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By Root 1443 0

century a lot of features were brought back which our ancestors had cast out. Nothing harmful, of course, like prayer books and bishops, just small embellishments: side pulpits, organs, stained-glass windows and even, in a few cases, crucifxes on the communion table. But a modern mural painting would be a complete novelty; newspapers, wireless and even television might take note, which would put an extra card up our sleeve in dealing with the Presbytery. So Mr. Smail wrote to the director of the art school asking if he could recommend a student who would like to take on the job. Because, you see, we couldn’t pay him. The director wrote back saying it would be a shame to spoil an old building with the work of inexperienced hands. Mr. Smail was much annoyed. Excuse me telling you this, I have very little to do with it.”

Thaw stared into the photographs. From in front the church looked like a blackened stone dog kennel with a squat little tower, a tower no taller than the tenements on each side. The interior was surprisingly spacious, the exact pattern of the church used by Thaw’s old school. A balcony surrounded three sides and the fourth was pierced by a high arched chancel with three lancet windows in the back wall and an organ in the left. Intuitively he stood under the arch appraising the flat plaster surfaces. A sudden dread filled him that he wouldn’t be allowed to decorate this building. He returned the snapshots, muttered “Excuse me,” and hurried off down the ward.

He crossed bright lawns between vivid flowerbeds and sank, wrestling for breath, upon a bench. He shut his eyes and saw the inside of the church. Images were flowing up the walls like trees and mingling their colours like branches on the ceiling. He opened his eyes and stared across fields and woodland at the dip in the heat-dimmed Campsies. Self-pitying tears sprung on his cheeks and he whispered at the blue sky, “Bastard, giving me ideas without the strength to use them.” He punched the side of his head, muttering, “Take that for having ideas. And that.”

He broke into a fit of giggling, got up and returned to the ward.

“I must explain something,” he said, sitting down by the minister. “I am not a Christian. I have a sort of faith in God but I can’t believe he came down and made wheelbarrows in a shop. I like most of what Christ taught and I prefer him to Buddha, but only because Buddha started life with exceptional social privileges. I also want very, very much to paint this mural.”

Thaw wondered if the minister was smiling, for he had hidden his face by a hand adjusting the spectacles, but when he lowered it he said gravely, “If you are willing to help and your design satisfies the kirk session well be perfectly content. There are no inquisitors among us.”

“Good. The chancel ceiling is divided by plaster ribs into six panels. The most suitable theme for them is surely the six days of creation: Genesis, chapter one.”

“The ceiling? … Mr. Smail thought the wall facing the organ would be the best place.”

“The wall facing the organ will show the world on the seventh day, when God looks at it and likes it.”

“That sounds acceptable.”

“Good. I’ll make sketches.”

The ideas he scribbled in the notebook grew so fast that they burned up energy needed for breathing and he had to stop twice for injections. God was the easiest part of the design. He came out strong and omniscient, like Mr. Thaw, but with an unexpected expression of reckless gaiety got from Aitken Drummond. Next evening he showed sketches to the minister. “I’ve decided to begin with the universe before creation starts, when the spirit of God moves on the face of the deep. I’ll paint it on the back wall round the three windows.”

“Dear me, that’s a very large area.”

“Yes, but I’ll make it a simple deep, dark blue with silver ripples. Modern science thinks the primordial chaos was hydrogen. I can’t paint hydrogen so I’ll stick to the old Jewish notion of a universe filled with water. The Greeks believed everything was made of water too.”

“I thought they believed the original chaos was a mixture