for him, to avenge him. His brain was in a mist of pity. But he had sworn never to have favourites in the Brotherhood because that would only cause strife and jealousy. He swallowed his loving anguish for the unfriended boy till the bitterness of it made him grue. Then he spoke out harshly, shaking Garson as he had shaken Savage.
‘What do you want to go starting fights for? You know damn fine you’re no’ a match for Sheuchie Savage, ye wee fool!’
Garson suffered the shaking patiently as long as it lasted, and the moment he was released he turned and went away. The mob opened an alley for him and let him pass along without a whisper of sympathy or a hand raised to console him with a pat on the back, and he went off shaking his head as if Percy’s large hand was still at his collar.
‘Ye’re a horde of ruffians!’ Percy cried in exasperation, feeling he had let Garson down but not knowing what else he could have done.
‘Yous that was watching and made no attempt to stop it, yous are just as bad as Savage, only worse. We’ve got all this – all this—’
He paused and the Adam’s apple in his scraggy neck moved up and down, but it was a crisis to him and he had to say it.
‘All this money. Aye, all this money. Yous know damn well what I mean. We’ve got all this money and yous canny live in peace. I give yous up! Come on, get away home all of yous! Scram! Come on, run, run, run! Every one of yous, beat it!’
Normally the false plural slipped from him only now and again. He had learned it was wrong, and he was trying hard to stop using it. But he was too angry to think of his grammar.
He waved his gang away with open hands like a farmer’s wife shooing hens, and those on the ground dispersed slowly, resenting his command to run, and those on the roof of the air-raid shelters jumped down and mixed guiltily with their brethren. In a few moments Percy was all alone in the waste land.
‘Hate!’ he muttered unhappily. ‘It’s only brought hate. Those two hate each other. It could have made them so happy if they would only be reasonable. I should have made them make it up before wee Frankie went away. I should have made them shake hands and be friends. It’s an awful job, making yourself responsible for folks that hasn’t been brought up to what’s right.’
CHAPTER NINE
Mr Garson was a lonely man, a dour man. He wasn’t given to complaining and he suffered many daily injustices rather than make a fuss, but when he came home from the garage that evening and saw his son’s black eye and puffed lips he was just a little bit angry. He was willing to take it as natural that boys should fight now and again, but this hadn’t been a fight, it looked more like assault and battery. He wanted to know what had happened, but he couldn’t get anything out of the boy, so he shook him by the shoulder in an impatient attempt to make him speak. The boy winced and yelped.
‘Take your shirt off,’ said Mr Garson sharply. He hadn’t grasped him all that roughly, there was no need for such a cry of pain unless the damage was as great elsewhere as it was on the face. He suspected it was, and he wanted to make sure.
Garson stripped grudgingly to the waist, embarrassed to be half-naked in the kitchen under the glowering eye of his unfriendly father. His shoulders were bruised, and his flanks were black and blue where Savage had kicked him.
‘You tell me who did that to you or I’ll give you worse,’ said Mr Garson, quite cold.
The boy would have told him gladly if he had been thawed by a warm sympathy, he would have enjoyed weeping out the name if he had been consoled and pitied, but the cold threat froze him.
‘I’m warning you,’ said Mr Garson with a frightening sincerity, ‘You’d better tell me.’
The boy had a brief fantasy of his father fighting Savage’s father to avenge the family honour, but he knew that was absurd. His father was too proud even to speak to Savage’s father, far less fight him in the back-court or the waste land. Nor would he rush out to look for Savage and smack his ear. That was just as absurd. He just wanted to know for the sake of knowing. All right then, why shouldn’t he tell? He kept his silence for a little longer till he didn’t feel quite so frozen inside and then he told.
Mr Garson took time off from the garage on Monday morning and went to the school. He didn’t know what he wanted exactly, he certainly didn’t want vengeance, but he did want to make a protest and get some kind of assurance it wouldn’t happen again. He thought he was likelier to get that from the headmaster than from the parents. Mr Daunders promised to look into it, he offered to have Savage brought in right away and invited Mr Garson to remain and see the boy for himself. Mr Garson said he would rather not.
‘So long as you promise me to make sure he gets a lesson, I’ll leave it to you,’ he said respectfully. He was only a motor-mechanic, and he looked up to Mr Daunders as an educated man.
‘I’ll give him a lesson all right,’ Mr Daunders promised cordially. ‘We could do with more pupils like your boy, always clean and smart and industrious, but you see every school has its Savages and that’s what makes our job so difficult. It’s one long struggle against the jungle here.’
They parted at the door of the headmaster’s room, both talking at once in polite expression of mutual trust.
‘I’ll leave him to you,’ said Mr Garson.
‘You can safely leave him to me,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘I wish we had more decent parents like you, Mr Garson.’
He sent for Savage at once and lectured him on the immorality of bullying. For all his confident promises to Mr Garson he wasn’t sure of the best way to handle it. He was a good man, a reasonable man, unwilling to damn any boy till he had tried hard to save him. He saw little sense telling Savage it was wrong to think that the use of superior physical force was a good thing, and then going on to give him a lathering with a Lochgelly. It was the use of force he had to discredit. He spoke sternly but reasonably. He tried to make Savage see the dangers of living by jungle law. Savage slouched insolently, his black leather jerkin, with the zip unfastened, bulging out in front of his broad chest. He was a big boy, but Mr Daunders was a man. He looked down on him.
‘I’ve told you before not to wear that belt,’ he said severely, ‘Take it off. You don’t need it.’
Savage took off an Army webbing belt and rolled it in his hand. Many a fight he had won with it.
‘Where did you get that jacket, by the way?’ Mr Daunders asked curiously. He knew quality when he saw it, and he knew that Savage’s father could never afford the price of it. ‘I haven’t seen you wearing it before.’
‘My Granny bought me it,’ said Savage.
‘For your birthday?’ Mr Daunders asked, a vague memory of something he had heard before putting an ironic edge on his question.
‘ ’Sright,’ Savage nodded willingly, leering up as Mr Daunders looked down. He understood too late what the headmaster was staring at. The bulge of the jacket exposed the lining.
‘And what’s that you’ve got in there?’ Mr Daunders asked gently, simply gesturing to the lining of the jacket. He was too careful ever to touch a boy’s clothing.
Savage’s hand flashed to the four pound notes he had pinned inside the jacket that morning.
‘Let me see it,’ said Mr Daunders.
