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 way.
Duthie tagged behind her, though it meant he would have to take a detour home.
Gerry’s disappointment with the fight stayed with him over teatime until his mother came in. Senga did nothing to make up for it. She obeyed all his orders without a word of complaint. He was a Roman slaveowner defeated by the humility of an early Christian. He tried to make her rebel so that he could batter her. She wouldn’t break. She made his tea, kept the fire going, washed the dishes, cleaned his shoes, washed his socks, and switched the TV on and off and on again whenever he told her from the command- post of his armchair. He waited for his mother.
‘Big Alfy hit me this afternoon,’ he said before she was right in.
‘Him again?’ said Mrs Provan. ‘He’s always picking on you, that man.’
‘Right across the face,’ said Gerald. ‘Hard. His big rough hand.’
Mrs Provan threw her handbag on a chair and hurried to him. She took his chin between thumb and forefinger and turned his face left and right, looking for a bruise.
‘For nothing?’ she asked like one who knows the answer.
‘I bet you were giving up cheek,’ said Senga unheeded.
‘Yes,’ said Gerald.
His mother stopped looking. She could see nothing. She was angry.
‘I’ll see about this. Teachers aren’t allowed to use their hand. There’s no hamfisted brute going to get away with striking my boy.’
‘He called me a rat,’ said Gerald. ‘And he used a bad word. He said I was a so-and-so-king infant.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ said Mrs Provan. ‘Well, I’ll call him worse when I see him. And see him I will. First thing tomorrow. Some teacher him, using that language. You leave it to me, Gerald. You’re not an orphan. You’ve got your mother to protect you.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Granny Lyons had a room-and-kitchen near the prison. It was on the ground floor of the Black Building. She sat knitting by the fire and waited for Mr Alfred. The little clock on the mantelpiece ticked away between Rabbie Burns and Highland Mary. Often he just posted the money, not always with a letter. But once the dark nights came in he called about once a month.
‘It’s only a couple of days now till Christmas,’ she remarked to her needles. ‘He’ll come tonight.’
He did. In his oldest clothes. A wilted hat on his head, a muffler round his neck, a stained raincoat hiding a jacket that didn’t match his trousers, shoes needing to be reheeled.
‘You should wear dark glasses too,’ she cut at him, ‘and finish it.’
He smiled. Her he would always conciliate. He spoke flippantly of his appearance.
‘So! You don’t like my disguise? But then you never do.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s a fact. I never do.’
He saw the china-poet look at his sweetheart. He imagined they were avoiding his eyes in case they let him see they didn’t like the way he was dressed.
‘You think your boys won’t recognise you?’ she asked him. ‘Sure they’d know you a mile away.’
‘Not in the dark,’ he answered. ‘And I slip round the corner quick.’
‘I don’t know why you bother at all if you’re that ashamed,’ she said.
‘That’s not a nice thing to say. You know perfectly well I’m not ashamed.’
‘You should get a transfer to another school. Then nobody here would know you.’
‘It’s too late for that. It’s