Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [73]
Thaw stood up. The moor lay below with dots of sheep grazing on it, some shrub-filled glens and the green coastal strip beyond. The village was hidden by the trees of the largest glen but its position was shown by the hotel roof among its conifers and by the end of a pier sticking into the Atlantic. To the left of this, between the beach and the white road, the hostel stood in neat rectangular blocks like a chess game, human specks moving on the straight paths between. Farther off still, the road—a bus moving down it like an insect—turned from the coast into a district of moorland with small lochs and blue-grey bens paling into the distance like waves of a stone sea. The ocean in front, however, was as shining-smooth as slightly wrinkled silk. It stretched to the dark mountains of the Isle of Skye on the horizon, and the sun hung above these at the height of Thaw himself. It was dimmed and oranged by haze but firing golden wires of light from the centre. Thaw stared at it miserably. The minister was someone he tried to avoid. On coming to the hostel his mother, who went to church, sent him to a Sunday school held by Dr. McPhedron after the morning service. He had expected to sing little hymns and draw little pictures of Bible stories; instead he was given a book of questions and answers to learn by heart so that when Dr. McPhedron asked a question like “Why did God make man?” Thaw could give an answer like “God made man to glorify his name and enjoy his works for ever.” After the first day of Sunday school he didn’t want to go back and his father, who was an atheist, said he needn’t if he didn’t enjoy it. Since then Thaw had heard his parents discuss the minister several times. His mother said there was too much Hell in his sermons. She thought churches were good because they gave people something to look up to and hope for, but she didn’t believe in Hell and it was wrong to frighten children with it. Mr. Thaw said he saw no reason why people shouldn’t believe what pleased them but McPhedron was a type found too often in the highlands and islands, a bigot who damned to Hell whoever rejected his narrow opinions.
To hide embarrassment Thaw turned and examined the pillar.
“Do you wonder what that is, now?” asked the minister. His voice was soft and precise.
“Yes.”
“It is a triangulation point. Your name is still on my Sunday school enrolment book. Would you have me remove it?”
Thaw frowned and rubbed his fingers round an odd depression in the pillar’s top.
The minister said, “That is to hold the base of an instrument used by government mapmakers. I notice you don’t come to kirk with your mother any more. Why?”
“Dad says I needn’t go to something I don’t like if it isn’t educational,” muttered Thaw. The minister gave a slight friendly laugh.
“I admire your father. His notion of education embraces everything but the purpose of life and the fate of man. Do you believe in the Almighty?”
Thaw said boldly, “I don’t know, but I don’t believe in Hell.” The minister laughed again. “When you have more knowledge of life you will mibby find Hell more believable. You are from Glasgow?”
“Yes.”
“I was six years a student of divinity in that city. It made Hell very real to me.”
A muffled blast came to their ears from a distance. A white cloud drifted up from a dip in the moorlands to the south, shredding and vanishing as it rose. The sound was batted back and forth between the mountains, then trickled into echoes among far off glens.
“Yes,” said the minister. “They are testing at the munition factory down there. The country must be preserved with all the Hell we can muster.”
Thaw was filled with baffled anger. He had bitten into the splendid fruit of the afternoon and found a core of harsh