Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [77]
A lank young teacher led them into the classroom. The girls sat in desks to his right, the boys to the left, and he faced them with hands on hips leaning forward from the waist. He said, “My name is Maxwell. I’m your form teacher. You come to me first period each day to have the class register called and to bring reasons for having been absent or late. They’d better be good reasons. I’m also your Latin teacher.”
He stared at them a while, then said, “I’m new to teaching. Just as I’m your first senior secondary school teacher, you are my first senior secondary school class. We’re starting together, you see, and I think we’d better decide here and now to start well. You do right by me and I’ll do right by you. But if we quarrel about anything you’re going to suffer. Not me.”
He stared at them brightly and the frightened class stared back. He had a craggy face with a rugged nose, trimmed red moustache and broad lips. Thaw noticed the undersurface of the moustache was clipped to exactly continue the flat surface of the upper lip. This detail frightened him even more than the grim, nervous little speech.
Through the morning depression gathered in his brain and chest like a physical weight. Each forty minutes the bell screeched and the class moved to a different room and were welcomed by a few unfriendly words. The Mathematics teacher was a small brisk woman who said if they tried hard she would help them all she could, but one thing she could not and would not stand was dreaming. There was no room for dreamers in her class. She gave out algebra and geometry books in which Thaw saw a land without colour, furniture or action where thought negotiated symbolically with itself. The science room had a pungent chemical smell and shelves of strange objects which excited his appetite for magic, but the teacher was a big bullying man with hair like a beast’s fur and Thaw knew nothing he taught would bring an increase of power or freedom. The art teacher was mild and middle-aged. He talked about the laws of perspective, and how these laws had to be learned before true art became possible. He gave out pencils and got them to copy a wooden block onto a small sheet of paper. In each class Thaw sat in the front row and stared at the teacher’s face. He was in a world where he could not do well, and he wanted to give an impression of obedience that would make the authorities treat him leniently. All the time he felt the pale blaze of the blond girl somewhere behind him on the left. Twice he dropped a book as an excuse for looking at her while he picked it up. She seemed an unstill flickering girl, always moving her shoulders, shaking her head and hair, smiling and glancing from side to side. He noticed with surprise that her oval face had a thrust-forward, slightly clumsy jaw. Her beauty lay more in the movement of her parts than the parts themselves, which was maybe why she was never still.
The boys from Riddrie stood chattering in a queue for the tram which would take them home at noontime. One said, “That big Maxwell—I hate him. He looks mad enough to murder ye.”
“Ach, naw, he’ll be all right if ye do as he says. It’s the science man I’m feart from. He’s the sort that’ll hammer ye jist because he’s in a bad mood.”
“Ach, they’re all out to terrorize us today. The theory is that if they scare us enough at the start we’ll give them nae trouble later. They’ve got a hope.”
There was a reflective silence; then somebody said, “What dae ye think of the talent?”
“I care for that wee blond bird.”
“Aye, did ye see her? She couldnae keep still. I wouldnae mind feeling her