Mr Alfred, MA Read online

  She knew enough to know a free press is the guarantee of liberty. Within twenty-four hours a counter-attack was organised. Gerald arrived at school in a Ford Anglia driven by a bearded reporter accompanied by a bald photographer. He got out at the gate and went straight to Mr Briggs’ room while his escorts waited in the playground. Five minutes after he sauntered out smiling. The photographer had a word with him and then took his picture against the wall of the boys’ urinal. By an unfortunate coincidence Mr Alfred came along at that moment. He slowed down when he saw Gerald being photographed by a bareheaded man in a sheepskin coat and saw another man, similarly clad, shepherding a jolly crowd of pupils out of the picture. He was puzzled.

  ‘That’s him,’ Gerald whispered.

  The man with the camera turned quickly. Mr Alfred gaped. The man with the beard stepped forward.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Would you give me your views on corporal punishment?’

  The man with the camera took aim.

  Mr Alfred looked round for escape. He was jostled by cheering boys and girls and confronted by this bearded stranger with the big smile and the unexpected question. He faced him fiercely, glare answering grin.

  The man with the camera snapped.

  ‘Thank you,’ he sang out.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Alfred, and barged on.

  When the evening paper came out there wasn’t only Gerald full length on the front page. Mr Alfred was there too, head and shoulders. A single column story under a three column headline separated the two pictures. The headline was Teacher Has Spite Says Mum.

  Mr Brown brought in a copy next morning in case Mr Alfred had missed it.

  ‘You look a right badtempered old bastard there,’ he said.

  Mr Alfred hadn’t seen his picture. He seldom bought an evening paper. He was shocked. He had the same irrational disbelief as some people have when they hear their voice on tape for the first time. That wasn’t him. To increase the offence, Gerald looked boyish and handsome, happy and innocent.

  ‘Crabbed age and youth,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘That face doesn’t do our image any good, does it?’ said Mr Dale.

  Mr Alfred drank more than usual that night. He went on a pub-crawl in what Granny Lyons called his disguise, but he was sure everybody recognised him. He couldn’t forget how his face looked in the paper. And that would be how it looked to other people, he supposed. Yet he knew he had once been tall, dark and handsome, with a profile and a moustache that made his fellow students say he looked like Robert Louis Stevenson.

  When he got back to his lodgings he hunted out the typescript of his poems. It was a long time since he last looked at them. He had an alcoholic whim to read them again and enter the mind of the man he had been in the green years that had no ophidian Provan lurking in the grass. He thought he would comfort his troubled spirit by saying his own verses aloud.

  He had called his poems Negotiations for a Treaty. He meant a treaty with the reality of philosophers, politicians, economists, scientists and businessmen. The thirty-two poems he had typed in a fair copy after countless revisions were meant to be a lyric-sequence showing the attempt to come to terms with a material world. The poet would insist on his right to live in the independent republic of his imagination. But he would let reality be boss in its territory if it gave up all claims to invade and conquer his. If it didn’t he would organise his own resistance movement.

  The performance fell short of the intention. He was depressed to see how weak and derivative his verses sounded after lying long unread. He felt he was a failure, a lonely provincial hearing from afar rumours of the world of letters, the only world he cared about, a world he would never be allowed to enter. And he saw his failure didn’t come from an addiction to drink and idleness. It came from the whole cast and calibre of his mind. Sleep seemed impossible. He wished he had taken just one more whisky at the bar before it closed, or bought a half-bottle to carry out so that he could have another drink before he went to bed.

  Undressing slowly he saw himself as a man tossed aside by a God who had given him the ambition to be a poet without giving him the talent.

  Mr Briggs saw him as a bit of a fool who had brought unnecessary publicity to the school by mishandling a difficult boy. The evening paper that started the story followed it up for a week. So did the morning paper that was its stable companion. There was Mother Demands Enquiry on the front page with a picture of Gerald and Mrs Provan cheek to cheek like sweethearts. Then there was Banned Boy Tries Again on the middle page with a picture of Gerald at the school gate, like Adam outside the gates of Paradise, wearing his best suit, face washed and hair combed. But at the week-end a youth was stabbed to death in a brawl outside a dance-hall in Sauchiehall Street. His griefstricken girlfriend was a photogenic blonde who was interviewed on her thoughts about life and love. She displaced Gerald and his mother.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Although the Provan story was no longer newsworthy the papers went on drawing dividends from it. Letters to the Editor condemning corporal punishment were printed daily for several weeks and filled a lot of space. They appeared most frequently and at the greatest length in the Herald.

  ‘More letters this morning!’ cried Mr Brown.

  He breezed in waving his paper.

  ‘Hey, shut that door, there’s a draught,’ said Mr Campbell. A cross man.

  ‘A long one from Monica Trumbell,’ said Mr Brown.

  He slammed the door with a backheeler and pitched an eager question at Mr Alfred.

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  Mr Alfred stooped at the staffroom table sipping a cup of strong tea brewed by a kindly cleaner forty minutes before the first of the staff arrived.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Who is Monica, what is she?’

  ‘One of our conquerors,’ said Mr Dale. ‘She’s up here on loan from England.’

  ‘She damn near names you as the villain of the piece,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Alfred.

  He sipped his tea.

  Mr Brown read to him with loud gusto.

  ‘“It is a sorry comment on Scottish education when some survivor from a prehistoric society thinks he can solve the most subtle problems of school discipline by resorting to brute force against a sensitive adolescent.”’

  ‘An excess of sibilants surely,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Onomatopoeia,’ said Mr Brown. ‘She’s hissing you.’

  ‘Who is she, I was asking,’ said Alfred.

  ‘Monica Trumbell?’ said Mr Campbell. He frowned a moment, then identified a function. ‘That’s that dame is always writing letters. She’s the secretary of poise, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Mr Dale. ‘A poisonality.’

  ‘What is poise, saith my sufferings then?’ Mr Alfred enquired.

  ‘POISE?’ said Mr Brown. ‘You mean to say you don’t know what poise is?’

  ‘Not as something having a secretary,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘It’s an acronym,’ said Mr Brown. ‘It stands for Parents’ Organisation for the Improvement of Scottish Education. You’re not keeping up! It’s old models like you poise is out to improve on.’

  ‘There’s always room for improvement,’ said Mr Alfred.

  He sipped his tea and glanced at the electric clock on the wall. Two minutes to the bell. He sipped his tea again.

  ‘She’s good, our Monica,’ said Mr Dale. ‘Mrs Monica actually. Oh Jaysus, I’d hate to sleep with her. I bet she’d tell you your way of doing it was out-of-date.’

  ‘How is she qualified to improve anybody?’ Mr Alfred asked. ‘Except herself of course.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Mr Dale. ‘She’s English.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Mr Alfred.

  He sipped his tea, squinting over the rim of the cup at the sinister clock.

  ‘She’s married to the personnel boss at Bunter’s Ball Bearings,’ said Mr Dale. ‘You know, the English firm that came to t
he new Salthill industrial scheme. A shower of Sassenachs out there now.’

  ‘She’s from Essex actually,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Upminster. Here about a year. The Herald had an article on her last week.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘On the Woman’s Page,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Complete with picture,’ said Mr Dale. ‘A horsefaced old haybag.’

  ‘A reformer,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘The minute she sees a pie she shoves her finger in.’

  ‘She’s got two girls at Bay,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Two girls at bay,’ Mr Alfred turned gladly. ‘I thought it was stags one had at bay.’

  ‘Bay School,’ said Mr Campbell.

  ‘Private school for girls,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘You couldn’t send your daughter there,’ said Mr Dale.

  ‘I know,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘I haven’t got a daughter. Not as far as I know.’

  ‘If you had you couldn’t,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘Not on your salary.’

  ‘It’s not a school,’ said Mr Dale. ‘It’s an advance post of English infiltration. Hockey and an English accent. The old girl network.’

  Mr Alfred glanced at the clock. The bell rang.

  He swallowed the last of his tea and was first out to meet his class.

  At morning break Mr Brown was still in a teasing mood. He read out further extracts from Mrs Trumbell’s letter and bits from a letter supporting her. Mr Alfred wasn’t amused. Mr Brown’s voice jarred on him and he disliked the man’s use of juvenile slang. He tried to show his disapproval by sighs and groans but Mr Brown wasn’t discouraged.

  ‘Here’s a smashing argument,’ he declared loud and clear.

  ‘Must you?’ Mr Alfred asked.

  Mr Brown read with zest to his jaded colleagues.

  ‘“It is surely obvious to the meanest intelligence, even amongst teachers—”’

  Mr Campbell was jolted from his crossword.

  ‘That bloody cheek!’ he cried. ‘“Even amongst teachers!”’

  ‘Than whom,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Mr Brown read straight on through the interruptions.

  ‘ “—that a pupil refuses punishment because he is the innocent victim of certain psychical and physical strains resulting in a feeling of resentment due to his immaturity. Now whatever the child resents cannot be just and should therefore be abolished.”’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Mr Dale. ‘Let’s abolish the weans as well. That’ll solve it.’

  Mr Brown laughed and continued.

  ‘“This applies particularly to that curse of Scottish education, corporal punishment. Not that way will the child with a thirst for knowledge be provided with a key to wider horizons.”’

  ‘Oh ma Goad!’ said Mr Dale.

  ‘She’ll be leaving no stone unturned till she nips us in the bud,’ said Mr Campbell.

  Mr Alfred sighed and groaned again. Mr Brown continued.

  ‘“A system of sanctions must be devised which will not produce resentment in the child. Here is a task for our child-psychologists. Meanwhile in view of the present atmosphere of frustration which is itself an indication of a great deterioration in our much-vaunted determination to create a higher civilisation I appeal to parents of every denomination to send me their application for registration in the Parents Organisation for the Improvement of Scottish Education.”’

  ‘Damnation,’ said Mr Alfred.

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Monica’s last words. “It can hardly be without significance that Scotland is the only country, apart from Eire, Switzerland and Denmark, where teachers still think it necessary to flog their pupils.”’

  ‘To what?’ said Mr Campbell, pencil poised over his crossword. Clue: What are they when John has x times as many sweets as Jean? ‘That’s a bit stupid, that is.’

  He entered PROBLEM CHILDREN in his crossword and snorted.

  ‘Flogging? The bitch doesn’t know what flogging means.’

  The bell rang. Harsh, crude, rude, dogmatic, domineering. Tea was gulped, cigarettes stubbed, pipes knocked out, crosswords abandoned till lunchtime, and the battle-scarred troopers marched out to rejoin their unit.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mr Alfred went to see his aunt.

  It was six weeks since he had given her any money. He swithered about sending her some by post. Then he thought it would be better if he went to see her.

  ‘You’re the fine one!’ she said when she let him in. ‘Your picture in the paper and you never come near folk to tell them what it was all about.’

  ‘There was nothing to tell,’ he said.

  She scolded him.

  ‘I thought you had more sense than to talk to reporters. Here, have a cup of tea.’

  He sat down with his coat on and his old hat on his lap.

  ‘I don’t talk to them. One of them tried to talk to me. All I said was excuse me.’

  ‘More fool you. You’re lucky he didn’t put in his paper, teacher apologises. But you must have been standing talking to them if they took your picture.’

  He sat across from her and stirred his tea.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘You know, it’s a very odd thing but—’

  ‘Here, I haven’t sugared it,’ she said. ‘Don’t sit there and try to tell me they snapped your face behind your back.’

  She pushed a poke of sugar across to him. He scrabbled the spoon in it. The sugar was low.

  ‘They took it before I knew. You know, it’s a very odd thing. You can stop a person printing a letter he stole from you, but you can’t stop him taking a quick snap at you and printing your photograph.’

  ‘You can’t call your face your own these days,’ she said. ‘Do you want a biscuit? Or can I fry you something?’

  ‘Any more trouble lately?’ he was asking. ‘No, thanks, no.’

  ‘Nothing much,’ she said. ‘You’re quite sure? It would be no bother. Except I had my purse snatched yesterday. I don’t know how you stay alive on what you eat. Well, my handbag it was actually, but my purse was in it. Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure, thanks. You don’t know who it was?’

  ‘No, I’ve no idea. It was that quick. All I saw was the turnup of his jeans. I was coming through the Weavers Lane.’

  ‘I’ve told you not to use the Weavers Lane.’

  ‘It saves me a good minute’s walk to Ballochmyle Road.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I had my shopper and my handbag in one hand and somebody came up behind me and hit my wrist with a stick or something and I dropped them and he pushed me down and kicked me and grabbed my handbag and ran away. All I saw was the turnup of his jeans. Blue. Kind of tight. There was nothing I could do. He was out the lane and out of sight before I got to my feet. The funny thing was I found my handbag at the end of the lane but my purse was missing.’

  He gave her more money than he had meant to.

  ‘You shouldn’t bother,’ she said. ‘The price of things these days. You need it yourself. I wish you’d buy yourself a new coat. And as for that hat. It’s the midden it should be in.’

  ‘I must get you a purse,’ he said. ‘You only ever had the one.’

  ‘It was my mother’s. It was a good one. They don’t make them like that nowadays. Handstitched leather. It was a good one.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’ll buy you a good one.’

  ‘When would you buy a purse? The only shops you’re ever in are beershops. I suppose you’ll be off round them tonight as usual.’

  He didn’t deny it, and she let him go after he gave her his version of the Provan story. He kept saying at the doorstep he would get her a good purse like the one she had lost and she kept telling him not to bother.

  His wandering took him to a district he hadn’t visited for over a year. The pubs were all changed. More chromium and plastic, less mahogany and brass. But it was the new people in The Kivins, a bar he used to like, that spoiled his pub-cr
awl. He remembered it as a bright spot off the beaten track, frequented by characters he would have said Dickens rather than God created. He hardly knew the place, and he certainly didn’t know the customers.

  There used to be community-singing in the back-room, and many solos too, though singing of any kind was against the licensing laws. There was an Irish labourer sang ‘Danny Boy’, commonly known as ‘The Londonderry Air’, and even ‘Sonny Boy’, as well as ‘The Rose of Tralee’ and ‘I love the dear silver that shines in your hair’, which is the same song as ‘Mother Machree’, sung elsewhere by Count John McCormack. And every Saturday night a bookie’s clerk sang ‘I have heard the mavis singing’, a fine song for a man with a good drink on him if he is a good tenor. The point of the song was that the voice of Bonny Mary of Argyll was sweeter than the song of the mavis, and a member of the audience said one night that the song was written by Rabbie Burns and that Bonny Mary of Argyll was Mary Campbell, the Ayrshire bard’s Highland Mary.

  His gloss aroused considerable dissension in the company and the argument flowed out of the back-room into the bar. Mr Alfred was appealed to as arbiter, his erudition being no doubt immediately recognised from his distinguished appearance and the fact that he wore a hat. He remembered the night well. He had, he regretted later, become rather didactic and after settling the controversy he had gone on to inform his fellow-drinkers that a similar mistake was often made about ‘I dream of Jeannie with the light-brown hair’. Many people, he said, believed it was written by Burns when in fact it was the work of the American songwriter Stephen Foster who wrote about the old folks at home etc.

  It was sober shame at his occupational habit of imparting information at the lowering of an elbow that inhibited him from going back to that haven of mirth and melody.

  And now! Ah, now! No couthy customers chatted at the bar, no merry company sang the old songs through in the back-room. A television gabbled on a high shelf at the far end of the gantry and dazzled him with a watered-silk effect the moment he went in. Two trios of long-haired youths, apparently not on speaking terms, were plainly now the established patrons. The door of the back-room was open, and he saw a couple of bottle-blondes, haggard professionals, sitting there with middleaged men beside them. The waiters too were changed. Four hard-faced, wary-eyed silent men, moving like ex-boxers, served clumsily. They looked as if they didn’t approve of drinking.