Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [171]
“Oh!” said Thaw, and wept with relief. The minister patted his shoulder and said kindly, “Just you go ahead and pay no attention to them.”
CHAPTER 29.
The Way Out
He could no longer ask the church to pay for materials. When only ten pounds remained he knew he would be a desperate man when it was spent; on the other hand if he survived without touching it he could probably last forever. A smell of boiled cabbage from the depths of the building suggested an idea. In the early afternoon he went to a lane behind the church where rubbish bins stood and found scraps from the school dinners tipped there. He started bringing a plate round and picking out slices of bread and mutton, lumps of macaroni and dumpling. One day he heard someone cry “Duncan Thaw!” and looked into the accusing eyes of Mrs. Coulter. He said defensively, “I’m not stealing this. Nobody wants it.”
“You should be ashamed, a well-brought-up boy like you!” He walked past her with the heaped plate, but around noon the next day she brought a large covered bowl into the church and set it on the end of a pew saying, “Your dinner.” He said irritably, “You don’t need to do that Mrs. Coulter.” She snorted and went out and did the same every following weekday except Friday, when she left two bowls. And the decorator, Mr. Rennie, arrived one evening and said abruptly, “Do you still want help?”
“More than ever.”
“Right. I’ll give you a couple of nights a week.”
He began changing into overalls and Thaw, who wept easily nowadays, hurried to a quiet corner of the church. Then he returned and said, “You see my tree of life, Mr. Rennie? It’s big and beautiful and in the wrong place. Far too central. It must be shifted two and a quarter inches to the left, fruit, birds, squirrels and all. Do you see why?”
“Don’t ask me why, just show me how to do it.”
“I will, Mr. Rennie. Excuse me if I chatter nervously, I’m afraid of you vanishing. And could you lend me scaffolding again for a few days? I want to get back to the ceiling.”
“That won’t please the minister.”
“Just for a few days.”
The help of Mr. Rennie, though only six hours a week, was so welcome that Thaw found comfort in addressing him when he wasn’t there.
“We aren’t working on the rim of the universe, are we, Mr. Rennie? No, no, Cowlairs is a historic region. A cinema down the road has a granite slab set in the wall above a bunged-up drinking fountain. It must have lain flat once, for the inscription says James Nisbet lies under it who suffered martyrdom there in 1684. I suppose the district was wild moorland then. He was shot by government troops for worshipping God without a prayerbook, just making up the words as he went along. … A bad business? No, a question of law and order. Men who refused to pray out of a properly licensed book might undermine the government by asking God to change it. So bang-bang, cheerio, Jimmy Nisbet. But four years later came a different lot of politicians who found it easy to govern Scotland without prayerbooks. So the troops stopped chasing Presbyterians, who wouldnae pray out of books, and returned to chasing Catholics, who prayed out of Latin ones. And a slab was laid over Nisbet’s bones on the site of the Casino picture house (they’re turning it into a bingo hall next year) and a slipshod verse was carved on it which ends with the rousing words:
As Britain lyes in guilt, you see, ’Tis asked o reader, art thou free?
Are we free, Mr. Rennie? Of course we are. We’re making our own model of the universe and nobody gives a damn for us….”
“Yes, a great ground for martyrs, Mr. Rennie. Overby in the cemetery is a monument to Baird, Hardie and Wilson, some weavers who nearly overturned the British government around 1820. The government was very insecure in those days. It had just won a large war and there was widespread unemployment. Mechanization was making the owning classes richer and the working classes poorer—especially the weavers. A secret organization grew up in the weaving