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
