Lanark: a life in 4 books by Alasdair Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

passed him. Lanark looked desperately round for Rima, then pushed to the door, stepped outside and closed it behind him.
    The hall was completely empty and silent. It was also rather cold. Lanark strolled up and down wondering what to do. He could not think why he had blurted such words to the blond girl, but he would go far to avoid anyone who had been in the room at that time, excepting Rima. Yet he had no wish to leave. His elbow itched and he wondered if a wash would cool it. There was sure to be a bathroom in the house, a tiled bathroom with clean towels warming on heated towel rails, and soap crystals, and sponges, and all the hot water he could use. There was no bathroom in his own lodgings, he had not bathed since arriving there, and now (feeling dirty inside and out) he thought a bath would be beautifully soothing. He walked to the end of the hall and climbed the softly carpeted stairs. The upper floors were in darkness and he found his way by light from the hall below. At the second landing a corridor began. Halfway along it a triangle of light was cast on the floor from an ajar door. He moved toward this, his steps silent in the thick carpet, then stopped and peeked through the narrow door-slit. A vertical ribbon of wallpaper was visible, the light on it flickering slightly. Lanark pushed the door wide and stepped through.
    The room was a library illuminated by a vivid fire burning beneath a carved mantelpiece. Above surrounding bookcases hung massive portraits with antique weapons crossed on the walls between them. There were many high-backed leather armchairs, and a standard lamp with a red silk shade shone beside one with a man getting up from it. He smiled at Lanark and said, “Why, it’s the writer! Come on in.”
    He was nearly seven feet high and wore a polo-necked sweater and well-cut khaki trousers and, though perhaps fifty, gave an impression of youthful fitness. He had a bronzed bald head with tufts of white hair behind the ears, a clipped white moustache and good-humoured, boyishly alert features. Lanark said awkwardly, “I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
    “Quite so. Not many of your crowd know me. Yet the whole place belongs to me. Funny, isn’t it? I often have a laugh about that.”
    “Does Sludden know you?”
    “Oh yes, Sludden and I are great buddies. What would you like to drink?”
    He turned to a sideboard with bottles and glasses on it.
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing? Well, sit down anyway, I want you to tell me something. Meanwhile I will pour myself … a drop … of Smith’s Glenlivet Malt. Here’s health.”
    The warm fire, the mild light, the host’s calm manner made Lanark feel this a pleasant place to relax. He sat in one of the chairs.
    The tall man returned with a glass in his hand, sat down and crossed his legs. He said, “What makes you chaps tick? What satisfaction do you, personally, get from being a writer?” Lanark tried to remember. He said, “It’s the only disciplined work I remember trying. I sleep better after it.”
    “Really? But wouldn’t you sleep better after other kinds of discipline?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”
    “And you’ve never thought of joining the army?”
    “Why should I?”
    “Because in a couple of terse, commonplace sentences you connected the ideas of work, discipline and health. So I suspect that, in spite of your association with sponges and leeches, you are still a vertebrate. Am I wrong?”
    Lanark thought about this for a while, then asked, “What use is the army?”
    “What use to society, you mean? Defence and employment. We defend and we employ. I believe you lodge with a woman called Fleck in a tenement beside Turk’s Head Forge.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Aha! There’s not much we don’t know. The point is that the Turk’s Head Forge produces components for our Q39. Industry is slack just now, as you may have noticed. If it wasn’t for the Q39 programme the Forge would have to close,