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By Root 1446 0

central channel marked by buoys and tiny lighthouses. A long oil tanker moved procession-ally seaward between tugboats and was passed by a cargo ship going the other way. The hills on the right got steeper and nearer, the road was pinched between the river and a wooded crag, then they saw ahead of them the great rock of Dumbarton upholding the ancient fort above the roofs of the town. The bus turned north up the Vale of Leven, sometimes travelling between fields and sometimes through the crooked streets of industrial villages, then it reached the broad glittering water of Loch Lomond and ran along the western shore. Islands lay with trees, fields and cottages on them like broken-off pieces of the surrounding land, and on the far side arose the great head and shoulders of Ben Lomond. Fields gave way to heather and the islands grew small and rocky. The Loch became a corridor of water between high-sided bens, with the road twisting through trees and boulders at the feet of them.

The bus was full of folk going north for the holidays. Climbers sat at the back singing bawdy mountaineering songs and Thaw pressed his brow to the cool window and felt desperate. On leaving home he had taken a grain of effedrine and boarded the bus feeling fairly well, but beyond Dumbarton his breathing worsened and now he tried to forget it by concentrating on the ache the vibrating glass made in the bones of his skull. In the passing land outside the colours were raw green or dead grey: grey road, crags and tree trunks, green leaves, grass, bracken and heather. His eyes were sick of dead grey and raw green. The yellow or purple spots of occasional roadside flowers shrieked like tiny discords in an orchestra where every instrument played over and over again the same two notes. Ruth said, “Feeling cheesed off, brother mine?”

“A bit. It’s getting worse.”

“Cheer up! You’ll be fine when we arrive.”

“It’s not easy.”

“Ach, you’re too pessimistic. I’m sure you wouldnae get so bad if you were less pessimistic.”

The bus stopped on a hillside in Glencoe to let climbers off and the passengers were told they could stretch their legs for five minutes. Thaw got laboriously out and sat on a sun-warmed bank of turf at the roadside. Ruth stood with climbers taking their rucksacks from the boot and talked to someone she had met when climbing with her father. The other passengers gossiped and glanced at the surrounding peaks with expressions of satisfaction or puzzled resentment. An elderly man said to his neighbour, “Aye, a remarkable vista, a remarkable vista.”

“You’re right. If these stones could talk they would tell us some stories, eh? I bet they could tell us some stories.”

“Aye, from scenes like these Auld Scotia’s grandeur springs.” Thaw looked upward and saw huge chunks of raw material hacked about by time and weather. From cracks in the highest a rocky rubble spilled over heathery slopes like stuff poured down slag-bings. A boy and girl in shorts and climbing boots strode past him down the road, the boy with a small rucksack bumping between his shoulders. The climbers by the bus cheered and whistled after them: they joined hands and grinned without embarrassment. The assurance of the boy, the ordinary beauty of the girl, the happy ease of both struck a pang of rage and envy into Thaw which almost made him choke. He glared at a granite slab on the turf beside him. It carried patches of lichen the shape, colour and thickness of scabs he had scratched from his thigh the night before. He imagined the lichen’s microscopic roots poking into imperceptible pores in what seemed a solid surface, making them wider and deeper. ‘A disease of the rock,’ he thought, ‘A disease of matter like the rest of us.’

Back in the bus Ruth said, “That was Harry Logan and Sheila. They’re going to do the Buchail and spend the night in Cameron’s bothy. I wouldnae mind being Sheila for today. Not for tonight, but for today.” She laughed and said, “Are you very bad, Duncan? Why not take another pill?”

“I’ve done that.”

Ten minutes later he knew the asthma had grown too strong