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By Root 1341 0

waited a long time next morning for an impulse to get out of bed, and at last crawled to the larder, and to the lavatory, and back to bed again. He lay like a corpse, his brain rotten with resentful dreams. He tortured her in sexual fantasies, and revised and enlarged the farewell speeches he had failed to make when parting, and minutely remembered and resented every moment they had passed together. He wondered why his thoughts were so full of a girl who had given him so little. The aching emotions gradually became muscular tightness, his limited movement a way of saving breath. He kept wanting her to enter the dark, dusty, muddled room, switch on the light and glance round it, smiling. His own face would stay hard and immobile but she would remove her coat, give a small pat to the back of her hair and start to clean up. She would make a warm drink, sit by the mattress and hold the cup for him to sip like a child. With a sardonic smile he would submit to this but at last he would take her hands and press them to where she could feel the heart knocking on his ribs. They would lean against each other. The sweat would go from his brow, the tension from his body and he would sleep. He was afraid of sleep now and sat as rigid as possible to keep it away.

One day during the summer holidays McAlpin, who was painting in a corner, said, “I know advice is always useless but wouldn’t you feel better if you got up and tackled your picture?”

“It’s ludicrous to think anyone in Glasgow will ever paint a good picture.”

“You should go home, Duncan.”

“Afraid to move.”

Later McAlpin went out and returned with Ruth. Thaw stared at her fearfully for she often called his illness a disgusting way of grabbing attention. She asked kindly, “How are you, old Duncan?” and gently helped him to dress and led him downstairs to a taxi. As they sped homeward she spoke of her training college in Aberdeen. She had been a year there, her intelligent bright bounciness had no aggression in it and he sensed he need never fear her again. Mr. Thaw had laid the table for tea. As they sat round it Ruth said “I like Aberdeen, I’ve got so many boyfriends! I go swimming with Harry Docherty, who was the Scottish Junior Breaststroke Champion, and I go dancing with Joe Stewart, and I go to parties with anybody—anybody I like, I mean. The girls at college think I’m a scarlet woman but I think they’re daft. Most of them have only one boyfriend and talk about nothing but marriage. I’m not going to marry for four or five years, and there’s safety in numbers, I say.”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Thaw. “Don’t commit yourself to another human being until you’re able to be independent. You’re young, enjoy yourself.”

“On Sunday I go for walks with Tony Gow, who’s a medical student. You’d like him, Duncan. He knows all about animals and flowers and folk songs. He’s not much use in the back row of a cinema but he’s really interesting. Our walks haven’t been much fun lately because of this new rabbit disease the farmers are spreading. All along the country roads you find these poor dying rabbits, gasping for breath with their eyes bulging out. Tony takes them by the hind legs and brains them on the ground. I can’t do it. I know it’s the kind thing to do but I can’t even look. Tony—”

Thaw screamed, “Stop!”

After a moment Mr. Thaw said, “Go to bed son. I’ll get the doctor.”

The doctor ordered rest and new kinds of pill. Thaw sat in bed, unable to concentrate on reading but willing to argue.

“I wish I was a duck.”

“What?”

“I wish I was a duck on Alexandra Park pond. I could swim, and fly, and walk, and have three wives, and everything I wanted. But I’m a man. I have a mind, and three library tickets, and everything I want is impossible.”

“My God, what are you saying? What’s this I’ve fathered? Look at penicillin and the national health service, look at all these books and pictures you’re so keen on! And you want to be a bird!”

“Look at Belsen!” cried Thaw. “And Nagasaki, and the Russians in Hungary and Yanks in South America and French in Algeria and the British bombing Egypt