Mavis Belfrage Read online

  FOR

  ALEXANDRA GRAY

  WHEN SHE IS

  MUCH OLDER

  Table of Contents

  Mavis Belfrage

  A Night Off

  Mr Goodchild

  Money

  Edison’s Tractatus

  The Shortest Tale

  Also by Alasdair Gray

  Mavis Belfrage

  Publicly funded learning was once greatly valued in Britain. The minimum school leaving age had been raised to sixteen. New schools and colleges were built and old ones enlarged. Folk who would have missed university courses in other decades were helped to them by government grants. A solemn young Scot called Colin Kerr went to a famous South British university where he won a fairly good second class philosophy degree. This would have finished his education had he not met Mavis Belfrage.

  1

  He was lecturing in the teachers’ training college of his native city. His students were nearly his own age but he thought them less intelligent. Some lecturers push ideas into listless brains by using forceful speech or by turning their classrooms into debating halls. Colin relied on repetition. He knew clever students found his method dull but thought he did most good by serving the majority. He also enjoyed putting complex ideas into simple, fluent sentences. During some monologues he was so hypnotized by the sound of his steady, quiet, distinct voice that he felt himself still at Cambridge.

  One morning he spoke about what he called the Classical and Romantic theories of education, comparing teaching that strengthens a superior class by promoting obedience with teaching that strengthens individuals by suggesting a variety of choices. A distinct sigh and impatient movement interrupted him. It was not his habit to look straight at students but he knew their names and exactly where they sat. He said, “You seem restless Miss Belfrage. Do you want to say something?”

  “No. I mean yes. What do you believe?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’ve told us at great length how Plato and Rousseau disagree about what and why children should be taught. Who do you agree with?”

  “I’ve no opinion.”

  “You must! It’s your subject.”

  There was a general stir of interest. He ignored it by gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling and saying, “Of course I feel … flattered that an attractive young lady believes I can add something to the thoughts of Plato and Rousseau, but I know them better than you do. They were geniuses. Their ideas will exercise the minds of thinkers for centuries to come. The best I can do is explain them.”

  “That’s a very convenient attitude for you, Mr Kerr, but not for us,” said a sing-song Welsh voice from the back of the class. “You lecture adults on educational theory so need not choose between one theory and another. We will soon be managing classrooms of children. We will be forced to choose. I don’t think Mavis wants you to choose for her. It’s just that your lectures refuse to admit that choice is necessary. I think that sums it up?”

  The voice belonged to Evans, a mature student who had sat beside Mavis Belfrage in that classroom, but not for a week or two.

  “Your notion of choice is slightly absurd,” said Colin with a touch of impatience. “What you eventually teach will be chosen for you by the Scottish curriculum council. How you teach will be decided by the school you are in and some character traits inherited from your parents – most of them based on self-esteem.”

  “That answers Mavis’s question!” said the Welsh voice triumphantly. “If you think individual choice absurd you are a conforming Platonist.”

  “Wrong, Evans,” said Colin cheerfully. “Plato thought educators should persuade people to conform. I am a pragmatic materialist who believes that even educators do as things do with them. But knowing this won’t help anyone pass their end-of-term exam next week. My questions will be set on chapters two, five, nine and ten of Hoffman and MacKinlay’s Outline of Educational Theory. Memorize these and you can forget all about me. Make a note of that, everyone – chapters two, five, nine and ten.”

  While most of the class scribbled in their notebooks he pretended not to see Mavis Belfrage sitting with folded arms and an ominous scowl.

  “You will also get higher marks if you remember,” he added, “that while I expect no one to show interest in my opinions, I have no interest at all in yours.”

  “Which is why you are such an uninspiring individ –” said Mavis sharply, then faltered and said “– lecturer.”

  The whole class stared from her to him. He removed his spectacles and stared thoughtfully back, wiping the lenses with a small oblong of yellow chamois leather. The faces of all but Mavis appeared featureless to him now. Perhaps emphatic lipstick and eyeshadow made her defiant glare unusually distinct. The glare stimulated him. He smiled, said, “Probably,” and dismissed the class, pleased to have shown a fair-mindedness typical of Cambridge at its best.

  A fortnight later he announced the exam results and asked Mavis Belfrage to visit his office in a free period of the following day.

  2

  Colin kept an office as impersonal as himself. One wall was the exact width of the door and two filing cabinets beside it. The cabinets had a row of text books and directories on top. The floor was just big enough for a desk with a chair before and behind it and a tin wastepaper basket. On the desk lay a phone, a clean glass ashtray for the use of visitors, a sheaf of pages covered with Mavis Belfrage’s bold, irregular writing. The only wall decorations were a calendar and class timetable. The one colourful object was a small cube made of yellow and blue interlocking plastic bricks. Colin was attaching something like a propeller to this when his door was knocked firmly, once. He dropped the object in a drawer, and opened the door saying, “Come in Miss Belfrage. Please sit down.”

  “I won’t be here long will I?” she asked, erect and facing him. She was black-haired, gaunt, the same height as him and dressed (he thought) more attractively than the day before. She stood with right hand in the pocket of a trousersuit, the other gripping the strap of a bag slung from her shoulder. To stop himself looking hard at her he sat down and waited. She sighed, sat across the desk from him, took cigarette and matchbook from her bag, lit the cigarette and tossed a match into his ashtray.

  He said, “I want to talk about your exam paper.”

  “Yes. You want to apologize.”

  “No!” he said, surprised and amused, “certainly not. I know you dislike my teaching methods – during the past term you’ve made that obvious. But I respect your attitude and don’t want you to think I gave you abnormally low marks out of bad feeling.”

  “But you did.”

  “No. Let us take your paper a question at a time.”

  He lifted the sheaf from the desk. She said swiftly, “No need. Did I write anything stupid in that paper?”

  “No.”

  “Did I express myself badly?”

  “You expressed your self magnificently.”

  “Did I show I understood the subject?”

  “You showed that you thoroughly understand it.”

  “Yet you failed me.”

  “Yes. You did not answer my questions.” (He examined the paper.) “I did not ask you to compare the ancient Greek, English public-school and American state education systems. I asked you to summarize Hoffman and MacKinlay’s accounts of these systems. I don’t pretend Hoffman and MacKinlay’s account is the only intelligent account possible. On most points I preferred yours. But I did not ask for yours. The whole class knew my questions would be based on Hoffman and MacKinlay. You knew it.”

  “Why are you terrified of your students’ opinions?”

  “They have nothing to do with me!” he said on a surprisingly petty note. Noticing this he blushed slightly. She stared at him then stu
bbed out her less than half smoked cigarette saying calmly, “I don’t understand you but obviously you want me to think you’re nothing but a conscientious, honest, decent, stupid bloke. All right, I believe it. Can I leave now?”

  But it was he who stood up.

  He went to the window, looked out and said, “How did you perform in your other subjects?”

  “Surely you’ve heard about that from your colleagues?”

  “Yes. Why did you do so badly?”

  “For … personal reasons. For personal reasons my attendance has been poor. But I didn’t do very badly. I was a borderline case. With reasonable marks in your subject I might just have scraped through. You marked me as low as possible.”

  “So you’ll repeat the year?”

  “I can’t. They won’t renew my grant.”

  She spoke in so low a voice that he looked at her. Her head was bowed. He said crisply, “I may be able to help.”

  She did not look up. He said, “If you’re a borderline case I can explain to the Principal the special nature of your failure. If your reasons for poor attendance are not outrageous he might let you repeat a year. He’s not a harsh man.”

  She shook her head and said, “There’s no point. You see, I can’t stand children – not whole roomfuls of them. Their problems bore me. Their manners sicken me. That’s why my attendance was bad, and why I failed most of my practical tests. As for your subject, I could have got high marks if I’d wanted them but I decided to sink with flags flying and guns firing instead of just … fading away. I suppose I did it to annoy you. Sorry!”

  She looked at him with a slightly rueful but friendly smile. He nodded and said, “What will you do now?”

  “Find a job somewhere … I don’t know.”

  “Can I take you out to dinner?”

  “Why?” she asked, startled. He did not answer. She said, “When?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  She thought about that. “Thursday would be better.”

  “Will we meet in the lounge of the North British Hotel? Say about seven?”

  “Eight would be better.”

  “All right.”

  He went to the door and held it open saying, “Goodbye Miss Belfrage.”

  She walked out past him saying, “Goodbye Mister Kerr.”

  He closed the door, smiling at the mockery she had put into Mister. He was only comfortable with assertive women and had met none of these socially since leaving university.

  3

  Colin was ten minutes early for the meeting, Mavis Belfrage exactly on time. Each drank half a pint of lager in the lounge then shared a bottle of wine while dining in the restaurant. The invited woman mainly listened, the man who would pay for her mainly talked. He talked about Cambridge because he thought his life there more interesting than anything before or after; also because she seemed the sort of woman he had met at Cambridge. He told stories about dons, college servants and fellow students in a humorous, denigrating way which did not hide how much they had fascinated him. Mavis smiled and listened with an alertness which suggested she was trying to understand something behind his words. Wondering what it was he changed the subject to politics and was pleased when she began talking. She had left-wing radical views he thought sentimental in a woman with her expensive accent. He did not say so. Instead he described nuclear disarmament demonstrations he had marched with as a schoolboy, not mentioning that he had since become more conservative. When that topic was exhausted he was silent for a while, wondering how to get her talking about her own past. He ordered coffee and liqueurs then said abruptly, “What brought you to Scotland?”

  “A man I once lived with came to work here.”

  “O?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling at him.

  “Em … Why did you stay here afterwards?”

  “Scotland is as good a place as anywhere else.”

  Colin did not believe Scotland was as good a place as anywhere else. He suspected she was hiding something so changed the subject to avoid seeming suspicious.

  “What are your plans for the future?”

  “I never plan things,” she said shaking her head. “I put up with them until they turn nasty then take the nearest way out. Just now I don’t see any way out.”

  “That sounds serious. Why are you laughing?”

  “Because I’m not a serious person and you obviously are!”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, laughing too.

  “You don’t have to talk to me all the time, Colin. You’re a sort I can enjoy being quiet with.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said thankfully, and watched while she sipped the liqueur and smoked a cigarette. He liked the elegant way she did these things.

  The night was wet and windy when they left the hotel and she accepted his offer of a lift. From a city centre brightened by the fronts of big shops he drove to a district lit only by lamp posts and the glow from curtained tenement windows. He did not know this district. “Left at the next turning,” and “Right now!” was all she said before telling him to stop at a kerb; then she turned to him and said, “Thank you Colin, I enjoyed this evening.”

  “Won’t you ask me in for a coffee?”

  In a harder but quieter voice she said, “Listen, if you insist on coming in with me you have to be very quiet. The landlady hates my guts and is looking for an excuse to turn me out.”

  He nodded. They left the car. He closed the door carefully then followed her on tiptoe into the close of a tenement.

  4

  Two hours later they had made love and enjoyed it more than they had expected. Colin sat up in bed feeling better than he had ever felt before. He was astonished by how well he felt. Mavis seemed to be sleeping but without opening her eyes murmured, “You’re quite a loverboy, aren’t you?”

  “You led me on.”

  “You let me. Some men can’t.”

  “Have you had many men?”

  “Have you had many women?”

  He thought about two women he had once fucked with after a drunken party. It had been interesting but unsatisfying.

  He said, “Let’s not discuss that just now.”

  From the bedclothes under her chin a hand with pointing forefinger slid out. She aimed it at his heart murmuring, “You are being secretive because you’ve nothing to hide.”

  He laughed and agreed. Since his lively feelings needed an outlet he asked if he could make the cup of coffee he had asked for in the car.

  “Yes, if you’re quiet about it. There’s water in the kettle.”

  “Can I put on some heat?”

  “No. The gas is worked by a shilling meter and I’m out of shillings.”

  “I have a shilling.”

  “Keep it. The slot meter is in the hall and I don’t want that nosy old bitch seeing you.”

  Amused by her English habit of calling a wee lobby the hall he said, “Will you put in the shilling? This room’s freezing.”

  “No,” (she snuggled deeper in the bedclothes) “I’m perfectly warm and cosy here.”

  He slipped on the overcoat he had hung over a bundle of garments on a hook behind the door. An electric kettle stood in the hearth of a boarded-up fireplace. The board was papered, as were the walls, with a pattern like red brickwork, its realism enhanced by patches of genuine damp and dirt. Mavis had hidden the brickwork as much as possible by pinning childish drawings over it and posters showing the faces of Che Guevara, James Dean and popular singers whose faces were as sullen as her own sometimes looked.

  While waiting for the kettle to boil he said abruptly, “I’m afraid I need you.”

  “O I’m sorry!” she cried, staring at him.

  “Why?”

  She closed her eyes murmuring, “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I want you to live with me.”

  “O?”

  “Will you live with me?”

  “Why not? It will be convenient. I’m terribly short of money.”

  “I
s that the only reason why you’ll live with me?”

  In a low voice she said, “No, Colin.”

  “You see I’d like us to get married.”

  “There’s too much of that going on nowadays.”

  “I’d like it all the same.”

  “Why?”

  “I prefer things to be conventional.”

  “I’m married already!” she said with a sudden smile of beautiful malicious glee. He shut his eyes for a moment then said, “When did you leave him?”

  “Years ago.”

  “Was he bad to you?”

  “No, he was nice. I only go for nice men.”

  “Why did you separate?”

  “Because I’m a bit of a bitch.”

  “You’re not a bitch!”

  “Nice men never believe I’m a bitch.”

  The kettle boiled. He took it to a table by the bed where mugs and a jar of coffee powder stood among food tins and piles of magazines, mostly fashion magazines. While making the coffee something tugged at his mind. All the drawings on the wall showed big aeroplanes bombing tiny houses. He pointed to a heap of aeroplane magazines.

  “Why are you fond of aeroplanes?”

  “These belong to my son,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight.”

  “But!” cried Colin excitedly, “that means you’re old! I mean, I’m sorry, older than me.”

  “Had you not noticed?” she asked coldly.

  “No! I always think women who attract me are my own age or younger. Where is your son?”

  “With a friend. He usually sleeps here.”

  “Where?” asked Colin looking round the tiny room.

  “With me,” she said taking a cigarette case from under her pillow.

  “Is that healthy?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Give me that lighter.”

  “You’ve a horrible life Mavis,” he said holding a flame to the tip of her cigarette. She looked at him across it and whispered, “Do you really want me?”