Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [109]
Tears slid down Thaw’s immobile face. He said harshly, “I can’t. There’s no alternative. I have no choice but to cooperate with my damnation.”
“Stop being melodramatic.”
“Am I melodramatic? I’m saying what I believe as succinctly as I can.”
They finished the meal in silence. Then Mr. Thaw said, “Duncan, go to the art school tonight. Join the evening classes.”
“Why?”
“You’ve six weeks before you start work for the libraries. Use them for what you like doing most.”
“I see. Get a taste of that life before I give it up for good. No thanks.“
“Duncan, join the evening classes.”
“No thanks.”
That evening he waited in a corridor of the art school outside the registrar’s office in a queue of other applicants. When his turn came he entered a spacious room and started walking toward a desk at the far end, conscious of pictorial and statuesque objects on either side. The man at the desk looked up as he approached. He had a large, spectacled face and a wide mouth with amused corners. He spoke drawlingly, with an expensive English dialect. “Good evening. What can I do for you?”
Thaw sat down and pushed onto the desk a filled in application form. The registrar looked at it and said, “I see you want to go to life classes, ah, Thaw. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Still at school?”
“I’ve just left it.”
“I’m afraid you’re rather young for life drawing. You’ll have to convince us that your studies are sufficiently advanced to fit you for it.”
“I’ve some work here.”
Thaw pushed his folder onto the desk. The registrar looked through it examining each picture carefully. He said, “Are the mounted ones part of a series?”
“They illustrate a lecture I once gave.”
The registrar put a few pictures aside and looked at them again. He said, “Don’t you think you should join us as a day student?” “My father can’t afford it.”
“We could arrange a grant from the Corporation, you know. What are you intending to do?”
“Join the library service.”
“Do you like the idea?”
“It seems the only thing possible.”
“Honestly, I think you would be wasted in the library service. This is remarkable work. Quite remarkable. I take it you would prefer to come to the art school as a full-time day student?”
“Yes.”
“Your address is on this form, of course…. What school did you go to?”
“Whitehill Senior Secondary.”
“Have you a telephone?”
“No.”
“Has your father’s place of work a telephone?”
“Yes. Garngash nine-three-one-three.”
“Well, Thaw, I’ll be seeing you again. I’ll keep this work if I may. I want to show it to the director.”
Thaw shut the door behind him. He had entered the building in an exhausted mood and had maintained through the interview a colourless, almost listless manner. Now he eyed the corridor outside with an excited speculation. It was lined with salt-white casts of renaissance nobility and nude and broken gods and goddesses. A door among these opened and a hectic little group of girls marched out and surrounded him for a moment with swinging skirts and hair, scent, chatter, thighs in coloured slacks and the sweet alien abundances of breasts. “….. charcoal charcoal charcoal always charcoal…..” “… Did you see the way he posed the model? …”
“….. Wee Davie gives me the horrors….”
He ran down a staircase, through the entrance hall and into the street. Too elated to wait for the tram he walked home by a route which took in Sauchiehall Street, Cathedral Square and the canal bank. He saw himself at the school of art, a respected artist among artists: prominent, admired, desired. He entered corridors of glamorous girls who fell silent, gazing at him and whispering together behind their hands. He pretended not to notice but if his look fell