Читать книгу Growing Up In The West - John Muir - Страница 22

FOURTEEN

AFTER LEAVING THE office Mansie parted from Gibson, saying: ‘I’m going along to the Reformers’ Bookstall.’ He would put off the journey for a little while at least. But instead of making for the bookstall he wandered down Hope Street. It was deserted, for all the law offices were already closed. A belated message-boy, a sheaf of blue envelopes in one hand, hurried past him with the anxious look of one who has fallen so far behind in a race that he has lost all his companions. Mansie’s own anxiety stirred somewhere, threatened to awaken, then sank again.

He walked on in the chasm of shadow between the tall buildings; but when he came to the corner of West George Street he stepped into a level drive of light; the roofs and smokeless chimney-pots glittered, and looking down the hill he saw a yellow tramcar floating past amid a hurrying crowd of men and girls in bright dresses. And anxiety came over him again. He would have to take that tramcar some time; he couldn’t put it off indefinitely! Nevertheless he continued on his way, went into the Central Station and stood at the bookstall, his head half-turned to look at the crowds hurrying to their separate platforms. They seemed all to be flying to one point, like filings drawn by an enormous magnet. After the morning dispersion which had scattered them to their distant outposts, evening was gathering them together again, and on the faces that passed him there was a look: ‘We are coming.’ Yes, it was all very well for them. He thought of Tom and stood staring at a book on the stall which he had noticed there months before, and its persistent futile presence filled him with discouragement. ‘You and me,’ it seemed to be saying.

He bought an evening paper and walked out through the side entrance, crossed Union Street, climbed on to the open top of a yellow tramcar, and sat down in the back seat. Now that he felt himself being irrevocably borne home, he tried to banish from his mind what he would find there; for the twenty minutes that were still left seemed an invisible suit of mail which, if he refrained altogether from thinking, might soundlessly close round him, encasing him for the encounter. But it was of no use, for already he saw himself standing unprepared on the stair-head with the latch-key in his hand, and the same feeling that he would have then swept over him, a sensation of simultaneous collapse, as if everything within him were loosened and falling, and he himself were being precipitated through the solid stone landing where he stood. He was awakened by a sudden brilliance; the passengers looked like a glorified company dizzily charging through seas of light: the tramcar was crossing the Jamaica Bridge and the rays of the westering sun showered over it. He looked at the Clyde winding eastwards in radiance, and saw down in the river a fantastically elongated shadow car with a cargo of spectral and aqueous passengers. Beyond the moving shadow ran the little suspension bridge where the noseless beggar had stood. ‘Eaten away,’ the words came into Mansie’s head. For the wide gaping nose cavity had actually looked as if it were being devoured by incredibly tiny indefatigable armies, and it was against them that the look in the man’s face was protesting, and not against the people, all of them with complete faces of every variety of shape, who passed him daily. And his voice! A subterranean snuffle rising to a soft hoot as of swirling wind in a chimney; but never any intelligible sound. The poor beggar had stood there in hard frost too. Mansie had always given him a few coppers, though he had had to overcome a physical repulsion first; and now sitting on the tramcar he remembered that he had been offended at the man for not seeming to be aware of it. Well, a man who had lost his nose couldn’t always remember to behave like a man who had lost his nose. Maybe put up his hands sometimes to scratch it, and it wasn’t there! A dashed unpleasant shock. But he had looked in a funny accusing way at you sometimes; made you feel uncomfortable. Then he had gone and never appeared again. What could have become of him?

Mansie twisted his shoulders to shake off such disagreeable thoughts. He would fix his mind on something more cheerful; but instead it flew forward to Tom waiting at home, as though the beggar had been cunningly leading him there. Well, there was no good in burking the fact; Tom was out of the hospital now and waiting for him. These fellows sitting here on the top of the tramcar weren’t returning to a brother with a tumour on his brain! Idiotic the way Jean’s silly words kept running in one’s head. He felt all at once violently exasperated with Tom. What need had the silly fool to go and get a tumour on the brain? That was where he landed himself with his dashed recklessness. The tramcar was rolling up through Eglinton Street, and Mansie’s eyes fell on the fish-and-chip shop with its door-posts rotten and oozing with rancid grease. He looked to see if the great red-haired woman was standing in the next close as usual, with her arms wrapped round her over-flowing breasts. Yes, she was there, talking to a laughing ring of young girls in shawls, still holding them in; but they would escape some day, and then there would be a fine flop! Nice thoughts to have when your brother was. But all the same she would always be there, nothing could shift her, just like something you had to walk round every morning and evening, forced you out of your way, until at last you got used to your new road and it seemed the natural one. He remembered Gibson’s words again: ‘And what about the poor bloody little children?’ A blackened steel railway-bridge rushed smoothly towards him and passed over his head. The tramcar stopped at Eglinton Toll and turned up Victoria Road. Suddenly like a gaseous fluid dread pumped itself into him, filling him up so tightly that there seemed no room left for the air he tried to draw into his lungs. Four stops, and he would have to get off.

He descended and walked very slowly up Garvin Street. Dashed nonsense! Tom was getting better. At the close mouth he stopped again. Half of him was still out in the street, and to draw it back to him from its freedom, which he shared as a poor man, standing at the lodge gates, shares a fine estate, – to force this half of him to coalesce with the other which was about to walk resolutely into the close and up the stairs, was a task for which he had to summon all his strength as for the pulling in of a heavy weight. With a jerk he turned and climbed the stairs to the first floor. There he was, standing with the key in his hand; but the sensation of sinking through the floor did not come; he had paid that debt in the tramcar; and now his mind was strangely clear, so that when he inserted the key in the lock and turned it his act seemed a purely intellectual one, faintly suggesting the shining revolutions of the stars. As he hung up his hat in the lobby he felt quite indifferent to his brother. ‘What must be, must,’ he thought, and walked into the kitchen: ‘Well, Tom? Feeling better?’

Tom was sitting at the table eating ham and eggs and drinking tea, and at that prosaic sight Mansie’s mind fell through octave after octave until it rested on something like reassurance.

‘Yes, I think I am,’ Tom answered with his mouth full.

Mansie took his place at the other side of the table and glanced at his brother. He was astonished. He had expected some change, but this was a clean knock-out. Tom had grown fat. His thin face with the daring line of the cheek-bone and jaw was round and soft now, and the skin seemed darker and coarser, as if there were an admixture of infinitesimal specks of mud in the grain.

Mrs Manson set a cup of tea and a plate of ham and eggs before Mansie.

‘Isna’ he changed, Mansie?’ she asked. ‘Isna’ he looking weel?’

Tom made a movement with his hand as if he were warding off something.

‘But you are looking better, Tom.’

‘Well, don’t make such a song about it, mother,’ said Tom as if ashamed. ‘You might talk about something else.’

‘But I’m that blithe about it!’

Mansie unobtrusively studied his brother. Something queer about the fellow’s face; yes, must be the eyes. Tom’s eyes had an intent, almost pleased look, as if he were listening to something inside him: something ticking – Mansie could not keep the thought out of his head – ticking and ticking. Suddenly on this face that he was studying a very quick spasm ran from eye to chin. But it did not seem real somehow; and indeed it was not caused by real pain, but perhaps by a faintly vibrating memory, even a dream of pain. Yet Mansie felt profoundly cast down all at once; it had looked almost like a threat. Then the expression of intent and pleased watching returned again. So might a condemned man sitting in chains listen to the rain beating on the window of his cell, and tell himself that so long as he listened to that regular drumming no harm could come to him, for when it was raining – raining as it might rain on any day – how could anything happen, how could the blow fall? And he did not know why, Mansie felt disquieted by that pleased expression on Tom’s face.

The evening light was streaming in through the window on to the table. Mansie shifted nervously every now and then to get out of it, and its warmth on the backs of his hands was like a spidery film that he longed to tear away. His mother sat in her chair by the empty range looking into Tom’s face. Mansie felt apprehensive, almost scared, at the expression in her eyes, for although of course Tom would get better it was almost asking for trouble to be as confident as that. His heart sank at the thought that the pain might return after all, and pushing back his chair he walked to the window. There, looking out into the backyard as if that put a barrier between him and his brother, he said: ‘So the pain’s quite gone now?’

His mother threw him a warning look, but Tom replied quite coolly: ‘Yes, I haven’t had any for more than a fortnight now.’ Mansie asked him how he had liked the nurses; a queer lot, from all accounts.

‘Oh, they’re all right,’ said Tom indifferently.

‘Well, you’ll just let your mother look after you now, my lamb,’ said Mrs Manson. ‘We’ll have the whole hoose to oursel’s. You’ll get up when you like, and we’ll live like grand folk.’

‘All right, mother,’ said Tom impatiently. Then as if he had something really important to discuss he turned to Mansie: ‘They told me I was to go for walks. Have you anything on this evening?’

‘No, nothing. I’ll take you— I’ll go for a stroll with you if you like.’

In the lobby Tom turned to Mansie with a pleased look: ‘I’ve been putting on weight. Twelve pounds!’

As they were walking along Garvin Street Mansie thought he noticed something queer about Tom’s walk, but told himself that he must be mistaken. At the corner of Victoria Road Tom stopped and carefully surveyed the street before crossing. They wandered slowly in the direction of the Queen’s Park recreation grounds. And now Mansie saw – and his heart almost stopped – that Tom was really walking very strangely. His feet, flung out with the old impetuousness, seemed to hang in the air for the fraction of a second before they returned, a little uncertainly, to the ground. It was as though the additional weight of his body had made him a little top-heavy. He walked very carefully with his eyes fixed on the pavement a few steps in front of him, as if there, no nearer and no farther, lay the danger that he must circumvent, a danger that continuously advanced with him as he went on.

From the gate the recreation park stretched before them, in the distance rising to a grassy sunlit hill, behind which rose the irregular ridged roofs and chimneys of Mount Florida. In the eastern sky beyond floated a few pink fleece-like clouds, deepening at their centres to hectic rose. Shouts came towards them on the still air, mingled with the thud of footballs and the sharp click of bats. They walked over to a seat where they could watch a game of cricket. And soon the vigilant inward look had quite faded from Tom’s face; for now he followed almost with anxiety the ball as it flew from the bats of the players, followed it with tortured hope as if in its flight it might carry him into another world, a world where everybody’s head was as sound as a nut. This could take him out of himself, Mansie was thinking, and his mother couldn’t! ‘Tits, man. Hit it! Hit it!’ Tom kept muttering impatiently. A band of schoolboys were running about, and sometimes in swerving they almost knocked against the seat. For long intervals they would play at the other side of the field; then for a little they would circle round the seat as persistently as a swarm of bees. At last Tom muttered in a tearful voice: ‘Go away, damn you! Go away!’ The boys were back again. Suddenly, just in front of Mansie, one of them tottered and fell and Mansie saw a cricket ball bounding away at a tangent. The boys stood round, quite silent all at once, the batsman came running across. Tom got hastily to his feet and said: ‘Come away! It isn’t safe here.’ Mansie rose and followed him.

‘Fine rotters you are!’ the batsman panted, bending over the boy. ‘Walking away when you see someone hurt!’

‘My brother’s ill,’ said Mansie.

‘Oh! Sorry!’

Mansie turned back to see if he could help. The boy was lying on the grass, his face transparent, his breath quick and soft as if he were inhaling an infinitely subtle atmosphere. He looked like someone to whom something fortunate but very strange had happened.

The batsman raised his head: ‘Run to the pump for some water! Here’s my cap. Hurry!’

One of the boys flew away.

‘It hit him here,’ said another, pointing to his collar-bone.

The batsman felt the neck of the unconscious boy with his fingers. ‘No bones broken. It must have been the shock.’ And as though those words were a magical formula, his voice was quite confident now. He wiped the sweat from his face. The boy opened his eyes, which had a bruised and wandering look.

‘All right again?’ asked the batsman in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘I suppose I can go now,’ said Mansie. Without waiting for an answer he walked across to Tom.

‘Where did it hit him?’

‘On the collar-bone. He’ll be all right in a little. He fainted.’

‘It’s lucky for him it didn’t catch him on the head! Serve him right. These damned kids shouldn’t be out playing so late as this, anyway.’

Tom walked on. The accident was merely an accident, and soon the boy would be walking about again, none the worse. At the thought he felt the disease within his head like a grub clinging to him. He would never be able to shake it off, and yet he did not know what it was or where it was; he put up his hand to the back of his skull, which was hard and blank, like a wall. ‘And it might have hit me on the head!’ He did not notice that he had spoken the words aloud until Mansie gave him a warning glance. He walked on faster, his left leg swinging out jerkily. All at once his head seemed terribly vulnerable; a slate might fall on it from a house-roof, a chance stone flung by a boy might hit it. Or he might stumble and fall and ruin everything now that he was getting better. The sweat broke out on him. I’ve got to be very careful, he thought, at this stage. He jerked Mansie back by the sleeve. ‘Can’t you wait a bit! Don’t you see there’s a car coming?’ They were at the corner of Victoria Road. A tramcar was slowly approaching from the direction of the park gates; it was still a good distance away. Presently it ground past them, continuously pulverising some invisible and piteous object which hovered just above the dust in front of it, and Tom felt the pavement thrilling with a menace that had been and was over. They crossed the empty street.

‘You’ve got to be careful when you’ve just come out of hospital,’ Tom said half-apologetically. ‘A pretty poor game, wasn’t it?’ But immediately his thoughts closed him in again, and Mansie’s reply was cast back as from a wall.

‘Come in and sit down!’ Mrs Manson cried as soon as they entered the kitchen.

‘I’m going to bed, mother,’ said Tom coldly. ‘The doctor told me to get as much sleep as possible.’

‘Ay, just do that, lamb.’

Mansie went through to the parlour and stood looking out of the window. He breathed quickly as though he had been running, and an intense longing drew him to everything his eyes fell on: an old man walking peacefully along the pavement, the windows opposite with their dingy lace curtains, the impalpable white sky. He felt hollow and cold, as if all the warmth in his body were being drained out through the glass panes into the street below him, and was wandering homelessly there like a lost dog eager to attach itself to any master. Eglinton Street. The pavement was coated with a thick layer of liquid mud, into which one’s feet sank with a humiliating feeling of discomfort and shame. A frightening place, Glasgow! Every winter his father’s farm had been like a thin raft riding on nothing but clay and mud. Terrible clinging mud; but he had escaped, he had found a firm foothold on the dry clean streets of Blackness. If he were only back there again! He felt tired out as though he had been walking and walking to get to the end of Eglinton Street, to get past all those houses, all those people who kept looking at you.

He began to walk up and down the room. Must get out of this! His mother came in.

‘He’s going to bed,’ she whispered. ‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘No. He didn’t say much.’

‘Isna’ he looking better?’

‘Yes. Mother, I think I’ll go out for a turn.’

‘Why? Have you an engagement? Come in quietly, then, and be sure not to waken him.’

She was offended. He turned to the window: the light was running away from him as through a sand-glass. His mother’s soft footsteps receded. He stole into the lobby and softly closed the outside door behind him.

He hastened up Victoria Road. The park was still open: thank God, the park was still open! For a moment he had half thought of going to the Clarion Scout rooms, for he wanted to lose himself among people and wash away the remoteness with which Tom had touched him. But the park with its trees, its flowers and its crowds, all sending out the same glow, drew him unresistingly. Inside the gate he was caught by the crowd coming away from the band enclosure; he let himself be carried along by the weight of the massed bodies round him, his limbs became slack as under a stream of warmth, and life ran back into his veins. He went up the main avenue and turned along the terraced gardens, from which the scents were pouring in a steady stream, perfuming all the air, perfuming his very breath. Once more his arms and head seemed to break into blossom, and it was as though he were floating, an anonymous shape, in the half-darkness. From the blacker shadows came low voices and now and then a laugh which seemed startled at its own sound; and a warmth radiated out to him from the populated darkness, and he was glad that he could wander here alone, without Helen. And again the warmth of his body flowed out, but freely and blissfully now, filling the twilight, stretching from horizon to horizon, a web as perfect and delicate as the tissue of a moth’s wing, except for one point, a point no bigger than a burn made by a red-hot needle, a blackened point of which as he walked on he was scarcely aware, so distant and so tiny did it seem. But when he emerged from the tree-shaded gardens to barer ground and saw the street lamps far away in Pollokshaws Road, that distant harsh burning leapt so viciously at him that he turned round hastily into the scented darkness again. But now the park-keepers’ whistles blew; a rustling came from the trees; voices that a moment before had sounded sweet or care free all at once became matter-of-fact, and the laughter had a note of embarrassment. It was over. They were going home, just going home, after all. Surely the park-keepers might have waited for a little longer? Mansie mingled with the crowd moving towards the gate. It seemed to be carrying him irresistibly on a wave from which there was no escape, and which must inevitably wash him up on that stair-head, where he could do nothing – nothing at all – but take the key out of his pocket and turn it in the lock. A fine life for a fellow! How long was this to last?