He looked down, startled, at Libby, who lay curled with her legs under her in the angle between wall and carpet looking unconscious. She was a gracefully plump, dark-haired girl. Her skirt was shorter and blouse silkier than he remembered, and her sulky slumbering face looked far more childish than the clothes. She opened her eyes saying “What?” and sat up and glanced at her wristwatch. Without blame she said, “You’ve been hours in there. Hours and hours. We’ve missed the opera.”
She held out a hand and he helped her up. She said, “Did he feed you?”
“He did. Now I would like to speak to Wilkins.”
“Wilkins?”
“Or Monboddo. On second thought, I would prefer to see Monboddo. Is that possible?”
She stared at him and said, “Do you never relax? Don’t you ever enjoy yourself?”
“I did not come here to relax.”
“Sorry I asked.”
She walked down the corridor. He followed, saying, “Listen, if I’m being rude I apologize, but I’m very worried just now. And anyway, I’ve always been bad at enjoying myself.”
“Poor old you.”
“I’m not complaining,” said Lanark defensively. “Some very nice things have happened to me, even so.”
“When, for instance?”
Lanark remembered when Sandy was born. He knew he must have been happy then or he wouldn’t have rung the cathedral bell, but he couldn’t remember what happiness felt like. His past suddenly seemed a very large, very dreary place. He said tiredly, “Not long ago.”
In the hall beside the lift doors she halted, faced him and said firmly, “I don’t know where Monboddo and Wilkins are just now. I expect they’ll drop in later when the party starts, so I’ll give you some advice. Play it gelid. I see you’ve got it bad, Dad, but the hard sell is no go on day one when everybody’s casing each other. The real hot lobbyists start cashing their therms halfway through countdown on day two. And there’s something else I’d like to tell you. The Provan executive pays my salary whether I stay with you or not. If you want me to vanish say ‘vanish’ and I’ll vanish. Or else come for a quiet drink with me and talk about anything but this general bloody awful assembly. Even their language gives me the poxy nungs.”
Lanark stared at her, seeing how attractive she was. The sight was a great pain. He knew that if she let him kiss her petulant mouth he would feel no warmth or excitement. He looked inside himself and found only a hungry ungenerous cold, a pained emptiness which could neither give nor take. He thought, ‘I am mostly a dead man. How did this happen?’ He muttered, “Please don’t vanish.”
She took his arm and led him toward the gallery saying slyly, “I bet I know one thing you enjoy.”
“What?”
“Bet you enjoy being famous.”
“I’m not.”
“Modest, eh?”
“No, but I’m not famous either.”
“Think I’d have waited all these hours outside Nastler’s door if you’d been an ordinary delegate?”
Lanark was too confused to answer. He pointed to a silent crowd of black-suited security men on each side of the glass door and said, “What are they doing here?”
“They’re staying outside to make the party less spooky.”
Though nearly empty the gallery throbbed with light rhythmical music. In the night sky outside the window the pink-tipped petals of several great chrysanthemums were spreading out from golden centres among the stars and dipping down toward the floodlit stadium where tiny figures thronged the terraces and crowded upon dance floors, one at each end of the central field. The chrysanthemums faded and a scarlet spark shot through them, drawing a long tail of white and green dazzling feathers. The floor along the window was furnished with piles of huge coloured cushions. The floor above that had a twelve-man orchestra at one end, though at present the only player was a clarinettist blowing a humorous little tune and a drummer softly stroking the cymbals with wire brushes. The floor above that had four well-laden buffets along it, and the top floor had many empty little chairs and tables, and a bar at each end, and four girls sitting on stools by one of the bars. Libby led Lanark over to them and said, “Martha, Solveig, Joy and the other Joy, this is you-know-who from Unthank.”
Martha said, “It can’t be.”
Solveig said, “You look far too respectable.”
Joy said, “Shall I put your briefcase behind the bar? It’ll be safe there.”
The other Joy said, “My mother is a friend of yours, or says she used to be.”
“Is she called Nancy?” said Lanark glumly, handing over the briefcase and sitting down. “Because if she is I met you when you were a baby.”
“No, she’s called Gay.”
“Don’t remind him of his age,” said Libby. “Be a mother yourself and mix us two white rainbows. (She’s good at white rainbows.)”
Solveig was the largest of the girls and the other Joy was the smallest. They were all about the same age and had the same casually friendly manners. Lanark was not very conscious of them as distinct people but he was soothed by being the only man among them. Libby said, “We’ve got to persuade Lanark that he’s famous.”
They all laughed and the other Joy, who was measuring drops of liquor into a silver canister, said, “But he knows. He must know.”
“What am I famous for?” said Lanark.
“You’re the man who does these weird, weird things for no reason at all,” said Martha. “You smashed Monboddo’s telescreen when he was conducting a string quartet.”
“You fought with him over a dragon-bitch and blocked the whole current of the institute,” said Solveig.
“You told him exactly what you thought of him and walked straight out of the council corridors into an intercalendrical zone. On foot!” said Joy.
“We’re mad keen to see what you do tonight,” said the other Joy. “Monboddo’s terrified of you.”
Lanark started explaining how things had really happened, but the corners of his mouth had risen and were squeezing out his cheeks and narrowing his eyes; he could not help his face being contorted, his tongue gagged by a huge silly grin, and at last he shook his head and laughed. Libby laughed too. She was leaning on the bar, her hip brushing his thigh. Martha told him, “Libby’s using you to make her boyfriend jealous.”
“No I’m not. Well, just a bit, I am.”
“Who’s your boyfriend?” asked Lanark, smiling.
“The man with the glasses down there. The drummer. He’s horrible. When his music isn’t going right for him nothing goes right for him.”
“Make him as jealous of me as you like,” said Lanark, patting her hand. The other Joy gave him a tall glass of clear drink and they all watched him closely as he sipped. The first sip tasted soft and furry, then cool and milky, then thin and piercing like peppermint, then bitter like gin, then thick and warm like chocolate, then sharp like lemon but sweetening like lemonade. He sipped again and the flow of tastes over his tongue was wholly different, for the tip tasted black currant, blending into a pleasant kind of children’s cough mixture in the centre and becoming like clear beef gravy as it entered the throat, with a faint aftertaste of smoked oysters. He said, “The taste of this makes no sense.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“Yes, it’s delicious.”
They laughed as if he’d said something clever. Solveig said, “Will you dance with me when the music starts?”
“Of course.”
“What about me?” said Martha.
“I intend to dance once with everybody—except the other Joy. I’m going to dance twice with the other Joy.”
“Why?”
“Because being unusually kind to someone will give me a feeling of power.”
Everyone laughed again and he sipped the drink feeling worldly and witty. A small man with a large nose arrived and said, “You all seem to be having a good time, do you mind if I join in? I’m Griffith-Powys, Arthur Griffith-Powys of Ynyswitrin. Lanark of Unthank, aren’t you? I only just missed you this morning, but I heard you’d been hard at it. It was good to know somebody was knocking the gelid lark. We’ve had too much of that. You’ll be sounding off loud and clear tomorrow, I hope?”
The gallery was filling with older people who were clearly delegates or delegates’ wives, and others in their thirties who seemed to be secretaries and journalists. There were more red girls too, though few of them now wore the whole red uniform. Groups were forming but the group round Lanark was the largest. Odin, the pink-faced morose man, came over and asked, “Any luck with His Royal Highness?”
“None. In fact he said he wasn’t a king at all but a conjuror.”
“Young people must find the modern world very confusing,” said Powys, patting Martha’s arm paternally. “So many single people have different names and so many different people have the same name. Look at Monboddo. We’ve all known at least two Monboddos and the next one will likely be a woman. Look at me! Last year I was Arch Druid of Camelot and Cadbury. This year, what with ecumenical pressure and regionalization, I’m Proto-Presbyter of Ynyswitrin, yet I’m the same man doing the same job.”
Odin said in a low voice, “Here comes the enemy.”
Five black men of different heights entered, two in business suits, two in military uniform and the tallest in caftan and fez. Martha shivered and said, “I hate the black bloc—they drink nothing stronger than lemonade.”
“Well, I love them,” said Libby stoutly. “I think they’re charming. And Senator Sennacherib drinks whisky by the quart.”
“What I can’t take is bloody Multan’s air of superiority,” said Odin. “I know we sold and flogged his ancestors, which proves we’re vicious; but it doesn’t prove he’s much good.”
“Is that Multan?” said Lanark. The blacks had descended to the next floor and were standing at one of the buffets. “Excuse me a minute,” said Lanark. He passed quickly through the other groups, descended three or four steps and approached the black bloc. “Please,” he said to the tall man in the fez, “are you Multan of Zimbabwe?”
“Here is General Multan,” said the tall man, indicating a small man in military uniform. Lanark said, “May I speak to you, General Multan? I’ve been told you … we might be able to help each other.”
Multan regarded Lanark with an expression of polite amusement. He said, “Who told you that, man?”
“Nastler.”
“Don’t know this Nastler. How does he say we be useful?”
“He didn’t, but my own region—Greater Unthank—is having trouble with—well, many things. Almost everything. Is yours?”
“Oh, sure. Our plains are overgrazed, our bush is undercultivated, our minerals are owned by foreigners, the council sends us airplanes, tanks and bulldozers and our revenues go to Algolagnics and Volstat to buy fuel and spare parts to work them. Oh, yes, we got problems.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t expect help from your sort, man, but I listen hard to anything you say.”
Multan held a plate of sweet corn and chopped meat in one hand and ate delicately with the other for a minute or two, closely watching Lanark, who could now hear the dance orchestra playing very loudly, for the nearest groups had fallen silent and an attentive and furtive murmuring came from the rest of the gallery. Lanark felt his face blush hotter and hotter. Multan said, “Why you go on standing there if you got nothing to say?”
“Embarrassment,” said Lanark in a low voice. “I started this conversation and I don’t know how to end it.”
“Let me help you off the hook, man. Come here, Omphale.” A tall elegant black woman approached. Multan said, “Omphale, this delegate needs to talk to a white woman.”
“But I’m black. As black as you are,” said the woman in a clear, hooting voice.
“Sure, but you got a white voice,” said Multan, moving away. Lanark and the woman stared at each other then Lanark said,
“Would you care to dance?”
“No,” said the woman and followed Multan.
Suddenly, on a note of laughter, all the conversations started loudly again. Lanark turned, blushing, and saw the two Joys laughing at him openly. They said “Poor Lanark!” and “Why did he leave the friends who love him?” Each linked an arm with him and led him down steps to a side of the dance floor where Odin, Powys, the other girls and some new arrivals had gathered. They received him so genially that it was easy to smile again.
“I could have told you it was useless talking to that bastard,” said Odin. “Have a cigar.”
“But wasn’t it exciting?” said Libby. “Everybody expected something gigantic to happen. I don’t know what.”
“The opening of a new intercontinental viaduct, perhaps,” said Powys jocularly. “The unrolling across the ocean of a fraternal carpet on which all the human races could meet and sink into one human race and get Utopia delivered by parachute with their morning milk, no?”
“Congratulations! You’ve done something rather fine,” said Wilkins, shaking his hand. “The rebuff doesn’t matter. What counts is that you put the ball fair and square into their arena and they know it. One of you girls should get this man a drink.”
“Wilkins, I want to talk to you,” said Lanark.
“Yes, the sooner the better. There are one or two unexpected developments we must discuss. Shall we breakfast together first thing tomorrow at the delegates’ repose village?”
“Certainly.”
“You don’t mind rising early?”
“Not it all.”
“Good. I’ll buzz your room before seven, then.”
“Please, sir,” said Solveig very meekly, “please can I have the dance you promised me earlier, please, please?”
“In a wee while, dearie. Let me finish my drink first,” said Lanark kindly.
As he sipped a second white rainbow he looked out at the starry field of the sky where rockets bloomed, tinting thousands of upturned faces in the stadium beneath with purple, white, orange and greenish-gold. He was leaning on a rail guarding the drop to the lowest and narrowest floor and he also saw in the window a dark distinct reflection of himself, the captainish centre of a company standing easily in midair under the flashing fireworks and above the crowd. He nodded down at the people below and thought, ‘Tomorrow I will defend you all.’ He brought the cigar to his lips, turned round and carefully surveyed the gallery. His group was still the largest, though Wilkins had left it and was moving among the others. Lanark even saw him pause for a word with Multan. He thought tolerantly, ‘I must keep my eye on that fellow; he’s a fox, an ecological fox of the first water…. Fox? Ecological? First water? I don’t usually think in words like these but they seem appropriate here. Yes, tomorrow I will talk to Wilkins. There will be some shrewd bargaining but no compromise. No compromise. I’ll play it by ear. I’ll play it hot, gelid, dirty, depending on how he deals the deck. I’ll cash every therm in my suit, and then some, but no compromise! If a region’s to be thrown to the crocodiles it won’t be Unthank; upon that I am resolved. Monboddo is afraid of me: understandably. The hell with the standings, the top rung is up for grabs! All bets are off, the odds are cancelled, it’s anybody’s ballgame! The horses are all drugged, the track is glass … what is happening to my vocabulary? This cigar is intoxicating. Good thing I noticed: stub it out, stay calm, sip your drink…. I know whythis is called a white rainbow. It’s clear like water, yet on the tongue it spreads out into all the tastes on an artist’s peacock palette (badly put). It contains as many tastes as there are colours in the mother of pearly stuff lining an abalone seashell. Poetry. Shall I tell the other Joy? She mixed this drink, she’s standing over there, what a clever attractive little … I used to prefer big women but … oh, if my hand were between her small …’
“I am pleased to encounter you, sir,” said a quiet, bald man with rimless spectacles, shaking Lanark’s hand. “Kodac, Timon Kodac of South Atlantis. God knows why they chose me as a delegate. My true field is research, for Algolagnics. But it’s nice to visit other continents. My mother’s people hailed from Unthank.”
Lanark nodded and thought, ‘She is smiling at me just as Libby smiled. I thought Libby meant to seduce me but she had a boyfriend. All young attractive healthy girls have young attractive healthy boyfriends. I’ve heard that young girls prefer older men, but I’ve never seen it.’
“That’s a very good woman you’ve got,” said Kodac.
Lanark stared at him. Kodac said, “That little old professor. What’s her name? Schtzngrm. That was quite a report she sent to the council. You know, the preliminary report with the Permian deep pollution samples. It made us sit up, in Algolagnics, when we got word of it. Oh, yes, we have our sources.”
Lanark smiled, nodded and sipped. He thought, ‘Surely her face is making me smile at her? It’s so merry and intelligent, so quick to be surprised and amused. I will smile, but not much. A leader should be an audience, not a performer. His crowd should feel he is noticing, assessing, appreciating them, but from a position of strength.’
Kodac said, “Of course what interests us is her final report, giving the locations. I believe you are seeing Wilkins tomorrow. He’s a very, very shrewd man, best man the council owns. We have a lot of respect for Wilkins at Algolagnics. So far we’ve always been one or two paces ahead of him, but it’s been a hassle. By the way, a lot of us in Algolagnics feel Unthank has had a pretty raw deal from the council. It doesn’t surprise us that you and Sludden are taking an independent line. More power to you! And speaking unofficially, I know these are also the sentiments of the Tunc-Quidative and Quantum-Cortexin clusters. But I suppose they’ve told you that?”
Lanark nodded gravely and thought, ‘If she knew what her odd, thoroughly alive young face makes me feel, and how I envy the seam in her jeans which goes down over her stomach and over the little mound between the thighs and through and up between behind … if she knew how much less than a leader I am, I would bore her. I must give her the same smile I am giving this bald man who is hinting something: the knowing smile which tells them I know more than they know I know.’
“Hey!” said Kodac chuckling. “See that little tulip watching you over there? Bet you she would go like a bomb. Yes, I’m sure Wilkins is just wild to get his hands on that final report of yours. If he knows it exists. Does he?”
Lanark stared at him. Kodac laughed, patted Lanark’s shoulder and said, “A straight question at last, eh? I’m sorry, but though government and industry are interlocking we ain’t fully interlocking. Not yet. We support each other because order is Heaven’s first law, but remember Costaguana? Remember when the Occidental Republic split off from it? That could never have happened without our support. Of course we weren’t called Algolagnics then; that was in the time of the old Material Interests Corporation. Boy, what a gang of pirates they were! And the mineral was silver, which doesn’t thrust as hard as a certain other mineral, you follow?”
Lanark smiled bitterly and thought, ‘The only feeling she gives me is stony pain, the pain of being slightly alive in a pot-bellied old body with thinning hair. But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves. Sludden was wise to send me. I can never melt.’
“Your glass is empty,” said Kodac, taking it. “I’ll find a girl to fill it; I need a drink myself.”
“Don’t be nasty to me, Lanark,” said the other Joy, smiling in front of him. “You promised me two dances, remember? Surely you can give me one?”
Without waiting for a reply she drew him out among the dancers.
Bitterness fell from him. The firm bracelet of her fingers round his wrist gave lightness and freedom. He laughed and held her waist, saying, “And Gay is your mother? Has the wound in her hand healed?”
“Was she ever wounded? She never tells me anything.”
“What does she do nowadays?”
“She’s a journalist. Let’s not talk about her; surely I’m enough for you?”
Holding her was hard, at first, for the music was so quick and jerky that the other men and women danced without touching each other. Lanark danced to the slower sound of the whole room, whose main noise was conversation. Heard all together the conversations sounded like a waterfall blattering into a pool and made the orchestra seem the chirping of excited insects. At first the other dancers collided with him but later they moved to the side of the floor and stood cheering and clapping. The orchestra lapsed raggedly into silence and the other Joy broke away and ran into the crowd. He followed her through laughter to his group and found her talking vigorously to the other girls. She faced him and asked, “Was that not nearly incest?”
He stared at her. She said, “You are my father, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no! Sludden is. Probably.”
“Sludden? My mother never tells me anything. Who is Sludden? Is he successful? Is he good-looking?”
Lanark said gently, “Sludden is a very successful man, and women find him very attractive. Or used to. But I don’t want to talk about him tonight.”
He turned sadly away and looked at the crowded gallery where the dancing had resumed. On the faces of all these strangers he saw such familiar expressions of worry, courage, happiness, resignation, hope and failure that he felt he had known them all his life, yet they had surprising variety. Each seemed a world with its own age, climate and landscape. One was fresh and springlike, another rich, hot and summery. Some were mildly or stormily autumnal, some tragically bleak and frozen. Someone was standing by his side and her company let him admire these worlds peacefully, without wanting to conquer or enter them. He heard her sigh and say, “I wish you were more careful,” and he turned and saw Lady Monboddo. Her face looked younger, more solemn and lonely than he remembered. Her breasts were bigger and a floor-length gown of stiff tapestry patterned with lions and unicorns gave her a pillar-like look. Lanark said gladly, “Catalyst!”
“That was my job, not my name. I think you should leave this place and go to bed, Lanark.”
“I would, if I could go with you,” said Lanark, placing an arm round her waist. She frowned at him as though his face was a page she was trying to read. He withdrew his arm awkwardly and said, “I’m sorry if I’m greedy, but I don’t think these little girls like me much. And you and I were nearly very good friends once.”
“Yes. We could have done anything we liked together. But you ran away to a dragon-bitch.”
“But good came of it!” said Lanark eagerly. “She didn’t stay a dragon long and we have a son now. He’s very tall and healthy for his age, and seems intelligent too, and may be quite a kind person when he grows up.”
She still stared at his face as if trying to read it. He looked away, saying uncomfortably, “Don’t worry about me. I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
When he looked back she had gone and Martha stood there offering a glass and saying, “I mixed this one. It doesn’t taste very nice but it’s strong. Please, sir, will it soon be time for me to dance with you?”
“Why do you girls keep replacing each other?” said Lanark moodily, “I’ve had no time to know any of you yet.”
“We think a lot of new friends can have more fun together than a pair of old friends.”
“So when will you leave me?”
“Maybe I’ll stay with you. Tonight,” said Martha, looking at him unsmilingly.
“Maybe!” said Lanark sceptically, and drank.
At first the taste was sickly sweet and then so appallingly bitter that he gulped it hastily. Somewhere he could hear Powys saying “… wants the council to ban the manufacture of footwear, because the earth, you see, is like the body of a mother, and direct contact with her keeps us healthy and sane. He says the recent increase in warfare and crime is caused by composition rubber shoe soles which insulate us from the cthonic current and leave us a prey to the lunar current. Once I would have laughed, of course, but modern science is reinstating so much that we regarded as superstition. It seems that hedgehogs really do suck the teats of cows….”
Lanark was lying outspread on cushions upon the lowest floor of all. Someone had removed his shoes and his feet gently explored the softer parts of a silk-clad body. His cheek lay on another one, each hand was snug between a pair of canvas-covered thighs and someone caressed his neck. The sounds of the gallery and orchestra were subdued and distant but he could hear two people talking high above his head.
“It’s nice to see women combining to make a man feel famous.”
“Drivel. They’re making him a sot.”
“I believe he comes from a region where coitus is often reached through stupefaction.”
“I hate these voices,” said Lanark. There was whispering and he was gently raised and helped forward. A door closed somewhere and all noises stopped.
He said loudly “I am walking … along a corridor.”
Someone whispered, “Open your eyes.”
“No. Touch tells me you are near me but eyes talk about the space between.”
Another door closed and he lay down among whispers like falling leaves and felt his clothes removed. Someone whispered “Look!” and he opened his eyes long enough to meet a thin-lipped small smiling mouth in a glade of dark hair. Softly, sadly, he revisited the hills and hollows of a familiar landscape, the sides of his limbs brushing sweet abundances with surprisingly hard tips, his endings paddling in the pleats of a wet wound which opened into a boggy cave where little moans bloomed like violets in the blackness. There were dank odours and even a whiff of dung. Losing his way he lay on his back feeling that he too was a landscape, a dull flat one surrounding a tower sticking up into a dark and heavy sky. In the darkness above he felt people climbing off and onto his tower and swinging there with rhythmical gasps or shrieks. He hoped they were enjoying themselves and was glad of the company, and he kissed and caressed to show this; then everything turned over and he was the heavy sky pressing the tower into the land below, yet he felt increasingly lost, knowing the tower could stand for hours and never fire a gun. Someone whispered, “Won’t you give yourself?”
“I can’t. Half my strength is locked in fear and hatred.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How would you like to show it?”
“I would like to … I can’t say. You’d be disgusted.”
“Tell us.”
“I would like … I can’t tell you. You would laugh.”
“Risk it.”
“I want you to hate and fear me too, but be unable to escape. I want you captured and bound, and waiting helplessly in perfect dread for the slash of my whip, the touch of my branding iron. And then, at the climax of your terror, what enters you is simply naked me—ah! You would have … to … be … de … lighted. Then.”
The land and foundation melted and he was thrusting, biting, grunting and clutching among squealing jelly meats like a carnivorous pig with fingers. Later on, feeling expended, he lay again in kindness gently rooting in soft clefts, rocking and drifting on smoothness, afloat and basking in softness. He clasped a waist, his penis nestled between two gentle mounds and he was filled with kind nowhere.
He was knee-deep in a cold quick little burn gurgling over big rounded stones, some black, some grey, some speckled like oatmeal. He was tugging some of the stones out and carefully flinging them onto the bank a yard or two upstream where Alexander, about ten years old, very brown, and wearing red underpants, was building a dam with them. The hot sun on Lanark’s neck, the chill water round his legs, the ache in his back and shoulders suggested he had been doing this for a long time. He hauled out an extra large black and dripping boulder, heaved it into the heather, then climbed up and lay flat on his back beside it, breathing hard. He closed his eyes against the profound blue and the dazzle came hot dark red through his lids. He could hear the water and the click of stones. Alexander said, “This water keeps getting through.”
“Plug the holes with moss and gravelly stuff.”
“I don’t believe in God, you know,” said Alexander.
Lanark blinked sideways and watched him wrenching clods from the bank. He said, “Oh?”
“He doesn’t exist. Grampa told me.”
“Which Grampa? Everyone has two.”
“The one who fought in France in the first war. Give me a lot of that moss.”
Without sitting up Lanark plucked handfuls from a dank mossy cushion nearby and chucked them lazily over. Alexander said, “The first war was the most interesting, I think, even though it had no Hitler or atomic bombs. You see, it mostly happened in one place, and it killed more soldiers than the second war.” “Wars are only interesting because they show how stupid we can be.”
“Say that son of thing as much as you like,” said Alexander amiably, “but it won’t change me. Anyway, Grampa says there isn’t a God. People invented him.”
“They invented motorcars too, and there are motorcars.”
“That’s nothing but words…. Shall we go for a walk? I can show you Rima, if you like.”
Lanark sighed and said, “All right, Sandy.”
He stood up while Alexander climbed out of the burn. Their clothes lay on a flat rock and they had to shake small red ants off them before dressing. Alexander said, “Of course my real name is Alexander.”
“What does Rima call you?”
“Alex, but my real name is Alexander.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Good.”
They walked down the burn to a place where it vanished into a dip in the moor. Lanark saw it fall from his feet down a reddish rock into a pool at the head of a deep glen full of bushes and trees, mostly birch, rowan and small oaks. A couple, partly screened by the roots of a fallen mountain ash, lay on some grass beside the pool. The woman seemed asleep and Lanark saw more of the man, who was reading a newspaper. He said, “That isn’t Sludden.”
“No, that’s Kirkwood. We don’t see Sludden nowadays.”
“Why not?”
“Sludden became too dependent.”
“Kirkwood isn’t?”
“Not yet.”
“Sandy, do you think Rima would like to see me?”
Alexander looked uncertainly into the glen, then pointed the other way saying, “Wouldn’t you like to walk with me to the top of that hill?”
“Yes. I would.”
They turned and walked uphill toward a distant green summit. Alexander flung himself down for a rest at the top of the first slope and did the same thing halfway up the next. Soon he was resting for two minutes every minute or two. Lanark said irritably, “You don’t need as much rest as this.” “I know how much rest I need.”
“The sun won’t hang around the sky forever, Sandy. And it bores me, sitting still so often.”
“It bores me walking all the time.”
“Well, I’ll go on at a slow steady pace and you catch up with me when you like,” said Lanark, standing up.
“Yah!” cried Alexander on a strong whining note. “You must be right all the time, mustn’t you? You won’t leave anyone in peace, will you? You have to spoil everything, haven’t you?” Lanark lost his temper, thrust his face toward Alexander’s and hissed, “You hate visiting the country, don’t you?”
“Have I been howling and whining like this all the time? If I hated the country I would have been, wouldn’t I?”
“No. You’ll hit me.”
“I certainly will not. Stand up!”
Alexander stood up, looking worried. Lanark went behind him, gripped his body under the armpits and with a strong heave managed to sit him on his shoulders. Staggering slightly he set off through a plantation of tiny fir trees. A minute later Alexander said, “You can put me down now.”
Lanark plodded on up the slope.
“I said you can put me down. I can walk now.”
“Not till … we leave … these trees.”
The weight at first had been so heavy that Lanark told himself he would only walk ten paces, but after that he went another ten, and then another, and now he thought happily, ‘I could carry him forever by taking ten steps at a time.’ But he put him down at the far side of the plantation and rested on the heather while Alexander hurried ahead. Eventually Lanark followed and overtook him on a ridge where heather and coarse brown grass gave place to a carpet of turf. The land here dipped into a hollow then rose to the steep cone of the summit. Alexander said, “You see that white thing on top?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a triangle point.”
“A triangulation point.”
“That’s right, a triangule point. Come on.”
Alexander started straight toward the summit. Lanark said, “Stop Sandy, that’s the difficult way. We’ll take this path to the right.”
“The straight way in the shortest, I can see it is.”
“But it’s the steepest too. This path keeps to the high ground, it will save a lot of effort.”
“You go that way then.”
“I will, and I’ll reach the top before you do. This path was made by sensible people who knew which way was the quickest.”
“You go that way then,” said Alexander and rushed straight down into the hollow.
Lanark walked up the path at an easy pace. The air was fresh and the sun warm. He thought how good it was to have a holiday. The only sound was the Wheep! Wheep! of a distant moorbird, the only cloud a faint white smudge in the blueness over the hilltop. In the hollow on his left he sometimes saw Alexander scrambling over a ridge and thought tolerantly, ‘Silly of him, but he’ll learn from experience.’ He was wondering sadly about Alexander’s life with Rima when the path became a ladder of sandy toeholes kicked in the steepening turf. From here the summit seemed a great green dome, and staring up at it Lanark saw an amazing sight. Up the left-hand curve, silhouetted against the sky, a small human figure was quickly climbing. Lanark sighed with pleasure, halted and looked away into the blue. He said, “Thank you!” and for a moment glimpsed the ghost of a man scribbling in a bed littered with papers. Lanark smiled and said, “No, old Nastler, it isn’t you I thank, but the cause of the ground which grew us all. I have never given you much thought, Mr. cause, for you don’t repay that kind of effort, and on the whole I have found your world bearable rather than good. But in spite of me and the sensible path, Sandy is reaching the summit all by himself in the sunlight; he is up there enjoying the whole great globe that you gave him, so I love you now. I am so content that I don’t care when contentment ends. I don’t care what absurdity, failure, death I am moving toward. Even when your world has lapsed into black nothing, it will have made sense because Sandy once enjoyed it in the sunlight. I am not speaking for mankind. If the poorest orphan in creation has reason to curse you, then everything high and decent in you should go to Hell. Yes! Go to Hell, go to Hell, go to Hell as often as there are vicitms in your universe. But I am not a victim. This is my best moment. Speaking purely as a private person, I admit you to the kingdom of Heaven, and this admission is final, and I will not revoke it.”
Near the top of the slope he began to grow breathless. The turf of the summit was broken by low gnarls of rock. The concrete triangulation pillar stood on one and Alexander was using it as a backrest. He had the air of man sprawling on a comfortable sofa in his own house and seemed not to see Lanark at first, then patted invitingly the rock beside him, and when Lanark sat down he leaned against him and they looked a long time at the view. In spite of their height the sea was only a soft dark line on the horizon. The land up to it was wide low hills given over to pasture, and there were strips of windbreak wood with half-reaped fields of grain in the valleys between. Lanark and Alexander faced a steep side of the hill which sloped straight down to a red-roofed town with crooked streets and a small ancient palace. This had round towers with conical roofs and a walled garden open to the public. Many figures were moving between the bright bushes and flowerbeds, and there was a full car-park outside. Alexander said, “It would be nice to go down there.”
“Yes.”
“But Mum might worry.”
“Yes, we must go back.”
They sat a little longer and when the sun was three-quarters across the sky they arose and descended to the moor by a path which led round a small loch. Two men with thick moustaches, one carrying a rifle, came up the path and nodded to Lanark as they passed. The rifle man said, “Will I shoot the delegate?” and the other laughed and said, “No, no, we mustn’t kill our delegate.”
Shortly after, Alexander said, “Some jokes make me tremble with fear.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be helped. Are you really a delegate?”
Lanark had been pleased by the recognition but said firmly, “Not now. I’m on holiday just now.”
The loch was embanked as a reservoir on one side and on the grass of the embankment a dead seagull lay with outspread wings. Alexander was fascinated and Lanark picked it up. They looked at the yellow beak with the raspberry spot under the tip, the pure grey back and snowy breast which seemed unmarked. Alexander said, “Should we bury it?”
“That would be difficult without tools. We could build a cairn over it.”
They collected stones from the shingle of the lochside and heaped them over the glossy feathers of the unmarked body. Alexander said, “What happens to it now?”
“It rots and insects eat it. There are a lot of red ants around here; they’ll pick it to a skeleton quite fast. Skeletons are interesting things.”
“Could we come back for it tomorrow?”
“No, it probably needs several weeks to reach the skeleton stage.”
“Then say a prayer.”
“You told me you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t, but a prayer must be said. Put your hands like this and shut your eyes.”
They stood on each side of the knee-high cairn and Lanark shut his eyes.
“You begin by saying Dear God.”
“Dear God,” said Lanark, “we are sorry this gull died, especially as it looks young and healthy (apart from being dead). Let there be many young, living gulls to enjoy the speed and freshness this one missed; and give us all enough happiness and courage to die without feeling cheated; moreover …” He hesitated. A voice whispered, “Say amen.”
“Amen.”
Something cold stung his cheeks. He opened his eyes and saw the sky dark with torn, onrushing clouds. He was alone with nothing at his feet but a scatter of stones with old bones and feathers between them. He said “Sandy?” and looked around. There was nothing human on the moor. The light was fading from two or three sunset streaks in the clouds to the west. The heather was crested with sleet; the wind whipped more of it into his face.
“Sandy!” he screamed, starting to run. “Sandy! Sandy! Alexander!”
He plunged across the heather, tripped and fell into darkness. He wrestled awhile with something entangling, then realized it was blankets and sat up.
He was in a square room with cement floor and tiled walls like a public lavatory. It seemed large, perhaps because the only furniture was a lavatory pan in one corner without seat or handle to flush it. He lay in the diagonally opposite corner on part of the floor raised a foot above the rest and covered with red linoleum. The door of the place had a metal surface, and he knew it was locked. He had a headache and felt filthy and was sure something dreadful had happened. He pulled the blankets around him and huddled up, biting the thumb knuckle and trying to think. His main feeling was of filth, disorder and loss. He had lost someone or something, a secret document, a parent, or his self-respect. The past seemed a muddle of memories without sequence, like a confused pile of old photographs. To sort them out he tried recalling his life from the start.
First he had been a child, then a schoolboy, then his mother died. He became a student, tried to work as a painter and became very ill. He hung uselessly round cafés for a time, then took a job in an institute. He got mixed up with a woman there, lost the job, then went to live in a badly governed place where his son was born. The woman and child left him, and for no very clear reason he had been sent on a mission to some sort of assembly. This had been hard at first, then easy, because he was suddenly a famous man with important papers in his briefcase. Women loved him. He had been granted an unexpected holiday with Sandy, then something cold had stung his cheek—
His thoughts recoiled from that point like fingers from a scalding plate, but he forced them back to it and gradually more recent, more depressing memories came to him.