The first thing I remember is a thumping sound, then either I opened my eyes or the light went on for I saw I was in the corner of an old railway compartment. The sound and the blackness outside the window suggested the train was going through a tunnel. My legs were cramped but I felt very careless and happy. I stood up and walked about and was shocked to see my reflection in the carriage window. My head was big and clumsy with thick hair and eyebrows and an ordinary face, but I could not remember seeing it before. I decided to find what other people were on this train.
A cold wind blew along the corridor from the direction of the engine. I walked into it, looking through the windows of the compartments. They were empty. The wind at the end of the corridor was so strong that I had to grip the loose rubbery stuff on the walls of the doorway which usually leads to the next carriage. I could not go farther, for the entrance opened on a dark surface of wooden planks rocking from side to side. It was the back of a goods truck. I returned along the corridor with the wind at my back and recognized my own compartment by the open door. The compartments beyond were empty and the far entrance opened onto a metal tank of the kind used for transporting oil. So I returned to my compartment and noticed, as I shut the door behind me, a small rucksack on the rack above the corner seat. This made me wary. Since waking up I had felt wonderfully free and comfortable. I had been pleased to see I was alone and amused to find the carriage coupled in a goods train, but the knapsack frightened me. I knew it was mine and held something nasty but I was reluctant to throw it through the window. So I took it cautiously down, telling myself there was nobody looking and I need not be bound by what I discovered.
I first looked in the two outside pockets and found safe things, a shaving kit in a plastic envelope, some socks and a magnetic compass which didn’t work. I opened the top of the knapsack and found a rolled-up black raincoat, dirty underwear and a suit of pyjamas. Underneath was a folded map and a wallet stuffed with papers so I opened the window, dropped them out and pulled the window shut. Feeling safe again, I repacked the knapsack and returned it to the rack and then (for the rucksack business suggested this) searched my pockets. They all held some grit and tiny seashells. I also found a handkerchief, pen, key and pocket diary. I threw the key and diary after the wallet and map. After that the train tooted its whistle and came out of the tunnel.
It ran along a viaduct among the roofs of a city. Rainclouds covered the sky and the day was so dull that lamps were lit in the streets. They were broad streets, and crossed at right angles, and were lined with big stone buildings. I saw very few people and no traffic. Beyond the rooftops were rows of cranes with metal hulls among them. The train travelled toward these and crossed a bridge over the river. It was a broad river with stone embankments, cracked khaki-coloured mud on the bottom and a narrow black stream trickling zigzag down the middle. This worried me. I felt, and still feel, that a river should be more than this. I looked down into a yard where two hulls stood. They were metal cylinders with rusty domes on top, and a rattle of machinery inside suggested they were being worked on. The train entered another tunnel, slowed down, came out into a marshalling yard and stopped. Through the windows on either side I saw lines of goods trucks with railway signals sticking out of them. The sky was darker now.
I sat for a while in my warm corner, not wanting to leave it for the bad weather outside. Then the light went out, so I shouldered the knapsack, went into the corridor, opened a door and jumped to the ground. I stood between two lines of trucks. Thin rain was falling, so I put down the knapsack and unpacked my coat. As I put it on I saw a man in black overalls and peaked cap come toward me looking closely at the trucks of the train and pencilling in a notebook as he passed each one. He stopped beside me, marked his book and asked if I had just arrived. I said I had. He said, “They needn’t have provided a whole carriage for one passenger. They could have brought you in the guard’s van.”
I asked what time it was. He said, “We don’t bother much with time now. The sky is lighter than normal but that sort of light is too chancy to be useful.”
I asked if he knew where I could go. He said someone was coming who usually helped with that sort of thing then went on along the train.
A small figure ran toward us and passed the railwayman without a look. He stopped beside me and stared up with a feeble ingratiating smile. He had a weak-chinned handsome face and greasy hair sloping wavily back to a paltry wisp of curl on the nape of his neck. He wore a maroon bow tie, a jacket with maroon lapels which came down to his knees, tight black trousers and maroon suède shoes. His accent was soft and whined on the vowels. He said, “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
I said yes.
“I’ve come to help you. You can call me Gloopy. You don’t have a name yet, I suppose. Is anybody with you?”
I said no.
“I’ll take a look, just to be on the safe side. Give me a hitch up, will you?”
He insisted on entering every compartment and looking under the seats. And he giggled when I helped him down and said I was very strong. Then he offered to carry my knapsack but I shouldered it and asked if he would tell me where I could spend the night. He said, “Of course! That’s why I’m here! I’ll take you to my boardinghouse, we’ve got a spare room.” I said a boardinghouse was no use, I had no money.
“Of course you’ve no money! We’ll leave your knapsack in my boardinghouse and then we’ll go to the security place and they’ll give you money.”
We emerged from among the trucks and crossed some railway lines. The city lights glittered between a pair of black hills ahead of us. It was dark now and raining heavily and my guide turned up the sodden collar of his fancy jacket. He was far worse dressed for this weather than I was. I asked who paid him to meet people and he said in a hurt voice, “Nobody pays me. I do this job because I like people. I believe in friendship. People ought to be nice to one another.” I pitied him. I knew it was wrong to dislike people for their appearance and way of speaking but I disliked him very much. I explained that I wanted to collect the money before I did anything else. He said slyly, “If I take you to the security place first, will you promise to come to my boardinghouse after?” I told him I promised nothing and walked fast to get away. He trotted behind shouting, “All right! All right! I never said I wouldn’t take you to the security place, did I?”
We continued side by side till the way grew narrow then he walked in front. The path went down a steep embankment between the two hills which seemed to be rubbish dumps. Where it twisted sharply I sometimes walked forward and found myself wading in what felt like ashes and rotten cloth. We crossed the dry bed of an old canal and reached the end of a street. The city did not seem a thriving place. Groups of adolescents or old men stood in occasional close mouths, but many closes were empty and unlit. The only shops not boarded up were small stores selling newspapers, sweets, cigarettes and contraceptives. After a while we came to a large square with tramcars clanging around it. The street lamps only lit the lowest storeys of the surrounding buildings but these looked very big and ornamental, and people sheltered between pillars on their façades. Some soot-black statues were arranged round a central pillar whose top I couldn’t see in the black sky. In spite of the wet a man stood on a high part of the pillar’s pedestal and spoke to an angry crowd. We passed through the edge of the crowd and I saw the speaker was an anxiously smiling man with a clergyman’s collar and bruised brow. His words were drowned by jeering.
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.