Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [101]
“I know, son, I know. It’s a long, slow process.”
At this time Thaw slept with his father in the bed settee. He did not sleep well, for the mattress had a hollow in the middle which Mr. Thaw, being heavier, naturally filled, and Thaw found it hard not to roll down on top of him. One night after the lights were out he remarked how pleasant it would be to get back to the usual sleeping arrangements when his mother was better. After a pause, Mr. Thaw said strangely,
“Duncan, I hope you’re not … hoping too much that your mother will get better.” Thaw said lightly, “Oh, where there’s life there’s hope.”
“Duncan, there’s no hope. You see, the operation was too late. She’s been recovering from the effects of the operation, but it’s a recovery that can’t last. Her liver is too badly damaged.”
Thaw said, “When will she die then?”
“In a month. Mibby in two months. It depends on the strength of her heart. You see, the liver isn’t cleaning the blood, so her body is getting less and less nourishment.”
“Does she know?”
“No. Not yet.”
Thaw turned his face away and wept a little in the darkness. His tears were not particularly passionate, just a weak bleeding of water at the eyes.
He was wakened by a crash and a great cry. They found his mother struggling on the lobby floor. She had been trying to go to the lavatory. “Ach, Daddy, I’m done. I’m done. Finished,” she said as Mr. Thaw helped her back to bed. Thaw stood transfixed at the living-room door, his brain ringing with echoes of the cry. At the moment of waking to it he had felt it was not an unexpected thing, but something heard ages ago which he had waited all his life to hear again.
Two days later Thaw and Ruth came home from school together and had the door opened to them by Mr. Thaw. He said, “Your mother has something to tell you.”
They entered the bedroom. Mr. Thaw stood by the door watching. The bed had been moved to the window to give her a view of the street, and she lay with her face toward them and said timidly, “Ruth, Duncan, I think that one day soon I’ll just … just sleep away and not wake up.”
Ruth gasped and ran from the room and Mr. Thaw followed her. Thaw went to the bed and lay on it between his mother and the window. He felt below the covers for her hand and held it. After a while she said, “Duncan, do you think there’s anything afterwards?”
He said, “No, I don’t think so. It’s just sleep.”
Something wistful in the tone of the question made him add, “Mind you, many wiser folk than me have believed there’s a new life afterwards. If there is, it won’t be worse than this one.”
For several days on returning from school he took his shoes off and lay beside his mother holding her hand. It would have been untrue to say he felt unhappy. At these times he hardly thought or felt at all, and did not talk, for Mrs. Thaw was becoming unable to talk. Usually he looked out at the street. Although joining a main road it was a quiet street and usually lit by cold spring sunshine. The houses opposite were semi-detached villas with lilacs and a yellow laburnum tree in the gardens. If he felt anything it was a quietness and closeness amounting to contentment. During this time Ruth, who had never taken much interest in household things, became very busy at cleaning and cooking and made her mother many light sorts of foods and pastries, but soon Mrs. Thaw had to be nourished on nothing but fluids and was too weak to speak clearly or open her eyes. Nobody in the household talked much, but once Thaw made a remark to his sister beginning. “When Mummy’s dead …”
“She’s not going to die.”
“But Ruth …”
“She’s not going to die. She’s going to get better,” said Ruth, staring at him brightly.
At school oral examinations were held to corroborate the results of the written exams. The English teacher told his students to learn by heart some passages of prose, preferably from the bible, since they might be asked to recite aloud. Thaw decided to shock the examiner by learning the erotic verses from the Song of Solomon which begin, “Behold thou