Mavis Belfrage (9 page)

“Does your wife take nights off?”

“She doesn't want them. Our son isn't quite two yet. But she doesn't mind me enjoying some freedom. She knows I won't get drunk, or waste money, or do anything stupid. My wife,” said the teacher as if making a puzzling discovery, “is a very
intelligent
woman.”

“It would seem so. Where will I drop you?”

“Anywhere near Sauchiehall Street. I'm going to the Delta tearoom.”

“I can easily drop you there. Several of our staff usually meet there after school don't they? Don't Jean and Tom Forbes?”

“Yes,” said the teacher defensively, “but others go there too – art students, and people who work in television and … journalists and … unconventional people like that. Interesting people.”

“Then it's very wise of you to go there too.”

He looked at her suspiciously. She said, “On your night off, I mean. I was an art student once. I felt wonderfully interesting in those days.”

In the Delta tearoom three of his colleagues sat round a table in silence punctuated by occasional remarks. They had talked hard to children all day so were partly resting their voices, partly easing them back into adult conversation. As the teacher approached he heard a bearded man called Plenderleith say, “and he never starts anything.”

“Mhm,” said Jean, a young woman who was pleasantly vivacious most of the day but not at quarter to five on Friday afternoons. Nearby her husband Tom swiftly, steadily corrected a stack of exercise books, underlining words, scribbling marginal comments and marks out of twenty. The teacher ordered a coffee, brooded for a while then asked Plenderleith, “Who were you talking about when I came in?”

“Jack Golspie.”

“Why did you say he never starts anything?”

“It's true. He waits until someone else suggests something then hangs about looking pathetic until he's included.”

“Mind you it isn't easy to start something, is it? When did you last do it?”

“I don't remember. I don't care. I was just telling Jean why Jack Golspie bored me.”

A waitress brought coffee. The teacher drank most of it before saying gloomily, “He bores me too.”

Tom Forbes marked his last essay, put the exercise
books in a briefcase and sat back with a sigh of relief. “It beats me how you can do that first thing after school on Friday,” said the teacher on his gloomy note. “Last thing on Sunday evening is as soon as I can manage.”

“From now onward no memory of schoolwork will disturb the evening's joy,” said Tom, yawning slightly.

“It's our wedding anniversary,” Jean explained.

“Congratulations!” said the teacher, truly pleased. “The first?”

“The first.”

“Splendid. How will you celebrate?”

“A dinner for two in the Rogano first,” said Tom, “then a party.”

“Definitely a party,” said Jean. The teacher looked hopefully from one to the other but they were exchanging smiles in a way which excluded him. He lapsed into mild depression again.

Suddenly Plenderleith muttered, “Hell.”

They looked at him.

“Tony McCrimmon,” he added.

“Has he seen us?” asked Jean looking down at her cup. “No doubt of it,” said Plenderleith grimly. “Here he comes, flaunting his regalia.”

The teacher saw a big black-moustached man with close-cropped hair approach. His bulk was emphasized by a thick overcoat with square shoulders from which shiny camera cases hung on straps.

“Hullo hullo hullo! Still here in the customary corner?” he said, sitting with them. “I was passing the old Delta tearoom and thought, five o'clock on Friday! Why not drop in and see if the old gang are in the customary
corner? So in I come and here you are.”

“That's nice of you, Tony,” said Jean gently.

“I think I know you. Or do I?” McCrimmon asked the teacher who found the question confusing.

“You don't,” Tom told McCrimmon jovially. “You went to London months before he joined us. But he's bound to know you. Who hasn't heard the name of Tony McCrimmon?”

The teacher, embarrassed, said, “Yes, I'm sure I've heard it but I can't exactly remember where or why.”

“Ahaw! Such is fame. I'm better known in Fleet Street and Soho than I'll ever be in my native land. Waitress, a coffee! Very hot, very black, very strong.”

“You're a journalist?” asked the teacher, interested.

“You're getting warm, son. Yes, I wield the old plume from time to time but my forte is the pictorial genre. You may have seen something of mine in the
Sunday Times
colour supplement a wee while ago:
Britain's Forgotten Royalty
. My work.”

“All of it, Tony?” Jean softly asked.

“The pictures. The idea was mine too but the writer got the credit for it. That sort of thing happens all the time. I'm used to it.”

“What brings you north of Soho?” asked Plenderleith.

“Exhaustion, Plendy-boy, sheer exhaustion. I can work myself into the ground like a pig when the mood is on me but periodically I've got to stop. I throw up whatever I'm in the middle of and go somewhere quiet and … just let my mind go totally blank. Like the yogis. A bit of eastern mysticism is a great antidote to the commercial rat race. Willie Maugham taught me that. Ever read him?”

Again McCrimmon was looking at the teacher who replied that his field was maths and he hadn't much time for reading nowadays.

“So you're back in Glasgow for the eastern mysticism?” said Plenderleith drily.

“I know what you people think of me,” McCrimmon said in a voice so quietly sincere that the three who knew him glanced uneasily at each other but relaxed when he said, “You think I'm a cynic. You think I'm a cynic because I'm dynamic and who ever heard of a dynamo with a heart? Well,
this
dynamo has a heart.” (He clapped a hand to his chest.) “No matter how far I travel I'll always return to auld Scotia. A man needs roots. But,” he concluded, becoming less solemn and turning to the teacher again, “you ought to read Maugham. He was a great writer but a greater human being. I got on well with him, before the end.”

“You knew him?” said the teacher.

“Where's that coffee of mine?” said McCrimmon looking round. “I keep forgetting how rotten the service is here. Yes, I knew old Willie Maugham. Beaverbrook introduced us.”

The photographer concentrated on the teacher with the instinct of a performer finding an audience. The quiet departure of Jean, Tom and Plenderleith was hardly noticed by the two who remained, one spouting fluent monologues, the other inciting them with exclamations and questions.

Four coffees later McCrimmon said, “And that is the true story of my last and worst encounter with Beaverbrook.”

The teacher was excited and appalled. He had suspected great press barons were greedy, selfish and unscrupulous, but had not thought them petty, vindictive and superstitious.

“Amazing – really amazing,” he murmured, “but I think the lassie wants us to leave.”

The room was empty but for them and a bored waitress lounging near the till.

“Forget her – she kept me waiting for my coffee. I'm surprised that you haven't asked why I'm back in Scotland.”

“You told us you were here to relax and meditate.”

“Did I? So I did. I wasn't being strictly accurate. There are better places to relax than smoky old Glasgow. No laddie. I'm here with a purpose.”

McCrimmon pressed his lips together and nodded heavily.

“If you'd rather not tell me –” said the teacher after a silence.

“Know something? I like you. There's not many I would waste my sweetness on but I think you're what I would call trustworthy. Notice how many new buildings are going up nowadays?”

“Yes.”

“And a lot more are going to go up which means even more old stuff will be hammered down. It's inevitable. All progress is inevitable. But when these filthy old
tenements and warehouses and cinemas are replaced by motorways and multistorey flats and shopping centres folk are going to miss them, hence
this
little toy –” (McCrimmon tapped a camera case with his finger) “– I paid two hundred quid down for it and it'll make my fortune. I will emerge as the Recording Angel of Glasgow's recent past.”

“You won't believe this,” said the teacher excitedly, “but I've thought of doing that!”

McCrimmon seemed not to believe it or found it a negligible idea in others. He said, “I'll show more than the buildings of course, I'll show the people. We don't just have smooth characterless buildings going up, we've smooth characterless people taking over. Like the three who've just left.”

The teacher could not help showing surprise because he liked the three who had just left and did not think them very different from himself. McCrimmon said quickly, “Don't get me wrong – they're nice enough folk but speaking as an artist you cannae beat the hard dour folk formed by the First World War, the General Strike, the Thirties' Depression and the single-room flat – the faces of folk who took abject poverty for granted. Closet-on-the-stair faces. Jawbox-with-one-brass-swan-neck-cold-water-tap faces. Black-leaded-kitchen-range-with-polished-steel-trim faces. There aren't many left.”

“A lot of folk still live like that,” said the teacher with a faint smile.

“I wish I knew where. All the single-end flats I've seen this week had a tiled fireplace and modern sink unit with gas water-heater. What's wrong with you?” he asked, for the teacher, gripped by a strong idea,
stared at him like an equal and said, “Are you free just now Tony? Because if you are I can take you to exactly the place you want – recess bed, jawbox, polished fire range, wally dugs, the lot.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“My granny and grampa – my father's folk.”

“What sort of faces have they?”

“Good faces. Kind faces. Lots of character in them.”

“Wrinkles?”

“They're in their eighties. They live overby in the Cowcaddens. I'd love a record of them. I'd pay you for it.” McCrimmon stood up and slung his cases round him saying, “I suppose they may have some sociological value. Let's go.”

McCrimmon held aloof while the teacher paid for the coffees but walked beside him up Sauchiehall Street and over Rose Street in the dusk of an autumn evening. The teacher explained he must first buy some presents as he had not visited his grandparents for over a year. “Coloured beads to keep the natives happy, eh?” said McCrimmon. The teacher did not answer. He supposed that McCrimmon's talent had destroyed normal sympathies by raising him into a bad-mannered class which must be tolerated because it knows no better.

They crossed New City Road into a district which two years before had been lively with people and bright with small shops. An advancing motorway now
threatened it with demolition so nothing was being replaced or repaired and people with plans for the future had moved out. Pavements were cracked, road surfaces potholed, some tenements obviously derelict. Not every shop was boarded up. In a small general store the teacher bought bread, butter, jam, cheese, eggs, potatoes, tinned corned beef, sardines, beans and stewed pears. The Pakistani owner put all this in a cardboard box which the teacher hoisted upon his shoulder.

He led McCrimmon into a gaslit close and up narrow stairs with the door of a communal lavatory on each half landing. On the third landing he tapped a door with signs of former working-class dignity: a shiningly polished brass door-knob, letter-box and name-plate engraved with the name ROSS.

“Who's there?” asked an old voice from within.

“It's me, Granny – Jimmy.”

“O my boy!”

A small neat timidly smiling woman opened the door. She wore spectacles, flower-patterned wrap-round apron and old cloth slippers. She looked much older than the teacher remembered. One reason why he visited her so seldom was that she looked older every time he did so. He said, “I've brought a friend, Granny.”

“I'm sure he's welcome.”

“Hullo hullo Mrs Ross. McCrimmon is the name but you just call me Tony.”

“Fancy that. Come in Mr McCrimmon.”

They entered a small neat room with a recess bed in which the teacher's father's father lay perfectly still
on his back. A wedge of pillows propped him at a straight angle from waist to head. His eyes were shut, mouth slightly open, spectacles pushed onto brow, hands folded on book on coverlet over stomach.

“How's Grampa?” the teacher murmured placing the box on a sideboard.

“O don't ask me,” she sighed, “I've given up worrying about him. Just be a bit quiet and we'll have a sip of tea without being bothered by his nonsense. Or do you want me to make you a meal?” she asked, staring at the groceries.

“No Granny, I'm afraid we can't stay long. A cup of tea will do.”

“You're a good wee boy to play Santa Claus with your old folk.”

At the side of the range was a kettle of water which she shifted onto the fire saying, “Take off your coat and sit down Mr McCrimmon.”

Her grandson had already done so.

“Don't worry about me Mrs Ross,” said McCrimmon strolling to the wooden sink before the window. He stood there with his back to the room. The teacher felt dominated by his grandfather's lean, Caesar-like profile and whispered, “Is his back still bad?”

“Yes but he never speaks about it now.”

“Can't you get a doctor to him?”

“You know what he thinks about doctors. Come to the fire, Mr McCrimmon. Make yourself at home.”

“Just don't worry about me Mrs Ross,” said McCrimmon without turning round.

The kettle simmered. Mrs Ross brewed a pot of tea
asking, “How's the family?”

“Not bad. All right. You should visit us. You'd like the wee boy.”