Dance of the Apprentices by Edward Gaitens

Author:Edward Gaitens [Edward Gaitens]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847675651
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eddy, polishing his shoes on the edge of a chair, turned his head and recited back,

At the first, Father William replied to his son,

I thought it might injure my brain,

But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

Why I do it again and again!

They both laughed themselves red in the face at Lewis Carroll’s nonsense, then Francie repeated the first verse and shot out breathlessly, stopping his violent sweeping, ‘Are ye going tae Johnny McLean’s Class the day?’

Eddy collected his volume of Keats’ Poems from the parlour sideboard and said he was going for a walk. As he went out Francie called after him, ‘Ah’d come wi’ ye but Ah want tae hear Johnny McLean oan “The Seegnificance O’ The Paris Commune”!’

Feeling half-proud, half-ashamed of his studious appearance, with the poems beneath his arm, Eddy walked through the streets as far as Bridgeton Cross and from there took a car to Cambuslang terminus. He left the tram and walked away out along the banks of the Clyde, trying to quiet the fear of what he was going to do. After some vigorous miles he flung himself on the grass and read and smoked, looking sometimes down on the clear waters of the young Clyde. Some people said you could hear the guns in France on hot still days like these. He put his ear to the ground and sprang up enraged at the image he saw of the colossal destruction and agony of war. The utter peace of the cloudless sky intensified his pain. They were bleeding and dying in their thousands at this moment to defend their tenements, their slums, their dirt and drunkenness, their lives of toil and thwarted love.

That men should live in friendliness in the beauty of the world, seemed so simple to him. He read Keats again and again, intoxicating himself with rhythm and words. Wild ducks flew overhead across the river, glimmering blue and grey, and rainbow coloured. He followed their flight in mind to places lonelier, where reeds whispered at night and waters were black and still. He was filled with loneliness and Nature suddenly appeared strange and hostile. He rose and hurried from the quiet place and ended his adventure with solitude in the reeking habble of an ilp Sunday evening lecture in the Pavilion where a half-antagonistic audience listened restlessly to an anti-war speech verging on sedition.

The following evening, when he came home, tired and grimy from the shipyards he trembled and paled at the sight of an OHMS envelope staring at him from the mantelpiece. The four fateful letters loomed huge to his eyes, threatening, solid, inescapable, symbols of the Power he had resolved to defy. The rapid thud of his heart drummed in his ears while he stood with exaggeratedly upheld head looking at the letter, as though he was facing a court-martial. He took it down quickly, opened it and ran a contemptuous eye through the questionnaire. Then he found a penny bottle of ink in a

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