Lanark: a life in 4 books (57 page)

“Well?”

“We’ve still a long way to travel.”

She made a noise between a howl and a laugh and went on eating till nothing was left, then she uncorked the brandy flask, drank two mouthfuls and got up and staggered into the mist. He dimly saw her kneel at the roadside and heard vomiting sounds. She returned looking pale, lay down with her head in his lap and fell asleep at once.

The weight on his lap was comforting at first. Her face, childish in sleep, filled him with the tender, sad superiority we usually feel for the sleeping; but the road was hard, his position uncomfortable and he began to feel trapped. His thoughts kept exploring the road ahead, wondering how to escape from it. His muscles ached with the effort of keeping still. At last he kissed her eyelids until she raised them and asked “What’s wrong?”

“Rima, we must get away from here.”

She sat up and pressed her hair back with her hands.

“If you don’t mind I’ll just stay and wait for you to come wandering back.”

“You may wait a long time. I refuse to die at the door of a place where I’ve acted wickedly.”

“Wickedly? Wickedly? You use more meaningless words than anyone I’ve ever met.”

He wondered how to be soothing and said experimentally, “I love you.”

“Shut up.”

His anger rose to the surface. “I love the reckless way you abandon courage and intelligence whenever things get really difficult.”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

“Since we’re determined to behave badly, please pass the brandy.”

“No, I need it.”

He got to his feet and said, “Are you coming, then?”

She folded her arms. He said sharply, “If you need the first-aid box, you’ll find it in the rucksack.”

She didn’t move. He said humbly, “Please come with me.” She didn’t move.

“If you knock the door hard enough, somebody might open it.”

She didn’t move. He laid the torch beside her, said quickly, “Goodbye,” and walked away. He was descending the first hill in great strides when something punched his back. He turned and saw her, tearstained and breathless. She cried, “You’d have left me! You’d have left me alone in the fog!”

“I thought you wanted that.”

“You’re a cruel nasty idiot.”

He said awkwardly, “Anyway, give me your hand.”

They joined hands and all at once his body felt aching-feeble. He even lacked strength to hold her fingers. It was Rima who kept them together and moving along the road. He loathed her. He wanted to lie down and sleep so he disguised his staggers as a carefree way of walking and thought malignantly, ‘She’ll soon tire of dragging me along,’ but Rima continued for a great distance without complaining. At last, feeling lightheaded, he pretended to hum a tune to himself. She stopped and cried, “Oh, Lanark, let’s be friends! Please, please, why can’t we be friends?”

“I’m too tired to be friendly. I want to sleep.”

She stared at him, then her face relaxed into a smile. “I thought you hated me and wanted to get away.”

“At the moment that is perfectly true.”

She said cheerfully, “Let’s sit down. I’m tired too,” and sat on the road. He would have preferred the sand at the roadside but was too tired to say so. He lay beside her. She stroked his hair and he was almost sleeping when he felt something strange and sat up.

“Rima! This asphalt is cracked! It’s covered with moss!”

“I thought it was more comfortable than usual.”

He looked uneasily around and saw through the mist a thing which shocked him out of tiredness. A dark humped headless creature, about four feet high with many legs, stood perfectly still in front of them. The feet were gathered together and the legs bent as if to jump. Lanark felt Rima grip his shoulder and whisper, “A spider.”

His scalp tightened. There was a thudding in his ears. He stood up and whispered, “Give me the torch.”

“I haven’t a torch. Come away.”

“I’m going nowhere with that behind me.”

He took a breath and stepped forward. The dark body became a cluster of bodies, each with its own leg. He called happily, “Rima, it’s toadstools!”

A clump of big toadstools grew on the yellow line so that half the domed heads tilted left and the other half to the right. Lanark bent down and stared between the stems. They were rooted in a heap of rotten cloth with rusty buckles and a blistered blue cylinder in it. He pointed: “Look, the thermos flask! That pile of old clothing must be your rucksack!”

“Don’t touch! It’s horrible!”

“How did they come here? We left them beside the chariots. They can’t have crawled along the road to meet us.”

“Can any dreadful thing not happen here?”

“Be sensible, Rima. Strange things have happened here but nothing dreadful. This fungus is a form of life, like you and me.”

“Like you, perhaps. Not like me.”

Lanark was fascinated. Peering closely he moved round the cluster and felt his ankles brushed by something light.

“And, Rima, here’s ferns and grass.”

“What’s wonderful about grass?”

“It’s better than a desert full of rusty wheels. Come on, there’s a slope. Let’s climb it.”

“Why? My back’s sore, and you’re supposed to be tired.”

Beyond the toadstools the road vanished under an overgrown embankment. Lanark scrambled upward and Rima, grumbling, came after.

They climbed through gorse, brambles and bracken, feeling glad of the protective coats. The white mist faded until they emerged into luminous darkness under an immense sky of stars. They stood beside a ten-lane motorway which lay across the mist like a causeway across an ocean of foam. Vehicles were whizzing along too quickly to be recognized: tiny stars in the distance would suddenly expand, pass in a blast of wind, shrink to stars on the opposite horizon, and vanish. There was a thirty-feet-high road sign on the grassy verge:

: “Good,” said

Lanark happily. “We’re on the right road at last. Come on.”

“It seems a general rule that when I’m able to walk you feel exhausted and when I need a rest you keep dragging me along.” “Are you really tired, Rima?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. Me tired? What a strange idea.”

“Good. Come along, then.”

As they started walking a glow appeared on the misty horizon to their left and a globe of yellow light slid up into the sky from behind a jagged black mountain. Rima said, “The moon!” “It can’t be the moon. It’s going too fast.”

The globe was certainly marked like the moon. It swung upward across Orion, passed near the Pole Star and sunk down below the horizon on the far side of the road. A little later, with a piece of rim missing from one side, it rose again behind the mountain on the left. Rima stood still and said desperately “I can’t go on. My back hurts, my stomach’s swollen, and this coat is far too tight.”

She unbuttoned it frantically and Lanark stared in surprise. The dress had hung loose from her shoulders, but now her stomach was swollen almost to her breasts and the amber velvet was as tight as the skin of a balloon. She gazed down as if struck by something and said faintly, “Give me your hand.”

She pressed his hand against the lower side of her belly, staring wildly at his face. He had begun to say, “I feel nothing,” when his palm received, through the tense stomach wall, a queer little pat. He said, “Somebody is in there.”

She said hysterically, “I’m going to have a baby!”

He gaped at her and she glared accusingly back. He struggled to keep serious and failed. His face was stretched by a huge happy grin. She bared her teeth and shrieked, “You’re
glad!
You’re
glad!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

In a low intense voice she said, “How you must hate me….” “I love you!”

“… grinning when I’m going to have horrible pains and will split open and maybe die …”

“You won’t die!”

“… beside a fucking motorway without a fucking doctor in fucking sight.”

“We’ll get to Unthank before then.”

“How do you know?”

“And if we don’t I’ll take care of you. Births are natural things, usually.”

She knelt on the grass, covered her face and wept hysterically while Lanark started helplessly laughing, for he felt a burden lifted from him, a burden he had carried all his life without noticing. Then he grew ashamed and knelt and embraced her, and she allowed him. They squatted a long time like that.

CHAPTER 34.

Intersections

When he next looked at the sky a half-moon was sailing over it. He said, “Rima, I think we should try to keep moving.” She got to her feet and they started walking arm in arm. She said miserably, “It was wrong of you to be glad.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Rima. Listen, when Nan was pregnant she had nobody to help her, but she still wanted a baby and had one without any bother.”

“Stop comparing me with other women. Nan’s a fool. Anyway, she loved Sludden. That makes a difference.”

Lanark stood still, stunned, and said, “Don’t you love me?” She said impatiently, “I like you, Lanark, and of course I depend on you, but you aren’t very inspiring, are you?”

He stared at the air, pressing a clenched fist to his chest and feeling utterly weak and hollow. An excited expression came on her face. She pointed past him and whispered, “Look!”

Fifty yards ahead a tanker stood on the verge with a man beside it, apparently pissing on the grass between the wheels. Rima said, “Ask him for a lift.”

Lanark felt too feeble to move. He said, “I don’t like begging favours from strangers.”

“Don’t you? Then I will.”

She hurried past him, shouting, “Excuse me a minute!”

The driver turned and faced them, buttoning his fly. He wore jeans and a leather jacket. He was a young man with spiky red hair who regarded them blankly. Rima said, “Excuse me, could you give me a lift? I’m terribly tired.”

Lanark said, “We’re trying to get to Unthank.”

The driver said, “I’m going to Imber.”

He was staring at Rima. Her hood had fallen back and the pale golden hair hung to her shoulders, partly curtaining her ardently smiling face. The coat hung open and the bulging stomach raised the short dress far above her knees. The driver said, “Imber isn’t all that far from Unthank, though.”

Rima said, “Then you’ll let us come?”

“Sure, if you like.”

He walked to the cab, opened the door, climbed in and reached down his hand. Lanark muttered, “I’ll help you up,” but she took the driver’s hand, set her foot on the hub of the front wheel and was pulled inside before Lanark could touch her. So he scrambled in after and shut the door behind him. The cabin was hot, oil-smelling, dimly lit and divided in two by a throbbing engine as thick as the body of a horse. A tartan rug lay over this and the driver sat on the far side. Lanark said, “I’ll sit in the middle, Rima.”

She settled astride the rug saying, “No, I’m supposed to sit here.”

“But won’t the vibration … do something?”

She laughed.

“I’m sure it will do nothing nasty. It’s a nice vibration.”

The driver said, “I always sit the birds on the engine. It warms them up.”

He put two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them and gave one to Rima. Lanark settled gloomily into the other seat. The driver said, “Are you happy then?”

Rima said “Oh, yes. It’s very kind of you.”

The driver turned out the light and drove on.

The noise of the engine made it hard to talk without shouting. Lanark heard the driver yell, “In the pudding club, eh?”

“You’re very observant.”

“Queer how some birds can carry a stomach like that without getting less sexy. Why you going to Unthank?”

“My boyfriend wants to work there.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a painter—an artist.”

Lanark yelled, “I’m not a painter!”

“An artist, eh? Does he paint nudes?”

“I’m
not
an artist!”

Rima laughed and said, “Oh, yes. He’s very keen on nudes.” “I bet I know who his favourite model is.”

Lanark stared glumly out of the window. Rima’s hysterical despair had changed to a gaiety he found even more disturbing because he couldn’t understand it. On the other hand, it was good to feel that each moment saw them nearer Unthank. The speed of the lorry had changed his view of the moon; its thin crescent stood just above the horizon, apparently motionless, and gave a comforting sense that time was passing more slowly. He heard the driver say, “Go on, give it to him,” and Rima pushed something plump into his hands. The driver shouted, “Count what’s in it—go on count what’s in it!”

The object was a wallet. Lanark thrust it violently back across Rima’s thighs. The driver took it with one hand and yelled, “Two hundred quid. Four days’ work. The overtime’s chronic but the creature pays well for it. Half of it yours for a drawing of your girl here in the buff, right?”

“I’m not an artist and we’re going to Unthank.”

“No. Nothing much in Unthank. Imber’s the place. Bright lights, strip clubs, Swedish massage, plenty of overtime for artists in Imber. Something for everybody. I’ll show you round.”