Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [68]
Next morning he pretended to be ill but unluckily the asthma and the disease between his legs weren’t troublesome and he had to go to school. Nobody spoke to him there and at playtime he kept nervously to the field’s quietest corner. On queuing to re-enter the classroom he stood beside an evacuee called Coulter who pushed him in the side. Thaw pushed back. Coulter punched him in the side, Thaw punched back and Coulter muttered, “A’ll see you after school.”
Thaw said, “A’ve to go straight home after school tonight; my dad said so.”
“Right. I’ll see ye the morra.”
At home that night he refused to eat anything. He said, “I’ve a pain.”
“You don’t look sick,” said Mrs. Thaw. “Where is the pain?” “All over.”
“What kind of pain is it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
Mrs. Thaw said to her husband, “You deal with this, Duncan, it’s beyond me.”
Mr. Thaw took his son into the bedroom and said, “Duncan, there’s something you haven’t told us.”
Thaw started crying and said what the matter was. His father held him to his chest and asked, “Is he bigger than you?”
“Yes.” (This was untrue.)
“Much bigger?”
“No,” said Thaw after a fight with his conscience.
“Do you want me to ask Mr. Macrae to tell the other pupils not to hit you?”
“No,” said Thaw, who only wanted not to go to school.
“I knew you would say that, Duncan. Duncan, you’ll have to fight this boy. If ye start running away now you’ll never learn to face up to life. I’ll teach ye how to fight—it’s easy—all ye have to do is use your left hand to protect your face….” Mr. Thaw talked like this until Thaw’s head was full of images of defeating Coulter. He spent that evening practising for the fight. First he sparred with his father, but the opposition of a real human being left no scope for fantasy, so he practised on a cushion and went confidently to bed after a good supper.
He was less confident next morning and ate breakfast very quietly. Mrs. Thaw kissed him goodbye and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll knock his block off.”
She waved encouragingly as the car drove away.
That morning Thaw stood in a lonely corner of the playfield and waited fearfully for the approach of Coulter, who was playing football with friends. Rain started falling and gradually the pupils collected in a shelter at the end of the building. Thaw was last to enter. In an agony of dread he walked up to Coulter, stuck his tongue out at him and struck him on the shoulder. At once they started fighting as unskilfully as small boys always fight, with flailing arms and a tendency to kick each other’s ankles; then they grappled and fell. Thaw was beneath but Coulter’s nose flattened on his brow, the resulting blood smeared both equally, each thought it his own and, appalled by the suspected wound, rolled apart and stood up. After that, in spite of encouragement from their allies (Thaw was surprised to find a cheering mob of allies at his back) they were content to stand swearing at each other until Miss Ingram came up and took them to the headmaster. Mr. Macrae was a stout pig-coloured man. He said, “Right. What’s the cause of all this?”
Thaw started talking rapidly, his explanation punctuated by gulps and stutters, and only stopped when he found himself starting to sob. Coulter said nothing. Mr. Macrae took a leather tawse from his desk and said, “Hold your hands out.”
Each held his hand out and got a hellish stinging wallop on it. Mr. Macrae said, “Again!” “Again!” and “Again!” Then he said, “If I hear of you two fighting another time you’ll get the same treatment but more of it, a lot more of it. Go to your class.”
Each bent his head to hide his distorted face and went to the next room sucking a crippled hand. Miss Ingram didn’t ask them to do anything for the rest of the morning.
After the fight Thaw found playtimes more boring than frightening. He would stand in the lonely corner of the field