with her. Better if the thing had always stayed at that stage. For her kisses drove a fellow frantic, and she didn’t seem to know it. Flung herself at you and thought she could go on doing that till the cows came home; kissing and nothing more. Thus far and no farther. And after it was over she would just pat her hat to rights again, looking as superior and genteel as ever, and that was that. How could he have stood it? No wonder he got violent that night in Maxwell Park; he was beyond himself, he couldn’t help it. But then he had crept and crawled before her, licked her boots, told her he was a waster, and promised never to offend again. And after all it wasn’t any use, for she kept as stiff as a poker, never gave him another chance, took no pity on a fellow. And now she was kissing and canoodling with that creeper. By God, if he had guessed that would ever happen he would have known what to do; he would have paid no attention to her objections; that was how to treat tarts of her kind. A proper soft mark he had been.
Now he was among streets again. His anger, which had winged his feet, now fell like the sudden ceasing of a wind. He felt tired; a drink would do him good. He pushed open the swing-door of a pub. As he sat drinking, and the comforting equivocality of alcohol spread through his mind, he gave himself over more and more completely to the thought that he was a waster, as though it were a consoling thought. It didn’t matter what happened to a poor devil like him; let them kiss and canoodle. But then – for even a waster must take some measures of defence against his enemies – he suddenly saw that he must get back before Mansie; it was a point of honour, a point of honour that a creeper mightn’t understand; but it would be indecent if he wasn’t home before Mansie, if he wasn’t sitting at home and waiting for him. So Tom got unsteadily to his feet.
But as he approached Garvin Street a long forgotten memory of his childhood came back to him. A big lout, the son of a neighbouring farmer, had lain in wait for Mansie one evening. Mansie had stood with a terrified look on his face, refusing to fight; but Tom, although he was only a little boy at the time, had flown at Mansie’s tormentor screaming: ‘You’re no’ to hurt Mansie! You’re no’ to hurt Mansie!’ And everybody had laughed, and there had been no fight. And now Mansie had given him a stab in the back. Without provocation. His elder brother that he had always looked up to, that he would have done anything for. ‘By God, I’ll get even with him!’ he said as he went up the stairs, but it was only the repetition of an empty phrase. And when he opened the door he felt so tired that he walked straight through to the parlour – driven out of his very room, by God! – and forlornly went to bed.
After a long and inconclusive debate with his mother in the kitchen, Mansie wearily betook himself to his room. He had denied that there was anything between himself and Helen, denied it as indignantly as if he were speaking the truth; and indeed what he had told her was partly true at least, entirely true in fact if you only counted the time up to the moment when, yielding to a silly impulse – it had become far too much of a habit with him, dash it! – he had stooped down and kissed Helen on the mouth. He knew it was a mistake the minute it was done, knew it as soon as he found her in his arms, knew it while her lips were still clinging to his: a silly goat to have got himself into such a fix for the sake of a moment’s pleasure. But then, whether it was the total abandon with which Helen fell into his arms, as if she had been fatefully poised in a perilous equilibrium that only one touch was needed to destroy, or whether it was the slightly terrifying thought that this was Tom’s girl, whom it would be wicked to trifle with, almost blasphemous to embrace unless one were driven by an irresistible passion that excused everything: all at once they had both become serious, they had looked at each other like conspirators suddenly bound together by a fatal act that they had not foreseen a moment before, revealing them to each other in a flash, so that it would have been useless, even perverse, to pretend any longer. This wasn’t like his other affairs with girls at all! The frightening thought had shot through Mansie’s mind while Helen’s lips were still pressed to his. There was no turning back now. A serious business!
And now, as he lit the gas-jet in his room, he thought again, listening involuntarily for any sound from the parlour where Tom was lying: A serious business! But all the same what he had told his mother was true. Helen had only come to him for help and advice. And besides, it was a dashed shame of Tom to have lain in wait for her, stopping her and speaking to her like that: the poor girl was frightened out of her wits and didn’t know where to turn. Tom should have taken his dismissal like a man. Why, it was two months now since she had told him that it was all over between them! And yet the fellow still went on persecuting her, even stopping her in the street: that was carrying things a bit too far. Still it was dashed unfortunate that Tom had seen them that evening. It was like him, all the same; always stumbling against things that hurt him, always getting himself and other people into trouble. Well, he had only himself to blame; Helen would never have had him back whatever happened.
Mansie glanced round the bedroom. It had a strange naked look. Made a fellow feel quite queer, that empty iron bedstead; something ugly and threatening about it. Things would be dashed uncomfortable in the house now, with Tom in that state of mind. Mansie slowly took off his clothes. Unpleasant going to bed with that thing standing there by the wall as if it were watching you. Wish Bob Ryrie were here to keep a fellow company. Bob would be able to advise one too. He turned his back on the bedstead. A serious business! And he was to see Helen on Saturday afternoon. He almost wished now that he had not fixed up that appointment with her; but there was no drawing back; the damage was done; Tom had seen them, and there would be no use in trying to convince him that—
Putting out the gas, Mansie slipped into bed, carefully avoiding the iron bedstead still reproachfully and threatingly exposing its shameful nakedness to him in the light of the street lamp outside. For a long time he lay awake thinking of Helen and Tom and wishing that Bob Ryrie were there with him. He felt forsaken and unjustly treated, like a child locked as a punishment in an empty room where damaged and disused pieces of furniture are kept. But at last he fell asleep.
TWO
Since there’s no hope, come let us kiss …
DRAYTON
IF TOM MANSON had had the ability to crystallise his vague feelings of betrayal connected with Glasgow he might have said that he was betrayed by a kiss. For it was a kiss, or rather a special kind of kiss, known perhaps only in Puritan countries which have been thoroughly industrialised without being civilised to the point requisite for an industrialised population, that was one of the chief causes of his later misfortunes.
Like all born lovers of freedom Tom had always been irked by a countless number of things which tamer natures adapt themselves to without inconvenience. His father’s farm had irked him because it was stationary, because the seasons followed one another, because the soil had to be ploughed and the harvest reaped; and the little town of Blackness had begun to irk him as soon as he felt that he knew every stone in it. For on the farm he had at least felt the horizon round him wherever he went; but here his sight was bounded by arbitrary walls, and if he got drunk oftener than he should it was partly because then the houses lost their stability, rocked lightly like ships at anchor, and seemed on the point of floating away; and this fluctuating barrier was far more endurable than the rigid walls that sobriety raised about him. Sometimes as he walked home at night after a spree he would kick a particularly massive stone in the wall, at first to convince himself that it was as solid as it looked, and finally in anger at its unresponsiveness. Next day his imprisonment was always harder to bear.
When at last his apprenticeship in the engineering shop was over and he could go to Glasgow, the hugeness of that city became an image of inexhaustible freedom. For a year he was enchanted by the variety and strangeness of Glasgow. Even the unfamiliar conventions pleased him, and he set himself eagerly to acquire them. And although he came from a northern island where people’s speech had still a ballad frankness and young men still climbed in through their sweethearts’ windows at night, he soon learned what words might and might not be addressed to a respectable young Glasgow typist. Like almost everybody, indeed, who, coming from a relatively primitive state of society, seeks to adapt himself to one that is more
