“I must get a woman to take home,” he was saying. “I must take some woman home. Lorna, Lorna, Lorna!”
He tried to embrace a girl who slipped under his arm, laughing and saying, “Not tonight, Aitken, not tonight!”
A girl in a blue coat came out and paused, looking vaguely from side to side. Drummond took her hand politely and said, “Let us walk you home, Marjory.”
The girl’s face crinkled in a shy amused smile. She said, “I’m sorry, Aitken. My father is coming for me in the car.”
“Phone him up, he may not even have left yet. Tell him we’re walking you home. I’ll hold one hand and Duncan the other. Two is a perfectly safe escort.”
The girl hesitated.
“It’s only half past eleven. And a warm night,” said Drummond with soft urgency.
“All right,” said the girl. She smiled quickly at Thaw and went indoors to phone.
“Marjory is a nice girl, a really nice girl,” said Drummond musically. “I don’t know why people think I’m incapable of liking nice girls.”
Thaw yawned at the sky. One or two stars were visible. He said, “Goodnight, Aitken.”
“Don’t go,” said Drummond quickly. “Don’t you like Marjory?”
“That’s not the point,” said Thaw; yet when Marjory came out Drummond took her right hand and Thaw her left, holding it lightly and carefully. It was small, faintly warm, neither dry nor quite moist, and he was very conscious of it.
They walked, talking about ordinary things, across the arch of the hill and followed the lamp-reflecting steel of the tramlines over the River Kelvin into a district of trees and terraces. Somewhere beyond the university they heard some sharp barks and a black dog ran toward them round a curving pavement.
“It’s Gibbie!” said Marjory, and squatting down on her haunches received the dog’s head in her lap. “How are you, Gibbie? Eh, Gibbie? Good dog, Gibbie,” she whispered, rubbing its cheeks with her hands. The dog panted and lolled its tongue out, grinning up at her with shut ecstatic eyes. She stood up and it shot back the way it had come. They followed until they reached a tall, slightly gawky woman standing by a gate in a hedge. She smiled amiably and gave her hand to the students in turn.
“Oh, I’ve met you before, Aitken, of course. So this is Duncan. How are you, Duncan? Thank you both for seeing our little daughter so safely home. My husband is just bringing the car round to drive you back to the city centre. Neither of you live near here, do you?”
A car drove slowly toward them along the edge of the kerb. It stopped and the back door was pushed open. They said goodbye to Marjory and her mother and climbed in.
Though Marjory had given him no more than some friendly glances and a squeeze of the hand he spent the weekend cleaning paint stains from his clothes and started brushing his teeth before going to bed. On Monday he stood with friends on the staircase of the main building when she went swiftly by. He followed her down to the entrance hall, across the street and into the annexe, where, singing, she turned unexpected corners. Her voice echoed along an unseen corridor until silenced by the remote slam of a door. He stood for a while as if still listening. The song had been tuneful but without definite tune, a line of melodious notes as casual as bird notes. On the staircase he had glimpsed her throat in silhouette, the outline pulsing like a plucked string. He felt baffled and wondered whether to feel insulted. She must have known he was following; why hadn’t she stopped? But then he could have reached her side by walking faster; why hadn’t he walked faster?
At noontime she was several places ahead of him in the refectory queue and smiled and raised her hand in greeting. He nodded, looked casually elsewhere, and three minutes later arrived beside her in a way that seemed accidental. He waited until she noticed him before smiling. She said, “Hullo, Duncan. How are you?”
“Well. How are you?”
“Oh! Well.”
A pleasant little giggle suggested, not that he amused her, but that it was amusing for them to be talking there. He said, “I enjoyed our walk on Friday.”
“I enjoyed it a lot too.”
“Aitken is good company.”
“You were not bad company yourself, Duncan.”
A dangerous silence widened between them. He drew breath and plunged over it.
“Can I … eat at your table?”
“Of course, Duncan.”
She smiled so kindly that he felt he had said nothing difficult or strange. They took their plates to a table and ate beside Janet Weir and a couple of other girls who were attractive and welcoming. He enjoyed the meal for it was easier talking to several girls than one, but when Janet left to get cigarettes he leaned towards Marjory and his face went red.
“Would you… let me take you to the pictures some night?” “Of course, Duncan.”
“Will tomorrow night do?”
“Yes…. yes, I think so.”
“I’ll call about seven, will I?”
She frowned vaguely. “I … think so, Duncan. Yes.”
After tea next evening he took from his wardrobe a blue pin-striped double-breasted suit, a gift of a neighbour whose son had outgrown it. Thaw had enraged his mother by saying he would never wear it because it was the kind of suit businessmen and American gangsters wore. Tonight he put it on, slid a clean white folded handkerchief into the breast pocket and set off for Marjory’s home, buying a box of chocolates on the way. Aboard the bus his heart beat loudly and his knees trembled, but entering the district where she lived he was unable to find the house. It had been at the end of a curving terrace but there were many of these. He searched for a phone box to look up her address in the directory and found one near the docks, but with the book in hand he discovered he didn’t know her second name. He punched his brow violently for a while, then phoned McAlpin who said, “Her father’s Professor Laidlaw, who does biochemistry at Gilmorehill. I’ll look up the address for you. You sound rather … distraught.”
Half an hour later Thaw rang a doorbell and Mrs. Laidlaw opened to him, saying, “Come in, Duncan.”
Having despaired of getting there he felt his arrival was insubstantial. He said, “I’m sorry I’m late. I lost my way.”
“Are you late? Marjory’s still upstairs getting ready.”
The lobby had shining dark furniture and dark landscapes in guilt frames. A golf club and umbrella lay in a huge blue earthenware vase, and on the polished floor nearby a golf ball was tethered by a cord to a rubber mat. Mrs. Laidlaw led him into a room with a bright fire in the hearth and switched on the light. A massive man hoisted himself out of an armchair and said in a gentle voice, “How do you do?”
Thaw said, “How do you do?”
“This is Marjory’s father—oh, but you met last Friday. Now sit down, both of you, and I’ll see if I can hurry up my daughter a little.”
Thaw sat down and tried to seem at ease. The professor had sounded small and clerkly in the car but here the quiet voice emphasized his suave bulk. He was leaning forward and tickling with one finger the ear of the dog, Gibbie, who sprawled on the hearth rug.
“Do you play golf?” he asked gently.
“No. But my father does—did, I mean, during the war. He’s mainly a climber, though.”
“Ah.”
Thaw cleared his throat and said, “I received some golfing lessons at my secondary school, but the game required more care, concentration and precision than I was prepared to bring to it.” The professor said, “Yes. It is an exacting game and requires ….. patience.”
They were silent until a small yellow budgerigar landed with a thump on Thaw’s shoulder and said “Hurry up, Marjory! Good old Mr. Churchill! Hurry up, Marjory!”
Thaw said, “Ah. A budgerigar.”
“Yes indeed. We call him Joey. I’m sure I’ve seen you around the university.”
“I sometimes sketch in the medical building.”
“Why?”
“To see the insides of people. And death too, of course.”
&nb
sp; “Why?”
“Because it’s stupid to share the world with something you’re afraid to look at. You see I want to like the world, life, God, nature, et cetera, but I can’t because of pain.”
“Pain poses no problem. It warns individuals that they’re defective.”
“Oh, I know pain is usually good for us,” said Thaw, “but what good is it to a woman who bears a limbless baby with a face on top of its head? What good is it to the baby?”
“I deal with life at a cellular level,” said the professor.
A little later he and Thaw said simultaneously, “How is Marjory−” “Tell me about golf—”
“I beg your pardon,” said Thaw. “How is Marjory?”
“Getting on at school.”
“I … I don’t know. What year is she in?”
“The second, I think.”
“Then she’s probably doing quite well,” said Thaw. “Hardly anyone fails their second year,” he added.
“I thought you were in her class,” said the professor, faintly hostile.
“Indeed no,” said Thaw coldly.
Marjory came in with her mother. She wore a flower-pat-terned dress and long earrings and her breasts seemed more prominent than usual. The budgerigar fluttered to her shoulder twittering, “Hurry, hurry up, Marjory! Good old Mr. Churchill!”
She blushed and smiled.
“Naughty Joey’s giving away secrets,” said Mrs. Laidlaw.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Duncan.”
“I was very late myself,” said Thaw.
“Off the pair of you go now,” said Mrs. Laidlaw kindly. She stood in the doorway watching them go down the path. Thaw felt like a child going to school with his sister. On the pavement Marjory hesitated and said nervously, “Duncan—I hope you won’t be annoyed about this—when I said I could go out with you tonight I’d forgotten I’d arranged to see a friend…. She’s very nice…. Would it be all right if she came with us? She lives quite near.”
“Of course!” said Thaw, and talked heartily to cover the stoical adjustments happening inside him. They reached a gate in a thick hedge and Marjory whispered that she wouldn’t be long and left him outside. The night was chilly and glints of frost shone in the pavement under the street lamp. He heard a door open and the light murmur of Marjory’s voice, then the darker tones of someone else. Eventually the door shut and Marjory joined him with a slight vertical crease between her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry, Duncan—she wasn’t able to come. I think maybe she has a cold.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She gave a quick polite smile. He was disturbed by the strained lines it made near the corners of her mouth. If she often smiled like that a wrinkle would come there in ten or twelve years.
They were late for the film. It had love scenes which made him very conscious of Marjory beside him. He leaned toward her but she sat so upright and stared so straight ahead that he dispiritedly brought out the chocolates and resignedly popped one at intervals into her mouth. After the film the nearby cafés had queues outside so they boarded the bus home. He sat on the upper deck watching the pure line of her face and throat against the black window. They filled him with delight and terror for he would need to cross over to them and he hadn’t much time. He stared desperately, trying to learn what to do by intensity of vision. Her eyes were downcast under a brown feathery brow, her mouth had a lost remote look but the chin was strong, her brown hair was drawn into a flat coil at the back of her skull and the tip of an ear peeped through like a delicate section of seashell. The head turned and faced him enquiringly. Sweat trickled down his brow.
“Can I … hold your hand?”
“Of course, Duncan.”
“It’s queer. When I ask for something I’m usually sure you’ll give it, but I sweat as if I’d no chance at all.”
Her throat was shaken by a note of bitten-back laughter.
“Do you, Duncan?”
The handhold was mainly pleasing for symbolic reasons, but where their shoulders touched so soft a silence and relaxation flowed into him that his mind bathed in vacancy for a while, untroubled by thoughts of what to do when they reached her house.
They paused at the garden gate. She shut her eyes suddenly and tilted her blind face upward. He put his mouth on hers. After a moment she slipped away, saying “Goodnight, Duncan.”
“Goodnight—I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I?”
“Yes, tomorrow. Goodnight.”
He walked thoughtfully home, for the last tram had gone. Frost stiffened the substance of the pavement so that his feet hit the glittering surface with a tweeting note. Crossing the hill by the university he was struck by the clarity of the stars. They were not like lights stippling the inner surface of a dome but like galactic chandeliers hung at different levels in black air. He felt vaguely happy, yet vaguely puzzled and flat, and very cold. The kiss had meant nothing, nothing books, films and gossip had made him expect. Was it his fault? Or Marjory’s? Did it matter? He reached home, went to bed and slept.
He was standing on the golf course of Alexandra Park shortly after dawn, listening to a lark in the grey air overhead. The song stopped and the bird’s corpse thumped onto the turf at his feet. He walked downhill through a litter of sparrows and blackbirds on the paths to the gate. On Alexandra Parade a worker’s tram, apparently empty, groaned past the traffic lights. He watched the lights change from red and amber to green, then to green and amber, and then go out. The tramcar came to a halt.
Not everything died at once for the lowlier plants put on final spurts of abnormal growth. Ivy sprouted up the Scott monument in George Square and reached the lightning conductor on the poet’s head; then the leaves fell off and the column was encased in a net of bone-white bone-hard fibre. Moss carpeted the pavements, then crumbled to powder under his feet as he walked alone through the city. He was happy. He looked in the windows of pornography shops without wondering if anyone saw him, and rode a bicycle through the halls of the art galleries arid bumped down the front steps, singing. He set up easels in public places and painted huge canvases of buildings and dead trees. When a painting was completed he left it confronting the reality it depicted. The weather had also died. There was no rain or wind. The sky was always grey and warm and the time mid-afternoon.
He sat in the courtyard of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh painting a view of Arthur’s Seat. A harsh beak whispered gratingly in his left ear, “This is all much as Queen Mary remembered it.”
A white speck appeared high on the crags and moved down the path toward the courtyard’s southern gate. A load of depression settled in his heart. He leaned toward the canvas and worked with his face against it, determined to see nobody. A chilling shock went through him and he knew she had laid her hand on the back of his neck. He tried to ignore her but work was intolerable under her suffering eyes, so he motioned her to stand before the easel. She did so, thinking he meant to put her in the picture. He took a rifle and shot her. She stared at him reproachfully, then broke, crumpled, crumbled into a turd.
Great beetles emerged. The city was full of them. They were five feet long and shaped like rowing boats with antennae and had mouths in their stomachs. They were in every building throwing furniture and the bodies of the dead out of the windows. They feared open spaces and crossed these at a quick scuttling run. In the angle between a wall and pavement Thaw crouched between two who flickered their antennae incuriously over him. Since they had no eyes they thought him one of themselves as he squatted down and moved as they did.
He awoke with a chill that kept him in bed for a week.
CHAPTER 24.
Marjory Laidlaw
Convalescence was sweetened by the thought of Marjory and he returned to school full of anxious hope. Once again he was standing on the staircase talking to McAlpin and Drummond when she passed without noticing him wave and call. He gaped after her, wondering if he should chase and strike her. Surely she must have seen him! Why did she p
retend not to? Or was the fault his? Perhaps on their night out together he had bored or disappointed her beyond any hope of forgiveness. An hour later in the school shop she said “Hello, Duncan!” and stood looking at him with a shy gay open amused smile.
“Hullo!” he said, gazing joyfully back.
“Have you been ill, Duncan?”
“Just a bit.”
“What a shame.”
She still smiled, but her voice sympathized.
In the following weeks she brought him increasing splendour and discontent. He told her of a studio he was sharing near Kelvingrove Park.
“It’s a great big attic and by clubbing together it only costs a few shillings a week each. On Friday nights we go there from school and take turns at making a big meal. Most of the others get help from their girlfriends but Kenneth is a great chef. Last week he made Spanish onion soup with toast on top. Next week it’s my turn and I’m going to boil a haggis. A shop in Argyle Street has good big cheap ones and they’re nice with tatties and turnip. Afterwards we put off the lights and play records by the fire, jazz and classical. You should come.”
“It sounds marvellous.” She sighed. “I wish I could come.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Well … there’s a friend I always have to see on Fridays.” At tea breaks and lunch time they sat in the refectory or went to a café and returned holding hands and talking. He joined the school choir because she sang there, and after late practices they walked to her home. At the garden gate conversation suddenly failed, their mouths met in a ritual pressure and she slipped away with a soft “Goodnight,” leaving him as baffled as the first time they kissed. When they left the school together she always murmured “Excuse me a minute,” slipped into the ladies’ lavatory and left him outside for a quarter of an hour. She never recognized him if he was with friends. These insults filled reservoirs of rage which evaporated whenever she smiled at him. And when their bodies accidentally touched a current of stillness and silence flowed in from her and he felt that before touching Marjory he had never known rest. His calmest moods had been full of fear, hope, lust and memory, all clashing to make a discord of ideas and words. Her touch silenced these, letting him know nothing for a while but the pressure of hand or knee, and Marjory beside him, and sunlight on rooftops or a cloud seen through a window. That didn’t happen often. His frequentest pleasure was waking in the morning, hearing pigeons among the chimneypots and being warmed by the thought of soon seeing her. When words came at these times the memory of Marjory orchestrated them into phrases. He wrote poems and slid copies into her hands as they passed in the school corridors. He started combing his hair, brushing his teeth, polishing his shoes, changing underwear twice a week and (to the annoyance of Mr. Thaw, who laundered them) shirts four times a week. He wore the pin-striped suit to school and cleaned off the stains with turpentine, though this made temporary rashes on the skin. His manner with other girls grew more playful. He thought they were interested in him.
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