Lanark: a life in 4 books by Alasdair Gray Page A

“Rima! It’s me!”
    “So I see.”
    “Provost Dodd was looking for you.”
    “Who’s Provost Dodd?”
    The question seemed meant to stop conversation rather than aid it. He walked beside her, thinking of what he had seen of her friends in the bedroom. This memory no longer horrified. It combined with his words to the blond girl, with Gloopy’s disappearance and with the fog; it cast around her an odour of exciting malign sexual possibility. He asked abruptly, “Did you enjoy the party?”
    “No.”
    “What did you do?”
    “If you must know I spent most of the time in the bathroom with Gay. She was very sick.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Do you want to talk to me at all?”
    “No.”
    His heart and penis hardened in angry amazement. He gripped her arms and pulled her round to face him saying softly, “Why?” She glared into his eyes and yelled, “Because I’m afraid of you!”
    He was hit by a feeling of shame and weariness. He let her go, shrugging his shoulders and muttering, “Well, maybe that’s wise of you.”
    Half a minute later he was surprised to find her walking beside him. She said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be. Maybe I am a dangerous man.”
    She began laughing but quickly smothered this and slipped a hand through his arm. The light pressure made him calmer and stronger.
    They came to a street corner. The fog was very thick. A tramcar clanged past a few feet in front of them, but nothing could be seen of it. Rima said, “Where’s your coat? You’re shivering.”
    “So are you. I’d take you for a coffee but I don’t know where we are.”
    “You’d better come with me. I live nearby and I stole a bottle of brandy from the party.”
    “You shouldn’t have done that.”
    Rima withdrew her hand sharply and said, “You, are a very, big, wet, drip!”
    Lanark was stung by this. He said, “Rima, I am not clever or imaginative. I have only a few rules to live by. These rules may annoy folk who are clever enough to live without them, but I can’t help that and you ought not to blame me.”
    “All right, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You can make me apologize by breathing on me, it seems.”
    They turned the corner. Lanark said, “But I can frighten you too.”
    She was silent.
    “And I can make you laugh.”
    She laughed slightly and took his arm again.
    They seemed to enter a lane between low buildings like private garages. Rima unlocked a door, led him up a steep narrow wooden stair and switched a light on. Her austere manner and clothing had made Lanark expect a stark room. This room was small, with a sloping ceiling and not much furniture, but there were many sad little personal touches. Childish crayon sketches of unconvincing green fields and blue seas were fixed to the walls. There was the only clock Lanark remembered seeing, carved and painted like a log cabin, with a pendulum below and a gilt weight shaped like a fir cone. The hands were missing. A stringless guitar lay on a chest of drawers and a teddy bear sat on the bed, which was a mattress on the floor against the wall. Rima clicked the switch of the electric radiator, removed her coat and became busy with a kettle and gas ring in a cupboard-sized scullery. There were no chairs, so Lanark sat on the floor and leaned on the bed. The radiator heated the small place so quickly that he was soon able to remove his fog-sodden jacket and jersey, yet though his skin was warm he was still shaken from inside by spasms of shivering. Rima carried in two large mugs of black coffee. She sat on the bed with her legs folded under her and handed a mug to Lanark saying, “You probably won’t refuse to drink it.”
    The coffee flavour was drowned by the taste of sugar and brandy.
    Later Lanark lay back on the bed, feeling comfortable and slightly drunk. Rima, her eyes closed, rested her shoulders against the wall and cradled the teddy bear in her lap. Lanark said, “You’ve been kind to