“… the conceived conceiving in mid conception …”
“….. inglorious Milton, guiltless Cromwell …..”
“Why inglorious? Why not guilty?”
“She came naked. That helped.”
Munro came over and stood at the bed’s foot regarding them gravely. He said, “I’ve arranged a meeting with Lord Monboddo three hours from now to authorize your departure from the institute. I had meant you to wait here till then but we’ve had an unexpected delivery of human beings. They’re in good condition, but feeble, and will die if someone puts them off their food. A nurse is bringing your clothes. You can dress and wait in the staff club.”
“No need,” said Lanark. “We wouldn’t spread our opinions in a case like this.”
Munro asked Rima, “Do you agree?”
“Of course, but I’d like to see the staff club.”
“If I can trust you I’d like you to stay here. This is a lonely ward and company would help the woman feel at home.”
Rima said brightly, “I’ll be delighted to help you, Dr. Munro, but will you do something for us? Get Monsignor Noakes to send more of his lovely food. It will be easy to not mention food when we have some.”
Munro walked away saying grimly, “I promise nothing, but I’ll do what I can.”
Lanark stared at her and said, “You are unscrupulous!”
She asked in a hurt voice, “Aren’t you glad I’m not like you?”
“Very glad.”
“Then show it, please.”
They heard the technicians and their apparatus leave the ward. Only a few doctors were busy behind the screens when a nurse came to Rima and Lanark with an armful of clothes and a couple of fat rucksacks and said, “Dr. Munro wants you to dress now. He says the rucksacks are full of food for your journey and you can start eating it when you like.”
Rima seized the female garments and stroked them with her fingertips. They were blond and velvety. A small excited smile curved her lips. She sprang naked from bed, saying, “I’ll dress in the bathroom.” She ran to the door at the end of the ward and Lanark examined the rucksacks. Each contained a rolled-up leather overcoat and hard little blocks of compressed fruit and meat wrapped in rice paper. One held a red thermos flask of coffee and a flat steel flask of brandy, the other a first-aid kit and an electric torch. Departure from this far too warm, too insulated place seemed disturbingly near. Lanark got up and carried his clothes to the bathroom.
Rima stood before a mirror, brushing her hair downward over a shoulder with slow, even strokes. She wore a short, amber-coloured, long-sleeved dress, and sandals of yellow leather, and Lanark stood half-hypnotized by her cool golden elegant figure. She murmured, “Well?”
He said, “Not bad,” and started washing at a basin.
“Why don’t you say I’m beautiful?”
“When I do you disparage me.”
“Yes, but I feel lonely when you don’t.”
“All right. You’re beautiful.”
He dried himself and began putting on a grey tweed suit and pullover. She tied her hair carefully with a dark yellow ribbon, looking sad and thoughtful. He kissed her and said, “Cheer up! You’re the light and I’m the shadow. Aren’t you glad we’re different?”
She pulled a face and went out, saying, “It’s hard to shine without encouragement.”
When he re-entered the ward, the doctors, nurses and screens had gone and Rima was talking to a woman in the corner bed. He joined them, noticing a small bald wrinkled head sticking from under a coverlet. The mother lay half sunk in a bank of pillows. Her body was slight, there were grey glints in her brown hair and youth and age were equally mingled in her gaunt little face. She smiled wanly and said, “It’s strange seeing you again, mystery man.”
He stared blankly. Rima said, “It’s Nancy. Don’t you remember Nan?”
He sat by the bed almost laughing with surprise. He said, “I’m glad you escaped from the Elite.”
He could not stop grinning. Since entering the institute he had forgotten Sludden and his harem, and now these tangled love-lives seemed wonderfully funny. He pointed at the cot. “You’ve a nice-looking baby.”
“Yes! Isn’t she like her father?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Rima gently. “Babies aren’t like people.
Who is the father anyway? Toal?”
“Of course not.”
“Then who is he?”
“Sludden.”
Rima peered at what was visible of the baby’s face.
“Are you sure?”
Nan smiled sadly. “Oh, yes. I wasn’t his fiancée, like Gay, or his vulgar mistress, like Frankie, or his clever mistress, like you. I was the poor little girl he had been kind to, but he loved me most, though I had to keep that a secret. Whenever I was tired of being neglected and tried to escape he would come to my lodgings and climb drainpipes and break in through windows. Sludden was tremendously athletic. He would hold me tight and tell me that though we’d slept together so often our lovemaking was still fresh and adventurous and it would be stupid to give it up because of the other girls. He said he needed all of you so that he could be lively with me. He was the first man I ever loved and I never really wanted anyone else, though I was always planning to leave him, before my illness got bad.”
“What illness?”
“I began to grow mouths, not just in my face but in other places, and when I was alone they argued and shouted and screamed at me. Sludden was very good with them. He could always get them singing in tune, and when we slept together he even made me glad of them. He said he’d never known a girl who could be pierced in so many places.”
Nan smiled in an almost motherly way and Lanark, with a pang of jealousy, saw the same soft, remembering look on Rima’s face. Nan sighed and said, “But they drove even Sludden away in the end (the mouths did), because as I grew worse I needed him more and he didn’t like that. He was going into politics and he had a lot to do.”
Lanark and Rima cried out together, “Politics?” and Rima said, “He always made fun of people who went into politics.”
“I know, but when you disappeared he replaced you with a protest girl, a big brassy blonde who played the guitar and kept telling us her father was a brigadier. I didn’t like her at all. She said we should prepare to seize the reins of the economy, and it was very important to care for people, but she always talked too much to listen to anyone. While she was speaking Sludden would wink at us behind her back. A lot of the Elite crowd went Protestant then. Hundreds of new cliques appeared with names and badges I can’t even remember. Even criminals wore badges. Suddenly Sludden came in wearing a badge and laughing his head off. He’d gone with the blonde to a protest meeting and been elected to a committee. He said we should all become protestants because nobody had confidence nowadays in Provost Dodd and we had a real chance of seizing the city. None of that made sense to me. You see I was pregnant and Sludden wouldn’t allow me near enough to tell him. When I managed it at last he grew very serious. He said it was a crime to bring children into the world before it had been redeemed by revolution. He wanted the baby killed before it was born but I wouldn’t allow that. Pass her to me, please.” Rima lifted the baby into Nan’s arms. It opened its eyes, gave a small mew of complaint and returned to sleep against her breast. She said,” He called me selfish, and he was right, I suppose. I had never known anyone who wanted me before I met Sludden, and now he didn’t want me at all, and I needed someone else, though the thought of the coming baby often made me quite mad and sick. I felt I was being crushed under a whole pile of women with Sludden jumping up and down on top, wearing a crown and laughing. Then the baby would move inside me and I would suddenly feel calm and complete. I was sorry for Sludden then. He seemed a frantic greedy child running everywhere looking for breasts to grab and mothers to feed him and who would never, never have enough. Did you feel that, Rima?”
Rima said shortly, “No.”
“Why did you like him
so much?”
“He was clever and amusing and kind. He was the only man among us who hadn’t a disease.”
Lanark said, “He had no disease because he was a disease. He was a cancer afflicting everyone who knew him.”
Rima snorted. “Huh, you don’t know who you’re talking about. Sludden liked you. He tried to help you, but you wouldn’t let him.”
Nan smiled. “You’re making Lanark jealous.”
“Oh yes, she’s making me jealous. But I can be jealous and correct.”
Rima said, “How did you get here, Nancy?”
“Well, I was in my lodgings when the pains began and I knew my baby was coming. I asked the landlord to help but he was frightened and ordered me out of the house, so I shut myself in my room and managed (I can’t remember how) to drag a heavy wardrobe in front of the door. That nearly killed me. The pains were so bad I fell down and couldn’t move. I was sure the baby had died after all. I felt I was nothing then, nothing and nobody, a nobody feeling nothing but horror, a piece of dirt as evil as the world. I suppose I screamed to get out because an opening appeared in the floor beside me.”
Lanark shuddered and said, “Going through that nearly killed me. I knew a soldier who jumped in with his revolver and was gored to death by it. I don’t see how a pregnant woman could survive at all.”
“But it was easy. It was like sinking through warm dark water that could be breathed. Every bit of me was supported. I still felt the labour pains but they weren’t sore, they were like bursts of music. I felt my little girl break free and float up to my breast and cling there. No, she must have drifted down for I was coming head first. I felt all kinds of muck flow out of me and vanish in the darkness. That darkness loved me. It was only when the light returned that the music became pain again and I fainted. That was a long time ago, and here I am, talking to you, in a lovely clean room.”
Lanark said abruptly, “You’ll be well cared for here.”
He rose and walked through the nearest archway. Nan’s story had recalled his own crushing descent in a way which made him long for sunlit landscapes of hill and water. Hopefully he raised the great Venetian blind, but the screen he had once thought a window was no longer there. In the centre of the wall, from floor to ceiling, was a double door of dark wood with panels of ornamental bronze. He pressed it but it was immovable, without handles or keyhole. He returned to the ward.
Nan breast-fed the baby and gossiped quietly to Rima. Lanark sat on his bed and tried to finish The Holy War but found it irritating. The writer was unable to imagine an honest enemy, and his only notion of virtue was total obedience to his strongest character. A nurse brought Nancy’s lunch. She only ate part and a moment later Lanark was startled to see Rima eat the rest, glancing at him defiantly between forkfuls. He pretended not to notice and nibbled a block of dense black chocolate from the rucksack. The sour taste was so unwelcome that he lay down and tried to sleep, but his imagination projected cityscapes on the insides of his eyelids: sliding views of stadiums, factories, prisons, palaces, squares, boulevards and bridges. Nancy and Rima’s conversation seemed like the murmur of distant crowds with fanfares sounding through it. He opened his eyes. The noise was not imaginary. An increasing din of trumpets shook the air. Lanark stood up and so did Rima. The trumpets grew deafening, then silent as a black and silver figure entered and stood under the central arch. It was a man in a black silver-buttoned coat, black knee breeches and white stockings. He wore white lace at the throat and wrists, silver-buckled shoes and a snowy periwig with a three-cornered black hat on top. He held a portfolio in his left hand and in his right an ebony staff tipped with a silver knob. His face was the most surprising thing about him for it was Munro’s. Lanark said, “Dr. Munro!”
“At the moment I am not a doctor, I am a chamberlain. Bring your rucksacks.”
Lanark slung a rucksack on his shoulder and carried the other in his hand. Rima said goodbye to Nan, who was comforting her crying baby. Munro turned and rapped his staff against the great doors, which clanged and swung inward. Munro led them through, Rima pressing against Lanark’s side. The doors closed.
CHAPTER 32.
Council Corridors
They were in a wood-panelled, low-ceilinged, circular room, thickly carpeted and smelling like an old railway carriage. An upholstered bench went round the wall and a mahogany pillar in the centre supported a bald bronze head wearing a laurel wreath. Munro said loudly, “The northern lobby.”
The head nodded and a faint rumbling began. Lanark realized they were in a carriage travelling sideways. Munro said, “The machinery joining the institute to the council chambers is rather antiquated. Take a seat, we’ll be some minutes here.”
They sat and Rima murmured, “Isn’t this exciting?”
Lanark nodded. He felt strong and sure of himself and thought that a lord president director could have frightened him once, but not now. He was too old. Munro was pacing round the pedestal and Lanark called out, “Where do we go when we’ve seen Lord Monboddo?”
“We’ll see what he says first.”
“But these rucksacks have been packed for a particular kind of journey!”
“You’re leaving at your own request, so you’ll have to travel on foot. It’s too late to discuss it now.”
The doors opened and someone dressed like Munro led in two plump men in evening dress. Soon after the lift stopped again and another chamberlain brought in a group of worried men in crumpled suits. The three chamberlains talked quietly by the pedestal while the rest babbled in clusters on the bench. “… not honouring us, it’s the creature he’s honouring …”
“His secretary is an algolagnics man.”
“….. but he’ll maintain the differential…..”
“If he doesn’t he’s opening the floodgates to a free-for-all.” Munro approached Lanark and said grimly, “Bad luck! I expected to have the director to ourselves but he’s receiving a deputation and conferring a couple of titles. He’s available for ten minutes, I’ll have to settle our business in three, so when we leave the lift stay close to me and say as little as possible.”
“But this meeting will shape our whole future!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.”
The doors opened and the chamberlains led them out onto such a bright floor that Lanark’s heart lurched, thinking he was in open daylight.
It was a floor of coloured marble inlaid in geometrical patterns. It was nearly a quarter of a mile across, but as the eye took in the height of the ceiling the width seemed insignificant. It was an octagonal hall where eight great corridors met below a dome, and looking down them was like looking down streets of renaissance palaces. The place seemed empty at first, but when his eyes got used to the scale Lanark noticed a great many people moving like insects about the corridor floors. The air was cool and, except for the remote sonorous echoes of distant footfalls, refreshingly quiet. Lanark looked around with open mouth. Rima sighed, slid her fingers out of his and stepped elegantly away across the marble floor. She seemed to grow taller and more graceful as she receded. Her figure and colouring blended perfectly with her surroundings. Lanark followed, saying, “This place suits you.”
“I know.”
She turned and walked past him, smoothing the amber velvet over her hips, her chin raised and face dreamy. Feeling excluded he stared around once more. Some benches upholstered in red leather lay about the floor and Munro sat on the nearest looking intently along a corridor, the staff and portfolio across his knees. Some distance behind stood a wooden medieval throne on top of three marble steps. The other chamberlains had brought their parties to it, and now the plump men in evening dress knelt side by side on the lowest step in an attitude of prayer. Close by, with folded arms, the deputation stood in a tight cluster. Their chamberlain was photographing them. Rima continued walking past Lanark in an aimless dreamy way till he said sharply, “It’s impressive, of course, but not beautiful. Look, at those chandeliers! Hundreds of ton
s of brass and glass pretending to be gold and diamonds and they don’t even light the place. The real light comes from behind the columns round the walls. I bet it’s neon.”
“You’re jealous because you don’t belong here.”
He was hurt by the truth of this and said in a low voice, “Quite right.”
She laid a hand on his chest and stared excitedly into his eyes. “But Lanark, we could live here if you wanted to! I’m sure they’d give you a job, you can be very clever when you try!
Tell Munro you want to stay. I’m sure it’s not too late!”
“You’ve forgotten there’s no sunlight here and we don’t like the food.”
Rima said wistfully, “Yes, I had forgotten that.”
She walked away from him again.
He sat beside Munro and tried to keep calm by looking up into the deep blue dome. It was painted with angels blowing trumpets and scattering blossoms around figures on clouds. He specially noted four ponderous horsemen on some puffs of cumulus. They wore Roman armour, curly wigs and laurel wreaths and managed the horses with their knees, for each held a sword in the left hand and a mason’s trowel in the right. On similar clouds facing them stood four venerable men in togas holding scrolls and queerly shaped walking sticks. Both groups were gazing at the height of the dome where a massive man sat upon a throne. His strong face looked benevolent, but something peering in it suggested he was shortsighted or deaf. The painter had tried to distract from this by loading him with impressive instruments. A globe lay in his lap and a sword across his knees. He held scales in one hand and a trowel in the other. An eagle with a thunderbolt in its beak hovered over his head and an owl looked out from under the hem of his robe. A turbaned Indian, a Red Indian, a Negro and a Chinaman knelt before him with gifts of spice, tobacco, ivory and silk. Lanark heard Munro ask, “Do you like it?”
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