“Stop condescending to me,” said a voice.
Thaw started and dropped his brush, for it was three o’clock in the morning. He laughed shakily and climbed down the ladder, saying, “I will never condescend to you again, Mr. Rennie, if you promise not to speak to me when you aren’t here. Excuse me, I’m a little tired.”
Sleeping had become as easy as work, for he dreamed he was in the mural. “Here it is: land, sky and sunlight,” he said to God his father as they strolled round the bramble bush, the serpent wagging its tail behind them. It was a clear day and anemones were singing in the tidal pools. “You’ll get it back when I’ve put it in decent order. I don’t like being in debt. As you see I’ve had no trouble with rational pain and death.” They looked up at a hawk with a young rabbit hanging from its claws, then paused on the summit of a cliff. On the river below two swans twined their necks and the first lovers knelt to each other on the far shore. On the western horizon arose the great stump of the Babylonian tower, tiny figures waved flags on the summit; to the east, on Ben Sinai, in a patch of bad weather, the minister was carving the triangulation tables of the law. “Sex and history are problems I can’t solve, so I’m returning them in the form you gave them, though stated a little more clearly. I’ll finish by the new year and then I’ll owe you nothing. Though I’ll be grateful if you give me some paying customers after that, I’ll need the money. Excuse me a moment.” He went up and moved the lightning over Sinai two and a quarter inches to the right, making it echo the rift in the tree of knowledge. He had no sensation of waking. As he lay with closed eyes his mind circled the chancel walls with lazy power, pausing in the vault to choose the area he would work upon that day. He even had a plan view of his body, curled in the pulpit like a grub in a nut, and knew it would soon bring his working weight up the ladder to join his thoughts. Body and mind so completely served the mural that sexual fancies never came to him now and he only knew he needed food when the brush felt too heavy to hold. His strangest, most dreamlike times happened away from the mural. He sat at the communion table eating lumps of custard from Mrs. Coulter’s bowl while the old minister stared at him murmuring, “Oh yes, you’re a real artist. A real artist.”
Later he was in a crowded art shop in the city centre stealing tubes of paint without haste or panic. Later still he stood on a pavement arranging to meet June Haig.
“You won’t come!” he said, laughing in her face. “I know you won’t come.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be there. Paisley’s corner by the bridge. I’ll be there.”
“So will I, but you won’t come.”
He laughed again because he felt he was not talking to her in the present but two or three years earlier.
The afternoon darkened early and he was working peer-ingly in the semi-dusk when someone coughed behind him. A man and a woman stood in the aisle, and when his eyes were used to the better light on the church floor he noticed the woman was Marjory. The man said heartily, “Hullo, Duncan,” and Marjory raised her hand and smiled. Thaw said “Hullo” and looked down on them, smiling slightly. The man said, “We were visiting friends in Lenzie and we thought, old times and so forth, why not run in and see Duncan? So here we are.”
The man peered up through the ladders.
“You must have cat’s eyes to work in this light.”
“The switches are behind the door.”
“No no. No no. I quite like it in this dimness, more mysterious, if you know what I mean…. Very impressive. Very impressive.”
Marjory said something he couldn’t hear. He said, “What?” “This isn’t your usual style of work, Duncan.”
After a short silence Thaw said, “I’m trying to show more air and light.”
The man said, “So you are. So you are.” He moved back into the body of the church, looking at the mural and quietly humming. He said, “You’re nearly finished.”
“Far from it.”
“It looks finished to my untutored eye.”
Thaw indicated bits to be repainted.
“How much longer will you be on it?”
“A few weeks.”
“Then what will you do. Teach?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned round and pretended to work. After a moment he heard the man cough and say, “Well, Marjory,” and, “I think we’ll be getting along now, Duncan.”
Thaw looked round and said goodbye. The two people had moved back into the middle of the church. The man said, “By the way, did you know Marjory and I are thinking of getting married?”
“No.”
“Yes, we’re thinking about it.”
“Good.”
There was silence then the man said, “Well, goodbye, Duncan. When we’re married you must look in on us. We still think of you now and again.”
Thaw shouted, “Good.”
The syllable clattered upon the ceiling and walls. At the door he saw Marjory look back and raise her hand, but couldn’t see if she was smiling or not.
It was too dark to work now. He lay on the planks, his thoughts returning to Marjory in a puzzled way, like a tongue tip returning to a hole from which a tooth has been pulled. He was sure he had just seen a girl without special beauty or intelligence. He wondered why she had been all he wanted in a woman. She was as unlike Marjory as Mrs. Thaw’s corpse had been unlike his mother. He wished he had said something ironic and memorable but she had given him no chance.
“This isn’t your usual style of work, Duncan.”
He shivered and climbed slowly down. His body felt unusually heavy. He switched on the lights and stared at the mural. It looked horrible. He went up into the gallery where he kept a large mirror for such emergencies. Reflected in it, the left and right sides transposed, the mural sometimes looked new and exciting when he had been working too close to it for too long. Now it appeared even worse than his naked eyes had seen. He flung the mirror onto the pews beneath shouting, “Not beauty! Not beauty! Nothing but hunger!”
He tried to cram all his knuckles into his mouth, then went downstairs and picked the biggest mirror fragment from among the pews and hurried about trying to catch a fresh new glimpse of the work. He had wanted to make a harmony of soft blue, brown and gold livened here and there by sparks of pure colour, but he could see only clumsy black and grey, glaring reds and greens. He had tried to show bodies in a depth of tender light, sharing space with clouds, hills, plants and creatures, but his space was hardly a foot deep and his people were crushed in it as if into a narrow cupboard. His mural showed the warped rat-trap world of a neurotic virgin. He hurled the mirror fragment into the chancel.
“That is not art,” he shouted, bending his head and wildly scratching. “Not art, just hungry howling. Oh, why did she hunt me out? Why didn’t she stay? How can I make her a beautiful world if she refuses to please me? Oh, God, God, God, let me kill her, kill her! I must get out of here.”
He went into the lavatory beside the vestry, stripped off dressing gown and overalls and started washing. From upstairs the voices of Cowlairs Women’s Social Club were bawling a chorus of “Who’s Sorry Now?” As he rubbed a paint stain from his knee with newspaper soaked in turpentine he noticed an advertisement for a film called Test Pilot. A strong, slightly pained male head looked skyward out of a padded husk hung with microphones, cables and dials. A woman stood nearby in profile, her back to the pilot but glancing at him with a sidelong inviting provocative smile. She had short dark hair and lips like June Haig. She was barefoot and wore bangles and black gauze trousers with a slit from ankle to waist. A sleeveless black gauze shirt covered her breasts but left bare the valley between them and her throat and midriff. Stealthily arising, his sexual imagination began slowly to rip and toy with her, but he crumpled the paper and flung it aside, thinking, “Women are never like that. Or they seem to be and then, ‘Stop touching me, Duncan.’ But that’s my fault. I’ve seen them with other men at bus stops, leaning toward them, looking into their faces, nakedly wanti
ng to be liked or happy because they see they’re wanted. But I’m unattractive. Never mind. Prostitutes make a living from men like me. I must go to Bath Street.”
He put on his suit, noticing the two five-pound notes still in the jacket pocket. Returning to the church to switch the lights off he noticed the place was stinking, stinking so powerfully he thought for a moment it was on fire. Then he recognized the corrupt sweet odour that had come after his mother’s death. He laughed mournfully and said, “Still there, auld woman? And bigger than ever, if my nose is any judge. I must see if I can get rid of you in Bath Street.”
It was ten o’clock and the tram into town was nearly empty. He sat chewing a knuckle and staring out of the window. Visions of viciously exciting intercourse were blurred by thoughts of peaceful sleep in the arms of someone pretending to like him. He left the tram and walked up West Regent Street. Two women stood at opposite corners of Blythswood Square. He quickened as he passed them, then slowed up, cursing his cowardice. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten for two or three days. He bought a poke of chips in a shop near Charing Cross and walked, eating them, up Bath Street. A woman stood at a corner wearing a red coat and carrying a big black handbag. She looked too old and dignified to be a prostitute but though on the far side of the road she seemed to be noticing him sideways. He stood against some railings, finishing the chips while the heart hammered in his chest. He crumpled and dropped the cardboard container and was about to cross the road when he saw someone coming. A small man walked lurchingly toward the woman along the opposite pavement. She turned to look at him. He slowed down, fumbled in several pockets and brought out a cigarette case. For a moment they stood talking then she took a cigarette, the man lit it and they set off toward Sauchiehall Street. Thaw walked on full of anger and relief and entered a café near Green’s Playhouse. He ordered a coffee and sat till the Italian behind the counter started to stand chairs on tables and sweep the floor. The idea of prostitution was wholly depressing now but there was nowhere to retreat. Church and home were places he never wanted to visit again. He went out into Renfield Street.
It was midnight but there were people about: one or two smart-suited men walking briskly, a lounger in a dirty coat reading a newspaper at a street corner. Two women halted across the road from him. They were young, tall and wore fur-trimmed black coats open over their dresses. One of them put a leg forward, pulled the hem of her dress halfway up her thigh and did something for a while to the top of her stocking. The woman at her side glanced around disdainfully. Thaw stopped, his stomach transbarbed by a shaft of nervous excitement. He raised his hand and crossed over, trying to smile. He said to the woman, who was now pulling down the hem of her dress, “Hullo. I think we know each other.”
The other woman said, “You’re wrong. It’s me ye know,” and stared at him. He said, “All right.”
The bending woman stood up and said, “I’ll be seeing ye, Greta.”
“Aye, all right. Wait, come here a minute.”
They moved aside and whispered together. Both had bright bronze hair permed exactly alike. Greta wore a tight dress which showed the urn-like curves of her thighs and hips. It was fastened down the front with buttons from which creases ran round her body like lines of latitude. Thaw was excited and puzzled that things were going so easily. The smaller girl said, “Goodnight, Greta. Goodnight, big boy,” and walked away. The other took his arm. His nostrils were buffeted by cheap sweet perfume. He said, “Have you a place of your own?”
“Sure I’ve a place.”
“Will we take a taxi?”
“Aye. Let’s be stylish.”
He waved to an approaching taxi and with a feeling of competence saw it come to the kerb. They entered and the woman gave an address. He leaned back, feeling cared for. The woman said, “Is it a short time you’re after?”
“All night, please. I’m a bit tired.”
“It’ll cost ye.”
“How much?”
“Oh, ten pounds, easy.”
Thaw was slightly shocked. “As much as that? … I’ve only nine pounds sixteen and tenpence. Less, when I’ve paid for the taxi.”
“I suppose that’ll have to do.”
He hesitated, then said, “You’ll have trouble warming me up. I’m as cold as a fish.”
She patted his knee. “Oh, I’ll warm you up. I’m good.”
The taxi stopped at the white portico of a church. He paid the driver and joined the woman on the pavement saying, “Are we getting married?”
“I live just round the corner.”
They entered a close in the block of buildings which held his old studio. He had difficulty climbing the stairs. She said,
“You aren’t well, are you?”
“Just a bit tired.”
A frosted glass window beside the door had a black triangular hole in it. She put her hand through the hole and took out a key. She opened the door, carefully closed it behind them, and whispered to Thaw to be quiet. She led him in darkness up narrow creaking stairs, opened another door, closed it behind them, touched a switch and he saw the rosy light of a table lamp in a pink satin shade. They were in a cosy attic bedroom with a sloping ceiling. The woman switched on an electric fire, took off her coat and sat down on the bed looking at him. He started to undress.
Sometime later she said in a sudden suspicious voice, “What’s that?”
Thaw was breathing hard and didn’t answer. She said, “Stop! What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“You call that nothing?”
“It’s eczema, it isn’t infectious, look—”
“No you don’t! Stop! Stop it!”
She got up and started to dress, saying, “I cannae afford to take chances.”
Thaw watched her, his mouth hanging stupidly open. He couldn’t quite believe what was happening. She buttoned up her dress.
“Get up!” she said roughly.
He sat up slowly and started dressing. His mouth still hung open. Once or twice he stopped and stared hard at the floor and she told him to hurry up. He felt dizzy and said, “Let me sit for a bit.”
He heard her say in a kindlier voice, “I cannae afford to take chances.”
“It wasn’t what you thought. Not contagious or infectious.” He took three pound notes from his hip pocket and laid them on the table.
“What’s that for?”
“Your time.”
“Take it back.”
He stared at the money without moving. She seized it and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. He stood up and put the jacket on. She led him downstairs.
He went slowly by back streets to Drummond’s house, opened the broken-locked door and moved stealthily into a room off the lobby. Light, reflected from a street lamp, showed a leatherette armchair with china ornaments on the seat. He moved these and sat, elbows on knees, chin on knuckles, until cold sunlight dawned on the roofs outside the window and his teeth were chattering. In occasional waking dreams he seemed another object in the room, like the clock on the mantelpiece, the ornaments at his feet. The sound of conversation from the kitchen struck him as it struck the objects. Once Mr. Drummond passed the door muttering loudly, “Sheer bloody nonsense … ” then came noises of the lavatory being used. Thaw wrapped a small carpet round himself as protection from the cold. He began to dream he was a carpet himself, a mat of flesh with a hole in it. Something dreadful was going to emerge from that hole, he could smell its cold breath. He heard quick footsteps and a voice shouted, “Sponger and scrounger!”
He opened his eyes and saw a brisk, erect, fairly old woman staring at him accusingly. One hand was on her hip; the other held a bird cage with a stuffed canary on the perch. She glanced down at it and tears came to her eyes.
“Poor wee Joey,” she whispered softly. “Poor wee Joey. That bloody cat. Sponger and scoundrel!” she yelled again. “I won’t stand it!”
Drummond strode in saying, “Pull yourself together Ma. Oh, hullo Duncan. Ma, for Go
d’s sake make yourself a cup of strong black coffee.”
“I won’t stand any more! You fill the house with Mollys and Janets till I’m driven out by the stink of bloody women, then your lazy friends come crawling in and shift all my good sister’s china, I won’t stand it!”
“Sorry about this, Duncan,” said Drummond grimly. He picked up his mother and wrestled her out of the room. Thaw went away.
It was a bright morning and the city stank of cheap perfume. He wandered eerily round to Brown’s tearoom and sat an hour or two in the teaspoon-tinkling warmth. His head ached. A small girl sat by him and said, “Hullo, Duncan, you look very well dressed today. Crumpled, perhaps, but quite smart really.” He stared at her. She said, “Do you remember you once said illness was useful sometimes?” He stared at her.
“Well, my doctor’s told me the same thing. You see, my mother committed suicide when I was three which probably … and then I lived with an aunt and the doctor thinks I made myself ill to … to be attended to. He said first I gave myself pleurisy and then anaemia and then colds, so now I’m going to a psychiatrist. Are you all right?”
Thaw stared at her. He heard the words but they seemed meaningless.
“Did you know that somebody, I forget his name, said you were a genius? Do you know who said that?”
Thaw stared at her.
“I forget his name but he’s a painter…. I think his first name begins with B. He’s quite well known. Anyway, that should make you feel … rather … I’m expecting Peter here soon. Did you know I was married?”
Thaw stood up awkwardly and climbed to the street. A Riddrie tram stopped at nearby traffic lights and he boarded with an effort. His seat in the downstairs cabin seemed to be a dog. When he looked at it or stroked it with his hand it was clearly a seat, but when he closed his eyes against the glare it seemed a huge dog. Getting up to the house was difficult. Inside he squatted on the hearth rug and pressed his fists to his aching brow. After a while he felt the rug get up, walk to the bedroom and tip him onto the bed. He got his clothes and shoes off and pulled the blankets over him. Oblivion seemed to fall on him from the ceiling like a ton of bricks.
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