Lanark: a life in 4 books (5 page)

A street leaving the square was blocked with long wooden huts joined by covered passageways. The lit windows of these huts had a cheery look when compared with the black windows in the solider buildings. Gloopy brought me onto a porch with a sign over it saying
SOCIAL SECURITY—WELFARE DIVISION
. He said, “Here it is, then.”

I thanked him. He kicked his heels and said, “What I want to know is, are you even going to
try
and be friendly? I don’t mind coming in and waiting for you, but it’s a hell of a long wait and if you’re going to be nasty I don’t think I’ll bother.” I said he shouldn’t wait. He said sorrowfully, “All right, all right. I was only trying to help. You don’t know what it feels like to have no friends in a big city. And I could have introduced you to some very interesting people—businessmen, and artists, and girls. I’ve some lovely high-class girls in my boarding-house.”

He eyed me coyly. I said goodnight and turned but he grabbed my arm and gabbled into my ear. “You’re right, girls are no use, girls are cows, and even if you don’t like me I’ve got men friends, military gentlemen—”

I pulled myself free and stepped into the hut. He didn’t follow.

It was not a big hut but it was very long and most of the floor was covered by people crowded together on benches. There was a counter partitioned into cubicles along one wall, and the cubicle near the door had a seat in it and a sign saying
ENQUIRIES
. I stepped in and sat down. After a very long time an old man with bristling eyebrows arrived behind the counter and said, “Yes?”

I explained that I had just arrived and had no money.

“Have you means of identifying yourself?”

I said I had none.

“Are you sure? Have you searched your pockets thoroughly?” I said I had.

“What are your professional qualifications and experience?” I could not remember. He sighed and brought from below the counter a yellow card and a worn, coverless telephone directory saying, “We can’t give you a number before you’ve been medically examined, but we can give you a name.”

He flicked through the directory pages in a random way, and I saw each page had many names scored out in red ink. He said, “Agerimzoo? Ardeer? How about Blenheim. Or Brown.” I was shocked at this and told him that I knew my name. He stared at me, not believing. My tongue felt for a word or syllable from a time earlier than the train compartment, and for a moment I thought I remembered a short word starting with
Th
or
Gr
but it escaped me. The earliest name I could remember had been printed under a brown photograph of spires and trees on a hilltop on the compartment wall. I had seen it as I took down the knapsack. I told him my name was Lanark. He wrote on the card and handed it over saying, “Take that to the medical room and give it to the examining doctor.”

I asked the purpose of the examination. He was not used to being questioned and said, “We need records to identify you. If you don’t want to cooperate there’s nothing we can do.”

The medical room was in a hut reached by a passageway. I undressed behind a screen and was examined by a casual young doctor who whistled between his teeth as he wrote the results on my card. I was 5 feet 7¾ inches high and weighed 9 stone 12 pounds 3½ ounces. My eyes were brown, hair black, blood group Β (111). My only bodily markings were corns on the small toes and a patch of hard black skin on the right elbow. The doctor measured this with a pocket ruler and made a note saying, “Nothing exceptional there.”

I asked what the hard patch was. He said, “We call it dragon-hide, a name more picturesque than scientific, perhaps, but the science of these things is in its infancy. You can dress now.” I asked how I could get it treated. He said, “There are several so-called medical practitioners in this city who claim to have cures for dragonhide. They advertise by small notices in tobacconists’ windows. Don’t waste money on them. It’s a common illness, as common as mouths or softs or twittering rigor. What you have there is very slight. If I were you I’d ignore it.”

I asked why he had not ignored it. He said cheerfully, “Descriptive purposes. Diseases identify people more accurately than variable factors like height, weight, and hair colour.”

He gave me the card and told me to take it back to the enquiry counter. And at the enquiry counter I was told to wait with the others.

The people waiting were of most ages, none well dressed and all (except some children playing between the benches) stupid with boredom. Sometimes a voice cried out, “Will Jones”—or another name—“go to box forty-nine,” and one of us would go to a cubicle, but this happened so rarely that I stopped expecting it. My eye kept seeking a circular patch of paler paintwork on the wall behind the counter. A clock had been fixed there once and been removed, I felt sure, because people would not have borne such waiting had they been able to measure it. My impatient thoughts kept returning to their own uselessness until they stopped altogether and I grew as unconscious as possible without actually sleeping. I could have endured eternity in this state, but I was roused by a woman who sat down beside me, a new arrival still in the restless stage. Her legs were encased in tight discoloured jeans and she kept crossing and recrossing them. She wore an army tunic over a plain shirt, and glittery earrings, necklaces, brooches, bangles and rings. Thick black hair lay tangled down her back, she smelled of powder, scent and sweat and she brought several of my senses to life again, including the sense of time, for she kept smoking cigarettes from a handbag which seemed to hold several packets. When she lit the twenty-third I asked how long they would keep us waiting. She said, “As long as they feel like it. It’s a damned scandal.”

She stared at me a moment then asked kindly if I was new here. I said I was.

“You’ll get used to it. It’s a deliberate system. They think that by putting us through a purgatory of boredom every time we ask for money we’ll come as seldom as we can. And by God they’re right! I’ve three weans to feed, one of them almost a baby, and I work to keep them. When I can get work, that is. But not everyone pays up the way they should, so here I am again. A mug, that’s what I am, a real mug.”

I asked what work she did. She said she did things for different people on a part-time basis and gave me a cigarette. Then she said, “Are you looking for a place to stay?”

I said I was.

“I could put you up. Just for a wee while, I mean. If you’re stuck, I mean.”

She looked at me in a friendly sideways assessing way which I found stirring. I liked her, she was pleasant to be with, yet she was the first woman I had met and I knew most of my lust came from loneliness. I thanked her and said I wanted something permanent. After a moment she said, “Anyway, a neighbour of mine, Mrs. Fleck, has just lost a lodger. You could get a room with her. She’s old but she’s not too fussy. I mean she’s very respectable, but she’s nice.”

I thought this a good idea, so she wrote the address and how to reach it on a used cigarette packet.

Someone shouted that I should go to box fifteen. I went there and was received by the bristling old clerk who returned the card saying, “Your claim is being allowed. Report to the cash desk for the money.”

I asked how long the money was meant to last. He said, “It should last until you find work, but if you spend it before then this card entitles you to present another claim, which we shall be obliged, in due course, to honour. Eventually. Have you any other questions?”

After considering I asked if he could tell me the name of the city. He said, “Mr. Lanark, I am a clerk, not a geographer.” The cash desk was a small shuttered hatch in the wall of a room full of benches, but few people were sitting on them. The shutter was soon raised. We queued and were swiftly paid by a woman who asked our names in turn, then shoved out between the bars a heap of notes and coin. I was surprised by the size of these heaps and the careless way the clerk handled them. The notes were creased and dirty and drawn from several currencies. The coins were thick copper pennies, worn silver with milled edges, frail nickel counters and plain brass discs with holes through the centre. I distributed this money into several pockets but I’ve never learned to use it for everyone has a different notion of its value. When buying anything I hold out a handful and let the waiter or shopman or conductor take what he thinks right.

The directions on the cigarette packet led me to the house where I write this, thirty-one days later. I have not looked for work in that time or made friends, and I count the days only to enjoy their emptiness. Sludden thinks I am content with too little. I believe there are cities where work is a prison and time a goad and love a burden, and this makes my freedom feel worthwhile. My one worry is the scab on my arm. There is no feeling in it, but when I grow tired the healthy skin round the edge starts itching and when I scratch this the scab spreads. I must scratch in my sleep, for when I waken the hard patch is always bigger. So I take the doctor’s advice and try to forget it.

CHAPTER 4.

A Party

Lanark was wakened by someone bumping up and down on his chest. It was the small girl from next door. Her brother and sister stood astride his legs, holding his coat aloft on the head of a floor brush and swaying from side to side so that the struts of the frail bed creaked. “The sea! The sea!” they chanted. “We’re sailing into the sea!”

Lanark sat up rubbing his eyes. He said, “Get away! What do you know about the sea?”

They jumped to the floor where the boy shouted, “We know all about the sea! Your pockets are full of seashells, hahaha! We searched them!”

They ran out giggling and slammed the door. Lanark arose feeling unusually fresh and relaxed. The hard skin on his elbow had spread no farther. He dressed, rolled up the manuscript and went outside.

There was a surprising change in the weather. The dreary rain, the buffeting winds had given way to an air so piercingly still and cold that he had to walk quickly, flapping his arms to keep warm, the breath snorting from his nostrils in jets of mist. His toes and ears were painfully chilled aboard the tram and after climbing the cinema stairs the crowded Elite seemed wonderfully warm and homelike. In the usual corner sat Sludden with Gay, McPake with Frankie, Toal with Nan, and Rima reading a fashion magazine. Rima nodded to him and continued reading but the rest looked surprised and said, “Where have you been?” “What have you been doing?” “We thought you’d disappeared.”

Lanark dropped the manuscript on the table beside Sludden who raised an eyebrow and asked what it was.

“Something I’ve written. I took your advice.”

There was no room near Rima so Lanark squeezed onto the sofa between Sludden and Frankie. Sludden read a couple of pages, flicked through the rest, then handed it back saying, “It’s dead. Perhaps you’re more naturally a painter. I mean, it’s good that you’ve tried to do something, I’m pleased about that, but what you’ve written there is dead.”

Lanark blushed with anger. He could think of nothing to say which wouldn’t show injured vanity so he pressed his lips into a smile. Sludden said, “I’m afraid I’ve hurt you.”

“No no. But I wish you had read it carefully before judging.”

“No need. Two pages showed me that your prose is totally flat, never departing an inch from your dull experiences. If a writer doesn’t enjoy words for their own sake how can the reader enjoy them?”

“But I do enjoy words—some words—for their own sake! Words like river, and dawn, and daylight, and time. These words seem much richer than our experiences of the things they represent—”

Frankie cried out, “Sludden, you’re a sadist, leave the mystery man alone! Don’t bother about Sludden, mystery man. He thinks he’s God but he can only prove it by torturing people. Isn’t that true, Sludden?”

Sludden raised an imaginary hat from his head and bowed, but her wrath was too impressive to seem a joke. She stood up saying, “Anyway, McPake’s taking us to this party, so come on, everybody. Rima, you don’t care about fashion, give up pretending to read that magazine and look after Lanark. Try to stop rotten things happening to him. I can’t do it.”

She walked off toward the stairs. Toal, McPake and Sludden grinned at each other and pretended to wipe sweat from their brows. Everybody stood up. Sludden said to Lanark, “Come along, it might be fun.”

“Who’s giving this party?”

“Gay and I. It’s our engagement party. But the house belongs to a friend and the army is providing the booze.”

“Why?”

“Prestige reasons. The army likes to be liked.”

Outside the cinema a steel-grey truck was parked beside the pavement and they scrambled through the sliding door into the narrow seats. Only McPake, in gauntlets and fleece-lined jacket, was dressed for the intense cold. He gripped the wheel and the truck charged smoothly forward. Sludden hugged Gay to his side with one arm and Frankie with the other. Frankie resisted fretfully until he said, “I need you both, girls. This frost is killing me.”

Toal and Nan embraced in the seat behind but Rima sat so forbiddingly erect that Lanark (who was beside her) folded arms on chest and clenched his teeth to stop their chattering. Gradually the heater raised a comfortable temperature. The truck nearly had the streets to itself but when passing a tramcar or pedestrian McPake sounded a clanging blast on the horn. Lanark said, “Rima, will there be dancing at this party?”

“I suppose so.”

“Will you dance with me?”

“I suppose so. I’m not selective.”

Lanark clenched his fist and bit hard on the thumb knuckle. After a moment he felt his arm touched. She said quietly, “I’m sorry I said that—I didn’t mean to be nasty. I’m more nervous than I seem.”

He almost laughed with relief and drew her gently against him saying, “I’m glad you told me. I was deciding to leave the truck and walk home.”

“You’re too serious.”

The truck travelled down broad streets between overgrown gardens, then entered a drive which curved through a shubbery. The headlights made points of frost glisten among the dark leaves. McPake sounded his horn and stopped before a large mansion and everyone got out. The mansion was a square three-storey building with outhouses and a conservatory at the sides. The enclosing larches, hollies and rhododendrons gave it a secret look, although the windows were lit, music resounded and many cars were parked on the gravel near the porch. The front door was open, but Sludden pressed the bell before leading his party into the hall. This was heavily magnificent, terrazzo tiled and oak panelled, with a pair of black marble columns separating a space where the staircase began. A small figure looked out of a door on the right. It was Gloopy. He was shorter and fatter than Lanark remembered, his hair was streaked with grey and he wore a silver lame jacket. He said, “There you are, Sludden. Leave the coats in here, will you?” The room was hung with paintings of fruit and lobsters in gilded frames. There was an oval table in the centre nearly covered by coats and scarves. As Lanark helped Rima remove her coat Gloopy gazed at him with a grin and said, “Hello, hello! So you’ve arrived after all. You’d have been here sooner if you’d come with me.”