Lanark: a life in 4 books (40 page)

Thaw said, “Ah. A budgerigar.”

“Yes indeed. We call him Joey. I’m sure I’ve seen you around the university.”

“I sometimes sketch in the medical building.”

“Why?”

“To see the insides of people. And death too, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s stupid to share the world with something you’re afraid to look at. You see I want to like the world, life, God, nature, et cetera, but I can’t because of pain.”

“Pain poses no problem. It warns individuals that they’re defective.”

“Oh, I know pain is usually good for us,” said Thaw, “but what good is it to a woman who bears a limbless baby with a face on top of its head? What good is it to the baby?”

“I deal with life at a cellular level,” said the professor.

A little later he and Thaw said simultaneously, “How is Marjory−” “Tell me about golf—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Thaw. “How is Marjory?”

“Getting on at school.”

“I … I don’t know. What year is she in?”

“The second, I think.”

“Then she’s probably doing quite well,” said Thaw. “Hardly anyone fails their second year,” he added.

“I thought you were in her class,” said the professor, faintly hostile.

“Indeed no,” said Thaw coldly.

Marjory came in with her mother. She wore a flower-pat-terned dress and long earrings and her breasts seemed more prominent than usual. The budgerigar fluttered to her shoulder twittering, “Hurry, hurry up, Marjory! Good old Mr. Churchill!”

She blushed and smiled.

“Naughty Joey’s giving away secrets,” said Mrs. Laidlaw.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Duncan.”

“I was very late myself,” said Thaw.

“Off the pair of you go now,” said Mrs. Laidlaw kindly. She stood in the doorway watching them go down the path. Thaw felt like a child going to school with his sister. On the pavement Marjory hesitated and said nervously, “Duncan—I hope you won’t be annoyed about this—when I said I could go out with you tonight I’d forgotten I’d arranged to see a friend…. She’s very nice…. Would it be all right if she came with us? She lives quite near.”

“Of course!” said Thaw, and talked heartily to cover the stoical adjustments happening inside him. They reached a gate in a thick hedge and Marjory whispered that she wouldn’t be long and left him outside. The night was chilly and glints of frost shone in the pavement under the street lamp. He heard a door open and the light murmur of Marjory’s voice, then the darker tones of someone else. Eventually the door shut and Marjory joined him with a slight vertical crease between her eyebrows.

“I’m sorry, Duncan—she wasn’t able to come. I think maybe she has a cold.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She gave a quick polite smile. He was disturbed by the strained lines it made near the corners of her mouth. If she often smiled like that a wrinkle would come there in ten or twelve years.

They were late for the film. It had love scenes which made him very conscious of Marjory beside him. He leaned toward her but she sat so upright and stared so straight ahead that he dispiritedly brought out the chocolates and resignedly popped one at intervals into her mouth. After the film the nearby cafés had queues outside so they boarded the bus home. He sat on the upper deck watching the pure line of her face and throat against the black window. They filled him with delight and terror for he would need to cross over to them and he hadn’t much time. He stared desperately, trying to learn what to do by intensity of vision. Her eyes were downcast under a brown feathery brow, her mouth had a lost remote look but the chin was strong, her brown hair was drawn into a flat coil at the back of her skull and the tip of an ear peeped through like a delicate section of seashell. The head turned and faced him enquiringly. Sweat trickled down his brow.

“Can I … hold your hand?”

“Of course, Duncan.”

“It’s queer. When I ask for something I’m usually sure you’ll give it, but I sweat as if I’d no chance at all.”

Her throat was shaken by a note of bitten-back laughter.

“Do you, Duncan?”

The handhold was mainly pleasing for symbolic reasons, but where their shoulders touched so soft a silence and relaxation flowed into him that his mind bathed in vacancy for a while, untroubled by thoughts of what to do when they reached her house.

They paused at the garden gate. She shut her eyes suddenly and tilted her blind face upward. He put his mouth on hers. After a moment she slipped away, saying “Goodnight, Duncan.”

“Goodnight—I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I?”

“Yes, tomorrow. Goodnight.”

He walked thoughtfully home, for the last tram had gone. Frost stiffened the substance of the pavement so that his feet hit the glittering surface with a tweeting note. Crossing the hill by the university he was struck by the clarity of the stars. They were not like lights stippling the inner surface of a dome but like galactic chandeliers hung at different levels in black air. He felt vaguely happy, yet vaguely puzzled and flat, and very cold. The kiss had meant nothing, nothing books, films and gossip had made him expect. Was it his fault? Or Marjory’s? Did it matter? He reached home, went to bed and slept.

He was standing on the golf course of Alexandra Park shortly after dawn, listening to a lark in the grey air overhead. The song stopped and the bird’s corpse thumped onto the turf at his feet. He walked downhill through a litter of sparrows and blackbirds on the paths to the gate. On Alexandra Parade a worker’s tram, apparently empty, groaned past the traffic lights. He watched the lights change from red and amber to green, then to green and amber, and then go out. The tramcar came to a halt.

Not everything died at once for the lowlier plants put on final spurts of abnormal growth. Ivy sprouted up the Scott monument in George Square and reached the lightning conductor on the poet’s head; then the leaves fell off and the column was encased in a net of bone-white bone-hard fibre. Moss carpeted the pavements, then crumbled to powder under his feet as he walked alone through the city. He was happy. He looked in the windows of pornography shops without wondering if anyone saw him, and rode a bicycle through the halls of the art galleries arid bumped down the front steps, singing. He set up easels in public places and painted huge canvases of buildings and dead trees. When a painting was completed he left it confronting the reality it depicted. The weather had also died. There was no rain or wind. The sky was always grey and warm and the time mid-afternoon.

He sat in the courtyard of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh painting a view of Arthur’s Seat. A harsh beak whispered gratingly in his left ear, “This is all much as Queen Mary remembered it.”

A white speck appeared high on the crags and moved down the path toward the courtyard’s southern gate. A load of depression settled in his heart. He leaned toward the canvas and worked with his face against it, determined to see nobody. A chilling shock went through him and he knew she had laid her hand on the back of his neck. He tried to ignore her but work was intolerable under her suffering eyes, so he motioned her to stand before the easel. She did so, thinking he meant to put her in the picture. He took a rifle and shot her. She stared at him reproachfully, then broke, crumpled, crumbled into a turd.

Great beetles emerged. The city was full of them. They were five feet long and shaped like rowing boats with antennae and had mouths in their stomachs. They were in every building throwing furniture and the bodies of the dead out of the windows. They feared open spaces and crossed these at a quick scuttling run. In the angle between a wall and pavement Thaw crouched between two who flickered their antennae incuriously over him. Since they had no eyes they thought him one of themselves as he squatted down and moved as they did.

He awoke with a chill that kept him in bed for a week.

CHAPTER 24.

Marjory Laidlaw

Convalescence was sweetened by the thought of Marjory and he returned to school full of anxious hope. Once again he was standing on the staircase talking to McAlpin and Drummond when she passed without noticing him wave and call. He gaped after her, wondering if he should chase and strike her. Surely she must have seen him! Why did she pretend not to? Or was the fault his? Perhaps on their night out together he had bored or disappointed her beyond any hope of forgiveness. An hour later in the school shop she said “Hello, Duncan!” and stood looking at him with a shy gay open amused smile.

“Hullo!” he said, gazing joyfully back.

“Have you been ill, Duncan?”

“Just a bit.”

“What a shame.”

She still smiled, but her voice sympathized.

In the following weeks she brought him increasing splendour and discontent. He told her of a studio he was sharing near Kelvingrove Park.

“It’s a great big attic and by clubbing together it only costs a few shillings a week each. On Friday nights we go there from school and take turns at making a big meal. Most of the others get help from their girlfriends but Kenneth is a great chef. Last week he made Spanish onion soup with toast on top. Next week it’s my turn and I’m going to boil a haggis. A shop in Argyle Street has good big cheap ones and they’re nice with tatties and turnip. Afterwards we put off the lights and play records by the fire, jazz and classical. You should come.”

“It sounds marvellous.” She sighed. “I wish I could come.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Well … there’s a friend I always have to see on Fridays.” At tea breaks and lunch time they sat in the refectory or went to a café and returned holding hands and talking. He joined the school choir because she sang there, and after late practices they walked to her home. At the garden gate conversation suddenly failed, their mouths met in a ritual pressure and she slipped away with a soft “Goodnight,” leaving him as baffled as the first time they kissed. When they left the school together she always murmured “Excuse me a minute,” slipped into the ladies’ lavatory and left him outside for a quarter of an hour. She never recognized him if he was with friends. These insults filled reservoirs of rage which evaporated whenever she smiled at him. And when their bodies accidentally touched a current of stillness and silence flowed in from her and he felt that before touching Marjory he had never known rest. His calmest moods had been full of fear, hope, lust and memory, all clashing to make a discord of ideas and words. Her touch silenced these, letting him know nothing for a while but the pressure of hand or knee, and Marjory beside him, and sunlight on rooftops or a cloud seen through a window. That didn’t happen often. His frequentest pleasure was waking in the morning, hearing pigeons among the chimneypots and being warmed by the thought of soon seeing her. When words came at these times the memory of Marjory orchestrated them into phrases. He wrote poems and slid copies into her hands as they passed in the school corridors. He started combing his hair, brushing his teeth, polishing his shoes, changing underwear twice a week and (to the annoyance of Mr. Thaw, who laundered them) shirts four times a week. He wore the pin-striped suit to school and cleaned off the stains with turpentine, though this made temporary rashes on the skin. His manner with other girls grew more playful. He thought they were interested in him.

After school one evening he saw her on the edge of a group outside the annexe. She smiled and raised her hand and he said, “Remember tonight, Marjory?”

She grew agitated and distressed. “No, Duncan…. Duncan I think I … I’m sure I’ve something to do tonight…. This isn’t an excuse; I really have too much work to do.”

“Never mind,” said Thaw amiably. He entered the refectory and found McAlpin alone at a table. Thaw sat down, folded arms on the tabletop and hid his face in them. “Damn her,” he said muffledly. “
Damn
her.
Damn
her.
Damn
her.”

“What happened this time?”

Thaw explained. McAlpin said, “She’s afraid of you.”

“That’s impossible. I’m not aggressive. Even in masturbation fantasies I never dream of being cruel to
real
girls.”

After a pause, McAlpin said, “Imagine you are quiet, timid, rather conventional, and not long out of a middle-class fee-paying school which prides itself on producing genteel young ladies. You are chased by a clever peculiar boy. He’s polite but his clothes and hair have paint on them, he breathes heavily and his skin is often … mmmm … medically interesting. How would you react? Remember, you’ve been brought up not to hurt people.”

Thaw said, “I’ve thought of that. And next time we meet I’ll nod to her distantly and she’ll be specially inquiring and charming. She’ll suggest we have coffee together. Oh, she wants me. Slightly. Sometimes.”

“Maybe she’s frigid.”

“Of course she’s frigid. So am I. But nobody stays the same forever and even lumps of ice, surely, will melt if they rub together long enough. Perhaps she’s not frigid. Perhaps she loves someone else.”

“She’s honest, Duncan—I doubt if there’s anyone else.”

“Do you? I would doubt but … she’s so much more bonny each time I see her that I feel she must love somebody.”

McAlpin said, “Hm!” and glanced sideways at Thaw beneath lethargic eyelids.

He sat on the top deck of the homeward tramcar and his rage at her, increased with the distance between them. A voice said, “Hullo, Duncan.”

It took a moment to recognize June Haig, who was going downstairs. He rose and followed, saying, “Hullo, June. You are a bad girl.”

“Oh? Why that?”

“Last year you kept me waiting for nothing for a whole hour at Paisley’s corner.”

She gave him a quick startled smile. “Did I? Oh, yes. Something happened.”

He saw that she didn’t remember. He grinned and said “Don’t worry. The point is …” —the tramcar stopped and they crossed to the pavement— “the point is, will you forget again if we arrange to meet again?”

“Oh no.”

“Yes you will, if we don’t meet soon. What about Paisley’s corner tomorrow night? About seven?”