Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [90]
“I don’t know what you mean. What sort of thing was it? Did it tie up everything you believed? Could ye test things with it?”
“You could test nothing with it. It was a feeling, I suppose. It was gentle, and permanent, and more like a friend than anything else.”
Thaw was unable to think of a similar experience and felt envious. He said, “It sounds a bit sentimental. Did you only feel it when you were seeing stars?”
“That was the only time.”
Thaw looked at the sky. Though at first sight it was merely dark his eyes gradually resolved it into brownish-purple, turning dull orange on the horizon toward the city centre. Thaw said, “Why is it that colour?”
“I suppose it’s the electric light reflected back from the gas and soot in the air.”
They reached a point halfway between their homes and said goodbye. After Thaw had gone forward a few yards by himself he heard a cry from behind. He turned and saw Coulter wave and shout, “Don’t worry! Don’t worry! Tae hell with Kate Caldwell!”
Thaw walked onward with a small perfect image of Kate Caldwell smiling and beckoning inside him. Such a fog of desperate emotions was wrapped round it that at last he had to halt and gasp for breath. On the far bank of the canal stood the vast sheds of the Blochairn ironworks. Dull bangs and clangs came from these, an orange glare flickered on the sky above them, the canal water bubbled blackly and wisps of steam waltzed on the surface and flew in a cloud over the towpath. A high railing divided the path from the Alexandra park. Taking a great breath he rushed at this, gripped two spikes on top, pulled himself up and jumped down onto the golf course. He ran along the fairways feeling exalted and criminal and came to a place where trees grew from smooth turf around the pagoda of an ornamental fountain. The grey lawns with dim galaxies of daisies on them, the silhouettes of the trees and fountain, were excitingly unlike themselves as he had seen them on the way from school a few hours before. Stepping over a “Keep Off the Grass” sign he went to a tree he had often wished to climb. It had no branches for the first twelve feet but it was craggy and crooked and he climbed high into it before the impetus which had driven him over the railing ran out and left him astride a high bough with his arms round the trunk. He recalled Greek stories about female spirits who lived inside trees. It was possible to imagine that the trunk between his arms contained the body of a woman. He hugged it, pressed his face against it and whispered, “I’m here. I’m here. Will you come out?” He imagined the woman’s body pressing the other side of the bark, her lips wrestling to meet his lips, but he felt nothing but roughness so he let go and climbed higher until the branches swung under his feet. Overhead the purple-brown sky had been pricked by a star or two. He tried to feel something gentle, permanent and friendly in them until he felt absurd, then climbed down and went home.
Mrs. Thaw opened the door to him. She said, “Duncan, how did you get in that mess?”
“What mess?”
“Your face is pot black, pot black all over!”
He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. His face was smeared with sooty grime, especially round the mouth.
CHAPTER 18.
Nature
The manageress of the Kinlochrua Hotel was a friend of Mrs. Thaw and invited her children north for the summer holidays. They boarded a bus one morning in a garage on the Broomielaw and it took them through shadows of warehouses and tenements into bright sunlight on the broad, tree-lined Great Western Road. They hurled past Victorian terraces and gardens and hotels, past merchants’ villas and municipal housing schemes into a region which (though open to the sky) could not be called country. New factories stood among tracts of weed and thistle, pylons grouped on hillsides and wire fences protected rows of grassy domes joined by metal tubes. The Clyde on their left widened to a firth, the