Lanark: a life in 4 books (3 page)

“No.”

“Then you can’t be a businessman. I’m afraid you’ll have to take up art. Art is the only work open to people who can’t get along with others and still want to be special.”

“I could never be an artist. I’ve nothing to tell people.”

Sludden started laughing. “You haven’t understood a word I’ve spoken.”

Lanark had an inner restraint which stopped him displaying much resentment or anger. He pressed his lips together and frowned at the coffee cup. Sludden said, “An artist doesn’t tell people things, he expresses himself. If the self is unusual his work shocks or excites people. Anyway, it forces his personality on them. Here comes Gay at last. Would you mind making room for her?”

A thin, tired-looking, pretty girl approached them between the crowded tables. She smiled shyly at Lanark and sat beside Sludden, saying anxiously, “Am I late? I came as soon as—” He said coldly, “You kept me waiting.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I really am sorry. I came as fast as I could. I didn’t mean to—”

“Get me cigarettes.”

Lanark looked embarrassedly at the tabletop. When Gay had gone to the counter he said, “What do you do?”

“Eh?”

“Are you a businessman? Or an artist?”

“Oh, I do nothing, with fantastic ability.”

Lanark looked hard at Sludden’s face for some trace of a smile. Sludden said, “Occupations are ways of imposing yourself on others. I can impose myself without doing a thing. I’m not boasting. It just happens to be the truth.”

“It’s modest of you to say so,” said Lanark, “but you’re wrong to say you do nothing. You talk very well.”

Sludden smiled and received a cigarette from Gay, who had returned meekly to his side. He said, “I don’t often talk as frankly as this; my ideas would be wasted on most people. But I think I can help you. Do you know any women here?”

“None.”

“I’ll introduce you to some.”

Sludden turned to Gay and lightly pinched the lobe of her ear, asking amiably, “Who will we give to him? Frankie?”

Gay laughed and at once looked happy. She said, “Oh no Sludden, Frankie’s noisy and vulgar and Lanark’s the thoughtful type. Not Frankie.”

“What about Nan, then? She’s quiet, in a will-’oo-be-my-daddy sort of way.”

“But Nan’s crazy about you!”

“I know, and it’s a nuisance. I’m tired of seeing her weep in the corner whenever you touch my knee. Let’s give her to Lanark. No. I’ve a better idea. I’ll take Nan and Lanark can have you. How would you like that?”

Gay leaned toward Sludden and kissed him daintily on the cheek. He said, “No. We’ll give him Rima.”

Gay frowned and said, “I don’t like Rima. She’s sly.”

“Not sly. Self-contained.”

“But Toal is keen on her. They go around together.”

“That means nothing. He has a sister fixation on her and she has a brother fixation on him. Their relationship is purely incestuous. Anyway, she despises him. We’ll give her to Lanark.”

Lanark smiled and said, “You’re very kind.”

He had heard somewhere that Gay and Sludden were engaged. A fur gauntlet on Gay’s left hand stopped him seeing if she wore a ring, but she and Sludden exhibited the sort of public intimacy proper to an engaged couple. Lanark had been impressed unwillingly by Sludden but now Gay had come he felt comfortable with him. In spite of the talk about “independent love” he seemed to practise a firmer sort than was usual in the Elite.

Sludden’s clique arrived from the cinema. Frankie was plump and vivacious and wore a tight pale-blue skirt and had pale-blue hair bunched round her head. Nan was a small shy uncombed blonde of about sixteen. Rima had an interesting, not pretty face with black hair drawn smoothly from her brow and fixed in a ponytail at the back. Toal was small, haggard, and pleasant, with a young pointed red beard, and there was a large stout pale boy called McPake in the uniform of a first lieutenant. Sludden, an arm round Gay’s waist, neither paused nor glanced at his friends but continued talking to Lanark as they sat down on each side of him. Frankie was the only one who paid Lanark special attention. She stood staring at him with feet apart and hands on hips and when Sludden stopped talking she said loudly, “It’s the mystery man! We’ve been joined by the mystery man!” She stuck her stomach forward and said, “What do you think of my belly, mystery man?”

“It probably does its work,” said Lanark.

Sludden smiled slightly and the others looked amused.

“Oh! He makes little jokes!” said Frankie. “Good. I’ll sit beside him and make McPake jealous.”

She sat beside Lanark and rested her hand on his thigh. He tried not to look embarrassed and managed to look confused. Frankie said, “God! He’s gone as tense as … hm. I’d better not say. Relax, son, can’t you? No, he can’t relax. Rima, I’ll change seats with you. I want to sit with McPake after all.

He’s fat, but he responds.”

She changed seats with Rima. Lanark felt relieved and insulted.

Two or three conversations began around him but he lacked the confidence to join one. Rima offered a cigarette. He said, “Thank you. Is your friend drunk?”

“Frankie? No, she’s usually like that. She’s not really my friend. Did she upset you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll get used to her. She’s amusing if you don’t take her seriously.”

Rima spoke in an odd, mewing, monotonous voice, as if no words were worth emphasis. Lanark looked sideways at her profile. He saw black glossy hair drawn back from a white brow, a large perfect eye slightly emphasized by mascara, a big straightish nose, a small straight mouth without lipstick, a small firm chin, a neat little bust under a black sweater. If she felt his glance she pretended not to but tilted her head back to breathe smoke from her nostrils. This so reminded him of a little girl trying to smoke like a woman that he felt an ache of unexpected tenderness. He said, “What was the film about?”

“It was about people who undressed soon after the beginning and then did everything they could think of in the circumstances.”

“Do you enjoy those films?”

“No, but they don’t bore me. Do they bore you?”

“I’ve never seen one.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid of enjoying them.”

“I enjoy them,” said Sludden. “I get genuine pleasure from imagining how the actors would look wearing flannel underwear and thick tweed skirts.”

Nan said, “I enjoy them too. Except the best bits. I can’t help closing my eyes during those, aren’t I silly?”

Frankie said, “I find them all very disappointing. I keep hoping to see a really surprising perversion but there don’t seem to be any.”

A discussion began about the forms a surprising perversion might take. Frankie, Toal and McPake made suggestions. Gay and Nan punctuated these with little screaming protests of horror and amusement. Sludden sometimes contributed a remark, and Lanark and Rima remained silent. Lanark was embarrassed by the conversation and thought Rima disliked it too. This made him feel nearer her.

Later Sludden whispered to Gay and stood up. He said, “Gay and I are leaving. We’ll see you all later.”

Nan, who had been watching him anxiously, suddenly folded her arms upon her knees and hid her face in them. Toal, who was seated beside her, put a comforting arm around her shoulders and smiled at the company in a humorous mournful way. Sludden looked at Lanark and said casually, “You’ll consider what I said?”

“Oh, yes. You gave me a lot to think about.”

“We’ll discuss it later. Come on, Gay.”

They went out between the crowded tables. Frankie said mockingly, “The mystery man seems to be replacing you as court favourite, Toal. I hope not, for your sake. You’d have to take up your old job of court jester. Rima never sleeps with the court jester.”

Without taking his arm from Nan’s trembling shoulders Toal grinned and said, “Shut up, Frankie. You’re the court jester and always will be.” He said apologetically to Lanark, “Pay no attention to what
she
says.”

Rima took her handbag from the seat beside her and said,

“I’m going.”

Lanark said, “Wait a bit, so am I.”

He edged round the table to where his coat hung and put it on. The others said they would see him later and as he and Rima went out Frankie shouted after them, “Have fun!”

CHAPTER 2.

Dawn and Lodgings

The foyer downstairs was empty apart from the girl at the cash desk. Through the glass doors Lanark saw lamplight reflected in a rain-wet street. Sometimes the wind dunted the doors extra hard and made them swing inward and admit a hissing draught. Rima took a plastic raincoat from her handbag. He helped her put it on and said, “Where do you get your tram?”

“At the cross.”

“Good. So do I.”

Outside they had to struggle against the wind. He took her hand and forced himself to go fast enough to feel he was dragging her. The cross was not far away and the tram stop was near the mouth of a close. Laughing breathlessly they stepped into this and sheltered from the wind. Rima’s hair had unloosed from its clasps and her composed, large-eyed face glanced at him between two falls of moist hair. She combed it back with her fingers, grimacing and saying, “A bother.”

“I like your hair that way.”

They were silent for a while, standing against opposite walls and looking out into the street. At last Lanark cleared his throat.

“That Frankie is a
bitch
.”

Rima smiled.

He said, “She was very nasty to Toal.”

Rima said, “She was under a strain, you know.”

“Why?”

“She feels the same about Sludden as Nan does. Whenever Sludden and Gay go off together, Nan weeps and Frankie is rude to people. Sludden says it’s because Nan has a negative ego and Frankie a positive one.”

“My God!” said Lanark. “Do all of Sludden’s girlfriends love him?”

“I don’t.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Oh, look! Look!”

“Look at what?”

“
Look
!”

The cross was a place where several broad streets met and they could see down two of them, though the dark had made it difficult to see far. And now, about a mile away, where the streets reached the crest of a wide shallow hill, each was silhouetted against a pearly paleness. Most of the sky was still black for the paleness did not reach above the tenement roofs, so it seemed that two little days were starting, one at the end of each street. Rima said again, “Look at what?”

“Can’t you see it? Can’t you see that … what’s the word?

There was once a special word for it ….”

Rima looked in the direction of his forefinger and said coldly,

“Are you talking about the light in the sky?”

“Dawn. That’s what it was called. Dawn.”

“Isn’t that a rather sentimental word? It’s fading already.”

The wind had fallen. Lanark stepped onto the pavement and stood leaning forward and staring along each street in turn, as if wanting to jump to the end of one but unable to decide which. Rima’s indifference to his excitement had made him forget her for the moment. She said with slight distaste, “I didn’t know you were keen on that kind of thing,” then, after a pause, “Good, here’s my tram.”

She went past him into the road. An antique-looking almost-empty tramcar came groaning along the track and stopped between Lanark and the view. It would have taken him to his lodgings. Rima boarded it. He took a step to follow her, then hesitated and said, “Look, I’ll see you again, won’t I?”

As the tram started moving Rima waved offhandedly from the platform. He watched her settle in an upstairs seat, hoping she would turn and wave again. She didn’t. He looked along the two streets. The wan watery light was perceptibly fading from the ends of them. He abruptly crossed over to the broadest and started running up the middle of it.

He ran with his gaze on the skyline, having an obscure idea that the day would last longer if he reached it before the light completely faded. The wind rose. Great gusts shoved at his back making it easier to run than walk. This race with the wind toward a fading dawn was the finest thing he had done since coming to that city. When the sky had grown altogether black he stopped, rested up a close mouth to recover his breath, then trudged back to the tramstop at the cross.

The next tram took him along a succession of similar tenement-lined streets. The stop where he got off had tenements on one side and a blank factory wall on the other. He entered a close, climbed ill-lit: steps to a top landing and let himself quietly into the lobby of his lodgings. This was a bare room with six doors leading from it. One led to Lanark’s bedroom, one to the lavatory and one to the kitchen where the landlady lived. The other doors led to empty rooms where bits of the ceiling had fallen in opening them to the huge draughty loft under the roof. As Lanark opened his bedroom door the landlady shouted from the kitchen, “Is that you, Lanark?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fleck.”

“Come here and see this.”

The kitchen was a clean, very cluttered room. It contained armchairs, a sideboard, a scrubbed white table, a clumsy gas cooker with shelves of pots above it. An iron range filled most of one wall and there was a sink and draining board under the window. All horizontal surfaces were covered with brass and china ornaments and bottles and jam-jars of artificial f
l
owers, some made of plastic, some of coloured wax, some of paper. One wall had a bed recess and Mrs. Fleck, a small middle-aged lady, stood beside it. She beckoned Lanark over and said grimly, “Look at this!”

Three children with serious wide-open mouths and eyes lay in a row under the quilt. There was a thin boy and girl of about eight years and a plump wee girl of four or five. Lanark recognized them as children from the house across the landing. He said, “Hullo you lot.”

The older ones grinned, the young one giggled and spread her hands on her face as if hiding behind them. Mrs. Fleck said morosely, “Their bloody mother’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Where to?”

“How do I know where folk disappear to? One minute she was there, the next she had gone. Well, what could I do? I couldn’t leave them to look after themselves. Look at the size of them! But I’m too old, Lanark, to be pestered by bloody weans.”