Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [66]
“Where have ye been? Where have ye been? Where have ye been?” shouted the man senselessly, and Thaw, full of love and gratitude, shouted, “Daddy!”
Mr. Thaw tucked his son under one arm and ran back home. Between the jolts of his father’s strides Thaw heard the iron noise again. They went up steps into the close-mouth and Thaw was put down. They stood together in the dark, breathing hard; then Mr. Thaw said in a weak voice Thaw hardly recognized, “I suppose you know the worry you’ve given your mother and me?”
There was a shriek and bang and pieces of dirt hit Thaw on the cheek.
From the living-room window next morning he saw a hole in the pavement across the street. The blast had shaken soot down the chimney onto the living-room floor, and Mrs. Thaw cleaned it up, stopping sometimes to talk with neighbours who called to discuss the raid. They agreed that it might have been worse, but Thaw was very uneasy. His adventure with the midden-rakers was a horrider crime than not eating dinner so he expected punishment on an unusually large scale. After closely watching his mother that day—noticing the way she hummed to herself when dusting, her small thoughtful pauses in the middle of work, her way of scolding when he was stupid during a lesson on clock reading—he became sure that punishment was not in her mind, and this worried him. He feared pain, but deserved to be hurt, and was not going to be hurt. He had not returned to exactly the same house.
CHAPTER 13.
A Hostel
The house was changing. Obscure urgency filled it and in bed at night he heard rumours of preparation and debate. Coming home from a friend’s back green he stuck with his head on one side of the railings and his body on the other. Mr. and Mrs. Thaw released him by greasing his ears with butter and pulling a leg each, laughing all the time. When free he flung himself howling on the grass but they tickled his armpits and sang “Stop Yer Ticklin’, Jock” until he couldn’t help laughing. Then one day they all came out onto the landing and the house was locked behind them. His father and mother carried his sister Ruth and some luggage; Thaw had a gas mask in a cardboard box hanging from his shoulder by a string loop; they all went up to his school by the sunlit bird-twittering back lanes. Murmuring groups of mothers stood in the playground with small children at their side. The fathers spoke in noisier groups and older children played halfheartedly between.
Thaw felt bored and walked to the railings. He was sure he was going on holiday and that holidays meant the sea. From the edge of the playground’s high platform he looked across the canal and the Blackhill tenements to remote hills with a dip in the middle. Looking the opposite way he saw a wide valley of roofs and smokestacks with more hills beyond. These hills were nearer and greener and so distinct that along a gently curved summit a line of treetops joined like a hedge and he saw the sky between the trunks underneath. It struck him that the sea was behind these hills; if he stood among the trees he would look down on a grey sea sparkling with waves. His mother shouted his name and he strolled toward her slowly, pretending he had not heard but was returning anyway. She adjusted the string of the gas mask which had got across his coat collar and was cutting the side of his neck, then made the coat sit better on his shoulders with tugs and pats which shook his head from side to side. He said, “Is the sea behind there?”
“Behind where?”
“Behind where those trees are.”
“Who told you that? Those are the Cathkin Braes. There’s nothing behind there but farms and fields. And England, eventually.”
The sparkling grey sea was too vivid for