‘Well, what with the family allowance and benefit it’s hardly worth their while,’ said Miss Ancill.
‘Should be occupation father,’ said Mr Briggs, and sipped.
He read the financial statement aloud. Weekly total, twenty-one pounds seventeen shillings.
‘And they talk about unearned income,’ he said.
‘It’s not the upper ten today have unearned income. It’s the layabouts. That’s your welfare state for you.’
‘Some folk play on it,’ said Miss Ancill. ‘But you can’t just do away with it.’
‘Aye, the poor we have always with us,’ said Mr Briggs. ‘Do you know, there’s a child born every two seconds. I read that somewhere the other day.’
‘Quite a thought,’ said Miss Ancill.
‘The trouble here,’ he said, ‘it’s the men of course. They never get a trade. Or even a steady job. They work as vanboys when they leave school, then they’re casual labourers. They earn just enough to start courting. Then they marry young and the children come and keep on coming. So the man sits back and stops working. They’re not working-class, these people. They’re just lumps.’
‘You can’t stop them marrying,’ said Miss Ancill.
Mr Briggs changed the subject.
‘Phone the police and tell them I want a policeman for the Ballochmyle Road crossing. The trafficwarden’s absent.’
After lunch he reprimanded Mr Alfred for striking a pupil and advised him to be careful what he said in class. Mr Alfred denied he had used bad language, but Mr Briggs had never expected him to admit it. He smiled and nodded and let it pass.
In the afternoon Mrs Duthie came and complained that a boy called Provan had forced her son into a fight and then kicked him when he was down. She had taken the boy to the doctor. The doctor would certify the boy’s ribs were all bruises. Mr Briggs said he would speak to Provan about it. He said it was a pity she hadn’t called at nine o’clock. He would have found that information about Provan useful if he had known it earlier. She said she couldn’t have called at nine o’clock because she had a part-time job, mornings only, in the Caballero Restaurant. That led her to tell him about her husband, who hadn’t worked for ten years. He was under the doctor on account of his heart. Mr Briggs gave her his sympathy and they parted on excellent terms.
When she had gone he littered his desk with requisitions, class lists, publishers’ catalogues, and the unfinished draft of a report on a probationer. He wanted to look busy if anyone came in.
Miss Ancill disturbed him with a cup of tea and a buttered scone. He told her what Mrs Duthie had been saying to him and what he said to her. He was on about the cares and loneliness of office when the bell rang. He hurried out to his car.
Miss Ancill watched him go. She knew all the little jobs that had kept him busy since nine o’clock. She counted them off to the janitor.
‘A day in the life of,’ she said. ‘And the way he blethers to me! It’s not a secretary that man wants, it’s an audience.’
In the staffroom Mr Alfred raised his voice about the headmaster’s bad habit of dealing with parents behind a teacher’s back. His colleagues were too eager to get out to listen, and he finished up talking to the soap as he washed his hands.
He was the last to leave. Miss Ancill saw him from her window.
‘That poor man,’ she said. ‘I felt sorry for him today. Briggs had him on the carpet. I think he’s getting past it. But still. It’s not right. A man like Briggs bossing a man like that. He’s so kind and gentle.’
‘I think he drinks too much,’ said the janitor.
‘He needs a woman to take care of him,’ said Miss Ancill. ‘Did you see the shirt he’d on this morning? Wasn’t even fit for a jumble sale.’
‘You can’t spend your money on drink and buy clothes too,’ said the janitor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Leaving school on a fine spring evening Mr Briggs had to go home by public transport. His car was laid up. There was something wrong with the clutch. He felt devalued. It was a long time since he last stood in a bus queue with ordinary people, some of whom in this case would be merely assistant teachers on his own staff. He was in a mood to find fault with the universe. Opportunity to let off steam was waiting ahead of him. En route to the bus stop he passed the Weavers Lane. A fankle of weedy boys loitered there in a state of manifest excitement. Mr Briggs was quick to appreciate the situation. There was something in the wind, and it wasn’t the smell of roses. Obviously a fight had been arranged and was due to begin as soon as the coast was clear. The guilt in the shifty eyes of his pupils showed they hadn’t expected him to come along. He stopped and scowled. He knew them all. His habit of checking against his index-cards whenever a boy came to his notice had made him familiar with their names, their intelligence quotient, their father’s occupation if any, and their address. He knew the good boys from the bad boys, though sometimes he believed the former category was an anomaly, as if one should speak of a square circle.
There they were. All the rascals. A dingy mob in jeans and donkey-jackets. Black, Brown, Gray, Green, White. With McColl, McKay, McKenzie, McPherson. He recognised Taylor, Slater, Wright and Barbour, Baker [and Bourne], Hall [and Knight], Latta [and MacBeath], Lid- del [and Scott], Ogilvie [and Albert], Gibson, Holmes, MacDougall and Blackie. A nightmare of classroom names. And lounging blondly, somehow the centre of the shapeless crowd, was Gerald Provan. He grinned, hands in the pockets of his tightarsed jeans, kicking the kerb, radiant with the insolence of an antimath idling out his last term at school.
Sure of his power, speaking in loco parentis, since after all they were barely outside the limits of his bailiwick and the bell releasing them from his jurisdiction had barely ceased vibrating across the gasworks, he demanded the why and wherefore of their hanging about. He waited for an answer. None was offered. Sternly he ordered them to disperse.
‘Get home! All of you! At once!’
Curt. Staccato.
Slowly, grudgingly, they went. He stood till they were all on the move.
He went for his bus, pleased with himself. Perhaps the universe wasn’t so unjust after all. He wished some of his teachers would learn to put into their voice the same ring of authority as he had done there. The bus was prompt, he got a seat at once, and within half-an-hour he was safe and sound at home. He had a sandstone villa, with garden and garage, outside the city. Over dinner he told Mrs Briggs all the events of his day and what he had done about them.
But no sooner was he round the corner from the Weavers Lane than the scattered boys reassembled. Like birds chased from a kitchen garden they hadn’t flown far.
Last to leave the school, Mr Alfred took the same route to the bus stop as Mr Briggs. He had lingered longer than usual in the staffroom to give Mr Briggs plenty of time to get away. He always found it a bore having to make conversation on the bus, especially with someone who talked shop as loudly as his headmaster.
When he came to the Weavers Lane he heard a lot of shouting. He stopped and listened. He wasn’t even tempted to walk away. He was oldfashioned, and he believed without doubting it was his duty to break up any riotous assembly of schoolboys, whether in school or out of school, during hours or after hours. And anyway he was in no hurry. If he put off time he would be in the city centre when the pubs were opening. Then he could have one or maybe two before going on to his digs. For the evening he had already planned a route that would take him round some pubs he hadn’t been in for a month or so.
He put on a grim face and went deep into the lane. What he saw wasn’t a storybook fight with bare fists. It was a battle with studded belts that had once been part of what the army called webbing equipment. His belly fluttered at the madness of it. He was as scared as if he was in there taking part. So excited