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By Root 1495 0

Though I’ll be grateful if you give me some paying customers after that, I’ll need the money. Excuse me a moment.” He went up and moved the lightning over Sinai two and a quarter inches to the right, making it echo the rift in the tree of knowledge. He had no sensation of waking. As he lay with closed eyes his mind circled the chancel walls with lazy power, pausing in the vault to choose the area he would work upon that day. He even had a plan view of his body, curled in the pulpit like a grub in a nut, and knew it would soon bring his working weight up the ladder to join his thoughts. Body and mind so completely served the mural that sexual fancies never came to him now and he only knew he needed food when the brush felt too heavy to hold. His strangest, most dreamlike times happened away from the mural. He sat at the communion table eating lumps of custard from Mrs. Coulter’s bowl while the old minister stared at him murmuring, “Oh yes, you’re a real artist. A real artist.”

Later he was in a crowded art shop in the city centre stealing tubes of paint without haste or panic. Later still he stood on a pavement arranging to meet June Haig.

“You won’t come!” he said, laughing in her face. “I know you won’t come.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be there. Paisley’s corner by the bridge. I’ll be there.”

“So will I, but you won’t come.”

He laughed again because he felt he was not talking to her in the present but two or three years earlier.

The afternoon darkened early and he was working peer-ingly in the semi-dusk when someone coughed behind him. A man and a woman stood in the aisle, and when his eyes were used to the better light on the church floor he noticed the woman was Marjory. The man said heartily, “Hullo, Duncan,” and Marjory raised her hand and smiled. Thaw said “Hullo” and looked down on them, smiling slightly. The man said, “We were visiting friends in Lenzie and we thought, old times and so forth, why not run in and see Duncan? So here we are.”

The man peered up through the ladders.

“You must have cat’s eyes to work in this light.”

“The switches are behind the door.”

“No no. No no. I quite like it in this dimness, more mysterious, if you know what I mean…. Very impressive. Very impressive.”

Marjory said something he couldn’t hear. He said, “What?” “This isn’t your usual style of work, Duncan.”

After a short silence Thaw said, “I’m trying to show more air and light.”

The man said, “So you are. So you are.” He moved back into the body of the church, looking at the mural and quietly humming. He said, “You’re nearly finished.”

“Far from it.”

“It looks finished to my untutored eye.”

Thaw indicated bits to be repainted.

“How much longer will you be on it?”

“A few weeks.”

“Then what will you do. Teach?”

“I don’t know.”

He turned round and pretended to work. After a moment he heard the man cough and say, “Well, Marjory,” and, “I think we’ll be getting along now, Duncan.”

Thaw looked round and said goodbye. The two people had moved back into the middle of the church. The man said, “By the way, did you know Marjory and I are thinking of getting married?”

“No.”

“Yes, we’re thinking about it.”

“Good.”

There was silence then the man said, “Well, goodbye, Duncan. When we’re married you must look in on us. We still think of you now and again.”

Thaw shouted, “Good.”

The syllable clattered upon the ceiling and walls. At the door he saw Marjory look back and raise her hand, but couldn’t see if she was smiling or not.

It was too dark to work now. He lay on the planks, his thoughts returning to Marjory in a puzzled way, like a tongue tip returning to a hole from which a tooth has been pulled. He was sure he had just seen a girl without special beauty or intelligence. He wondered why she had been all he wanted in a woman. She was as unlike Marjory as Mrs. Thaw’s corpse had been unlike his mother. He wished he had said something ironic and memorable but she had given him no chance.

“This isn’t your usual style of work, Duncan.”

He shivered and climbed slowly down. His body felt unusually heavy. He switched on the