Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [127]
Thaw felt shocked and cheapened and cursed himself for speaking. McAlpin glanced at him and said, “All women have an odour, you know. The deodorant adverts pretend it’s a bad thing, which is all balls. If the girl is clean it’s a very attractive thing. Judy has an odour.”
“Good.”
“What you need, Duncan, is a friendly, experienced older woman, not a silly wee girl.”
“But I don’t like being condescended to.”
“I admit she’d have to handle you cleverly. I’m sure there are many women in continental brothels who could do it. Of course there are no brothels deserving the name in Scotland. This is such a bloody poor country.”
Thaw said, “Your mind is full of brothels this morning.”
“Yes…. What do you think will happen to you when you leave art school?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t teach children and I won’t go to London.”
McAlpin said, “I don’t want to teach but I probably will. I would like to travel and have freedom before I settled down, visit Paris, Vienna, Florence. There are a lot of quiet little cities in Italy with frescoes by minor masters in the churches and their own wine served under awnings in the squares outside. I’d like to wander around exploring these with a girl, not necessarily a girl I’d marry. Think! After sunset the air is as warm as a fine summer afternoon here … but I can’t leave my mother for long. At least when I do leave her it will be to marry Judy, which—as far as freedom is concerned—will be leaving the frying pan for the fire. Meanwhile I’m getting older.”
“Blethers.”
“Does time never worry you?”
“No. Only feelings worry me, and time isn’t a feeling.”
“I feel it.”
After a moment McAlpin said on a baffled note, “I suspect that if I started living in a slum, and consorting with a prostitute, and wore nothing but a leopard skin, Judy and my mother would visit me four days a week with baskets of food.”
“I envy you.”
“Don’t.”
That afternoon in the lecture theatre Thaw’s body came to an uneasy compromise with the wooden bench and he dozed. Later he heard the lecturer say “… something of a thug. In fact he broke Michelangelo’s nose once, in a brawl, when they were young. It is consoling to remember that he died, most unhappily, a raving lunatic in a Spanish prison, ha-ha. However, that will do for today.”
The lights went on and people crowded to the exits. Thaw noticed McAlpin and Judy ahead of him; they ran hand in hand across the street to the annexe and he followed slowly. They were not in the refectory. He sat down at a table near Drummond and Macbeth. Drummond was saying, “I can’t understand why I’ve been asked. I hardly know Kenneth.”
“When is it?” said Macbeth.
“Tomorrow night. We go to his house for a meal and a booze-up, then to a fancy-dress party at a hotel.”
“How old is he?” said Macbeth.
“Twenty-one.”
A sad kind of shock flowed through Thaw like water. He sat still, not saying much, then went to the counter and brought food back to the table. Drummond left and Macbeth sat in a way which told Thaw he was depressed at not being asked to the party. Macbeth said, “You’re quiet tonight, Duncan.”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking.”
“I suppose you’ve been asked to Kenneth’s party tomorrow?”
“No.”
Macbeth became cheerful. “No? That’s queer. You and Kenneth are always about together. I thought you were friends.” “I thought that.”
He walked a lot around the streets that evening and let himself into the house after midnight.
“Is that you, Duncan?” said his father from the bed settee in the living room.
“I think so.”
“Is anything wrong?”
Thaw explained what had happened. He said, “I can’t get used to this. An acquaintance becomes a friend in a gradual, genial way. The reverse is … shocking.”
“What’s that noise?”
“I’m fiddling with ornaments on the lobby table. In God’s name how can I face him tomorrow? What can I say?”
“Don’t say much, Duncan. Quietly and politely wish him many happy returns of the day.”
“That’s a good idea, Dad. Goodnight.”
“And go straight to sleep. No writing.”
He went to bed, grew breathless, took two