Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [113]
“Mibby. But yell be doing what you want.”
“True,” said Thaw. “I’ll be doing what I want. I suppose”—he turned and waved toward the city— “I’m nearly the luckiest man living here.”
They re-entered the wood and came to a clearing with the iron structure of a child’s swing in it. Thaw ran and jumped onto the wooden seat, grabbed the chains on each side and swung violently backward and forward in greater and greater arcs.
“Yah—yip—yeaaaaaaaaaah!” he shouted. “I’ll be doing what I want, won’t I?”
Coulter leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched with a slight ironical grin.
INTERLUDE
The swing with Thaw on it flew high and stopped, leaving him in an absurd position with his knees higher than his back-flung head. The tree no longer rustled. Each branch and leaf was locked photographically in a single moment and as in old photographs the colour faded out, leaving the scene monochrome and brownish. Lanark stared at it through the ward window and said thoughtfully, “Thaw was not good at being happy.”
The oracle said He was bad at it.
“Yet that is almost a happy ending.”
A story can always end happily by stopping at a cheerful moment. Of course in nature the only end is death, but death hardly ever happens when people are at their best. That is why we like tragedies. They show men ending energetically with their wits about them and deserving to do it.
“Did Thaw die tragically?”
No. He botched his end. It set no example, not even a bad one. He was unacceptable to the infinite bright blankness, the clarity without edge which only selfishness fears. It flung him back into a second-class railway carriage, creating you.
Lanark spread cheese on a slice of rye bread and said, “I don’t understand that.”
Rima’s head stirred among the waves of blond hair on the pillow. Without opening her eyes she murmured, “Go on with the story.”
CHAPTER 21.
The Tree
The front bedroom was dusty, the curtains unclean, books and papers overlapped the tortoise-shell combs and pin trays on the dressing table. On the wall near the bed a black-bordered photograph of the late king was stuck beside the only picture by Thaw his mother much liked: a childish one of a tree shedding leaves in an autumn gale. These remained because their presence brought Mrs. Thaw less to mind than their removal would have done.
On the first day of art school he woke to the sweet rotten odour which had come when the corpse lay coffined on the hearth-rug. It had taken two or three weeks to vanish and he still sometimes found it on entering the room unexpectedly, though he knew by now it must be altogether ghostly and subjective. Through a gap in the curtains he saw a slice of colourless sky with dark rags of cloud moving across like the shadows of smoke. The ten-to-eight factory horns mourned over the city roofs and he curled more tightly into the nest of warmth his body made in the mattress, for like all bad sleepers he enjoyed bed most in the minutes before leaving it. Faint sounds came from the kitchen where his father prepared breakfast. Hundreds of thousands of men in dirty coats and heavy boots were tramping along grey streets to the gates of forges and machine shops. He thought with awe of the energy needed to keep up a civilization, of the implacable routines which started drawing it from the factory worker daily at eight, from the clerk and shopkeeper at nine. Why didn’t everyone decide to stay in bed one morning? It would mean the end of civilization, but in spite of two world wars the end of civilization was still an idea, while bed was a warm immediate fact. He heard his father approach the door and shut his eyes. Mr. Thaw entered quietly, pulled back the curtains, came to the bed and laid a hand on Thaw’s brow. Thaw smiled and opened his eyes. His father smiled and said, “Were you really asleep?” “Not really.”
Over breakfast they talked about money.
“How much will you need for materials?”
“I don’t know. I don’t yet know what materials I’ll need. But I can get them on account at the school shop.”
“That’s a very bad idea. It’s too easy. I