Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [70]
One summer day Thaw walked briskly along the coast road until the hostel was hidden by a green headland. It was a sunny afternoon. A few clouds lay about the sky like shirts scattered on a blue floor. He left the road and ran down a slope toward the sea, his feet crashing almost to the ankles among pebbles and shells. He felt confident and resolute, for he had been reading a book called The Young Naturalist and meant to make notes of anything interesting. The shingle gave onto shelving rocks with boulders and pools among them. He squatted by a pool the size of a soup plate and peered in, frowning. Below the crystalline water lay three pebbles, a small anemone the colour of raw liver, a wisp of green weed and several winkles. The winkles were olive and dull purple, and he thought he saw a tendency for the pale ones to be at the edges of the pool and the dark ones in the middle. Taking out a notebook and pencil he drew a map on the blank first page, showing the position of the winkles; then he wrote the date on the opposite page and added after some thought the letters:
SELKNIW ELPRUP NI ECIDRA WOC
for he wished to hide his discoveries under a code until he was ready to publish. Then he pocketed the notebook and strolled onto a beach of smooth white sand lapped by the sparkling sea. Tired of being a naturalist he found a stick of driftwood and began engraving the plans of a castle on the firm surface. It was a very elaborate castle full of secret entrances, dungeons and torture chambers.
Someone behind him said, “What’s that supposed to be?” Thaw turned and saw Coulter. He gripped the stick tightly and muttered, “It’s some plans.”
Coulter walked round the plans saying, “What are they plans of?”
“Oh, they’re just plans.”
“Well, mibby you’re wise no’ to tell me what they’re plans of. For all you know I’m mibby a German spy.”
“You couldnae be a German spy.”
“Yes I could.”
“You’re just a boy!”
“But mibby the Germans have a secret chemical that stops folk growing so they look like boys though they’re mibby twenty or thirty, and mibby they’ve landed me here off a submarine and I’m just pretending to be an evacuee but all the time I’m spying on the hostel your dad is managing.”
Thaw stared at Coulter who stood with feet apart and hands in trouser pockets and stared back. Thaw said, “Are you a German spy?”
“Yes,” said Coulter.
His face was so expressionless that Thaw became convinced that he was a German spy. At the same time, without noticing it, he had stopped being afraid of Coulter. He said, “Well I’m a British spy,”
“You are not.”
“I am so.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove you’re a German spy.”
“I don’t want to. If I did you could get me arrested and hung.” Thaw could think of no answer to this. He was wondering how to make Coulter think he was a British spy when Coulter said, “Do you come from Glasgow?”
“Yes!”
“So do I.”
“What bit of Glasgow?”
“Garngad. What bit do you come from?”
“Riddrie.”
“Hm! Riddrie is quite near Garngad. They’re both on the canal.”
Coulter looked at the plans again and said, “Is it a plan of a den?”
“Well … a sort of den.”
“I know some smashing dens.”
“So do I!” said Thaw eagerly. “I’ve got a den inside a—”
“I’ve got a den that’s a real secret cave!” said Coulter triumphantly.
Thaw was impressed. After a suitable silence he said, “My den is inside a bush. It looks like an ordinary bush outside but it’s all hollow inside and it stands beside this road in the hostel so you can sit in it and watch these daft munition girls passing and they don’t know you’re there. The bother is”—truth made him reluctantly add—“it doesnae keep out the rain.”
“That’s the bother with dens,” said Coulter. “Either they’re secret and let in rain or they don’t let in rain and arenae secret. My cave keeps the rain out fine, but last time I went there the floor was all covered with dirty straw. I