The Kiln by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page B

the door of Michael and Marion's room.
    (Dear Parents of Attila the Hun ,
    Where do you think you went wrong?)
    BRIGHT SUNLIGHT INFUSES THE ROOM . It says in the papers that this July could have the highest sunshine figure for any month of any year since they started keeping records in 1921. It certainly makes things look better. Seen in this light, the place looks like an advert for domestic life. The permanently set-up card table with its chequered cover, where Marion and Michael take their meals, resonates with sharp colours of red and white. The floral easy chairs with wooden arm-rests sit on each side of the fire. Michael and Marion have the only bedroom with a fireplace, because this is their living-room as well as where they sleep. The fire is cleared and set with firelighters and rolled-up newspaper and a few sticks and small pieces of coal, waiting for the first match of autumn. This looks like a good place to be.
    He comes here every Sunday, when Marion and Michael stay overnight at her mother's, to replenish his purposes at the beginning of each week. This is one of the essential places of the summer, along with the kitchen, the Grand Hall, the Queen's Cafe, the brickwork, the countryside round Bringan, the pictures, the inside of a book. These are landmarks for the wild wanderings of his mind. Here Sunday merges with Sunday - different occasions, same troubled and unresolved time.
    Sometimes the scene excludes him. He doesn't belong. This is a place for people who seem to know who they are, what their lives are about. They seem to have things worked out. He tries to fit in.
    He takes Michael's ashtray and places it on the tiled hearth beside Michael's chair. He sits down and lights a cigarette. He begins to read the paper. He smokes. He has seen his father do this. He has seen Michael do this.
    But it doesn't work. He feels like a bad actor. He is imitating the attitudes of others without personal conviction. Self-doubts invade him. He thinks of The Chair. Even when it sits empty at the piece-break, it is more full of Cran than this chair is full of him at the moment. He is simultaneously smoking suavely and brimming with panic, the terror of having to be who he doesn't know how to be.
    He leaves his cigarette burning in the ashtray and crosses towards Marion's dressing-table. He kneels down in front of it, as if it were an altar. He does this every Sunday and everySunday his image floats back at him like a ghost. He stares at himself in the mirror. Who is that? It could be anybody. What is the secret people like his father and Cran and Michael have? Michael is only eight years older than he is but he seems like an awfully big brother. He's married now and working in the creamery and Marion is pregnant. He has done his National Service. He served in Berlin at the time of the Berlin Airlift. He seems so relaxed about everything. How do you get like that?
    Tam watches his own jumpy eyes in the mirror. He has no substance as a person, he realises with panic. The mirror is composed of one centrepiece and two side flaps, which move on hinges. He pulls the flaps in towards him so that by looking in one flap he can see the back of his head in the other. That is what people coming behind him see. It looks solid and masculine. Maybe he should practise walking backwards so that people won't see the nervousness in his eyes.
    (‘There's a real man. He walks funny, right enough. But he looks like a real man.')
    He studies himself frontally again. The nose is all right.
    (‘Where d’ ye get that nose, our Tam?' Michael once said. ‘It's the only straight wan in the family. It's about half the size o’ ma feyther's.'
    ‘When God wis givin’ them out,' his father said, ‘Ah thought they were for eatin’. So Ah took the biggest one Ah could find.'
    ‘Naw, it's odd, though,’ Michael said. ‘You didny have a wee thing wi’ a passin' gypsy. Mammy?'
    ‘Aye,’ his mother said. ‘But that wis you. Dark-haired and