Lanark: a life in 4 books (42 page)

When the project of opening the district by railways was first mooted it created much alarm in the canal company, lest traffic be wholly diverted from their navigation. The alarm was not unfounded, but it only induced the company to reduce their dues by two thirds and expend large sums on improvements to facilitate traffic. New locks were made at Blackhill, of a character excelling all works of their class in Great Britain. They comprised two entire sets of four double locks each, either set being worked independently of the other; and were formed at the expense of upward of £30,000. In 1846, when the Monkland Canal became one concern with the Forth and Clyde Canal, the purchase price was £3,400 per share.

The canal had closed to traffic before he was born. From a channel carrying trade into the depth of the country it had become a ribbon of wilderness allowing reeds and willows, swans and waterhens into the heart of the city. He was puzzled by the phrase “splendid edifices were called into existence.” The only splendid building he knew east of the city was the canal itself, a ten-mile-long artwork shaped in stone, timber, earth and water. He went to sketch the Blackhill locks.

This was difficult. He knew how the two great water staircases curved round and down the hill, but from any one level the rest were invisible. Moreover, the weight of the architecture was seen best from the base, the spaciousness from on top; yet he wanted to show both equally so that eyes would climb his landscape as freely as a good athlete exploring the place. He invented a perspective showing the locks from below when looked at from left to right and from above when seen from right to left; he painted them as they would appear to a giant lying on his side, with eyes more than a hundred feet apart and tilted at an angle of 45 degrees. Working from maps, photographs, sketches and memory his favourite views had nearly all been combined into one when a new problem arose.

He had meant to people the canvas with Sunday afternoon activity: children fishing for minnows with jam-jars, a woman clipping a hedge round an old lockkeeper’s cottage, a pensioner exercising a dog on the towpath. But the locks now looked so solid that he wanted them to frame something vaster. He opened the last book of the bible and read of ultimatums and proclamations, of war, starvation, profiteering and death, of flaming bodies hurled through the sky to poison whole nations. The politics of the book seemed as modern as in the days of St. John and Albrecht Dürer. The final splitting of people into good and bad and the survival of the good into a luxurious new world was unconvincing, but politicians usually talk like that in a crisis. He changed the time of day from afternoon to gloaming and made a black descending dart high up between the moon and the roof of his old primary school. Being painted on the sky it could not fall, nor could the crowds under it escape. They fled along towpaths, over bridges, and collected on heights, yet there was no brutality in their fearful rush: mothers still clung to children, fathers shielded both, on open spaces single figures pointed to doors in the hillside. To show the crowds properly he made great changes in the landscape and these were nearly complete when a new need arose. In that huge multitude only
types
were visible, and he suddenly wanted a life-size figure in the foreground, someone whose bewildered face looked straight at the viewers, making them feel part of the multitude too.

Thaw stopped to think, for the whole composition would have to be rearranged again if the new figure was to fit it and not be just stuck on top. His painting teacher, a conscientious man, approached and said, “How much longer will you be on this? It’s all you’ve done this term. The others have finished three or four paintings by now.”

“Mine is bigger than theirs, sir.”

“Bigger, yes. Ridiculously big. When will you finish it?”

“Mibby next week, Mr. Watt. It looks nearly finished.”

“Quite. It looked nearly finished three weeks ago. It looked finished a fortnight before that. Each time you suddenly painted most of it out and began what seemed a different picture.”

“I got ideas for improvement.”

“Quite so. If you get any more ideas, ignore them. I want that picture finished next week.”

Thaw stared uneasily at his feet and said in a low voice, “I’ll try to finish it next week, sir, but if I get a good idea I can’t promise to reject it.”−He was filled with sudden gaiety and tried hard not to grin.— “If I did that, God might not give me others.”

After a pause Mr. Watt said, “Show me your folder of work.” Thaw brought over a folder of drawings and the teacher looked slowly through them.

“Why all the ugly distortions?”

“I may have over-emphasized some shapes to make them clearer, but surely you don’t think all my work distorted, sir?”

Mr. Watt looked through the folder again, frowning slightly, and set aside a sheet of hands drawn in pencil. He said, “I like these. They’re well observed and carefully described.”

Thaw hunted through the folder and brought out a foreshortened drawing of a woman seen from the feet. He said, “Don’t you think she is beautiful?”

“No. I honestly think you’ve made her ugly and tortured-looking.”

Thaw shuffled the drawings back into the folder and said embar-rassedly, “I’m sorry. I can’t agree.”

“We’re going to discuss this later,” said the teacher in a muffled voice, and left the room. McAlpin, who was working nearby, looked up and said, “I enjoyed that. I kept wondering which of you would burst into tears first.”

“It was nearly me.”

“It’s a good thing the registrar likes your work.”

“Why?”

“It would take too long to explain.”

They worked in silence, then Thaw asked in a pleading voice, “Kenneth, am I impudent?”

“Oh, no. You obviously dislike having to hurt their feelings.”

On the way to the classroom next morning Thaw met Mr. Watt who said, “One moment, Thaw! I’d like a word with you.”

They stepped into a window recess and sat on a bench. Mr. Watt sucked grimly at his lower lip, then said, “I’ve just been talking about you to Mr. Peel. I told him that you rejected my advice, were a disturbing influence on other students, and that I didn’t want you in my class.”

Thaw’s heart began beating hard and heavily. He said, “I like you to advise me, sir, I like advice from anyone, but advice which can’t be rejected doesn’t deserve the name. Moreover—” “Let’s not discuss it. McAlpin tells me you share a studio near the park.”

“Yes.”

“I have asked Mr. Peel to let you paint there. You’ll come to school as usual for lectures, but the rest of the time you’ll work by yourself. At the end of the term we’ll see what you have to show.”

Thaw took a moment to digest this, then gave his teacher a look of such delight, affection, and pity that Mr. Watt stirred impatiently and said, “I’d be grateful for an answer to a strictly unofficial question, Thaw. Do you have the faintest notion what you’re trying to do?”

“No sir, but this new arrangement will help me find out. Can I start shifting my things today?”

“Start when you like.”

At home that evening Thaw packed books and papers he had not yet taken to the studio. To Mr. Thaw, who was helping, he said, “Could I take the spare mattress from the single bed?”

“So I’m to see even less of you than usual?”

“It helps to be in the same room as my work when I wake in the morning.”

“All right. Take the mattress. And sheets. And blankets. And why not the bed when you’re about it?”

“No. A mattress and sleeping bag are easily rolled out of the way. A real bed would be a waste of space.”

“All right, all right. But I’ll consider it a favour if you come home to see me sometimes, and not only when you need money.”

These words held such humility and bitterness that Thaw felt an unfamiliar pang. He said sadly, “I respect and admire you, Dad. I even like you. But I’m afraid of you, I don’t know why.”

“Perhaps we chastised you too much when you were wee.”

“Chastised …?”

“Thrashed.”

“Did you do it often?”

“Quite often. You took it badly. We had to give you cold baths to stop your hysterics.”

This struck Thaw as an odd way to treat a small child. He hid his embarrassment by saying heartily, “I’m sure I deserved it.”

On Saturday morning he waited for Marjory in Central Station, for she had agreed to lunch with him, then help clean the studio. He felt lively and excited though he knew she was coming because he had asked for help, not pleasure. This would be their first time alone in a private place, and if they ever considered marriage her work in the studio would give him a notion of her domestic stamina. She was an hour and five minutes late and he could not look at her grimly, for the nearly hopeless wait gave her the appearance of a splendid surprise. She explained that she had worked hard the night before, her mother thought it best not to wake her, and the alarm clock had failed to ring. The waitress serving them in the restaurant they visited was June Haig.

“It’s a while since I saw you, June,” he said while Marjory considered the menu.

“Hello, Duncan. And er you still et the ert school?” she said, tapping her ruby underlip with a pencil end. She spoke drawlingly, for her accent had turned Anglo-Scottish.

“I’ve been twice jilted by that girl,” said Thaw when June left with the order.

“When was that, Duncan?” said Marjory, looking interested.

“I’ll tell you one day. It’s a sordid wee story,” said Thaw jovially. He enjoyed a vision of himself as a worldly man who could joke about being jilted by a waitress. While they ate Marjory looked up once or twice and saw his face intent on hers and smiled a small strained smile. He remembered when that smile had seemed ugly. Now it seemed lovely, and he was sure that after twelve years the wrinkle it caused would seem lovely too.

“Duncan,” said Marjory, “you won’t mind if I … well, I may have to leave you early this afternoon.”

After a pause Thaw said dryly, “If that’s so it can’t be helped.” “Well anyway, we’ll see,” said Marjory vaguely.

The studio was a long whitewashed attic. Two windows allowed a view of trees, paths and lawns sloping up to the mansions of Park Terrace. A gas cooker, table, sofa and some chairs stood round a fireplace at one end. The other end was filled by a canvas stretched on the wall which bore the first strokes of a bigger version of the Blackhill locks landscape. The middle of the floor held the grime and rubbish which comes when a few young men use a room carelessly. Among it were easels, Thaw’s bedding and a heavy old sideboard loaded with paint material. There was a figurine of a dancing faun on the mantelpiece and several sentences drawn on the sloping ceiling.

IF MORE THAN 5% OF THE PEOPLE LIKE A PAINTING
THEN BURN IT FOR IT MUST BE BAD

James McNeil Whistler

I DO NOT PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND ART BUT I BELIEVE MOST SO-CALLED MODERN ART IS THE WORK
OF LAZY, HALF-BAKED PEOPLE

President Truman

GOING DOWN TO HELL IS EASY: THE GLOOMY DOOR
IS OPEN NIGHT AND DAY. TURNING AROUND AND
GETTING BACK TO SUNLIGHT IS TASK, THE HARD
THING

Vergil

HUMANITY SETS ITSELF NO PROBLEM WHICH CANNOT
EVENTUALLY BE SOLVED

Marx

Thaw lit the fire, folded back the carpet, swept the floor, carried boxes of rubbish down to the midden, shook mats out of the window and washed the panes. Marjory cleaned the rusty stove, then washed pans and utensils and scrubbed the floor. It was six o’clock when they finished. The room looked wonderfully neat and clean.

“Wash yourself and we’ll have tea,” said Thaw. He brought parcels out of a cupboard. “Chops,” he said. “Onions. Cakes. Bread. Real butter. Jam.”

“Oh, Duncan! How lovely! But … Mummy expects me for tea….”

“Run down to the phone box at the corner and tell her you’re having it here. Here’s three pennies for the call.”

When Marjory returned the meal was almost ready. They ate hungrily and washed up, then Marjory sat on the sofa by the fire. Thaw occasionally went to the other end of the room and returned with folders. He opened them and spread the contents on the rug at her feet: paintings, drawings and sketches, reproductions and photographs clipped from newspapers and magazines.

“Goodness, Duncan. What a lot of good work. You make me feel very lazy.”

He put the work away and returned to the hearth. It was nearly dark outside and most of the light came flickering from a sheaf of vivid flames in the grate. Marjory looked up at him and smiled. Her hands were folded in her lap. Thaw stood by the table and felt a silence like the silence in the mathematics room when the teacher had asked a question he couldn’t answer.

“You know I’m afraid of you, Marjory,” he blurted.

“Why, Duncan?”

“I suppose because I … I like you very much.”

“I like you too, Duncan.”

There was more silence. He thought to break it with a joke. He said derisively, “Do you know that a while ago I actually believed you were going out with another man—”

She interrupted at once. “Oh, Duncan, I meant to tell you about that. I know a boy at the university, he … takes me sometimes to dances and things, but I—I don’t know how to say this without seeming vain—I think he … likes me more than I like him.”

“That’s all right,” said Thaw abstractedly. He sat on the hearth rug by her feet and laid his head against her knee.

“I … oh, I …” he murmured.

His intellect had dissolved. He shaped words with his lips but only one or two became sound: “mother” he said once, and shortly after that “world,” but he was unconscious of thoughts and later could not remember thinking.

“And yet you …” he murmured, reaching up and touching her cheek curiously. She stirred a little. “I think I’ll have to be going home now,” she said.

“Of course,” he said, standing up. “I was dreaming. I’ll see you home.”