Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

  She died three days later, very early on a Saturday morning. The previous night Mrs. Gilchrist downstairs and Mrs. Wishaw from across the landing sat waiting in the living room and did not move out when Thaw went to bed there. Mr. Thaw sat in the bedroom holding his wife’s hand. When Thaw awoke the light was filtering through the curtains and the neighbours had left and he knew his mother was dead. He got up, dressed, ate a bowl of cornflakes and switched the wireless on to a comedy programme. Mr. Thaw came in and said, slightly embarrassed, “Would you mind turning it down a bit, Duncan? The neighbours might be offended if they heard.”

  Thaw switched off the wireless and went for a walk to the canal. He stood at the edge of a deep stone channel and watched without thought or feeling the foam-flecked water swirl between rotting timbers.

  In the afternoon he called on Coulter as he had arranged to do some while before. Mrs. Coulter had taken her husband for a walk, and Thaw sat by the fire while Coulter, in vest and trousers, washed at the sink. Thaw said awkwardly, “By the way, Bob, my mother died last night.”

  Coulter turned slowly round. He said “You’re joking, Duncan.”

  “No.”

  “But I saw her two weeks ago. She was talking to me. She seemed all right.”

  “Aye.”

  Coulter towelled his hands, looking at Thaw closely. He said, “You shouldn’t hold it in, Duncan. It’ll be worse for you later.” “I don’t think I’m holding anything in.”

  Coulter pulled a shirt and pullover on and said in a worried way, “The bother is, I arranged tae meet Sam Lang at Tollcross playing fields at three. We were going to do some running practice. I thought you wouldnae mind coming along.”

  “I don’t mind coming along.”

  When he got home the undertaker had called. A coffin lay on a pair of trestles on the rug before the bedroom fireplace. The lid was placed to leave a square hole at the top and Mrs. Thaw’s face stuck up through the hole. Thaw looked at it with puzzled distaste. The features had been his mother’s but though he saw no difference in the shape all resemblance had vanished. The thing was without even the superficial life of a work of art and its material lacked the integrity of bronze or clay. He touched the brow with a fingertip and felt cold bone under the cold skin. This dense pack of dead tissues was not his mother’s face. It was nobody’s face.

  In the days before the funeral the bedroom was pervaded by a sweet fusty odour which spread to other parts of the house. Air fresheners of the kind used in lavatories were placed under the coffin but made little difference. On Tuesday the minister of Mrs. Thaw’s church conducted a short service in the living room while the coffin was screwed tight and taken deftly downstairs to the hearse. The living room was crowded with neighbours and old friends and relatives whom Thaw had heard his parents speak of but hardly ever met. Twice or thrice during the service the door was furtively opened and those beside it shifted to admit a stealthily breathing old man or woman. Thaw stood by the sideboard wearing his newest suit. It struck him that the minister had not visited his mother during the last weeks, and this not through failure of duty (he was a young earnest nervous man) but because his presence would have been an intrusion. To Mrs. Thaw and her friends the church had been a gathering place. They went to a service on Sunday, and on Thursday to a social club in the church hall, but none could have been accused of piety. Mrs. Thaw had been shocked when, some years before, Thaw called himself an atheist, but no more shocked than when, shortly afterward, he called himself a Christian and started turning the other cheek in his fights with Ruth. A phrase came into his head: “The consolations of religion.” As far as he could see, his mother had lived and died without consolations of any kind at all.

  The service ended and he went down to the cars with his father, the minister and a few others. The cars were shining black Rolls-Royces with silent engines and as they sped through the streets of the northern suburbs he looked out of the window feeling comfortable and privileged. It was a grey day, a lid of grey sky had shut down on Glasgow and thin smirr fell from it. They came to a municipal cemetery so precisely on the edge of the city that on three sides it was surrounded by open fields. There was a delay at the gate. The cars halted in a line behind the cars of a funeral party ahead. After a while the cars in front disappeared and they went up a curving drive between dripping rhododendrons and stopped outside a miniature Victorian-gothic church with a smokestack behind. More neighbours and relatives were waiting at the porch and followed Thaw and his father inside. They stood in the front row of pews and everyone else crowded into the pews behind. Just before them was a tall pulpit, and to the right of it a low platform with the coffin on top. Coffin and platform were covered by a heavy red cloth. After a moment of silence Thaw began to wonder why nobody sat down. The same thought must have struck his father, for he sat down and everyone followed his example. The minister, in the black gown and white bands of a doctor of divinity, climbed into the pulpit, said a prayer and announced a hymn. Everyone stood and sang and sat down again. The minister produced a sheet of paper and said, “Before we proceed with the service I have been asked—er, to read this to you:

  “During the last few months of her illness Mary Thaw was completely confined to her bed. I would like to thank those many good friends and neighbours who made these months as pleasant for her as they could. They brought gifts of fruit and of cake, and the even more precious gift of their company. I would like to tell them on her behalf how very much she appreciated their attentions, and to extend to them the thanks that she herself is unable to extend today.”

  In the pews behind somebody sniffed and blew their nose. Thaw looked sideways at his father and whispered, “That was very good.” The service continued. At the words “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes,” there began a lumbering rumbling sound and the red cloth began to sag as the coffin was drawn down under it. For a second it bulged up again with a rush of air from below, then flopped so that a rectangular depression appeared where the coffin had been. Thaw was struck by a poignant sense of loss neutralized at once by a memory of a conjuror who had made a scone disappear from under a handkerchief.

  Outside the church people squared their shoulders and began talking in loud cheerful voices.

  “Well, that didn’t go too badly, did it?”

  “A beautiful service, beautiful.”

  “Hullo, hullo! There’s a voice I’ve not heard in many a long day. How are ye, Jim?”

  “No’ too bad. A beautiful service, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye, beautiful. I liked that bit the minister read out in the middle.”

  “Ye cannae beat good neighbours.”

  “Aye, but she deserved good neighbours. She was one hersel’.”

  “Who’s that waiting by the gate? Don’t tell me it’s auld Neil Bannerman?”

  “Aye, it’s Neil Bannerman.”

  “My God, he looks done. Really done. Fancy auld Neil Bannerman surviving Mary Thaw. Last time I saw him was at her father’s funeral ten years back.”

  “Is it true, er, there’s a quantity of refreshment, er, available somewhere?”

  “Aye, man, there’s a tea laid on at the Grand Hotel at Charing Cross. Come in my car.”

  The male relations gathered in a private room of a hotel in Sauchiehall Street and ate a high tea of cold ham and warm vegetables. They chattered about old acquaintances and football and the days when the local churches had their own football teams. Thaw sat silent among them. At one point Bernard Shaw was mentioned and he was asked to tell an anecdote about him. It was well received. Afterward he returned with his father in someone’s car. The rain was falling heavily now. He thought how pleasant it would be to get home and sit by the bedroom fire drinking tea with his mother, then remembered this was impossible.

  Mr. Thaw wanted his wife’s ashes scattered on a hillside overlooking Loch Lomond where they had walked together in their courting days. One windy and sunny spring morning he journeyed with his children to Loch Lomond by train. Th
aw held the oblong deal box with the ashes in it upon his knee.

  The lid lacked hinge or fastening, and he raised it once or twice and looked curiously at the soft grey stuff inside. It was exactly like cigarette ash. Mr. Thaw said, “Be careful, Duncan.” Duncan said, “Yes, we don’t want to spill her before we get there.”

  He was surprised to see his father look shocked. They climbed the hillside by a stony lane sunk among bracken and budding hedges. Higher up this became a cart track over a green field, then they went through a gap in a dry-stone dyke and it became a sandy path among heather with curlews crying around it. Near the path lay a flat rock with a hole in the middle where the Colquhoun clan once stuck their banner pole when gathering to fight.

  “I suppose this place is as good as any,” said Mr. Thaw.

  They sat and rested, looking down on the loch and the green islands in it. Northward the jagged wall of the highland bens looked distinct and solid enough to bang the knuckles against. They waited till a young couple who had paused to see the view passed out of sight, then opened the box and flung handfuls of ash into the air. The wind whisked it away like smoke into the heather.

  A fortnight after Mr. Thaw sat at his desk in the living room and said, “Duncan, come here. I want ye to look at this. It’s the bill for your mother’s funeral. A fantastic figure, isn’t it? You’d think cremation would be a lot cheaper than burial, but no. The costs are practically the same.”

  Thaw looked at the bill and said, “Aye, it does look a bit extravagant.”

  “Well, I’m not going to have that sum of money wasted on me, so I’m arranging to give my body to science. Would ye sign this paper? It’s to prove that as next of kin you have no objection.”

  Thaw signed.

  “Good. The arrangement is that when I die you inform the medical faculty of the university and they call and collect me with an iron coffin. If you do that within twenty-four hours, you and Ruth will be given ten pounds to divide between you, so you see it’s not only cheaper, it’s profitable.”

  “I’ll spend the money drinking to the health of your memory,” said Thaw.

  “If you’ve sense you’ll spend it otherwise.”

  Almost a year later Thaw was looking through a drawer when he found a letter in his mother’s handwriting. It was written very faintly in pencil and was a rough draft of a letter she probably never got round to sending. It was superscribed to the correspondence page of a cheap woman’s magazine.

  I have enjoyed very much the letters from your readers telling about the funny mistakes some children make. I wonder if you would like to print an experience of mine. When my wee son was six or seven, we left the house one night quite late and were looking up at the stars. Suddenly Duncan said, “Where’s the tractor?” His father had been teaching him the names of the stars, and he had got mixed up with the plough. I have not been very well recently and have had to spend most of the time in bed. I find my main pleasure nowadays in memories like these.

  Thaw stood awhile with the letter in his hand. He remembered the night she spoke of. It had been at the hostel in Kinlochrua at Christmas. The family had been going to a concert in the main building, and the question had been asked by Ruth. Mrs. Thaw had always preferred him to Ruth and had unconsciously transferred the incident. He put back the letter and shut the drawer. Grief pulled at an almost unconscious corner of his mind like a puppy trying to attract its master’s attention by tugging the hem of his coat.

  CHAPTER 20.

  Employers

  The Higher Leaving Examination results were not yet published, but almost everyone knew how well or badly they had done and the school was full of excited discussions about maximum salaries and minimum qualifications. Employment officers came and lectured on careers in accountancy, banking and the civil service. A lawyer talked about law, an engineer about engineering, a doctor about medicine and a major about the army. A Scottish Canadian lectured on the advantages of emigration. Students argued in groups about whether it was best to stay a sixth year at school and win more certificates or leave at once for university or commercial or technical colleges. Mr. Thaw said, “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “That’s irrelevant, isn’t it?”

  “Face facts, Duncan. If you can’t live by doing what you want, you must take the nearest thing to it you can get.”

  “I want to write a modern Divine Comedy with illustrations in the style of William Blake.”

  “Well, surely the sensible thing to try for is work as a commercial artist?”

  “For that I need four years at art school and you cannae afford to send me.”

  Mr. Thaw looked thoughtful. He said, “When I worked for Laird’s, the box-makers, I was fairly friendly with Archie Tulloch, who was head of the art department. They used to take in boys of sixteen or seventeen then. They designed labels for packages and cartons, you know, and patterns for wrapping paper. That might not gratify your bohemian soul, but it would be a start. If I wrote to Archie Tulloch he would likely look your work over.”

  Thaw got an afternoon off school and walked down into Bridgeton wearing a newly cleaned overcoat and with a folder of work under his arm. The factory was near the river and he descended to it by narrow streets where many small factories stood between tenements and scrapyards. The sky was grey and beyond the rooftops the Cathkin Braes looked flat and dark like a wall shutting the city in, though he could make out the silhouettes of trees on the skyline. He remembered his mother talking about these trees when he was very small. They had reminded her of a line of camels in the desert. The ceiling of cloud pressed lower and released a thin smirr like a falling mist. It glazed the streets until they reflected the pale sky, a seagull skimming above the street appeared as far below it. The city seemed hung among distances of grey air, and windows were raised from the bottom and hands placed potted ferns on the sills to be watered. The rain soothed Thaw’s misery. He started to feel confident, and to imagine coming often this way to Laird’s. Even when very rich he would walk through these streets with such regularity that folk who lived there would set their clocks by him. He would be part of their lives. He came to a factory which was a huge brick cube at the junction of two streets. He straightened his tie, ran a hand through his hair, gripped the folder tightly and pushed through a revolving door of brass, glass and carved mahogany.

  The entrance hall was a bare place with a small door marked INQUIRIES. He turned the knob and entered a wedge-shaped room with a switchboard and an elderly lady shut in a corner by a counter of polished yellow wood. The lady said, “Yes?” “I’ve an appointment; that’s to say I’m expected. Mr. Tulloch expects me.”

  “What is your name, please?”

  He said shyly, “I am Duncan Thaw.”

  The lady moved her fingers among clicking plugs and said, “Mr. Tulloch? A Mr. Thaw to see you. He says he has an appointment…. Very well.”

  She deftly fingered more switches.

  “Would you send down a junior? To take a Mr. Thaw to the waiting room? … Very well…. Would you wait here a little while, sir?”

  “Yes, please,” said Thaw, humbled at being called sir. He went to a low table with magazines arranged neatly on top in overlapping rows. Lacking the courage to disturb their order, he was content to look at the covers:

  The Executive—A MAGAZINE FOR THE MODERN BUSINESSMAN.

  Modern Business—A MAGAZINE FOR THE EXECUTIVE.

  Ingot−THE THUNDERHAUGH STEEL GROUP MONTHLY BULLETIN.

  Automobile—THE CAR DEALERS’ MONTHLY BULLETIN.

  They had the thin glossy covers of obscene novelettes and were mostly pictures of people in expensive clothes sitting behind desks.

  A small neat pretty girl came in and said, “Mr. Thaw? Will you come this way, please?”

  He walked behind her across the bare hall and climbed some wide metallic stairs. She hurried ahead of him through corridors of glass and
cream-coloured metal, smiling downward as if sharing a tender secret with her bosom, and left him at a door labelled WAITING ROOM. Inside four men sat round a table, one of them saying in an English Midland dialect, “Yes, but what I don’t understand is—”

  “Will you excuse us?” said another man swiftly to Thaw. Thaw sat down in a comfortable chair and said, “Certainly. Please go on. I’m only here to wait.”

  “Then would you wait outside?” said the swift man, rising and opening the door. Thaw sat feeling insulted on a sofa against the corridor wall. It occurred to him that the men inside were capitalists plotting something. This floor of the factory was cut up into offices by glass screens supported by metal walls. The glass was rippled so that only shadows could be seen through it, and the bleakness, coldness, metallicness of the place gave a resounding quality to footsteps, clattering typewriters, ringing telephones, and the mutter of administrative voices. Two long spectacled men paused at a corner.

  “I think I’d better check that teller.”

  “No no. No need for that at all.”

  “Still, if the figures aren’t exact—”

  “No no. Even if his figures are a hundred percent out, that’s enough for my purpose.”

  Thaw realized Mr. Tulloch was beside him. He was a weary, paunchy man who said, “Duncan Thaw? … Yes …” and sat down.

  “I haven’t much time. Show me your stuff.”

  Thaw suddenly felt competent and businesslike. He opened his folder and said “Here is a series of watercolours, a series dealing with acts of God. The Deluge. The Tower of Babel. The Walls of Jericho Falling Flat.”

  “Um. Mmm. Next?”

  “Penelope unweaving. Circe. Scylla and Charybdis. The last is least successful because at the time I was equally influenced by Blake and Beardsley and the two sorts of outline—”