Mavis Belfrage

by Alasdair Gray

  7

  The Forbes lived in the top flat of a spacious nineteenth-century tenement. Tom opened the front door and said pleasantly, “Hullo! So you both found your way here after all.”

  “Time has not blunted your acute powers of observation Tommy,” said McCrimmon strolling in with the teacher behind him.

  “Drop you coats in there,” said Tom pointing to a bedroom. “If you’re hungry there’s plenty to eat in the kitchen but I’m afraid the booze is running out.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” said McCrimmon grimly. A slender girl in jeans, checked blouse and open sheepskin coat stood within the bedroom door. McCrimmon paused and said to her on a note of gentle astonishment, “Hullo, long time no see. How are you getting on? Someone told me you were engaged. Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “I’m not engaged and I’m getting on quite well.”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “I don’t. I’m sorry,” said the girl. The teacher dropped his coat on a pile of coats on the bed, regretting his connection with McCrimmon. He was embarrassed by hearing him say, “Don’t apologize, I feel the same way. As soon as I saw your face I realized I’d known it for years though I’ve never met you before in my life. That gives us something to celebrate, eh? Let’s find where they’ve hidden the booze. I think you can help me with a couple of Sunday Times articles I’m taking pictures for.”

  “I can’t, I’m waiting for a friend.”

  “Bring her too. Bring him if he’s a boyfriend. Romance, not sex is what I’m after. Romance and glamour are the raw materials of my profession. Sex is a distraction. You are perfectly safe with me.”

  The teacher hurried into the lobby.

  Only a husband and wife who both earned professional wages could afford such a flat, thought the teacher enviously. The ceilings were over twice the height of those in his semi-detached council house. He peeped into a living-room which could have held his own living-room and the kitchen beside it and the two bedrooms and bathroom above. Politely chatting well-dressed people showed this was not a suddenly improvised party but one whose guests had been invited days, perhaps weeks before. The crippled teacher who had given him a lift sat by the fire talking with Jean so he recoiled into the lobby. Friday night is my night off, he had told her, I go into town and let the unexpected happen. If she saw him she would know he had gatecrashed. At the end of a short corridor he found a kitchen where chatting couples and trios were so tightly packed that a lonely man was not noticeable. Filling a plate with salad and cold meat he stood eating with a fork in a corner by a refrigerator. Again voices pressed painfully in on him.

  “It’s a good wee car. It’s not a great wee car but it’s not a bad wee car. Anyway it suits me.”

  “Take it easy. Let yourself go. What use is worrying? That’s my philosophy.”

  “I said you’ve stopped trying. You’ve let yourself go. You’re sliding to the bottom I told him, but you aren’t going to take me with you.”

  These did not shut out earlier voices.

  “You need talent to enjoy the dolce vita.”

  “He never starts anything. He waits until someone else suggests something then hangs about hoping to be included.”

  “Ye big fat stupit wet plaster ye!”

  “I could have belted him if I’d wanted to,” thought the teacher unhappily then a sound recalled him wholly to the present. Through a lull in surrounding talk came the pure voice of a singer: “I never will marry, I’ll be no man’s wife, I have vowed to be single, All the days of my life.” He set down the plate and went toward the music.

  In a dim room next door a dozen people sat or squatted on the carpet listening to a plain stout woman of forty or fifty who sat on a sofa under a standard lamp. With hands folded on lap she sang of hopeless love, sudden death and failed endeavour, sang so sweetly, quietly and firmly that the teacher felt her singing was the one truly good thing he had met that day and for many days. He was grateful. He was even grateful to Plenderleith who sat by the singer striking quiet harmonious chords on a guitar. She sang Barbara Allan, The Bonnie Earl of Murray, Henry Martin then coughed, blew out her cheeks and said, “That’s all tonight folks.”

  The audience did not move. A girl begged, “One more?”

  “Right, a short one. Bonnie George Campbell … Don’t try to accompany this,” she told Plenderleith and sang,

  “High in the Highlands and low upon Tay,

  Bonnie George Campbell rode out on a day,

  Saddled and bridled and gallant rade he,

  Hame cam his guid horse, but never cam he.”

  During the last verse the teacher was gripped by an audacious notion which made him tremble with excitement.

  “Doon cam his auld mither greetin’ fu sair,

  Doon cam his bonny bride rivin’ her hair –

  ‘My meadow’s unreaped and uncut is my corn,

  My barn is unfilled and my babe is unborn.’ Now give me something to drink because my belly thinks my throat’s cut,” said the singer. There was a murmur of laughter and applause and someone handed her a glass of wine. The teacher hurried over to Plenderleith and said urgently, “Do you remember On Duty, Plendy?”

  “Eh?”

  “On Duty – A Tale of the Crimea. I sang it on the staff outing to Largs.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to sing it now. Vamp along with me will you? It’s an easy tune – dee dum dum dum dumpty, dee dum dum dum dum – you can do it.”

  Plenderleith looked thoughtfully at the teacher for a moment then shrugged and said, “All right.”

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” cried the teacher loudly, “ladies and gentlemen I don’t know who the last singer was but we must all agree she was splendid! Wonderful! Sublime! But she sang nothing very patriotic, did she? So it is now both my duty and my pleasure to give you a rendition of that popular patriotic ballad, On Duty – A Tale of the Crimea. Would someone near the door switch on the ceiling light? This ballad goes better without moody lighting. Thank you! Here it comes – On Duty – A Tale of the Crimea.”

  Standing to attention like a soldier on parade he sang,

  “The place was the Crimea, the year fifty-four,

  When passions had unleashed the demon of war…”

  Most of the audience were rising to leave when he made his announcement but paused to hear the start of the song. It glorified the charge of the Light Brigade, in such melodramatic clichés that the teacher’s Marxist uncle had amused family gatherings by singing it with an appearance of solemnity. Nobody here seemed to understand the joke, no matter how rigidly the teacher stood and how loudly he sang in the dialect of an English officer, so he changed to a London cockney dialect. Halfway through the second verse his only audience was an old smiling man in an easy chair and the former singer. When the teacher faltered into silence the old man said, “Go on! You’re doing fine!”

  Nursing the glass of wine on her lap the singer said kindly, “Don’t worry son, it happens to all of us sometimes. It’s happened to me.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry,” said the teacher, “I’m very sorry.” He went to a sideboard and stood with hands in pockets staring at a framed print of van Gogh sunflowers. He would have liked to flee through the lobby and out of the house but dreaded coming face to face with another human being. Noticing Plenderleith beside him he muttered, “Sorry about that. I’m no use, you know.”

  “Have a nut,” said Plenderleith offering a dish of salted peanuts. The teacher took and nibbled some.

  “What are you no use at?” asked Plenderleith. The teacher brooded on this, sighed and said, “I envy Tony McCrimmon.”

  “Why?”

  “He enjoys life. He appreciates himself.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “He talks too loud.”

  “I know what you mean. Yes, he blusters and bullies and ignores people’s feelings but, well, I think he’s entitled to do that. He’s made something of
himself. He’s a talented photographer.”

  “He’s a rotten photographer.”

  “But he works for the Sunday Times!”

  “A year ago they used one or two of his photographs, that’s all,” said Plenderleith between crunching on peanuts. “When he first landed in London he bluffed his way into one or two worthwhile commissions – they were never renewed. People soon saw through him. Of course he drinks like a fish, which doesn’t help. Have another nut.”

  The teacher stared at him blankly then nodded and hurried from the room.

  He found McCrimmon in the crowded living-room talking to a blonde girl in a very short black dress and fish-net stockings. He had backed her into a corner and was saying in exasperated tones, “I am not asking you to do it nude. You wouldn’t need to wear less than, shall we say, the briefest of brief bikinis!”

  “I’m not interested!” said the girl. “Get it into your head that I don’t want to talk about it, let alone do it!”

  “Tony,” said the teacher.

  “But there’s money in it,” cried McCrimmon, “big money! You’re the type they go for…”

  “Excuse us Tony,” said Jean walking round him and placing an arm on the girl’s shoulder. “Rita, there’s somebody over here who wants a private word with you. Sorry Tony.”

  She led the girl away.

  “My God,” said McCrimmon turning and surveying the room with disgust, “what a party. Cheap food, no booze and the most frigid women I’ve met in my life.”

  “Tony,” said the teacher.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to buy that film from you.”

  “What film?”

  “The film in that camera –” (McCrimmon still wore his overcoat with the gear of his profession hung from the shoulders) “– the film with the photos of my granny and grampa in it.”

  “You do not understand photography, son. I own the copyright of everything I take. In the course of time I will send you a sheet of contact prints from which you may select those you would like which I will then enlarge. But remember this, it won’t be cheap.”

  “That’s not what I asked you to do. I said I would pay you to photograph my granny and grampa. You did it and now I want the film.”

  “I don’t get this!” said McCrimmon shaking his head. “You make me photograph your old folk – make them sit for me – then without a word of explanation you ask for the undeveloped film!”

  “No. I’m telling you to sell me the undeveloped film. Here and now! At once!”

  McCrimmon turned his back and shouldered his way into the lobby saying, “Sorry son, you cannae afford it.”

  “Hand that film over Tony,” cried the teacher, following.

  “I get it! You’re jealous!” said McCrimmon facing him again. “You’re jealous like all the others. You cannae see someone do something original and artistic without wanting to throw your own miserable wee brick at it. Your trouble, Jimmy, is your totally third-rate mind …”

  “You’re a liar McCrimmon,” said the teacher feeling his face get hot and speaking with a voice which grew suddenly huge, “a liar, a bully, a boaster, a phony and a failure! What could be more third-rate than you? – You drunken idiot!”

  He glared at McCrimmon and in the silence which followed knew many were watching him and that he had never spoken so nastily to a human being before, not even to the worst of his pupils. His muscles were tensed for a fight but McCrimmon replied with unexpected dignity.

  “You’re wrong. I may be a failure and drunkard and … and other things but I am not third-rate. Second-rate yes, all right, but not third-rate. At least I’ve tried to get out of the rut. I failed, true. You havenae even tried.”

  “The film Tony,” said the teacher implacably. “Give it me.”

  “No.”

  McCrimmon moved away. The teacher seized and jerked the strap of the camera case. It broke. With the case swinging from the strap in one hand the teacher hurried down the lobby fumbling for the lid with the other. Roaring horribly McCrimmon leapt after him and grabbed him low from behind in a rugby tackle. The camera slid out of the case and hit the floor with a sharp crack as the teacher fell face down behind it with McCrimmon on top. There was a hubbub of voices. The weight on the teacher’s back was removed. Kneeling up he saw McCrimmon also kneeling, held back by men grasping each arm. Without lifting the camera the teacher opened it, pulled out the film, exposed it, dropped it and stood up, breathing heavily. Everyone looked at McCrimmon. He seemed so horrified that his captors, feeling him harmless, let him go. He crawled to the camera and lifted it with something like the unbelief of a mother lifting a dead baby. In a faint female falsetto he crooned, “Broke. My camera. Oh and it wasnae insured, it wasnae insured.” He wept.

  The teacher found Tom Forbes beside him saying, “Here’s your coat.”

  “Thanks.”

  They went to the front door. Tom opened it. The teacher paused a moment and slid his arms into the sleeves saying, “I’m sorry about all this …”

  “Just go home to your wife, Jimmy. Good night.”

  “Good night. See you on Monday …”

  The door closed behind him.

  8

  The time was eighteen minutes past midnight. At one a.m. buses left Glasgow’s central square for the suburbs but rather than wait for one the teacher walked five or six miles along Sauchiehall Street, Parliamentary Road and Alexandra Parade: thoroughfares of shops and tenements which in twenty years would be reshaped, shrunk or abolished by pedestrianization and a motorway system. But the teacher was thinking of the recent past. Since his last class became unruly that afternoon it had all been disastrous. The only action he did not regret was the exposure of McCrimmon’s film.

  “No more nights off for me,” he thought. “No more nights off for me.”

  He also resolved to visit his grandparents again tomorrow, or on Sunday, or perhaps the following weekend. There came a fall of rain so slight that he hardly noticed it until he saw privet hedges round the Carntyne gardens glittering under the street lamps. He may not have felt exactly like Ulysses landing on the coast of Ithaca but while turning the key of his front door and quietly entering years seemed to have passed since he left for work that morning.

  In the living-room his wife, who disliked going to bed alone, lay dozing on a sofa before the fire. Opening her eyes she smiled and said, “Hullo.”

  He tried to smile back. She said, “Bad?”

  “Bad.”

  “Worse than last week?”

  “Aye.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “The whole day went wrong. I’ll tell you tomorrow. How’s the lad?”

  “Not a cheep from him.”

  “Next week,” said the teacher watching himself in a mirror above the mantelpiece, “I’ll be thirty-four.”

  “You poor pathetic middle-aged soul,” said his wife standing up and laughing and leaning on his shoulder.

  “Has that been worrying you?”

  “A bit. Let’s have a keek at him.”

  They went quietly upstairs to a bedroom holding a child’s cot and switched on a low light in one corner. The cot contained a not quite two-year-old child soundly sleeping. His snub-nosed head with mouth pouting like a bird’s blunt beak was larger than a baby’s head but still babyish. On the coverlet lay a plastic duck, his mother’s hairbrush and a small red motor car. The teacher bent to kiss him but was restrained by his wife’s hand. She switched the light out and they tiptoed to the room next door.

  Sitting on the bed he unlaced and removed his shoes saying in a baffled voice, “You … and that wee boy in there … are the only worthwhile things I know.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “A man should have something more in life than his family. I used to think it would be my work but it isn’t my work. I don’t know what it is.”

  “I’ll help you look for it tomorrow,” said his wife gently rumpling his hair.


  “No use, I’ll never find it now,” he said, smiling at her in a way which showed he felt much better.

  “Perhaps wee Jimmy will find it.”

  “O yes,” he said yawning, “put it off for another generation.”

  “You need your bed my lad,” she said.

  They went to bed.

  Mister Goodchild

  “Nobody over fifty can tell where or how they’ll live a few months hence Mrs … Mrs?”

  “Dewhurst.”

  “Look at me, for instance. A year ago I was headmaster of a very good comprehensive school in Huddersfield. My wife made me take early retirement for the good of her health – not mine. She thought the warmer climate in the south would suit her so down to Berkshire we came. Fat lot of good that did. A fortnight after settling into the new house she died of a stroke. Since I do not intend to follow her example I will pause here for a few seconds Mrs … Mrs?”

  “Dewhurst. Let me carry that,” she said, pausing at a bend in the staircase.

  “No no!” he said putting a cumbersome suitcase down on a higher step without releasing the handle. “I was talking about losing my wife. Well my son has a garage with five men working under him in Bracknell. ‘Come and live with us, Dad,’ says he, ‘we’ve tons of room.’ Yes, they have. New house with half an acre of garden. Huge open-plan living-room with dining alcove. Five bedrooms no less, one for marital couple, one each for my two grandchildren, one for guests and one for poor old grandad. But poor old grandad’s bedroom is on the small side, hardly bigger than a cupboard and although I have retired from education I have not retired from public life. I am now ready to proceed – to continue proceeding – upward Mrs … Dewhurst.”

  They continued proceeding upward.

  “I edit the You See Monthly Bulletin, the newsletter of the Urban Conservation Fellowship and that requires both space and privacy. ‘Use the living-room!’ says my son, ‘it’s big enough. The kids are at school all day and if you work at the sun patio end Myra won’t disturb you.’ Myra did. How could I get a steady day’s work done in a house where lunch arrived any time between twelve and one? I didn’t complain but when I asked for a shelf in the fridge where I could keep my own food to make my own lunch she took it for a slight on her housekeeping. So this!” said Mr Goodchild putting the suitcase down, “is my fourth home since last September. I’m glad my things arrived.”