Lanark: a life in 4 books (23 page)

“French.”

“I’m taking Latin. Ye need it tae get to university.”

“But Latin’s a dead language!” said Thaw. “My mother wants me to take Latin but I tell her there are more good books in French. And ye can use French tae travel.”

“Aye, mibby, but ye need Latin tae get to university.”

An electric bell screeched and a fat bald man in a black gown appeared on the steps of the main entrance. He stood with hands deep in his trouser pockets and feet apart, contemplating the buttons of his waistcoat while the older pupils hurried into lines before several entrances. One or two lines kept up a vague chatter and shuffle; he looked sternly at these and they fell silent. He motioned each class to the entrances one after another with a finger of his right hand. Then he beckoned the little group by the gate to the foot of the steps, lined them up, read their names from a list and led them into the building. The gloom of the entrance steeped them, then the dim light of echoing hall, then the cold light of a classroom.

Thaw entered last and found the only seat left was the undesirable one in the front row in front of the teacher, who sat behind a tall desk with his hands clasped on the lid. When everyone was seated he looked from left to right along the rows of faces before him, as if memorizing each one, then leaned back and said casually, “Now well divide you into classes. In the first year, of course, the only real division is between those who take Latin and those whos take … a modern language. At the end of the third year you will have to choose between other subjects: Geography or History, for instance; Science or Art; for by then you will be specializing for your future career. Hands up those who don’t know what specializing means. No hands? Good. Your choice today is a simpler one, but its effects reach further. You all know Latin is needed for entrance to university. A number of benevolent people think this unfair and are trying to change it. As far as Glasgow University is concerned they haven’t succeeded
yet
.” He smiled an inward-looking smile and leaned back until he seemed to be staring at the ceiling. He said, “My name’s Walkenshaw. I’m senior Classics master. Classics. That’s what we call the study of Latin and Greek. Perhaps you’ve heard the word before? Who hasn’t heard of classical music? Put your hand up if you haven’t heard of classical music. No hands? Good. Classical music, you see, is the
best
sort of music, music by the best composers. In the same way the study of Classics is the study of the
best
. Are you chewing something?”

Thaw, who had been swallowing nervously, was appalled to find this question fired at himself. Not daring to take his gaze from the teacher’s face he stood slowly up and shook his head.

“Answer me.”

“No sir.”

“Open your mouth. Open it wide. Stick your tongue out.”

Thaw did as he was told. Mr. Walkenshaw leaned forward, stared, then said mildly, “Your name?”

“Thaw, sir.”

“That’s all right, Thaw. You can sit down. And always tell the truth, Thaw.”

Mr. Walkenshaw leaned back and said, “Classics. Or, as we call it at university, the Humanities. I say nothing against the study of modern languages. Naturally half of you will choose French. But Whitehall Senior Secondary School has a tradition, a fine tradition of Classical scholarship, and I hope many of you will continue that tradition. To those without enough ambition to go to university and who can’t see the use of Latin, I can only repeat the words of Robert Burns:’ Man cannot live by bread alone.’ No, and you would be wise to remember it. Now I’m going to read your names again and I want you to shout Modern and Classics according to choice.”

He read the list of names again. Thaw was depressed to hear all the people he knew choose Latin. He chose Latin.

The Latin students queued at the door of another classroom opening out of the hall. The girls who had chosen Latin were already there, giggling and whispering. It took Thaw a second to notice and fall in love with the loveliest of them. She was blond and wore a light dress, so he looked loftily round the hall with an absent-minded frown hoping she would notice his superior indifference. The hall was like an aquarium tank, the light slanted into it from windows in the roof. On a wall at one end a marble tablet showed a knight in Roman armour and the names of pupils killed in the first world war. Photographs of headmasters hung between surrounding doors: shaggy bearded early ones and neatly moustached recent ones, but all with stern brows and clenched mouths. From a balcony above came the horrible detonation of a leather belt striking a hand. Somewhere a door opened and a voice said querulously, “
Marcellus animadvertit
, Marcellus noticed this thing, and at once into battle line formed the forces, and did not reluctantly, er reluctantly take the opportunity of recalling to them how often in the past they had borne themselves, er, nobly….”

A lank young teacher led them into the classroom. The girls sat in desks to his right, the boys to the left, and he faced them with hands on hips leaning forward from the waist. He said, “My name is Maxwell. I’m your form teacher. You come to me first period each day to have the class register called and to bring reasons for having been absent or late. They’d better be good reasons. I’m also your Latin teacher.”

He stared at them a while, then said, “I’m new to teaching. Just as I’m your first senior secondary school teacher, you are my first senior secondary school class. We’re starting together, you see, and I think we’d better decide here and now to start well. You do right by me and I’ll do right by you. But if we quarrel about anything
you’re
going to suffer. Not me.”

He stared at them brightly and the frightened class stared back. He had a craggy face with a rugged nose, trimmed red moustache and broad lips. Thaw noticed the undersurface of the moustache was clipped to exactly continue the flat surface of the upper lip. This detail frightened him even more than the grim, nervous little speech.

Through the morning depression gathered in his brain and chest like a physical weight. Each forty minutes the bell screeched and the class moved to a different room and were welcomed by a few unfriendly words. The Mathematics teacher was a small brisk woman who said if they tried hard she would help them all she could, but one thing she could not and would not stand was dreaming. There was no room for dreamers in her class. She gave out algebra and geometry books in which Thaw saw a land without colour, furniture or action where thought negotiated symbolically with itself. The science room had a pungent chemical smell and shelves of strange objects which excited his appetite for magic, but the teacher was a big bullying man with hair like a beast’s fur and Thaw knew nothing
he
taught would bring an increase of power or freedom. The art teacher was mild and middle-aged. He talked about the laws of perspective, and how these laws had to be learned before true art became possible. He gave out pencils and got them to copy a wooden block onto a small sheet of paper. In each class Thaw sat in the front row and stared at the teacher’s face. He was in a world where he could not do well, and he wanted to give an impression of obedience that would make the authorities treat him leniently. All the time he felt the pale blaze of the blond girl somewhere behind him on the left. Twice he dropped a book as an excuse for looking at her while he picked it up. She seemed an unstill flickering girl, always moving her shoulders, shaking her head and hair, smiling and glancing from side to side. He noticed with surprise that her oval face had a thrust-forward, slightly clumsy jaw. Her beauty lay more in the movement of her parts than the parts themselves, which was maybe why she was never still.

The boys from Riddrie stood chattering in a queue for the tram which would take them home at noontime. One said, “That big Maxwell—I hate him. He looks mad enough to murder ye.”

“Ach, naw, he’ll be all right if ye do as he says. It’s the science man I’m feart from. He’s the sort that’ll hammer ye jist because he’s in a bad mood.”

“Ach, they’re all out to terrorize us today. The theory is that if they scare us enough at the start we’ll give them nae trouble later. They’ve got a hope.”

There was a reflective silence; then somebody said, “What dae ye think of the talent?”

“I care for that wee blond bird.”

“Aye, did ye see her? She couldnae keep still. I wouldnae mind feeling
her
belly in a dark room.”

Everyone but Thaw sniggered. Someone nudged him and said,“What do you think of her, moon-man?”

“Her jaw’s too ape-like for me.”

“Is it? All right. But I wouldnae give her back if I got her in a present. Does anyone know her name?

“I do. It’s Kate Caldwell.”

Things improved in the afternoon for they had English and the teacher was a young man with a comforting likeness to the film comedian Bob Hope. Without any introductory speech he said, “Today is the last day for handing in contributions for the school magazine. I’ll give you paper and you can try to write something for it. It can be prose or poetry, serious or comic, an invented story or something that really happened. It doesn’t matter if the result isn’t up to much, but maybe one or two of you will get something accepted.” Thaw leaned over the paper, elated thoughts flowing through his head. His heart began to beat faster and he started writing. He quickly filled two sheets of foolscap then copied the result out carefully, checking the hard words with a dictionary. The teacher collected the papers and the bell rang for the next lesson.

Next day the class had geometry. The Maths teacher talked lucidly and drew clear diagrams on the blackboard, and Thaw gazed at her, trying by intensity of expression to make up for inability to understand. A girl came in and said, “Please, miss, Mister Meikle wants tae see Duncan Thaw in room fifty-four.”

As she led him across the playground to the wooden annexe,

Thaw said, “Who’s Mr. Meikle?”

“Head English teacher.”

“What does he want me for?”

“How should I know?”

In room fifty-four a saturnine man in an academic gown leaned on a desk overlooking empty rows of desks. He turned toward Thaw a face that was long, lined and triangular under the oval of a balding skull. He had a small black moustache and ironical eyebrows. Lifting two sheets of foolscap from his desk he said,

“You wrote this?”

“Yes sir.”

“What gave you the idea?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Hm. I suppose you read a lot?”

“Quite a lot.”

“What are you reading just now?”

“A play called
The Dynasts
.”

“Hardy’s
Dynasts?
”

“I forget who wrote it. I got it out of the library.” “What do you think of it?”

“I think the choruses are a bit boring but I like the scenic directions. I like the retreat from Moscow, with the bodies of the soldiers baked by fire in front and frozen stiff behind. And I like the view of Europe down through the clouds, looking like a sick man with the Alps for his backbone.”

“Do you do any writing at home?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Are you at work on anything just now?”

“Yes. I’m trying to write about this boy who can hear colours.”

“Hear colours?”

“Yes sir. When he sees a fire burning each flame makes a noise like a fiddle playing a jig, and some nights he’s kept awake by the full moon screaming, and he hears the sun rise through an orange dawn like trumpets blowing. The bother is that most colours round about him make horrible noises—orange and green buses, for instance, traffic lights and advertisements and things.”

“You don’t hear colours yourself, do you?” said the teacher, looking at Thaw peculiarly.

“Oh no,” said Thaw, smiling. “I got the idea from a note Edgar Allan Poe wrote to one of his poems. He said he sometimes thought he could hear the dusk creeping over the land like the tolling of a bell.”

“I see. Well, Duncan, the school magazine is rather short of worthwhile contributions this year. Do you think you could write something more for us? Along slightly different lines?”

“Oh yes.”

“
Don’t
write about the boy who hears colours. It’s a good idea—perhaps too good for a school magazine. Write about something more commonplace. How soon could you manage it?”

“Tomorrow, sir.”

“The day after will do.”

“I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”

Mr. Meikle tapped his teeth with a pencil end, then said, “We have a debating society in the school every second Wednesday evening. You should come to it. You may have something to say.”

Thaw ran leaping back across the empty playground. Outside the maths room he paused, took the grin from his face, frowned with his brows, smiled faintly with his mouth, opened the door and went to his seat with the eyes of the class on him. Kate Caldwell, who sat across the passage from his desk, smiled and flickered questioningly. He bent over a page of axioms, pretending to concentrate but working inwardly on a new story. The elation in his chest recalled the summit of Rua. He remembered the sunlit moor and the beckoning white speck and wondered if these things could be used in a story and if Kate Caldwell would read it and be impressed. Taking a pencil he began to sketch furtively a steep mountain on the cover of a book.

“What is a point?”

He looked up and blinked.

“Stand up, Thaw! Now tell me what a point is.”

The question seemed meaningless.

“
A point is that which has no dimensions
. You didn’t know that, did you, yet it’s the first axiom in the book. And—what’s this? You’ve been drawing on the cover!”

He stared at the teacher’s mouth opening and shutting and wondered why the words coming out could hurt like stones. His ear tried to get free by attending to the purr of a car moving slowly up the street outside and the faint shuffle of Kate Caldwell’s feet. The teacher’s mouth stopped moving. He muttered “Yes miss” and sat down, blushing hotly.

He took four nights to finish the new story properly. He gave it to Mr. Meikle with many apologies for the delay and Mr. Meikle read it and rejected it, explaining that Thaw had tried a blend of realism and fantasy which even an adult would have found difficult. Thaw was stunned and resentful. Though not satisfied with the story he knew it was the best he had written; the words “even an adult” hurt his pride by suggesting his work was only interesting because he was a child; moreover he had quietly told a few classmates of Mr. Meikle’s request, hoping word of it would reach Kate Caldwell.