by George Friel
Savage said nothing.
‘Where did you get this money?’ Mr Daunders asked wheedlingly. ‘Come on, you’ll save a lot of time, and save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me the truth. Where did you get it?’
‘Wee Noddy gave it to me to keep for him,’ Savage answered. He was quick in his own way. He knew it was safe to mention Noddy, because Noddy wouldn’t give anything away. He couldn’t, because he couldn’t speak. To tell about the cellar was far beyond Noddy’s powers of speech.
‘Who?’ said Mr. Daunders, just as unwilling to admit he knew nicknames as to admit he knew Maverick.
‘Nicky Mann,’ said Savage, ‘in Jasper’s class.’
‘In whose class?’ Mr Daunders asked gently. He knew quite well who Jasper was. He had often commented on the amazing knack schoolboys had for giving a teacher a nickname. Jasper was an admirable name for the blue- jowled, villainous-looking young man with the lock of jet- black hair always falling over his right eye.
‘Mr Whiffen’s,’ said Savage. ‘Nicky Mann in Mr Whiffen’s class.’
‘Oh no!’ Mr Daunders groaned, his compulsive act of judicial ignorance over. He had to face it.
‘I’m keeping this money,’ he said. ‘Send Mann to me.’
He knew he had blundered the moment Savage crossed the door. He should have kept Savage incommunicado and had someone else fetch Noddy. But he was tired. Tired of evasive, deceitful, dirty-faced schoolboys. He had another spasm of longing for his retirement and his Horace.
Noddy arrived, briefly but efficiently warned by Savage, and Mr Daunders knew he was beaten before he started.
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
‘But he says you gave him it,’ said Mr Daunders.
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
‘Where did you get it?’ asked Mr Daunders.
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
‘Are you saying Savage is telling lies then?’ Mr Daunders asked.
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
‘Well, where do you think Savage got it?’ Mr Daunders asked.
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
‘You’re not answering my question,’ Mr Daunders said.
‘Just listen to me. Now—’
‘I never,’ said Noddy.
Mr Daunders gave in. He had to admit it was impossible to get a statement from a boy who was inarticulate, but that was only what Savage had seen before him.
He kept the four pound notes, though he wasn’t happy about it. He insisted on seeing Savage’s parents, but it was no use. They never answered his letter inviting them to call, for Savage made sure he got his hands on it first. The loss of the money didn’t bother him, he had plenty more. He was more concerned to keep his father out of it.
Mrs Mann was no help either. Noddy told her no more than he told Mr Daunders, and she was too cautious to claim the money. She had a nose. So had Mr Daunders.
‘It smells very fishy to me,’ he told his chief assistant, a superior person from a Border family with the double- barrelled name of Baillie-Hunter. ‘There seems to be a lot of money floating round this school just now. Miss Nairn told me she found McGillicuddy with a pound note inside his reader. He was apparently using it as a book- mark.’
‘He always reminds me of those odd mountains in Ireland,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter, sniffing languidly. ‘McGillicuddy’s Reeks.’
‘He does smell a little,’ Mr Daunders conceded. ‘You see, they never wash all over, and they sleep in their shirt, these boys.’
‘And McCutcheon had money last week,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter.
‘Yes, Mr Whiffen caught him passing a ten-shilling note to Morrison when they were supposed to be doing their sums,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘And Miss McIvory found out Somerled was paying McIntosh and Crombie five bob a week each to do his homework for him. One of them did his arithmetic and the other did his grammar. There he was, getting his homework right every time and couldn’t get a thing right in class. The deceit was as gross as a mountain, open, palpable. They’ve no craft, these boys. His mother was up to see me only yesterday. Quite cross because I hadn’t approved him for a full senior secondary course. She wanted to argue he was a clever boy. Always got his homework right. She damn soon changed her tune when I showed her his dictation book. Forty, fifty and sixty errors in dictations of less than a hundred words.’
‘Oh, we could never send him to a senior secondary school,’ said Mr Baillie-Hunter, appalled. ‘Why, he doesn’t even know his tables.’
‘Ah, they’re a great lot!’ Mr Daunders sighed. ‘I don’t know what I did to be sent here as headmaster in my declining years. I might as well be in the CID, the things I’ve got to investigate. And what am I to do about this four pound? It isn’t mine, and I’m damn sure it isn’t Savage’s. Do you think they could be selling what they steal? There’s a sort of gang there, you know, Savage – he’s the ring-leader, I’m sure – and Noddy and Cuddy and Cutchy and Somerled. Wherever you find trouble in this school you find they’re mixed up in it.’
‘What about Tosh and Crumbs?’ Mr Baillie-Hunter asked.
‘No, they’re not in it,’ Mr Daunders was sure. ‘They’re just a couple of sycophants. Anyway, Somerled was paying them. He wouldn’t be paying them if they were in the gang. They would have their share of whatever money’s going. Whatever it comes from.’
‘Gambling?’ suggested Mr Baillie-Hunter.
‘I hardly think so. What kind of odds with the money a schoolboy has would let Savage win four pounds?’
Mr Baillie-Hunter finished his mid-morning coffee with his headmaster and returned to his class for a poetry lesson. He was reading to them ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’ and acting it well, changing his voice to be the chief of Ulva’s isle, the boatman and Lord Ullin, and even the raging storm itself. He ended solemnly in a good rolling Scotch voice.
’Twas vain! The loud waves lashed the shore,
Return or aid preventing.
The waters wild went o’er his child,
And he was left lamenting.
He indicated the rise and fall of the waves by an undulation of his right hand, and in the sorrowful hush that followed his dramatic reading he looked round the class with gratification. He knew he had a good delivery, and he found a certain pleasure in giving such a touching rendering of corny ballads that children were thrilled to unshed tears. He expected to see here and there a hand furtively brushing a wet eye. Then he exploded at the dry- eyed inattention of a boy in the back row.
A minute later he barged into Mr Daunder’s room and slapped down a dozen or so bits of paper on the headmaster’s desk.
‘I just found Wedderburn playing with – with these,’ he gulped, agonized.
‘What are they?’ said Mr Daunders, putting the stock book aside. He had an annual return to make to the office, and he was puzzled to see the stock book showing him as having a piano more on hand than he thought he had. For any other item he would have balanced the discrepancy in the usual way by putting ‘i’ under the ‘Consumed’ column, but he wasn’t sure he could properly claim to have consumed a piano.
‘They’re bits of a five-pound note,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter moaned. ‘All the bits! Wedderburn was playing with them.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ Mr Daunders breathed devoutly, a pious ejaculation for divine assistance, his elbow on his desk, his brow on his hand, the stock book and the mysterious extra piano forgotten.
‘He was doing it as a jig-saw puzzle,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter complained miserably. ‘You see, it’s all there! Somebody has cut it in little pieces. You see how clever it is.’
He fitted two or three of the geometric fragments together. ‘It was just a jig-saw to Wedderburn, it wasn’t money, it was a puzzle. He says he found it inside his poetry book. You see, I don’t let them keep their poetry books. I give them out when I take poetry. So anybody could have left them there if he’s telling the truth. And he knows we can’t prove he isn’t.’
‘We’ll have to get to the botto
m of this,’ Mr Daunders muttered, and rubbed his palm wearily across his aching eyes. ‘This can’t go on. Ten-shilling notes, pound notes, a five-pound note. Where is it going to end?’
He brooded.
‘Yes, as I told you, I’ve got a very strong feeling there’s too much money floating around this school. Do you know, I’ve had about a dozen parents up lately. Complaining. Their children can’t sleep at night, or when they do they have nightmares. And they’re off their food. They seem to think Jasper’s frightening the weans. Then they say, “Oh it must be all these sweeties they’re eating between meals.” But they can’t tell me where the money’s coming from to buy sweets to that extent. They talk as if it was my job to stop them eating sweets!’
He brooded again.
‘Garson!’ he cried, slapping his desk so hard that the phone tinkled for a moment or two. ‘I’ve got it. Garson knows the answer.’
‘Garson wouldn’t be mixed up in anything dishonest,’ Mr Baillie-Hunter objected indignantly. ‘Garson’s a good boy. He grasped decimals right away.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Mr Daunders. ‘But he’s in on this money epidemic I’m sure. That’s why Savage gave him a beating. Garson knows where all this money’s coming from, and he was going to talk. I’ll make him talk all right! You get him in here now.’
But Garson wouldn’t talk. He still believed that what Percy was doing was wrong, he was still afraid a day of reckoning must come, and he still wanted no part of it. But he was quite clear in his own mind that the discovery of the hoard would never come through him. He had his own code. He was loyal. Loyalty was all that was left to him, even though it was loyalty to a gang that had never completely accepted him. He was worried about Percy most of all. He believed Percy should have taken his side against Savage and not been so neutral, but he still loved him. Percy was the leader and the organizer. He was the eldest. Whoever had to pay one day, Percy would have to pay most. And he wasn’t going to have Percy’s punishment on his conscience. Since it had to come sooner or later let it come later, through the inevitable gathering of circumstance, not because of any words he ever spoke. He had been long prepared to cope with an interrogator who knew much more than Mr Daunders.
‘Now you didn’t just fight about nothing,’ Mr Daunders kept at him, stubbornly drilling through his stony silence. ‘Something must have started it. Tell me what it was.’
Garson recognized it was time to answer. His fingertips went to the bruised and swollen bone under his eye.
‘It was a private matter,’ he said.
‘How private?’ Mr Daunders asked. ‘You can surely tell me. I’m trying to help you.’
‘My family,’ said Garson, warmed to a confidence by the old man’s kind wheedling voice.
‘What do you mean, your family?’ Mr Daunders pushed at him.
‘He-he-he insulted my mother,’ Garson answered, his rosy cheeks rosier, his engaging stammer appearing for a moment. ‘So I hit him and he hit me back, and we-we-we started to fight. It was a fair fight.’
‘I see,’ Mr Daunders murmured, as embarrassed as the boy. He felt he had blundered. He should have known better than to go on once Garson mentioned his family. You never knew what scandals you were going to stumble on if you asked too many questions about a boy’s family in this school. He remembered the muddle he had failed to sort out when he tried to discover why a boy was called Addison, his mother was called Mrs Mappin, and the man she was living with, whose name was on the doorplate, was called Tanner. Mr Tanner called one morning after it was proposed to send Addison to a special school, a school for the mentally handicapped, and Mr Daunders tactfully queried his relationship to the boy.
‘Oh, I’m one of his parents,’ Mr Tanner answered lightly. ‘In a sort of way, you see.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Daunders, wondering who Mr Mappin was if there ever was one, and what had happened to Mr Addison.
The trivial incident had been a lesson to him, but he still felt he should probe Garson. He still felt there was more to the fight with Garson than a schoolboy’s routine insult to a classmate’s parent. He remained convinced Savage was afraid of what Garson knew and had given him a beating to keep him quiet. He believed if he kept on asking questions he would come to the real sore, distinct from the wound about an insulted mother though perhaps connected with it.
‘And what did he say about your mother that annoyed you so much?’ he tried.
Garson looked at him and trembled with a strange pity. The man seemed to want to be shocked. He surrendered. He would repeat just what he had suffered and let this grown-up suffer too. Why should he bear the cruelty of the world alone? But he couldn’t use Savage’s words. He answered in the book-English a bright Scots schoolboy uses when he talks respectfully to his teachers.
‘He accused my mother of eloping with a Negro,’ he said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Daunders sadly. He knew a dead-end when he came to it. But he couldn’t stop worrying away like a dog at a bone. He turned the topic over and attacked it another way.
‘You’re sure it wasn’t because you knew something about Savage that he doesn’t want anyone else to know?’
For all its directness the question missed the target. Garson certainly felt guilty about the money, but the money meant Percy and the whole Brotherhood, not specifically Savage. He answered with a candour that was totally convincing because it was genuine.
‘I don’t know anything about Savage.’
‘He’s not afraid of anything you know?’
That came a little nearer. Garson was uneasy for a moment. He wondered if Old Daundy could possibly have got on to the money in the cellar. He put the idea away. If he knew about the money in the cellar he wouldn’t be wasting time asking a lot of silly questions. As for the question just put to him, he couldn’t see why Savage should be afraid of him when the rest of the Brotherhood knew all he knew. Surely Savage knew he would keep the oath as faithfully as the rest of them.
‘There’s nothing I know that other folk don’t know,’ he answered carefully. ‘Savage has no reason to be afraid of me.’
Mr Daunders let him go, but unwillingly. He felt he had neared the brink of the abyss where the mystery was buried.
It was a day of interrogation for Garson. His father started too after their silent evening meal together. From the casual way he spoke the boy guessed he had been thinking about it all day.
‘You never told me what you were fighting about anyway. What started it?’
What made grown-ups ask questions they wouldn’t like to hear answered, the boy wondered. He had had enough. If he could tell Mr Daunders he could tell his father. It was only right people should get what they asked for.
‘Savage said my mother ran away with a darkie,’ he said sullenly, and waited for it, ready to cower. And indeed his father’s hand went up before the words were fully spoken. The boy moved round the kitchen table to safety. His father put his hand back in his pocket and let him be.
‘That’s not true,’ he said walking from the kitchen sink to the kitchen door and back again, rubbing his nose, rubbing his lips.
The boy watched him alertly and waited.
‘It’s not true,’ his father repeated. ‘That’s gossip. I know what they say. But it’s not true. Your mother didn’t run away with anybody.’
‘What did she do?’ the boy demanded, his battered face twisted to choke the tears that the memory of Savage’s taunt brought back to his eyes. ‘Why is she not here?’
‘Aye, as far as you’re concerned she just disappeared,’ his father muttered, still walking up and down, still rubbing his face and thrusting his fingers through his hair in a private misery. ‘That’s all I know myself.’
‘Why?’ said the boy, determined to keep at it. He was going to find out something he wanted to know, he was sure of it. People had asked him too many questions. It was his turn.
‘Because she – because she wouldn’t do what I told her,’ said his father. He was starte
d, his tongue was loosened after years of silence. He had to tell himself now, not just his son. ‘She took a job on the buses. She was a conductress. I didn’t want her to. But I let her do it because she said she needed the money for new this and new that. I don’t know what the hell she didn’t want. She wanted new curtains, that was all to begin with. Just work for a wee while, she said. Then she wanted a washing-machine, then she wanted a television, then she wanted a fridge. It was going to go on for ever. I told her to stop. Her place was in the house. But oh no, her place was wherever she liked. She liked being out working. The house was just dull, she was nobody’s skivvy. She was going to go on working just as long as it pleased her. I ordered her. A man’s the head of his own family. But she wouldn’t obey me.’
‘You sent her away!’ the boy saw the truth of it, and he was gripped by a hatred of his father’s masculine authority.
‘I told her to come back into the house or leave the house,’ his father admitted.
‘And where does the darkie come in?’ the boy asked, feeling a black cloud between himself and his father.
‘There’s no darkie,’ said his father wearily, resting from his walking up and down and standing with his hands wide apart on the kitchen table as he looked across at his bitter son with unhappy eyes. ‘Your mother’s driver was a West Indian, that was all. She was always on the same shift with him. They got on but that was all. He’s been in this house since your mother went away. He tried to help. He’s got his own wife and family. She never ran away with him. That’s nonsense. People said that because they were pals but it’s not true. Any conductress on the buses is pally with her driver.’
‘But you must know where she is,’ the boy complained. Now the darkie was explained he didn’t matter. What mattered was that his mother had been allowed to stay away. ‘You could find out easily enough. You could find her depot and get her address.’
‘She changed her depot.’
‘You could find out.’
‘I’m not going to run after anybody,’ his father shouted. ‘She made her choice. She wants to work, well, she can work. If she wouldn’t agree her place is here, then this is no place for her.’
