“Is
this
your boardinghouse?”
“It’s not mine in the sense of owning it. I suppose you could call me the concierge.”
“What’s a concierge?”
“Why must you be nasty to me? I haven’t hurt you.”
“You don’t understand our mystery man, Gloopy,” said Sludden, who was straightening his tie at a mirror. “He’s never nasty. He’s just very very serious all the time. Where’s the revelry tonight?”
“We’re in the downstairs drawing room.”
The interior walls and doors of the house seemed soundproof, for nothing could be heard in the hall but the click of their feet on the tiles, yet the opposite door opened into a crowded room where couples were dancing to loud jazz. The people were the kind who visited the Elite, though the girls were more exotically dressed and Lanark noticed a few elderly men in dark business suits. He took Rima’s hand and led her onto the floor.
He couldn’t remember enjoying music before but the rhythm excited him and his body moved to it easily. He kept his eyes on Rima. Her movements were abrupt yet graceful. Her dark hair lay loosely about her shoulders, she was smiling absentmindedly. The record came to an end and each stood with an arm round the other’s waist. Lanark said, “Will we do that again?”
“Yes, why not?”
Suddenly he stared across the room, his mouth open. A table laden with food and drink stood in the curve of a bay window and a girl sat on the edge chatting to a stout spectacled man. Lanark muttered, “Who is the girl—the big blonde there in the white dress?”
“I don’t know. One of the camp followers, I suppose. Why has your face gone that colour?”
“I’ve met her before.”
“Oh?”
“Before I came here—before I came to this city. I know her face but I can’t remember anything else.”
“Does it matter?”
“How can I speak to her?”
“Ask her to dance.”
“Do you mind, Rima?”
“Why should I?”
He hurried through the crowd to the table and reached it as the music started. The girl was sipping from a glass while the stout man laughed heartily at something she had said. Lanark touched her shoulder. She set the glass down and let him lead her onto the floor. She was a vivacious girl with gaudy makeup and a rich brown tan. Lanark held her urgently and said,
“Where have I seen you before?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I couldn’t say.”
“I think I know you well.”
“I doubt it.”
“I killed you, didn’t I?”
She stepped violently back from him and said, “Oh my God!” People stopped and looked. She pointed at Lanark and said loudly, “How’s this for party conversation? We’ve just met and he asks if he killed me once. How’s that for small talk?” She turned to an onlooker (it was McPake) and said, “Take me away from that bastard.”
They joined the dance, McPake winking at Lanark as they passed him. Lanark looked desperately round for Rima, then pushed to the door, stepped outside and closed it behind him.
The hall was completely empty and silent. It was also rather cold. Lanark strolled up and down wondering what to do. He could not think why he had blurted such words to the blond girl, but he would go far to avoid anyone who had been in the room at that time, excepting Rima. Yet he had no wish to leave. His elbow itched and he wondered if a wash would cool it. There was sure to be a bathroom in the house, a tiled bathroom with clean towels warming on heated towel rails, and soap crystals, and sponges, and all the hot water he could use. There was no bathroom in his own lodgings, he had not bathed since arriving there, and now (feeling dirty inside and out) he thought a bath would be beautifully soothing. He walked to the end of the hall and climbed the softly carpeted stairs. The upper floors were in darkness and he found his way by light from the hall below. At the second landing a corridor began. Halfway along it a triangle of light was cast on the floor from an ajar door. He moved toward this, his steps silent in the thick carpet, then stopped and peeked through the narrow door-slit. A vertical ribbon of wallpaper was visible, the light on it flickering slightly. Lanark pushed the door wide and stepped through.
The room was a library illuminated by a vivid fire burning beneath a carved mantelpiece. Above surrounding bookcases hung massive portraits with antique weapons crossed on the walls between them. There were many high-backed leather armchairs, and a standard lamp with a red silk shade shone beside one with a man getting up from it. He smiled at Lanark and said, “Why, it’s the writer! Come on in.”
He was nearly seven feet high and wore a polo-necked sweater and well-cut khaki trousers and, though perhaps fifty, gave an impression of youthful fitness. He had a bronzed bald head with tufts of white hair behind the ears, a clipped white moustache and good-humoured, boyishly alert features. Lanark said awkwardly, “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
“Quite so. Not many of your crowd know me. Yet the whole place belongs to me. Funny, isn’t it? I often have a laugh about that.”
“Does Sludden know you?”
“Oh yes, Sludden and I are great buddies. What would you like to drink?”
He turned to a sideboard with bottles and glasses on it.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Well, sit down anyway, I want you to tell me something. Meanwhile I will pour myself … a drop … of Smith’s Glenlivet Malt. Here’s health.”
The warm fire, the mild light, the host’s calm manner made Lanark feel this a pleasant place to relax. He sat in one of the chairs.
The tall man returned with a glass in his hand, sat down and crossed his legs. He said, “What makes you chaps tick? What satisfaction do you, personally, get from being a writer?” Lanark tried to remember. He said, “It’s the only disciplined work I remember trying. I sleep better after it.”
“Really? But wouldn’t you sleep better after other kinds of discipline?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”
“And you’ve never thought of joining the army?”
“Why should I?”
“Because in a couple of terse, commonplace sentences you connected the ideas of work, discipline and health. So I suspect that, in spite of your association with sponges and leeches, you are still a vertebrate. Am I wrong?”
Lanark thought about this for a while, then asked, “What use is the army?”
“What use to society, you mean? Defence and employment. We defend and we employ. I believe you lodge with a woman called Fleck in a tenement beside Turk’s Head Forge.”
“How do you know?”
“Aha! There’s not much we don’t know. The point is that the Turk’s Head Forge produces components for our Q39. Industry is slack just now, as you may have noticed. If it wasn’t for the Q39 programme the Forge would have to close, thousands would be unemployed and they’d have to cut the social security allowance. Think of that next time you feel like knocking the army.”
“What is the Q39?”
“You’ve seen them. They’re being assembled in the yards near the river.”
“Do you mean these big metal constructions like bombs or bullets?”
“You think they look like bombs, do you? Good! Good! That cheers me greatly. Actually they’re shelters to protect the civilian population. Each one is capable of housing five hundred souls when the balloon goes up.”
“What do you mean?”
“About the balloon? It’s a figure of speech derived from an outmoded combat system. It means, when the sign goes out that the big show is starting.”
“What show?”
“I can’t tell you precisely, because it could take several different forms. We could be on the receiving end of any one of sixty-eight different types of attack, and I don’t mind telling you that we’re only capable of defending ourselves against three of them.’ Hopeless! Why bother?’ you say, and miss the point entirely. The other side is as badly placed as we are. These preparations for the big show may be pretty inadequate, but if we stop them the balloon will go up. Am I depressing you?”
“No, but I’m confused.”
The tall man nodded sympathetically, “I know, it’s difficult. Metaphor is one of thought’s most essential tools. It illuminates what would otherwise be totally obscure. But the illumination is sometimes so bright that it dazzles instead of revealing.”
It struck Lanark that in spite of his smooth flow of words the tall man was drunk. Somebody grunted nearby. Lanark turned and saw a stout elderly man sitting immobile in one of the chairs. He wore a dark blue suit and waistcoat. His eyes were shut but he was not asleep, for his hands were grasping his knees. Lanark gasped and said, “Who is that?”
“That is one of our city fathers. That is Baillie Dodd.”
The man in the chair said, “No.”
“Well, actually he’s more than just Baillie Dodd. He’s Provost Dodd.” The tall man began to laugh. “Yes!” he said between gasps, “that’s the Lord Provost of this whole, fucking big metropopolis.”
He silenced his chuckles by drinking what was left in the glass, then went to the sideboard to refill. The Provost said, “What does he want?”
The tall man looked over his shoulder. “Yes, Lanark, what do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“He said he wants nothing, Dodd.”
After a moment the Provost said flatly, “Then he’s no use to us.”
The tall man returned to his seat saying, “I begin to fear you’re right.” He smiled at Lanark and sat down. “I suppose in the end you’ll join the protest people.”
“Who are they?”
“Oh, they’re very nice people. No bother, really. My daughter is one. We have great arguments about it all. I had hoped you were a vertebrate, but I see you’re a crustacean. You’ll be at home with the protest people because most of them are crustaceans. Now you’re going to ask what crustaceans are, so I’ll tell you. The crustacean isn’t a mere mass of sentient acquisitiveness, like your leech or your sponge. It has a distinct shape. But the shape is not based on a backbone, it derives from the insensitive shell which
contains
the beast. In the crustacean class you will find the scorpion, the lobster and the louse.” He smiled into his whisky. Lanark knew he had been insulted and stood up, saying sharply, “Could you tell me where the bathroom is?”
“Third on the left as you go out.”
Lanark went to the door but turned before reaching it. He said, “Perhaps the Provost could tell me what his city is called?”
“Certainly he could. So could I. But for security reasons we’re not going to.”
Lanark opened the door to step through but was arrested by a cry of “Lanark!”
He turned and saw the man standing up gazing at him intently. “Lanark, if you ever come to feel you would like (how can I put it?) like to strike a blow for the good old vertebrate Divine Image, get in touch with me will you?”
There were tears in his eyes. Lanark went quickly out, feeling embarrassed.
The corridor was still in darkness. He turned left and moved toward the staircase, counting doors. The third one did not open into a bathroom but into a luxurious, brilliantly lit bedroom. On the quilt of the double bed moved a huge knot of limbs with the heads of Frankie, Toal and Sludden sticking out. Lanark slammed the door and clapped his hands over his eyes but the image of what he had seen stayed inside the lids: a knot of limbs with three crazily vacant faces, and Sludden’s mouth opening and shutting as if eating something. He hurried to the stairs and ran down them to the cloakroom. He was looking for his coat among the heap on the table when a slurred voice said, “I feel we’ve never really understood each other.”
Gloopy stood grinning emptily in the doorway. His legs were together and his arms pressed to his sides, his oiled grey hair and silver jacket glistened wetly. He took a few steps nearer, walking as if his thighs were glued together, then fell forward onto the floor with a sodden slap. He lay in the posture in which he had stood, except that his face was tilted so far back that it grinned blindly at the ceiling. Without moving his limbs he suddenly slid an inch or two toward Lanark along the polished floorboards, and then the light went out.
The darkness and silence were so complete that for a moment Lanark was deafened by the noise of his own breathing. Then he heard Gloopy say, “People ought to be nice to one another. Why can’t you and I—”
The words were cut short by a chilling draught which blew up suddenly from the floor bringing with it a salt stench like rotting weeds. Lanark felt he was on the lip of a horrible pit. He grew dizzy and crouched to the floor, afraid to move his feet and terrified of falling down. He squatted in the darkness like this for a very long time.
At last he saw light from the hall shining through the doorway. A bulky figure appeared in it, grunted and switched the light on. It was Provost Dodd. Lanark stood up, feeling sick and foolish, and said, “Gloopy. He’s disappeared. Gloopy’s disappeared!”
The Provost stared about the room as if Lanark were not in it and muttered, “No great loss, I would have thought.”
Lanark was filled with the conviction that every footstep in that room might land in an invisible trap. He managed to move to the door without running. The Provost said, “Wait.”
Lanark stepped into the hall before turning to him. The Provost pushed out his lower lip, frowned down at his shoes, then said, “You came with a girl. She had black hair and wore a black sweater and her skirt was … I forget the colour.”
“Black.”
“Quite so. Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
The Provost stared at him for a while then turned away, saying heavily, “Anyway, it’s all the same. It’s all the same.”
Lanark hurried out, slamming the door hard behind him.
CHAPTER 5.
Rima
There was fog outside. The light from the windows saturated it so that the mansion seemed wrapped in a cocoon of milky light, but outside the cocoon Lanark walked in total obscurity and only found his way down the drive by the crunch of gravel underfoot and the touch of rimy leaves on his hands and face.
On the pavement it was possible to steer through the murk by the glow of the street lamp ahead. The clammy air made his footsteps resound loudly but after five minutes he decided that what seemed like echoes were the footsteps of someone behind. His back prickled apprehensively. He stood against a hedge and waited. The other footsteps hesitated, then came boldly on. In the fog’s cloudy dimness a shadow appeared and developed an unusual density of black, then the slim black figure of Rima passed by giving him only the flicker of a glance. He hurried after her crying gladly, “Rima! It’s me!”