Growing Up In The West. John Muir

Growing Up In The West - John Muir


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that his perspective on the people he sketches is partial and contingent, that ‘what was true of them outside my personal intervention and knowledge is missing’. And this, it may be, is the cardinal lesson of the book: that in the business of understanding other people one can never be an adept or an expert, but only and always an apprentice.

      *

      NOTES

      Liam McIlvanney

       POOR TOM

       Edwin Muir

      PART ONE

      ONE

      WHEN ONE EVENING in the early autumn of 1911 Tom Manson saw his brother Mansie coming out with Helen Williamson through the gate of the Queen’s Park in Glasgow, he stopped as if he had been given a blow on the chest. He told himself that he must be mistaken; but, no, there was no doubt about it; Mansie and Helen were walking along there like old friends. They had not noticed him, but with their faces turned towards each other went off along the park railings towards Pollokshaws Road. Behind his incredulous rage Tom felt honestly alarmed for them; they were so completely unconscious of their danger; they had no idea that they had been seen! But then, as by the single turn of a screw, his fury completely flooded him, sweeping out everything else. He turned and walked down Victoria Road. ‘By God, I’ll get even with him!’ he thought, but no expedient came to his mind, and his anger took another leap upwards.

      He pushed open the swing-door of a pub and went up to the counter. The barmaid smiled at him; he could see that all right; but at the same time it was only a distant glassy re-arrangement of her features, so he paid no attention to it but ordered a double Scotch, and when that was swallowed, a second one which he drank more slowly. His anger now quite filled him, yet when he turned into Garvin Street and neared his home it took another leap upwards, lifted him up with it, so that he seemed to be walking partly on the air. Slamming the house door behind him he made at once for the room where he and Mansie slept and began to haul his clothes and belongings to the parlour. The sound of furniture banging brought his mother from the kitchen.

      ‘What are you doing, Tom?’ she cried. ‘You’ll break the bit sticks o’ furniture if you’re no’ careful.’

      ‘Leave me alone!’

      ‘But, lamb, what’s the matter?’

      ‘If you think I’m going to sleep another night in the same room as that—’ He had to stop, for only one word would come to his tongue, and he could not speak it out before his mother. So in revenge he said: ‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to ship on the first liner I find.’

      ‘But what’s wrong, Tom? Tell me what’s wrong?’

      ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you leave me alone!’

      His mother turned, and her bowed back as she left the room filled


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