The headmaster said abruptly, “Good,” and stood up. So did my aunts. He asked what class I should be attending. Maths, I told him. He said, “Go to it then. You have a remarkable aunt, John Tunnock,” — (adding with a polite nod to Nell) — “aunts, I mean. Don’t let them down again.”
I had always loved Nan but before this interview had thought her an ordinary old lady. I was so astonished and braced by her words that I said firmly, “Thank you Sir! Never again Sir!” I stepped up to the desk and held out my hand to him. After the briefest of pauses he held out his own. We shook, then he grunted, “Off you go Tunnock.”
We walked in silence from the Headmaster’s office until, turning a corner, Nell started laughing and said, “You were wonderful Nan.”
Nan said, “Yes, I astonished myself, especially with my lie about telling John to leave school if threatened with the belt. I’m glad you recovered your confidence at the end, John, but sorry your pal has let you down.”
I wiped what felt like a wide grin off my face and said firmly, “He is no longer my pal.”
They looked at each other and sighed because they thought I should forgive Doig’s honesty to his mother, but said no more about the matter nor ever spoke of it again. They must have known that discussing masculine inclinations with a male is useless. My purchases of pornography became rarer from then on. My erotic fantasies found enough to stimulate them in maturer literature and visits to the Hillhead Salon and Grosvenor cinemas. And ever since then I have loathed the taste of sherry and drunk alcohol cautiously.
But before going home that day I approached my usual classroom very dourly, knowing the teacher at least would know I came from the headmaster’s office and why I had been summoned there. I later learned that the whole school knew why: earlier that morning in the playground Doig had been surrounded by a crowd of urgent questioners and, unused to such popularity, had told everything. I entered the room halfway through a geometry lesson and the teacher fell silent in the middle of a sentence. By an effort I think I managed to look thoughtful, even absent-minded, as I walked between staring faces to an empty desk. From my briefcase I removed my Euclid and exercise book then sat with hands clasped on them (as the headmaster had clasped his) and looked enquiringly at the teacher who, with heavy irony said, “Have I your permission to continue, Tunnock?”
“Certainly, Sir! Certainly!” I said, and from that moment my reputation as a swot and a snob ended. Classmates who thought I had been savagely belted were astonished by my composure, the rest knew something unimaginable had happened. When questioned afterwards in the playground my only words were, “MacRae is not a barbarian. We reached an agreement and he dismissed the matter as a storm in a teacup.”
When several boys asked me to supply them with dirty books and offered to pay more than the purchase price I smiled thinly and said, “No no. Once bitten, twice shy.”
But how had two gentle spinsters born in Victoria’s reign (Nan 1897, Nell 1900) become so broad-minded without me noticing before the Stewart Doig catastrophe? The 1914-18 war must have changed them as it changed many others. When Nell heard a pipe band playing on the wireless she was inclined to weep. Nan told me privately this was because in 1914 young soldiers marched behind bands between cheering crowds from Maryhill Barracks to the train that would take them on the first lap of their journey to the Flanders slaughterfields. That kind of public jubilation cannot have lasted much more than a year, even though most British private businesses profited by that war. I do not know if Nell lost a sweetheart in it, but many young women of my aunts’ and Miss Jean Brodie’s generation were deprived of potential husbands and their faith in a God praised in churches because he had made Britain victorious. Jean Brodie became a Fascist but was exceptional. More folk turned to Socialism, my aunts among them. It had broadened their minds without changing their behaviour, hence my astonishment when Nan firmly dominated a Scottish headmaster. Being Socialists they were ashamed of having a house much larger than they needed, and living upon rents from two tenement blocks in Partick inherited from their father. Before 1939 this income let them employ a cook and housemaid. When these were directed into war-work they managed without, and like most middle-class folk after the war could not afford servants. Unlike many they never complained.
“I’m sure this exercize is good for us,” Nell would murmur with a sigh as she came home heavily laden from a shopping expedition, and Nan would say sharply, “Of course! It keeps us young.”
They always referred to my mother as a superior being because she had earned her own living, and also (I think) because she had borne a child. After my first week’s work as a teacher Nan said, “Me and Nell would be two useless old women if we had not helped to educate a useful man.”
Like many Scots in those days they believed teachers, doctors and Labour politicians were the noblest works of God because such people (they believed) strove to reduce ignorance, suffering and poverty. Perhaps what kept them attending Hillhead Parish Church on Sundays was their belief that Jesus was a Socialist. In their childhood before World War I there were many Scottish Socialist Sunday schools for Protestant children; also John Wheatley, though denounced by Glasgow priests, ran a vigorous Young Men’s Socialist Catholic Society. The 1979 election of Margaret Thatcher and everything that followed astonished and worried them. I am sorry I disappointed them by never marrying, glad I never again shocked or disturbed them after the Doig affair.
Soon after that I was invited to attend a school debating society where I began voicing my aunts’ Socialist opinions, and was strongly opposed by an equally vocal Tory, Gordon MacLean. I was his social superior because my home was in a terrace house and his in a Byres Road tenement. He was my social superior because one of the school’s best athletes, and I so bad at games that the physical training teacher let me miss them. In other subjects our marks averaged out equaclass="underline" he was better at maths, science, geography: I better at English, Latin, history, and we were equally bad at art and music. Our homes being near we started walking to and from school together, discussing books, films, sex but avoiding politics, which we only enjoyed discussing before an audience. Gordon, handsome and popular, had a complicated love life. Though not a boaster he liked telling me about it as much as I enjoyed hearing him. He even asked advice, which I was wise enough not to give, but I mentioned precedents for his troubles in the life of Burns, with relevant anecdotes from history and literature. He maybe found this flattering but I did not mean to flatter. His dealings with attractive girls fascinated me as much as anything I had read about, because they were real, and I knew great writers must study reality as well as books.
I was resigned to not directly knowing attractive girls. They terrified me, making speech with them impossible until I was old enough to be their father. In their presence I kept my self-respect by an aloofness suggesting (I hoped) that I was thinking of better things. This was easy for a boy whose manners had been formed by the example of nice old ladies, and whose main education was from books that had stored my mind with my grandfather’s furtive man-of-the-world knowledge. Once in the street I passed two good-looking, giggling school girls. One rushed after me and said, “John Tunnock, my pal fancies you rotten. In fact she’d like you to shag her!”
I said, “Tell her she’ll grow out of it.”
I could be friendly and at ease with girls who did not attract me, like those behind the counter of a Co-op grocery in Partick where I usually shopped. One day a new assistant, a small plump dark-haired girl, served me in a surprisingly unfriendly way, head bent to avoid seeing my face and never speaking a word. When I went there next week the other assistants shouted, “Terry! Here’s John,” and let her attend me. I could not imagine why. Her behaviour was still unfriendly. The fourth time this happened she suddenly raised her head and with the manner of someone flinging themselves off a cliff said, “What do you do in the evenings?”