After they had gone a little way Lanark stopped and declared, “This isn’t Unthank!”
“You are mistaken. It is.”
They looked down a slope of pinnacled monuments onto a squat black cathedral. The floodlit spire held a gilt weathercock above the level of their eyes, but Lanark was more perplexed by the view beyond. He remembered a stone-built city of dark tenements and ornate public buildings, a city with a square street plan and electric tramcars. Rumours from the council corridors had made him expect much the same place, only darker and more derelict, but below a starless sky this city was coldly blazing. Slim poles as tall as the spire cast white light upon the lanes and looping bridges of another vast motorway. On each side shone glass and concrete towers over twenty floors high with lights on top to warn off aeroplanes. Yet this was Unthank, though the old streets between towers and motor-lanes had a half-erased look, and blank gables stood behind spaces cleared for carparks. After a pause Lanark said, “And Unthank is dying?”
“Dying? Oh I doubt it. The population has shrunk since they scrapped the Q39 project, but there’s been a tremendous building boom.”
“But if a place is losing people and industry how can it afford new buildings?”
“Ah, I know too little about chronology to say. I feel that what happens between hearts matters more than these big public ways of swapping energy. You tell me, no doubt, that this is a conservative attitude. On the other hand, radicals are the only people who’ll work with me. Odd, isn’t it?”
Lanark said irritably, “You seem to understand my questions, but your answers make no sense to me.”
“That’s typical of life, isn’t it? But as long as you’ve a good heart and keep trying there’s no need to despair. Wer immer streband sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen. Oh, you’ll be a great deal of use to us.”
Rima suddenly leaned on a stone and said quietly, without bitterness, “I can’t go on.”
Lanark, alarmed, clasped her waist though it worried him to be clasping two people instead of one.
Ritchie-Smollet said softly, “A giddy spell?” “No, my back hurts and I … I can hardly think.”
“In my missionary phase I took a medical degree. Give me your pulse.”
He held her wrist in one hand, beat time with the other, then said, “Eighty-two. Considering your condition that’s quite good. Could you manage down to that building? A sleep is what you need most, but I’d better examine you first to make sure everything’s in order.”
He pointed to the cathedral. Rima stared at it. Lanark murmured, “Could we join hands and carry her?”
Rima pushed herself upright and said, “No, give me your arm. I’ll walk.”
The clergyman led them down dim weedy paths past the porticoes of mausoleums cut into the hillside. Gleams of light from below lit corners of inscriptions to the splendid dead:
“… His victorious campaign …” “….. whose unselfish devotion …..” “… revered by his students …” “….. esteemed by his colleagues …..” “… beloved by all …”
They crossed a flat space and walked along a cobbled lane. Ritchie-Smollet said, “A tributary of the river once flowed under here.”
Lanark saw that a low wall beside him was the parapet of a bridge and looked over onto a steeply embanked road. Cars sped up this to the motorway but there seemed to be a barrier: after slowing and stopping they turned and came back again. A tiny distinct throbbing in the air worked on the eardrum like the point of a drill on a tooth.
“There appears to be a pile-up at the intersection: a burst transporter, one of these huge dangerous God-the-Father jobs. The council ought to ban them. The city looks like being sealed off for quite a while. However, we’ve adequate food stocks. Come through here, it’s a short cut.”
The parapet had given way to a wall screened by bushes. Ritchie-Smollet parted two of these uncovering a hole into brighter air. Lanark helped Rima through. They were in the grounds of the cathedral where gravestones lay flat like a pavement. Vans and private cars stood on them against the surrounding wall, and Rima sank down on the step of a mobile crane. Ritchie-Smollet thrust hands into trouser pockets and stared ahead with a small satisfied smile.
“There she stands!” he said. “Our centre of government once again.”
Lanark looked at the cathedral. At first the floodlit spire seemed too solid for the flat black shape upholding it, a shape cut through by rows of dim yellow windows; then his eye made out the tower, roofs and buttresses of a sturdy Gothic ark, the sculpted waterspouts broken and rubbed by weather and the hammers of old iconoclasts.
“What do you mean, centre of government? Unthank has a city chambers.”
“Ah, yes, we use it nowadays for property deals. Quite a lot of work is done there, but the real legislators come here. I know you’re keen to meet them but first you’ll have to sleep. I speak as a doctor now, not as a minister of the gospel, so you mustn’t argue with me.”
They walked over inscriptions more laconic than in the higher cemetery.
“William Skinner: 5½ feet North × 2¼ West.”
“Harry Fleming, his wife Minnie, their son George, their daughter Amy: 6 feet West × 2½ North.”
They reached a side entrance and crossed a shallow porch into the cathedral.
A long-haired young man wearing blue overalls sat reading a book on a lidded stone font near the door. He glanced up and said, “Where have you been, Arthur? Polyphemus is going berserk. He thinks he’s discovered something.”
“I’m in a hurry, Jack,” said Ritchie-Smollet crisply. “These people need rest and attention. Will anywhere be clear for a while? I mean really clear?”
“Nothing scheduled for the arts lab.”
“Then get blankets and pillows into it and clean sheets, really clean sheets, and make up a bed.”
“Yes but” —the youth laid down his book and slid to the floor—“what will I tell Polyphemus?”
“Tell him politics is not man’s chief end.”
The youth hurried off between rows of rush-bottomed chairs covering the great flagged floor. The cathedral seemed vaster inside than out. The central pillars upholding the tower hid what lay beyond, but organ tones and blurred hymnal voices indicated a service there. At the same time the hard beat of wilder music sounded from somewhere below. Ritchie-Smollet said, “Not a bad God kennel, is it? The October Terminus are having a gig in the crypt. Some people don’t approve of that, but I tell them that at the Reformation the building was used by three congregations simultaneously and in my father’s house are many mansions. Do you need the lavatory?”
“No,” muttered Rima, who had sunk into a chair. “No, no, no, no.”
“Come on, then. Not far now.”
They moved slowly down a side aisle and Lanark had time to notice that the cathedral had clearly been used in several ways since its foundation. Torn flags hung overhead; against the walls stood ornate memorials to soldiers killed while invading remote continents. Before the arches under the tower they turned left and went down some steps, then right and descended others into a small chapel. An orange light hung in the stone-ribbed ceiling but the stone was whitewashed and the effect was restful. The air was warmed and scented by paraffin heaters in the corners; a stack of plastic mattresses against a wall nearly touched the ceiling. Three of these were laid edge to edge and Jack was making a bed on the middle one. Rima lay down on it when he finished and Lanark helped remove her coat. “Don’t go to sleep yet—I’ll be back in a jiff,” said Ritchie-Smollet and went out. Jack adjusted the wicks of the heaters and followed him. Lanark shed his own coat and sat with Rima’s head on his lap. He was weary but couldn’t relax because his clothes felt sticky and foul. He fingered the matted beard on his cheeks and chin and touched the thinning hair on his scalp. Clearly he had grown older. He looked down at Rima, whose eyes were closed. Her hair was black once more, and apart from the big belly her whole figure seemed slighter than in the council corridors. A small insulted frown between the brows suggested an angry little girl, but her lips had the beautiful repose of a mature, contented woman of thirty or forty. He gazed and gazed but couldn’t decide her age at all. She sighed and murmured, “Where’s Sludden?”
He overcame a pang of anger and said gently, “I don’t know, Rima.”
“You’re nice to me, Lanark. I’ll always trust you.”
Ritchie-Smollet and Jack brought basins of hot water, towels, clean nightshirts, and went out again. Rima lay on the towels while Lanark sponged and dried her, taking special care of the great belly, which looked more normal naked than clothed. She slid between the sheets and Ritchie-Smollet returned with a black leather case. He knelt by the bed and took out thermometer, stethoscope and sterilized gloves in a transparent envelope. He slipped the thermometer below Rima’s armpit and was tearing the envelope when she opened her eyes and said sharply, “Turn round Lanark.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t turn round I won’t let him touch me.”
Lanark turned round and walked to the far side of a pillar, his feet cold on the bare stone. He stopped and stared at the ceiling. The arching ribs came together in carved knops, and one showed a pair of tiny snakes twining across the brow of a very cheerful skull in the middle of a wreath of roses. Nearby on the vault someone had scribbled in pencil:
GOD = LOVE = MONEY = SHIT.
“Well, that seems all right,” said Ritchie-Smollet loudly. Lanark turned and saw him repacking the case. “The little fellow seems the correct way up and round and so forth. If she insists on having it here I suppose we can manage.”
“Here?” said Lanark, startled.
“Not in hospital, I mean. Anyway, I’ll leave you to some well-earned rest.”
He went out, pulling a red curtain across the door. Rima murmured, “Get in behind me.”
He obeyed and she pressed her freezing soles greedily to his shins, but her back was familiar and cosy and soon they grew warm and slept.
He wakened among whispering and rustling. Chains of bright spots flowed zigzag over the dark vault and pillars and crowded floor. They were cast by a silver-faceted globe revolving where the orange lamp had hung, and now the only steady light shone on the steps to the entrance. These were the breadth of the wall. Young men in overalls were arranging electrical machines on them which sometimes filled the chapel with huge hoarse sighs. Three older men sat on the lower steps holding instruments joined by wires to the machinery, and a fourth was setting up a percussion kit with BROWN’S LUGWORM CASANOVAS printed on the big drum. Lanark saw he was part of an audience: the whole floor was paved with mattresses and covered with people squatting shoulder to shoulder. Beside him a delicate girl in a silver sari was leaning on a hairy, bare-chested man in a sheepskin waistcoat. Just in front a girl in the tartan trews and scarlet mess jacket of a highland regiment was whispering to a man with the braided hair, headband and fringed buckskin of an Indian squaw. People from every culture and century seemed gathered here in silk, canvas, fur, feathers, wool, gauze, nylon and leather. Hair was frizzed out like the African, crewcut like the Roman, piled high like Pompadour, straightened like the Sphinx or rippled over the shoulders like periwigs. There was every kind of ornament and an amount of nakedness. Lanark looked unsuccessfully for his clothes. He felt he had rested a long time but Rima was still sleeping, so he decided not to move. Other couples were reclining at length and even caressing in the shelter of sleeping bags.
There was applause and a small gloomy man with a heavy moustache stood with a microphone on the steps. He said, “Glad to be back, folks, in legendary Unthank where I’ve had so many legendary experiences. I’m going to lead off with a new thing, it bombed them in Troy and Trebizond, it sank like stone-cold turkey in Atlantis, let’s see what happens here. ‘Domestic Man.’”
He threw his head back and shouted:
“The cake she baked me bit me till I cried!”
The instruments and machines said BAWAM so loudly that hearing and thought were destroyed for a second.
“The bed she made me was so hard I nearly died!”
(BAWAM)
“The shirt she washed me folded its arms and tied me up inside!”
(BAWAM)
“She’s going domestic, she’s got a great big domestic plan, But please baby believe me lady I am
not a domestic man
not a domestic man
not a domestic man.”
(BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM BAWAM)
Rima was sitting up, hands pressed over ears and tears pouring down her cheeks. She spoke but the words were inaudible. Lanark saw Ritchie-Smollet beckoning violently from the doorway behind the singer. He pulled Rima up and they stumbled through the audience. The singer shouted:
“She cleans windows till they shine so I can’t see!”
(BAWAM)
“She polishes floors till they suck my foot in up to the knee!”
(BAWAM)
“She papers rooms till the walls start squeezing in on me!”
(BAWAM)
As they passed the singer Rima waved so threateningly at a bank of loudspeakers that someone grabbed her arm. Lanark pulled him off and clumsy punches were exchanged on the way to the door. Ritchie-Smollet separated them, his voice coming through the BAWAMing like a far-off whisper: “… entirely my fault … delicate condition … failure of liaison….”
It was quieter outside the door where Jack waited with dressing-gown and slippers. Rima kept muttering “Bastards” as she was helped into these.
“They dislike space, you see, and noise fills that up,” said Ritchie-Smollet, leading them across the nave. “The fault is really mine. I went out with a man who thought I could save his marriage because I’d performed the ceremony. Illogical, really. Didn’t know him from Adam. I hadn’t expected you to sleep so long—if we had a clock it would be safe to say you snoozed right round the bally thing. Contractions started yet?”
“No,” said Rima.
“Good. In a brace of shakes you’ll have a bed and a bite in the triforium. I’d have put you there when you came but I feared you were too feeble to face the stairs.”
He opened a little door and they saw a stair hardly two feet wide spiralling upward in the thickness of the wall. Lanark said, “Excuse me, but can’t we get a decent room in a decent house?”
“Rooms are hard to find just now. The house of God is the best I can offer.”
“When I was last here a quarter of the city stood empty.”
“Ah, that was before the new building programme started. Someone on the committee may offer you a spare room eventually. Anyway, we can wait for them in the triforium—your clothes are there.”
Ritchie-Smollet ducked through the doorway and climbed. Rima followed and Lanark came after. The stairs were laboriously steep. After several turns they passed through another door onto the inner sill of a huge window. Rima gasped and clutched a handrail. Far below a man moved like a beetle over the flagged floor and the echoing throbs of “Domestic Man” added to the insecurity. Ritchie-Smollet said, “That’s Polyphemus on his way to the chapterhouse. My word, but the Lugworms are going it some.”
A few steps took them onto a walkway between rows of organ pipes, and a few more into the end of a very long low attic. The ceiling slanted from the floor to a wall of arches overlooking the nave. As they walked down it Lanark saw partitions dividing the loft on his left into cubicles, each containing a little furniture. In one a man in a dirty coat sat trying to mend an old boot. In another a haggard woman lay drinking from a flat-sided bottle. Ritchie-Smollet said, “Here we are,” stepped into one and squatted on the carpet.
The cubicle had a homely look mitigated by a smell of disinfectant. It was lit by a pink silk-shaded lamp above a low bed that covered a third of the floor. The seats were stools and cushions but there was a low table, a chest of drawers and a tiny sink. The boards between the ceiling joists were covered by forget-me-not patterned paper, and on one of the two walls a hanger on a hook held Lanark’s clothes, newly cleaned and pressed.
“Small but snug,” said Ritchie-Smollet. “A regrettable lack of headroom but nobody will disturb us. I suggest Rima slip into bed (she’ll find a hot-water bottle there) and you get dressed. Then Jack will bring us a meal, a companion will arrive for your good lady, and we two can attend the meeting in the chapterhouse. The provost should be there by now.”
Lanark sank on a stool with elbows on knees and chin on hands. He said, “You keep moving me about and I don’t know why.” “Yes, it’s difficult. In the present state of chronological confusion it’s impossible to state things clearly. As secretary I can only arrange meetings by keeping members here till the rest arrive. But Gow’s come, and poor Scougal and Mrs. Schtzngrm and the ubiquitous Polyphemus. And chairman Sludden, praise God.”
Lanark looked at Rima. The sight soothed him. She lay smiling against the pillows, a hand touching her full breast. There was a soft calmness about her; the dimples at the corners of her mouth were unusually deep. She said fondly, “It’s all right, Lanark. Don’t worry.”
He sighed and started dressing.
Jack entered with a loaded tray and Ritchie-Smollet poured coffee into cups and passed plates around, chatting as he did so.
“All out of tins, of course, but good of its kind. Easy to serve, too, which is handy because there’s only room for a very tiny kitchen. There was amazing opposition when we set up this little refuge—even more than to the arts lab in the lady chapel. Yet these lofts have lain empty since the old monks marched round them telling their beads. And what could better conform to the wishes of the founder? You know the poem, of course:
“If at the church they would give us some ale, and a pleasant fire our souls to regale, we’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day, nor ever once wish from the church to stray,
“And God, like a father, rejoicing to see, His children as pleasant and happy as He, would have no more quarrel with Devil or barrel, But kiss him and give him both drink and—”
“What the hell am I eating?” shouted Lanark.
“Enigma de Filets Congalés. Is it underdone? Try this pink moist crumbly stuff. I can heartily recommend it.”
Lanark groaned. A stink of burning rubber was fading from his nostrils and his limbs were invaded by a familiar invigorating warmth. He said, “This is institute food.”
“Yes. The Quantum group delivers nothing else to us nowadays.”
“We left the institute because we hate this food.”
“I admire you for it!” cried Ritchie-Smollet enthusiastically. “And you’ve moved in the right direction! We have two or three millennialists on the committee and who’s to blame them? Has not the prayer of humanity in all ages been for innocent and abundant food? Impossible, of course, but wer immer strebend sich bemüht et cetera. And one has to eat, unless one feels with Miss Weil that anorexia nervosa is a sacred duty.”
“Yes I will eat!” cried Lanark savagely. “But please stop bombarding me with funny names and meaningless quotations!” He finished all the plates that Rima and Ritchie-Smollet left untouched and in the end felt bloated, drugged and horribly tricked. A voice cried, “Rima!” A plump woman of about forty wearing tarty clothes came in. Rima laughed and said, “Frankie!”
Frankie dropped a huge embroidered handbag on the floor, sat on the bed and said, “Sludden told me you were here—he’s coming later. So the mystery man has put a bun in your oven, has he? Actually you don’t look too bad—quite surprisingly winsome, really. Hullo, mystery man, I’m glad you’ve grown a beard. You look less vulnerable.”
“Hullo,” said Lanark ungraciously. He was not pleased to see Frankie.