One evening Thaw came down to Sauchiehall Street when the air was mild and the lamps not yet lit. So fine a lake of yellow sky lay behind the western rooftops that he walked toward them in a direction opposite home and was overtaken by Aitken Drummond at Charing Cross.
“This isn’t your usual territory, Duncan.”
“I’m just walking.”
“I suppose you’re waiting for the ball to start?”
“Is there a ball tonight? No, I cannae afford a ticket.”
“I admit money is useful but don’t bother about a ticket. Come with me.”
They walked past the Grand Hotel then turned down a stunted unlit lane into a cluttered little yard. Thaw made out heaps of coke and coal, bins overflowing with garbage, stacks of milk, beer and fish crates. Drummond opened a door.
They entered so hot an air that Thaw felt stifled for a minute or two. Below a weak electric bulb an old man in a boiler suit sat smoking a pipe beside the furnace door. Drummond said, “This is Duncan Thaw, Dad. We’re going to the art school ball.”
Mr. Drummond took the pipe from his mouth and directed Thaw to an empty chair with the stem. His amused sunken mouth indicated a lack of teeth; his nose was almost as big as his son’s but more craggy; spectacles were pushed up on his brow, the legs mended with insulating tape. He said, “So you’re going dancing? It’s a waste of time, Douglas, a damned waste of time.”
“He’s called Duncan!” shouted Drummond.
“That doesn’t matter, it’s still a waste of time.”
“Who’s in the kitchen tonight?”
“Eh? Luigi.”
“Why not get Duncan and me something to eat? He’s hungry.”
“No, I’m not,” said Thaw.
Mr. Drummond left the room. Drummond pulled his father’s chair to the furnace door and opened it, showing a red-hot gullet of flame-roaring coal. He sat and spread his palms to the blaze saying, “It’s only a coincidence that I look like the Devil but I do enjoy heat. Pull your chair nearer, Duncan.” Mr. Drummond returned with a big plate of sandwiches and placed it on the floor between Thaw and Drummond. He said, “There’s cheese, there’s egg, there’s salmon, there’s meat paste. Help yourselves.”
He brought another chair from a corner, sat down and lifted a library book from the floor. “Do you read this man, Duncan?” he asked, showing the title of a novel by Aldous Huxley.
“Yes, but he annoys me. He shows a world with too little in it to believe or enjoy.”
“Too little?” said Mr. Drummond with a cackle of anarchic glee. “He leaves you with nothing, Duncan. Nothing whatsoever. Nothing at all. And he’s right.”
He turned a page and read while Thaw and Drummond ate.
“Tonight’s pay night!” said Drummond suddenly in a loud voice. Mr. Drummond looked up.
“I said you got paid tonight. Can I have some money?”
“The Glasgow Corporation, Duncan, gives this man one hundred and twenty pounds a year. He spends it on nothing but clothes and pocket money. He lives—”
“And materials,” said Drummond.
“And painting materials. He lives at home—he’s twenty-four—he pays nothing toward his rent or rates or fuel or light or food—”
“Food!” cried Drummond triumphantly. “I’m glad you mentioned food! Do you know what my father gave me for dinner today, Duncan? Fried kippers. Kippers, mind you, and fried with their heads and tails on.”
“Well, if you don’t like it you know what to do,” said Mr. Drummond mildly, returning the pipe to his mouth.
“Give me ten shillings,” said Drummond. His father fished four half crowns from his overalls pocket, handed them over, saw the plate was empty and stood up.
“Have some more sandwiches,” he told Duncan.
“No thanks, Mr. Drummond. That was good, but more would be too much.”
“Well, the cook’s a friend of mine. I’m not buying them and I’m not stealing them. You wouldn’t like some more?”
“No thanks, Mr. Drummond.”
“Duncan has to go now, Dad. We’ve an appointment. Would you like more coal?”
“If you can spare the time from your urgent appointment.”
A wooden hatch opened upon the coal heap outside. Thaw and Drummond pulled lumps onto the boiler-room floor with clumsy wooden rakes. Drummond shovelled them into the furnace and they left after washing their hands below a tap in the darkened yard.
They walked into the Cowcaddens and entered a close where the narrow stairs were worn to such a slant that the foot trod them uneasily. Thaw grew breathless and leaned a moment on a windowsill. He could see the flat back of a dingy church across a window box in which the soot-freckled crests of three stunted cauliflowers rose above a clump of weeds. On the top landing, Drummond pushed open a bright yellow door (the lock was broken), stuck his head inside and shouted, “Ma!” After a moment he said, “Come in, Duncan. I have to be careful in case my mother’s at home. If she dislikes someone she’s liable to retire to her bedroom and burn a pheasant’s tail feather.”
“What does that do?”
“I shudder to think.”
Thaw entered the queerest house he had ever seen. Parts of it were very like a home but these lay like valleys between piled furniture and objects salvaged from scrap heaps, middens and junk shops. As he edged into the kitchen he felt threatened by empty picture frames, stringless instruments and old wireless sets. The ceilings were loftier than in his own home but there was no open space and no planning.
“Excuse the mess,” said Drummond. “I haven’t had time to tidy up. I’m hoping to get a studio nearer the art school soon. What can we use?”
He began shifting things from in front of a cupboard. Thaw bent to help but Drummond said, “Leave it to me, Duncan. If you shift these I won’t know precisely where to find them.” When the cupboard door could be opened about twelve inches Drummond thrust his arm into the crevice and brought out, one at a time, a top hat, a Roman helmet, a pith helmet, a deerstalker, a mortarboard and an Indian feathered headdress, all with labels saying they belonged to the Acme Costume Hiring Agency.
“I used to work there,” said Drummond. “They stored their best things with an almost criminal carelessness.”
Drummond put on the top hat, a tail coat and spats. He cut himself a gleaming shirtfront, collar and cuffs from a sheet of glossy cardboard and fixed these in place with pins and drops of glue, then took a long pair of green rubber fangs from a drawer and inserted them carefully between his teeth and upper lip. He rubbed green greasepaint into his cheeks and, glaring balefully, asked with difficulty, “Dracula?”
“Oh yes,” said Thaw, nodding.
Drummond slipped the rubber teeth into his pocket and said, “Who do you want to be?”
“A sorcerer. But I’ll settle for an academic.”
He put on the mortarboard.
“Not enough,” said Drummond. “Go in there.”
He moved a tailor’s dummy and opened another door. Thaw entered a neat little room which clearly belonged to a woman. There were flowered curtains, striped wallpaper and a pink satin quilt on the bed. There was a scrolled and gilded bird cage, an ashtray shaped like a skull, and sweet peas blooming in a window box.
“Open the wardrobe,” commanded Drummond from outside. “I don’t think I should be here.”
“You should do exactly what I tell you.”
The wardrobe door was ajar and as Thaw opened it a ginger cat strolled out.
“Is there a black silk dressing gown among the coats to the right?” called Drummond.
“Yes.”
“Bring it here. Touch nothing else.”
Thaw returned to the chaotic kitchen. Drummond said, “Sorry, I would have fetched it myself but my mother made me promise not to go into her bedroom. Put it on. It’ll work rather well as an academic robe.”
“Won’t she find out?”
“No no. She’s managing a tearoom in Largs and her visits home are erratic, to say the least.”
Drummond took a knobbed cane in one hand and they set off for the ball.
Outside the lamps were lit and tramcars clanged and sparkled. A cryptic drama seemed unfolding throughout the city. An old woman and man argued quietly at a street corner watched by two little girls keeking round the corner of a lighted fruit shop. In a firelit room, seen through a ground-floor window, a man stood with a towel round his neck, shaving perhaps. Near the school they stepped into a room full of smoke, noise and people. Drummond forced a way to the bar and Thaw slid after him between backs and shoulders. Drummond handed him a large whisky and told him to knock it back in one. A blonde and a brunette leaned smiling toward Thaw and the blonde said, “Does your mother know you’re here?”
He said, “Mibby. She’s dead,” and turned away, pleased by his harshness. Drummond bought two cigars. They lit them, went out and marched up Sauchiehall Street issuing smoke like chimneys. Thaw was surprised to find the stares of the bypassers amusing. He began laughing violently but coughed violently instead.
“For God’s sake don’t inhale, Duncan!” said Drummond, slapping his back.
“There’s prestige in looking ridiculous with you, Aitken.”
The door of the annexe was thronged with people trying to buy tickets or bribe an entrance from the doorkeepers. Drummond and Thaw mounted the steps side by side, Drummond cleaving a path with his great axe-blade-edged nose, Thaw opening one with the pallid inclined carapace of his brow. Officials in exotic costumes shouted “It’s the Drummond!” “It’s the Thaw!” and cheerily ushered them in. The janitor gripped Thaw’s sleeve, drew him aside and indicated Drummond, saying, “Beware of that lad. When drunk he’s fit company for neither man nor brute.”
The triumph of arrival faded. He sat at the edge of the dance hall grinning unhappily at the revolving carnival of couples brushing past his knees, his eyes sucking visions of thighs and hips, fluttering breasts, throats and glances. Molly Tierney, dressed like an oriental dancing girl, spun gleefully in the arms of a white-robed Arab who was McAlpin and saluted Thaw with a raised forefinger. Suddenly two girls said “Hullo!” and sat on each side of him. “Don’t you recognize us?” asked the smaller girl on the left.
“I’m sorry, I’ve a poor memory for people.”
“You met us in the pub, don’t you remember?”
“Are you the girls who asked that question? No, I don’t remember your faces.”
“Why?” asked the girl on his right. “Did we look awfully hard and experienced?”
“Not at all,” said Thaw hurriedly. “Are you at the university?”
“No, the art school.”
“Are you in the first year?”
They laughed.
“No, the fourth.”
The pale girl said to the dark, “It makes you feel terribly ageing,” and then, to Thaw, “Why aren’t you dancing?”
“I’ve no sense of bodily rhythm.”
“Oh, we’ll soon teach you that,” said the dark girl, rising to her feet. She led him to a corner and showed him how to move his feet; then she took him onto the floor where he partnered her, feeling clumsy and apologetic and desperately wishing she was the pale girl; then she took him back and gave him to her friend. He felt the difference at once. Her body was firmer, supple without fragility, her hair was pale gold, drawn smoothly back from pale brows to the back of her head. She wore earrings made from small stones hung on thin chains, her dress was black with a square-cut neckline. Sometimes she spoke words directing his steps, sometimes words of congratulation. He looked straight into her eyes, imagined being married to her, thought of Molly Tierney and felt no regret at all. He thought, I’m being ridiculous, and kept looking in her eyes; the dark pupils grew very clear and her face and head became a dim white and gold shape around them. He thought, She’s like marble and honey, and shaped the words with his lips. The music stopped and he had to dance with the smaller girl again. He looked straight across her shoulder and talked about painting and the an school. She said,
“Is your father a minister?”
“No, my father’s a pious atheist. Do I look like a minister’s son?”
“You look like a kid of twelve. But you sound like an old highland minister.”
He danced again with the pale girl in a silence which grew desperate, for he knew it must end. So he said, “You’re like marble and honey.”
“What?”
“You’re like marble and honey.”
“Oh. Am I? Thank you.”
She looked at him without smiling and said, “You should dance more often.”
“If you come to more balls I’ll dance with you.”
He grew more worried, feeling she could not dance with him all evening, wondering when and how she would break from him. When the music stopped he excused himself and hurried from the hall.
He went upstairs thinking, ‘I love her,’ and, ‘You’re daft.’ He wondered if she had a boyfriend and why he wasn’t around. Anyway, she had danced with him from kindness; their connection had no equality in it. He imagined her friends mocking the lost look on his face when he danced with her. She would laugh and say, “He’s just a kid!” He looked for a place to hide. Intimate whispers came from all the dark corridors so he opened a door onto the dance hall balcony, a small place used as a store for chairs. A man was slumped there with arms on the balustrade and head on arms. It was Drummond. Thaw had never seen him alone or depressed before. Drummond smiled faintly and pointed to a chair.
“How are you, Duncan? Why aren’t you dancing?”
“I can’t.”
From up here the dancers seemed blind caps of hair with projecting hands and feet like the limbs of starfish. The linked couples twitched and turned as if the music was a fluid vibrating them. When it stopped they hurried to the side of the hall like corpuscles into a clot. Drummond sighed and said,
“They’re villainous, Duncan, downright villainous, absolutely villainous.”
“Who are?”
“Women.”
Drummond gazed down on the dancers and said, “One kept following me around tonight and looking at me … she went off with someone else ten minutes ago. I think I could have had her if I’d wanted. But I saw Molly dancing, and I’d no heart for anything of that kind. I don’t know why. She’s past her best and engaged to an Irish vet and flirting away….”
“Molly Tierney?”
“I used to go about with her. You must admit she’s good-looking. She avoids me now.”
“Why?”
“I suppose because her parents are nice and mine aren’t. My mother told her she wasn’t fit to sleep with a pig. Which forced me into the unenviable position of declaring she was fit to sleep with a pig,”
They were silent again, gazing on the dancers. Then Drummond said, “I tried to cure myself by imagining her pissing and excreting and menstruating, but the connection made these acts beautiful to me.”
“How do women menstruate? At regular times on regular days?”
“When they reach Molly’s age they can do it running for a tram, or standing before an easel, or at dinner or talking quietly to a friend, as we are. She let me watch her sometimes.”
“What?”
“We shared many little secrets of that kind,” said Drummond gloomily. This aspect of love had never entered Thaw’s fantasies. He rubbed his face in frustration. Drummond said, “You’ll be happier with women when you’re better known−prestige makes a lot of them randy. Janet Weir used to go around with the president of the students’ representative council, but when Jimmy Macbeth grew famous for drinking himself to death she kept company with him for a day or two. Then the film Cyrano de Bergerac popularized long noses and she turned to me. A lot of girls like me because I’m supposed to be a symbol of something. It’s humiliating in some ways but lucky in others. What do you think of Janet?”
“I don’t know her.”
“She looks like the Mona Lisa but has nicer legs. She invited me into her room last night and told me she loved me.”
“Oh, God,” said Thaw, beating his brow. It felt like a gate which had been locked and soldered shut. Drummond stretched his arms and yawned. “Yes, I was embarrassed too. Girls who say they love you expect all sorts of irrational things, like sincerity, in exchange. Still, we passed a pleasant night. She’s a virgin, you know. I’d seen her with so many men that I hadn’t expected that. I was careful not to destroy it. I like virginity; it seems a pity to destroy it for fun. But I suppose she’ll get me doing it eventually. Virgins are terribly single-minded.”
“I’m going to the lavatory.”
Two hours later Thaw leaned despondently on the railings by the entrance watching the last dancers leave in ones and twos. He had stowed the mortarboard and gown in a locker. Drummond, still dressed like Dracula, capered on the pavement among laughing friends.
“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.”
“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.