Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [89]
“I’m not. I want to know every obstacle, every obstacle there is. There’s the obstacles of not being attractive, not having money to take her out, not knowing how to talk to her, and now it seems she’s a flirt. If I ever reach her she’ll shift elsewhere and keep on shifting.”
“Mibby it’s a mistake to start with Kate Caldwell. You should practise on someone else first. Practise on my girl, big June Haig.”
“Your girl?”
“Well, I’ve only been out with her once. There’s a big demand for her.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s got a back like an all-in wrestler. Her arms are as thick as my thighs and her thighs as thick as your waist. Cuddling her is like sinking intae a big sofa.”
“You hardly make her sound attractive.”
“Big June is the most attractive girl I know. She’s exciting and she’s comfortable. Ask her to the third-year dance.”
Thaw remembered June Haig. She was a sulky-looking girl and not as large as Coulter pretended, but she had failed to get out of the second year and was called Big June to distinguish her from the less developed girls she sat among. Thaw felt a pang of interest. He said, “Big June wouldnae come to a dance with me.”
“She might. She doesnae like you but she’s intrigued by your reputation.”
“Have I a reputation?”
“You’ve two reputations. Some say you’re an absentminded professor with no sex life at all; others say that’s just a disguise and you’ve the dirtiest sex life in the whole school.”
Thaw stood still and held his head. He cried, “I see no way out, no way out. I want to be close to Kate, I want to be valued by her, I suppose I want to marry her. What bloody good is this useless wanting, wanting, wanting?”
“Don’t think your problems would be solved by marrying her.”
“Why not?”
“Fornication isnae just sticking it in and wagging it around. You’ve tae time things so that when you’re pushing hardest she’s exactly ready to take it. If ye don’t get this exactly right she feels angry and disappointed with you. It needs a lot of practice tae get right.”
“Examinations!” cried Thaw. “It’s all examinations! Must everything we do satisfy someone else before it’s worthwhile? Is everything we do because we enjoy it selfish and useless? Primary school, secondary school, university, they’ve got the first twenty-four years of our lives numbered off for us and to get into the year above we’ve to pass an exam. Everything is done to please the examiner, never for fun. The one pleasure they allow is anticipation: ‘Things will be better after the exam.’ It’s a lie. Things are never better after the exam. You’d think love was something different. Oh, no. It has to be studied, practised, learnt, and you can get it wrong.”
“You’re eloquent tonight,” said Coulter. “You’ve got me almost as mixed up as yourself. But not quite. You see there’s really no connection between—”
“What’s that?”
“That? A kid singing.”
They were beside a fence of old railway sleepers planted upright at the towpath edge. From the other side a clear tuneless little voice sang:
“Ah’ve a laddie in Ame-e-e-rica,
Ah’ve a laddie ower the sea;
Ah’ve a laddie in Ame-e-e-rica,
And he’s goantae marry me.”
They looked through a gap in the sleepers onto a road with the canal embankment on one side and the black barred windows of a warehouse on the other. A small girl was skipping with a rope and singing to herself in a circle of light under a lamp. Coulter said, “That kid’s too young to be up at this hour. Wht are ye grinning at?”
“I thought for a moment her words might be the key.”
“What key?”
Thaw explained about the key, expecting it would send Coulter into a fit of annoyance, as most of his less practical concepts did. Coulter frowned and said, “Has this key to be words?”
“What else could it be?”
“When I was staying with auld MacTaggart in Kinlochrua during the war I remember two or three nights when I got a good view of the stars. Ye can always see more stars when you’re in the country, especially if there’s a nip of frost in the air, and these nights the sky was just hotching with stars. I felt this … this coming