Mr Alfred, MA Read online

  Having gone in, Mr Alfred was unwilling to turn round and go out again. He would have one drink there anyway. Half-way through his pint, staring straight in front of him, wishing he had gone to see Stella, he had a subliminal knowledge of quarrelsome voices rising, angry scuffling, and the approach of battle. These disturbances put an end to his meditation of Stella’s bust and smile and he glanced round with disapproval. Two youths were fankled, legs kicking and heads butting, one of them with blood pouring from the tap of his nose. Four others, two on each side, tried to pull them apart, and there was a lot of bad language being used, another thing Mr Alfred didn’t like.

  The six youths came wrestling and lurching down the length of the bar, clearing all before them. Two of the ex- boxers dashed round to break it up and Mr Alfred stepped quickly out of their way, glass in hand. The youth who seemed to be the aggressor was wrenched away from his cowering foe but went on yelling threats and insults. He was a big fellow, and he strongly resisted the invulting arms of the grim barmen. He heaved himself free and launched a new attack. A joint effort by the bouncers brought him down, but in the tackle they shouldered Mr Alfred and brought him down too. He fell against a small table across from the bar and spilled beer all over his coat. When he got up he felt his ankle was hurting him. He hurried out as hastily as his newly-acquired claudication permitted, not waiting to hear what it was all about, nor caring.

  He limped a hundred yards or so in great agitation before a familiar rain, tapping insolently on his bare head, told him he had lost his hat. He slowed down. Then he hobbled on. It was an old hat. Everybody laughed at it. He would rather spend money on a new one than go back for it. He kept going, head down against a wind, angry at the young ones who couldn’t drink in peace.

  By the time the pubs were closed the wind was worse. He stood in a bus-shelter and a rainy draught annoyed his legs. He felt his turnups getting soaked. He wondered why. Then he saw that the glass panels along the upper half and the metal panels along the lower half were all missing. He fretted as he waited. Five schoolboys across the street stopped a while and kicked at a litter-basket till it tumbled from its post. The wind took up their sport and played along the gutter with cigarette- packets, bus-tickets, orange-peel, pokes, cartons, and a vinegar-drenched newspaper that still remembered the fish and chips it had wrapped. A Coca-Cola bottle broke where it fell. The schoolboys slouched on to the next litter-basket.

  ‘Oh dear me,’ said Mr Alfred.

  When the bus came he went upstairs for a smoke. There was a drunk man wouldn’t pay his fare. The coloured conductor stood over him. Tall, patient, dignified, persistent. A good samaritan across the passage offered the money.

  ‘No, no, oh no! That will not do,’ said the coloured conductor. ‘He must pay his own fare or go off.’

  ‘Ach, go to hell,’ said the drunk man, but quite pleasant about it.

  He lolled unworried, a small man with a bristly chin and nothing on his head. Mr Alfred noticed the raindrops glisten on the balding scalp.

  ‘Your fare please,’ said the coloured conductor again.

  ‘A belang here,’ said the little drunk man. ‘Mair than you do, mac. It’s me pays your wages. Go and get stuffed.’

  The bus weaved on between tall tenements.

  ‘Pay your fare or I stop the bus,’ said the coloured conductor.

  ‘Ye kin stope it noo,’ said the little drunk man. ‘This is whaur A get aff.’

  He swayed up as the bus slowed, palmed the coloured conductor out of his way, and slithered downstairs. Smiling. Victorious. Happy and glorious.

  Mr Alfred caught the conductor’s eye.

  ‘You meet some types, don’t you,’ he said, anxious to show sympathy.

  The conductor went downstairs without answering him.

  Mr Alfred blinked drunkenly at the graffiti on the blackboard of the seat in front of him. The rexine had been torn off and on the bare wood someone had scrawled in loose capitals FUCK THE POPE. A different hand added underneath CELTIC 7–1. Most of the seats had large stretches of the rexine stripped away. The bus was as shabby as its route. Above the front window SPITTING FORBIDDEN had been changed to SHITTING FORBIDDEN.

  Mr Alfred sighed.

  Three young men invaded the bus. They had shiny black jackets with white lettering on the back. ZEB ZAD ZOK I LOVE THE ZINGERS. The last one on had the outline of a broadhipped female nude in yellow paint and law in brass studs. They were no sooner on than they rose to get off. The conductor stood in their way to collect their fares. The first shoved him aside, the second pushed past, and the third flashed a knife.

  ‘There’s wur fares,’ he said. ‘Ur ye wanting it?’

  He rammed his knee in the conductor’s testicles and went smartly on his way. The conductor straightened in time to catch him by the collar at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Away ye big black cunt,’ said the young man, kicking as he turned. ‘Take yer hauns aff me or A’ll do ye.’

  He jerked free and did a wardance on the steps. The conductor kicked him on the thigh. He kicked back. The bus turned a corner. Rainbeads rolled down the streaming windows. White man and coloured, both fell. When they got up the passenger took another kick at the conductor. The conductor danced backwards and whipped off his ticket-machine. He swung it by the straps.

  Mr Alfred jumped up to restrain him.

  ‘Here! Don’t! You’ll kill him with that.’

  He was frightened.

  A buckle of the strap smacked him on the cheekbone and tore across the nose. The conductor’s elbow thumped him on the eye in the course of a vicious parabola.

  Mr Alfred clung to him.

  ‘Let go, you,’ said the coloured conductor.

  Mr Alfred pulled him back. ‘I’m only trying to help you,’ he said. ‘For your own good. You’d brain him if that thing landed.’

  The passenger decamped. His mates were already off.

  ‘Muck of the world,’ said the coloured conductor. He was shaking. ‘They won’t pay. Every night they won’t pay their fare. White bastards.’

  ‘Compose yourself,’ said Mr Alfred.

  Turning to sit down again he saw a bus-inspector huddling in the back seat. He looked down on him. The bus-inspector looked up and shrugged.

  ‘Well, what can you do with that kind?’ he asked.

  Mr Alfred had a black eye the next morning, a bruise on his cheek, and an abrased nose. But he wouldn’t stay off work. He never did. When he turned up at school his colleagues were sure he had been in a drunken brawl. His awkward gait showed an injured ankle was bothering him.

  ‘He’s falling apart, that fellow,’ said Mr Brown to Mr Campbell. ‘I’ll have to get rid of him. I’m going to have a quiet word with Briggs about him.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Martha was sorry for Mr Alfred.

  ‘Not that I know him. But every time I see him in the corridor, I mean. I was never in his class. Well, he never takes girls’ classes. No, it’s just when I see him about the school. I don’t know. He looks so neglected.’

  Graeme Roy laughed. He wasn’t jealous. He couldn’t see Mr Alfred as a rival.

  ‘You want to mother him? He could be your father.’

  ‘No, he couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course he could.’

  ‘Of course he couldn’t. In the first place my mother never met him. And even if she had I doubt if. I mean, she’s not his kind.’

  ‘I mean his age.’

  ‘Who’s talking about his age? All I said was I feel sorry for him. All that stinky stuff in the papers. The poor man always gets the low boy’s classes.’

  ‘You mean the boys’ low classes.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I mean the low boys’ classes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. He taught me once.’

  ‘He taught you? You never told me that. You been hiding your murky past from me?’

  They liked to mention their past as if they had one and make little confessions about it that they never m
ade to anyone else.

  ‘In third year. Before they started the comprehensive.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘He was all right. A bit sarcastic maybe.’

  ‘I can’t stand sarcastic teachers.’

  ‘I don’t mean he was all that sarcastic. Just sometimes.’

  ‘Tell me anybody that’s sarcastic all the time.’

  ‘Don’t nag.’

  ‘I’m not nagging. I was only asking a question. That’s not nagging.’

  ‘The way you do it it is. And it wasn’t a question. It was an order. You said, tell me!’

  ‘Who’s nagging now?’

  ‘Not me. It was you. I was only trying to tell you about Alfy.’

  ‘Well, go on. Tell me.’

  ‘He was quite amusing at times when I had him. But half the things he said were quotations. We didn’t know. At least I didn’t know. Not till later on. He could be very cutting. Then I found out it was Shakespeare or Pope or somebody. How were we to know? In third year. I ask you.’

  ‘Casting his pearls before swine.’

  He heard it as ‘perils’ and counted. Three was enough. He was in no danger of trying to improve her. It was she as she was detained him.

  ‘Put it that way if you like. But what’s the point of quoting Shakespeare when nobody knows you’re quoting Shakespeare? That’s teachers of course. Of course some of them say, as Shakespeare said, or in the words of Pope.

  But Alfy never. He was wasting his time showing off to us he knew his Shakespeare.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t showing off. Maybe it came natural to him.’

  ‘Shakespeare come natural? You’re joking of course.’

  They were happy blethering and arguing, happiest then perhaps. Certainly happier than they were later when they expected to scale the heights or plumb the depths or learn the meaning of it all. But even then they had their troubles. When they gave up Ianello’s they tried other cafes near and not so near the school. None suited. They were either too small or too big, too cheap or too dear, either a pokey wee ice-cream shop for juveniles or an adult coffee-lounge where men twice their age smoked cigars. They were beaten. Graeme offered her an answer. Instead of meeting for twenty minutes on the way home from school Monday to Friday, meet one night a week for two or three hours. A return to what they did before the ban fell. Avoid suspicion by keeping it strictly to just once a week and varying the night.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ said Martha.

  ‘We’d gain on it,’ he said. ‘Arithmetically.’

  ‘It’s not a question of arithmetic. I’d rather see you every day, even if it’s only a few minutes.’

  ‘But this way’s no good. By the time we’ve said hello it’s time to say goodbye.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ she laughed at him.

  ‘By the time we find a place where we can talk, I mean,’ he said.

  He was getting a bit sulky with her.

  And he didn’t mean talk though he thought he did. The ambitions of a young male growing in him. The withheld nearness of her unknown body was having its effect on his blood. A demon in his ear told him he would get nowhere talking to her in a cafe or at the bus-stop. A meeting at night would let him find the place and opportunity to go further. He could use the car again. And when he found the place he would find the time. The time to seduce her. Or seduce himself. The demon left it all very vague.

  Yet his imagination remained chaste. He wanted to be longer with her, closer to her. That was all. To know more. He began to have a documentary interest in the privacies of her life. He was curious about her underwear. He wanted to know what lipstick and powder she used, what earlier loves she had and how much she knew about making love. He wondered when her periods were and how much pain she suffered then. He wanted to know if she slept alone or shared a bed with a sister. He wanted to see her half-undressed for bed. He hadn’t got as far as thinking of her without her clothes on. But his hands longed to learn the precise mould and strength of her flanks, her thighs and breasts.

  Past that point his uninformed thoughts faltered. What he could see kept them busy enough. The sheen of her blonde hair made him want to stroke it. But he couldn’t do that in a public place. Her pale hand, small-palmed and long-fingered, seemed mysteriously different from his own. He wanted to take it and make it as familiar as the square fist that was a congenital part of himself. But he knew she would be annoyed if he held her hand in public. When she laughed, and she was much given to laughing, the good teeth behind her unkissed lips made him long to be taken behind them, to enter into her. But it was a yearning for a penetration beyond physical space. So with her complexion. She was so blonde her pure skin gave him the illusion of seeing a transparency more spiritual than epidermal. There too she tempted him to dreams of passing through an insubstantial curtain and dissolving himself within her. Her nylon knees, uncovered by a schoolgirl’s skirt, whispered to his unlearned hand. For a time the height of his ambition was to fondle them. But he couldn’t do that either in a public place. He was tired of seeing her in public places.

  ‘I’m not keen on it,’ she was saying. ‘It would mean more deceit. I hate telling lies to my mum and dad. And once you start.’

  ‘It would be better than this.’

  ‘It’s like saying a square meal once a week is better than a sandwich every day. I don’t know that’s true.’

  ‘If you’re going to be crude about it,’ he huffed. ‘Talking about food!’

  They were trying yet another cafe for the first time. A pop hit from the juke box rocked the walls. They winced together.

  ‘If music be the food of love,’ said Martha.

  He wasn’t amused. He was in a bad mood.

  ‘Oh, don’t start quoting Shakespeare at me,’ he said. ‘You’re as bad as big Alfy. Maybe you’d rather go out with him. Hold his hand and stroke his fevered brow if you feel all that sorry for him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, little boy,’ she said.

  ‘I’m taller than you,’ he said.

  But he won in the end. She gave in. They began to meet once a week, a different night every time. Since they were both fond of their parents they felt guilty.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Gerald went back to school in triumph. Once her grievance was off the front page Mrs Provan took it to her local councillor, who brought it before the education committee, whose members decided the suspension was invalid. The headmaster’s writ didn’t run in the Weavers Lane after four o’clock.

  ‘It’s the last time I’ll—’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘Why bother about the little bastards?’ asked Mr Campbell.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ said Mr Dale. ‘You can’t win.’

  ‘Alfy mucked that one up,’ said Mr Brown. ‘He should never have—’

  ‘Not after hours,’ said Mr Campbell. ‘Once it’s after four, well—’

  ‘They can commit murder and mayhem,’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘You don’t get much thanks, do you?’ said Miss Ancill.

  ‘One minute after the bell, one inch across that gate, and as far as I’m concerned they can,’ said Mr Briggs.

  ‘I’d suspend him,’ said Mr Dale. ‘From the bloody rafters.’

  ‘Surely any grownup has a right to stop boys fighting anywhere,’ said Miss Ancill.

  ‘The position is,’ said Mr Kerr, ‘you have the authority to stop fights only at the time and place when fights don’t occur, during school hours inside the school. At the time and place where fights do occur, after four o’clock outside the school, you have no authority.’

  ‘Sod them all,’ said Mr Dale.

  Mr Alfred sipped his tea in the staffroom, stuck in a corner silent by himself at morning-break. He felt the world was like a crowded bus speeding past the stop. It had left him behind. The daily frustrations of public transport analogised his fate. He didn’t get on. Even if the bus did stop and some of the queue was allowed on board he was the one that was put off. He was
always the extra passenger the conductor wouldn’t take. He was without a home, wife or child, without father, mother, sister, brother or wellwisher. He hadn’t even a car. He was unnecessary in the world, superfluous, supernumerary, not wanted. Nobody would miss him. He was an exile in his native land. Not that he had any love for his native land. He rated it as a cipher, of no value until a figure was put before it. But it had no figures. It existed only as terra incognita to the north of England. Hence formerly known simply as N.B. Note well. A footnote. Whereas England was where they spoke the language he taught, the language he once thought he knew. But he had been refused an immigrant’s visa there many years ago when nine publishers rejected his thirty-two poems. They had condemned him to stay where he was and go on waiting at the bus-stop till a hearse came along. He had silence and exile, but no cunning.

  He had long forgiven the uninterested publishers. Maybe they were right not to want his poems. After all, they were the only arbiters he respected. The praise of a friend, if friend he ever had, would prove nothing. And now he didn’t know what to do. He was too old to earn a living anywhere else. He knew it was possible there was a vacancy for a scavenger in the cleansing department. But he was probably past the age limit. There was no job open to a middleaged man that would let him live in the manner to which he was accustomed. Besides the expenses of rent, food, clothing and transport, which everyone had to meet, he had additional necessities to budget for. He was a heavy smoker. He was a hardened drinker. And sometimes he bought paperbacks and even a book in hard covers. These indulgences were not to be gained on a scavenger’s wages.

  He suffered an unwanted memory of the way Gerald ambled into the classroom that morning wearing new jeans and an old smirk. A spasm of undiluted hatred convulsed his guts and pained his sour face. His long lean body shuddered. He knew the emotion was unworthy of a cultured man like himself. But it was there. A glow of shame as well as hate warmed his forehead.