Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [102]
“All right, all right, Mary,” said Mr. Thaw. “You won’t die. You won’t die.”
“Uh I aw ie, I aw ie.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not going to die, you’re not going to die.”
For the first time in two weeks Mrs. Thaw shuddered and sat up. Her eyes opened to the full, she pulled her lips back from her teeth and shrieked, “I want to die! I want to die!” and fell back. Thaw collapsed on a chair, holding his head between his hands and sobbing loudly. Ten minutes later he ran to school across the sunlit slope of the park, loudly chanting verses from the Song of Solomon. When he got home that afternoon Mrs. Thaw lay more quiet and still than ever and breathed with a faint wheezy sound. He put his lips to her ear and whispered urgently, “Mum! Mum! I’ve passed in English. I’ve got Higher English.”
A faint smile moved her mouth, then sank into her blind face like water into sand. Next morning when Mrs. Gilchrist downstairs came in to wash her and pulled the curtain behind the bed she heard a very faint whisper: “Another day,” but in the afternoon word that Thaw had passed in Art and History did not reach the living part of her brain, or else she had grown indifferent.
She died three days later, very early on a Saturday morning. The previous night Mrs. Gilchrist downstairs and Mrs. Wishaw from across the landing sat waiting in the living room and did not move out when Thaw went to bed there. Mr. Thaw sat in the bedroom holding his wife’s hand. When Thaw awoke the light was filtering through the curtains and the neighbours had left and he knew his mother was dead. He got up, dressed, ate a bowl of cornflakes and switched the wireless on to a comedy programme. Mr. Thaw came in and said, slightly embarrassed, “Would you mind turning it down a bit, Duncan? The neighbours might be offended if they heard.”
Thaw switched off the wireless and went for a walk to the canal. He stood at the edge of a deep stone channel and watched without thought or feeling the foam-flecked water swirl between rotting timbers.
In the afternoon he called on Coulter as he had arranged to do some while before. Mrs. Coulter had taken her husband for a walk, and Thaw sat by the fire while Coulter, in vest and trousers, washed at the sink. Thaw said awkwardly, “By the way, Bob, my mother died last night.”
Coulter turned slowly round. He said “You’re joking, Duncan.”
“No.”
“But I saw her two weeks ago. She was talking to me. She seemed all right.”
“Aye.”
Coulter towelled his hands, looking at Thaw closely. He said, “You shouldn’t hold it in, Duncan. It’ll be worse for you later.” “I don’t think I’m holding anything in.”
Coulter pulled a shirt and pullover on and said in a worried way, “The bother is, I arranged tae meet Sam Lang at Tollcross playing fields at three. We were going to do some running practice. I thought you wouldnae mind coming along.”
“I don’t mind coming along.”
When he got home the undertaker had called. A coffin lay on a pair of trestles on the rug before the bedroom fireplace. The lid was placed to leave a square hole at the top and Mrs. Thaw’s face stuck up through the hole. Thaw looked at it with puzzled distaste. The features had been his mother’s but though he saw no difference in the shape all resemblance had vanished. The thing was without even the superficial life of a work of art and its material lacked the integrity of bronze or clay. He touched the brow with a fingertip and felt cold bone under the cold skin. This dense pack of dead tissues was not his mother’s face. It was nobody’s face.
In the days before the funeral the bedroom was pervaded by a sweet fusty odour which spread to other parts of the house. Air fresheners of the kind used in lavatories were placed under the coffin but