Mavis Belfrage by Alasdair Gray Page B

not understand photography, son. I own the copyright of everything I take. In the course of time I will send you a sheet of contact prints from which you may select those you would like which I will thenenlarge. But remember this, it won’t be cheap.”
    â€œThat’s not what I asked you to do. I said I would pay you to photograph my granny and grampa. You did it and now I want the film.”
    â€œI don’t get this!” said McCrimmon shaking his head. “You make me photograph your old folk – make them sit for me – then without a word of explanation you ask for the undeveloped film!”
    â€œNo. I’m
telling
you to sell me the undeveloped film. Here and now! At once!”
    McCrimmon turned his back and shouldered his way into the lobby saying, “Sorry son, you cannae afford it.”
    â€œHand that film over Tony,” cried the teacher, following.
    â€œI get it! You’re jealous!” said McCrimmon facing him again. “You’re jealous like all the others. You cannae see someone do something original and artistic without wanting to throw your own miserable wee brick at it. Your trouble, Jimmy, is your totally third-rate mind …”
    â€œYou’re a liar McCrimmon,” said the teacher feeling his face get hot and speaking with a voice which grew suddenly huge, “a liar, a bully, a boaster, a phony and a failure! What could be more third-rate than you? – You drunken idiot!”
    He glared at McCrimmon and in the silence which followed knew many were watching him and that he had never spoken so nastily to a human being before, not even to the worst of his pupils. His muscles were tensed for a fight but McCrimmon replied with unexpected dignity.
    â€œYou’re wrong. I may be a failure and drunkard and… and other things but I am not third-rate. Second-rate yes, all right, but not third-rate. At least I’ve tried to get out of the rut. I failed, true. You havenae even tried.”
    â€œThe film Tony,” said the teacher implacably. “Give it me.”
    â€œNo.”
    McCrimmon moved away. The teacher seized and jerked the strap of the camera case. It broke. With the case swinging from the strap in one hand the teacher hurried down the lobby fumbling for the lid with the other. Roaring horribly McCrimmon leapt after him and grabbed him low from behind in a rugby tackle. The camera slid out of the case and hit the floor with a sharp crack as the teacher fell face down behind it with McCrimmon on top. There was a hubbub of voices. The weight on the teacher’s back was removed. Kneeling up he saw McCrimmon also kneeling, held back by men grasping each arm. Without lifting the camera the teacher opened it, pulled out the film, exposed it, dropped it and stood up, breathing heavily. Everyone looked at McCrimmon. He seemed so horrified that his captors, feeling him harmless, let him go. He crawled to the camera and lifted it with something like the unbelief of a mother lifting a dead baby. In a faint female falsetto he crooned, “Broke. My camera. Oh and it wasnae insured, it wasnae insured.” He wept.
    The teacher found Tom Forbes beside him saying, “Here’s your coat.”
    â€œThanks.”
    They went to the front door. Tom opened it. The teacher paused a moment and slid his arms into the sleeves saying, “I’m sorry about all this …”
    â€œJust go home to your wife, Jimmy. Good night.”
    â€œGood night. See you on Monday …”
    The door closed behind him.
8
    The time was eighteen minutes past midnight. At one a.m. buses left Glasgow’s central square for the suburbs but rather than wait for one the teacher walked five or six miles along Sauchiehall Street, Parliamentary Road and Alexandra Parade: thoroughfares of shops and tenements which in twenty years would be reshaped, shrunk or abolished by pedestrianization and a motorway system. But the teacher was thinking