting up, smoothing the turnover of his sheet. He gave the doctor a colleaguing smile.

  When he showed more signs of deterioration he was put in a geriatric ward. He had attacks of amnesia and aphasia, but picked up a little now and again. He managed to say please without being able to say what it was he wanted. He could also say thank you when his want was understood and met. Since he wasn’t all that old and beds in the geriatric ward were scarce, he was moved to a mental asylum. It may have been that crack on his skull when he was rolled in a back-close. It may have been a natural decay. He lived on without knowing. When he could speak again he was polite to everybody. He walked round the grounds twice every day, morning and afternoon, weather permitting. His only greeting to any fellow patient he passed was a smile, a bow, and a timid murmur.

  ‘Turned out nice again today. No sign of children.’

  He would look up at the sky like a man afraid of a sudden shower.

  He was suspended between heaven and earth in peace and solitude. He forgot everything else he had ever wanted. Granny Lyons came to see him three times a week, and went away crying to herself. She brought him cigarettes at first. But he didn’t use them. He had forgotten about smoking. She stopped bringing them.

  News always gets around. The teachers in Collinsburn heard about him and somebody raised his name once in the staffroom.

  ‘I hadn’t much use for him,’ said Mr Brown. ‘But I must admit I feel sorry for the poor fellow.’

  ‘He wasn’t a bad sort really,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘A bit pedantic sometimes maybe.’

  ‘A bit old-fashioned,’ said Mr Dale.

  ‘Yes he was, wasn’t he,’ said Mr Kerr. ‘Very conscientious. Never absent. Never late.’

  Other people too heard about him through devious gossip.

  ‘Haw maw!’ Gerald Provan shouted one evening the moment he crossed the door. ‘Kno
w what I heard the day?’

  ‘Naw,’ said his mother standing over the frying-pan. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Remember big Alfy?’ said Gerald.

  ‘I’m not likely to forget him,’ said Mrs Provan.

  ‘He’s been put away,’ said Gerald. ‘He’s in the nuthouse.’

  ‘It’s where he belongs,’ said Mr Provan, turning the sausages. ‘Bad old bugger. He was aye mad.’

  Senga at the table, waiting, listening, said nothing as Gerald gave source and details. She had left school by that time and got a job as a copy typist in an insurance broker’s office. In spite of her squint she had a good appearance and a refined voice. She was skinny as a child, but now she was a slim, smart, confident Miss Provan. She had lost touch with Rose after the Weipers left Tordoch.

  They met by chance in the street at the evening rush-hour. They had to stop and speak for old time’s sake. Rose, once the prettier and more graceful, was thicklegged and broad- bottomed. Her face was plump and the mouth rather slack. She was a filing clerk in the Tax Offices in Waterloo Street.

  Senga did her best but Rose had nothing much to say. They moved to the edge of the pavement to avoid obstructing people and stood staring past each other after the first awkward words. Senga was going to tell Rose about Mr Alfred, just to break the silence and make conversation. But she changed her mind at once. It might sound malicious to say he was in a mental hospital. And remembering the trouble he had caused them she thought it would be tactless to mention him at all. She tried to think of something else to say.

  ‘I’ll need to hurry,’ said Rose. ‘Or I won’t get on a bus. I’m late.’

  ‘Yes, I’m late too,’ said Senga. ‘But I’ll maybe see you again sometime.’

  About the Author

  George Friel (1910–75) was born and brought up in a two- room flat in Maryhill Road in Glasgow, the city where he was to live and work all his life. Educated at St Mungo’s Academy, he was the only one in a family of seven children to go to university where he took an Ordinary ma, before training as a teacher at Jordanhill College. He married his wife Isobel in 1938 and the couple moved to Bishopbriggs where they resided for the rest of their days. When war broke out Friel served in the raoc before returning to teaching, a profession he gradually came to hate and distrust, although he never lost his concern for children. He became assistant head of a primary school before retiring in the early seventies. Such experience became the basis for his novels.

  Friel’s first novel was The Bank of Time (1959). In all his books he determined to write about the everyday lives of ordinary people from his own working-class background. His rather dark sense of humour and a rigorously intellectual style did not make him a popular author, although The Boy Who Wanted Peace (1964) sold well after its appearance on television. Grace and Miss Partridge (1969) was followed by Mr Alfred M.A. (1972), perhaps his most powerful novel. An Empty House appeared after the author’s death from cancer in 1975. His short stories were collected and published posthumously as A Friend of Humanity (1992).

  Copyright

  First published in 1972 by Calder and Boyars Ltd

  First published as a Canongate Classic in 1987,

  by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

  This digital edition first published in 2009

  by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Isabel Friel, 1972

  Introduction copyright © Douglas Gifford, 1987

  All rights reserved

  The publishers gratefully acknowledge general

  subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards

  the Canongate Classics series and a specific

  grant towards the publication of this title

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 797 6

  www.meetatthegate.com