than the man in the job. He had read more widely. He had written prose and verse for the university magazine when he was a student. For a session he had been the magazine’s most distinguished poet. He had his collection of unpublished poems behind him, and he kept up with modern poetry. Given the chance he knew he could inspire some good boys in fifth and sixth year with his own abiding love for literature. But the Principal Teacher of English, a portly man prematurely bald and Deputy Head Master, was just a dunce who had never written a poem in his life. He was only a teaching-machine during school hours, and outside them he was a non-smoker and teetotaller who read nothing.
Gerry had no loose change when it came his turn to make a donation to the begging composition. He shrugged, shook his head, and put his pencil-cigar back in his mouth.
Mr Alfred let it pass. He was thinking of the year he had to give up his honours course and settle for an ordinary degree. It was all because his father died suddenly and his mother mourned so much she became a bit unbalanced. He qualified quickly to get a job and bring some money into the house. Then his mother went and died too. If they had only lived another couple of years it would have made all the difference to his status. To his prospects of promotion. To his salary. To the classes he was given.
These cogitations on his misfortune occupied the back of his mind while the front went on soliciting sentences for the oral composition. A yelp from the pubescent anthropoid beside Gerry pulled the emergency cord that stopped both trains. He stared at the startled animal.
‘Hey sir, Provan stuck a pin into me.’
‘Aw sir, I never,’ Gerry declared.
Innocence and indignation sparkled in the young blue eyes.
Mr Alfred walked slowly across the room, stood over them both, glowered down, textbook canted.
‘Show me,’ he ordered Gerry.
‘It’s only a safety-pin,’ said Gerald.
He opened his fist and showed it.
‘It doesn’t seem to have been very safe,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘What were you doing with it?’
‘Taking it out my pocket,’ said Gerry.
‘Why?’ said Mr Alfred.
‘My braces is broke,’ said Gerry. ‘I was going to try and sort them.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Mr Alfred.
‘And McLetchie went and shoved his arm into me,’ said Gerry. ‘You see, I had the pin opened, sir.’
He lolled back, smiling up.
‘Wipe that smile off your silly face,’ said Mr Alfred.
Gerry raised an open hand to his face and drew it down over his nose and mouth. Took the hand away to reveal a straight face. The bland insolence of the obedience provoked Mr Alfred. He smacked Gerry across the nape. He knew at once he shouldn’t have done it. But he damned the consequences. It would soon be time for the peace of a pub-crawl. He sketched an itinerary and wondered if he should go and see Stella again or leave her alone for a bit.
Gerry rubbed the offended neck and drew back from any further attack though none was threatened. Cowering he shouted.
‘You’re not supposed to use you hands. I’ll bring my maw up.’
‘Bring your granny too,’ said Mr Alfred.
‘Ya big messan,’ said Gerry.
‘You cheeky little rat,’ said Mr Alfred, and smacked him again where he had smacked him before.
‘I’ll tell my maw you called me a rat,’ said Gerry.
He crouched over his desk, sullenly puffing the forbidden pencil again.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Mr Alfred. ‘Take that thing out of your mouth. Anybody would think you were a sucking infant.’
‘Oh!’ Gerry cried in delight. ‘What you said! Wait till I tell my maw.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The Weavers Lane was a good venue for a fight. Not far from the entrance it changed direction sharply, and twenty yards on it veered again before turning to the exit. Whatever went on between the zig and the zag couldn’t be seen from either end. To make it still more suitable the centre stretch had a recess of stony soil where some dockens and dandelions maintained a squalid existence.
On one side of the lane: the back walls of Kennedy’s soap factory, McLaren’s garage, and Donaldson’s paint- works. On the other: the palisade of the railway embankment.
But the fight was a flop. Gerry saw at once where he had gone wrong. He had matched a warmonger with a pacifist. In a minute it was no contest. McKay hit Duthie once, an uppercut wildly off target. Duthie reeled against the spectators. They shoved him back into the ring. He stumbled forward a couple of steps and stopped with his head down and his hands across his face, patiently waiting the next blow. Disgusted at the lack of style in his opponent McKay pushed rather than punched him and Duthie fell down. He lay there. He seemed to think he had done his bit and that was the show over. Gerry was annoyed.
‘Get up and fight!’ he shouted. ‘You’re yellow!’
To encourage Duthie to rise he kicked him three or four times in the ribs. He made it clear he had a great contempt for Duthie. But Duthie gave no sign of caring about anybody’s opinion. He sprawled raniform in defeat and croaked upon an ugly docken. The happy boys and girls, four deep all the way round, jeered at his abjection.
Gerry sighed.
Duthie lay still, waiting and willing for death or the end of the world to come and release him from his agony. Neither event occurred at that particular moment, but his salvation came along in the shape of Granny Lyons, famous locally for the health and vigour of her old age. She used the Weavers Lane every day as a shortcut between her house and the shops, and she was never one to emulate the Levite if she saw a creature in distress. She broke the ring of fight-fans with a swing of her shopper, hoisted Duthie to his feet, and shook him alive again.
‘You stupid wee fool! You should keep out of fights.’
Duthie wept.
‘A skelf like you,’ Granny Lyons comforted him. ‘You’re no match for McKay. Oh, I know him all right. And I know that Provan there too. Some bloody widow, that one’s mother.’
The dispersed mob reformed at a goodly distance.
‘Hey missis!’ Gerry called out pleasantly. ‘Yer knickers is hingin doon.’
He was hiding behind Jamieson and Crawford, and between the phrases he ducked from a shoulder of the one to an elbow of the other.
Granny Lyons measured them all with blazing eyes.
They retreated under her fire.
‘Scum,’ said Granny Lyons.
She paused, swinging her shopper, thinking.
‘Human rubbish,’ she shouted, and went on her
