Tom Murphy Chapter 1

I re-read, with my palsied shaking hands, Maria's address. Gustav's grandsons' passion was of no surprise. When I saw the grandson in the newspapers, I glanced at his gentle dreamy face yet smoldering eyes and sardonic smile beneath black ringlets. I instantly recognised my boyhood friend, Gustav.

I begin to weep. My chest heaves with choked sobs. I am astonished. This grief was unknown to the cocky boy and is strange to the dried-up old man. Yesterday a small boy pulled a face at me. I knew at that moment I had become a foggy brained old man with dry spit, with twisted feet, bulbous nose, a thread bare mothy coat and tatty trousers. That boy's idiotic face through the day grew and grew until it blocked out the sun. This morning breakfast time, a South African called me a diseased dog when I scrapped with him over his acquisition of the toast ration.

Don't take his sense of humour personally, I was counselled. In my morbid age, past and present cohorts of ghosts swirl and flit around me.

I am fifteen with a fag hanging out of my mouth. I am no longer attending Technical High School. The day of my departure from Tech was unforgettable. It was morning assembly. When I entered the assembly hall, boys grabbed me and dragged me to the forms. That was not unusual. However this time my left shoe became lost. I was horrified to see it kicked determinedly under the forms out of my sight.

I sat down anxiously and glanced frantically around. Suddenly the shoe rose into the air from the sixth form seating space, elegantly turned a half circle, and dropped on to the stage. A rising and falling faint deep ooh accompanied the shoe. Terror gripped me. In a few minutes, the teachers in their flowing black gowns would be entering on to the stage.

I got up and hurried to the corner of the stage. If I jumped on to the stage and stretched out my arm, I would retrieve my footwear before the awful accusations from the heavens.

Who is the owner of this shoe? It must be Murphy's!

I am a creature of impulsive action. I jumped. I leaned out my arm and grabbed air. A roar and whistling of savage delight pounded my ears. I glanced around. The entire school was ready and attendant for assembly. Teachers stood as sentinels at strategic points by the forms. I began to crawl. I grabbed my shoe. I looked up and mouths open, eyes glazed above me, were the headmaster and the Mayor. I crawled off the stage and fled back to my seat. Only now I remembered the Mayor was here because this morning we honoured the old boys dead in the Great War.

When the teachers entered and we rose to sing a hymn and pray Our Father, I glanced up at the roll of honour on the assembly hall paneling. I gazed at the old boys' names and I sinkingly knew this was not the conclusion of my public performance. The Mayor was welcomed. He gave a fine speech about the boys putting aside boyish things and becoming men.

The Mayor gave the strong impression that he personally would be playing a central role in this metamorphosis. I was somehow reminded of the Pied Piper in my old picture book at home. The senior boys with their gruff voices and whiskers would be led to a promised fairy land. I had no doubt my end would be rat-like at the bottom of the river.

Then Mr Prentice the woodwork teacher blew the last post with a trumpet. We thought about the Mayor's words on sacrifice and our glorious pioneers.

After we were ordered to stand and file out quietly, I found myself slapped on the back and congratulated by a myriad of boys. They previously would scarcely have bothered to walk over me.

In the middle of the first lesson in the woodwork class, the headmaster appeared at the door. We all sprang to our feet, myself with a sick feeling.

Murphy, leave with the headmaster.

There were grins all around. Ricky, the class joker, nudged me and patted his bum. I, with the fatalism of a condemned dog following his master with a gun, followed the headmaster to his office.

To my astonishment the Mayor was there also. The headmaster sat down beside the Mayor. They both leaned forward and stared at me.

Sit down Murphy, said the headmaster.

I slid forward and sat down in the opposite chair.

Tell us what happened in the morning assembly, said the headmaster.

I swallowed and in a shaky voice explained myself.

The headmaster glanced at the Mayor and they whispered to each other. Then they both stared at me fiercely and sorrowfully.

Murphy, said the headmaster.
We have decided you have a choice. You can tell us you did it as a foolish prank. In which case, you will take six of the best and that will be the end of it.

Or else you will admit to us you are, let us say, soft in the head. In which case you will leave Tech. If you choose the latter, the Mayor has promised he will take special care of your future.

I hurriedly chose the latter. I have never been a hero, and I agreed with the presumption that I was soft in the head. My family had been telling me that as far back as I could remember anything.

You have made, we believe, a good choice, said the headmaster. Pack your bag and accompany the Mayor.

The headmaster leaned forward and shook my hand.

Good luck with your future, Murphy. I suppose it takes all sorts to make the world.

He gave me the sort of sick smile I had seen landlords and policemen give to my family.

I was whisked away from Tech as fast as a contagious disease case. I never entered Tech again. If I met a tech boy or teacher, I always gave them a wave and they pretended not to see me. Beside the Mayor, in his black suit and top hat, inside his purring mobile hearse, I was swept away from my past life.

What is your Christian name, boy? asked the Mayor.

Tom, Sir, I said to the great man.

I had never known a time when he wasn't the Mayor of Petrie.

The Mayor glanced at me. You are no longer a tech boy. You are now a citizen in a great British democracy. Therefore boy, you will have to learn to give your name as Thomas and only call your betters, ‘Sir’.

Yes Sir, I said.

For all I knew he was taking me to that rat watery grave. My only education had been the back streets with Dad and his drinking mates, his bad tempered house keepers, and an endless parade of cussing brothers, sisters, cousins. I should also have mentioned school, but I had already forgotten everything except for patches of the three R's. As such, I would be thrust into the wide world.

I was however becoming curious. Whatever was the interest of the Mayor about me? The hearse purred to a stop at the creamy pillars entrance of the Council Chambers. The first thing that greeted us inside the foyer was the sign of two smiling mongrel dogs holding up a shield. What that meant I never ceased to wonder. Gustav later puzzled me even more when he explained the words beneath them meant in French, Without God, Nothing.

I followed the Mayor down a long corridor into his office. He motioned me to sit down in the chair facing in front of his desk. I sat down on soft upholstery and gaped. The Mayoral office was bigger than our sitting room, and the Mayor sat behind a mound of papers as cool and frightening as a lion.

Murphy, you may call me Mr McLean or Mr Mayor. I am putting you on my pay roll as my handy boy. You have a spontaneous innocence to solving problems which we can turn to profit.

But you must now learn, do it once and the world applauds, twice and they send the dogs after you. The pedagogue told me your deed had never been done before in the history of British education. That convinces me I have the services of a virtuoso fool, and not any young fool.

I am sure you are wondering about my interest in you. We, Murphy, are entering strange and uncertain times. Tell me what do you know about public affairs? What do fascism, communism and democracy mean? What is the name of the Prime Minister of the Dominion?

I immediately confessed I never read the papers. All these long words were as meaningless as the Priest's Latin benedictions.

Mr McLean's warty and crinkly face cracked open, and his thin lips curled up. Some people might have thought he was smiling.

Excellent, he said. You, Murphy, represent exactly the modern politician's future constituency.

I promised him I would do my best.

Now, Murphy, said Mr McLean.
Let's put it this way. My calling as Mayor is a lonely and dangerous one. The good citizens expect gentility but demand results. On my humble shoulders there rests a modern model city where before there was lethargy and backwardness.

But there are members of the old order out to get McLean. They will defeat me with their bally red‑tape and old‑boy ties. That's where I need a grape shot of low life to confound them.

This is where your background may help me. Have you ever been in situations where, let us say, you are glad not to see a policeman in the neighbourhood?

I assented. I was no more bad than the normal street urchin, but I had learnt a few tricks about entering places uninvited and slipping away into the shadows. I assumed that was what the Mayor meant. Being shocked didn't enter my mind. I had been thoroughly schooled in Dad's view of the world.

As Dad put it, ‘The rich and powerful are those bastards who stole the most and got away with the most. Otherwise how could they be rich and powerful?’
Dad would then burp and fall into a steam engine snore.

But I was surprised at the saltiness of the Mayor's language. I had assumed important people talked like books with tiny print.

You will be on notice, said the Mayor. I will expect a first class dodger. There is nothing more harmful to policy than a bumbling spy.

The Mayor opened up a large thin book filled with neat tiny words and figures. He picked up a fountain pen that a sun ray from the window caught in a golden glint.

I stared at his writing hand. It was wattled with angry veins. Black hairs poked like scrub out of the crevices. For an instant, I imagined the Mayor's blood was flowing out of the fountain pen on to the page. He handed me the fountain pen. After I had signed my name in the book, he closed it and locked it again in his desk.

You have signed on as my personal junior assistant for one pound a week. You will do all the jobs I order you.

Come back here tomorrow at eight o'clock in the evening. You will find all the doors locked and the staff gone. Tap three times at the door in the back annexe and wait. Keep doing that until I come and let you in.

If anyone asks you what do you now do for a living, say,
 – ‘I do jobbing for the Mayor’.
If they press you further, say,
 – ‘Odd jobs like washing his car and running errands’.

Indeed, wash my car now. That will be your first employment.

The reference to the one pound note bowled me over faster than a cricket ball. I had only seen pound notes before in flashes in shops and concerts. A man with a pound, I thought, walked the town as if it all belonged to him.

Only then as I rose to leave did I see the framed photographs on the wall. The Mayor, with a younger face and more ginger hair, was greeting the Prince of Wales. The Mayor was in black robes and wore a gold neck‐chain. In one photograph, he had a hang‐dog expression. In the other, he and the Prince looked like they had been chums for years.

I left the council offices as if I was walking on air. I was now a working man and a special hireling of the Mayor. In my street, working people were looked upon with near royal awe and envy. We were probably fewer than the King's children. And my sole qualification was that morning I had at an opportune time lost my shoe.

When the town clerk shouted at me to keep off the council grass, I even was bold enough to thumb my nose at that nasty little man.