Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [13]
I asked why he had not ignored it. He said cheerfully, “Descriptive purposes. Diseases identify people more accurately than variable factors like height, weight, and hair colour.”
He gave me the card and told me to take it back to the enquiry counter. And at the enquiry counter I was told to wait with the others.
The people waiting were of most ages, none well dressed and all (except some children playing between the benches) stupid with boredom. Sometimes a voice cried out, “Will Jones”—or another name—“go to box forty-nine,” and one of us would go to a cubicle, but this happened so rarely that I stopped expecting it. My eye kept seeking a circular patch of paler paintwork on the wall behind the counter. A clock had been fixed there once and been removed, I felt sure, because people would not have borne such waiting had they been able to measure it. My impatient thoughts kept returning to their own uselessness until they stopped altogether and I grew as unconscious as possible without actually sleeping. I could have endured eternity in this state, but I was roused by a woman who sat down beside me, a new arrival still in the restless stage. Her legs were encased in tight discoloured jeans and she kept crossing and recrossing them. She wore an army tunic over a plain shirt, and glittery earrings, necklaces, brooches, bangles and rings. Thick black hair lay tangled down her back, she smelled of powder, scent and sweat and she brought several of my senses to life again, including the sense of time, for she kept smoking cigarettes from a handbag which seemed to hold several packets. When she lit the twenty-third I asked how long they would keep us waiting. She said, “As long as they feel like it. It’s a damned scandal.”
She stared at me a moment then asked kindly if I was new here. I said I was.
“You’ll get used to it. It’s a deliberate system. They think that by putting us through a purgatory of boredom every time we ask for money we’ll come as seldom as we can. And by God they’re right! I’ve three weans to feed, one of them almost a baby, and I work to keep them. When I can get work, that is. But not everyone pays up the way they should, so here I am again. A mug, that’s what I am, a real mug.”
I asked what work she did. She said she did things for different people on a part-time basis and gave me a cigarette. Then she said, “Are you looking for a place to stay?”
I said I was.
“I could put you up. Just for a wee while, I mean. If you’re stuck, I mean.”
She looked at me in a friendly sideways assessing way which I found stirring. I liked her, she was pleasant to be with, yet she was the first woman I had met and I knew most of my lust came from loneliness. I thanked her and said I wanted something permanent. After a moment she said, “Anyway, a neighbour of mine, Mrs. Fleck, has just lost a lodger. You could get a room with her. She’s old but she’s not too fussy. I mean she’s very respectable, but she’s nice.”
I thought this a good idea, so she wrote the address and how to reach it on a used cigarette packet.
Someone shouted that I should go to box fifteen. I went there and was received by the bristling old clerk who returned the card saying, “Your claim is being allowed. Report to the cash desk for the money.”
I asked how long the money was meant to last. He said, “It should last until you find work, but if you spend it before then this card entitles you to present another claim, which we shall be obliged, in due course, to honour. Eventually. Have you any other questions?”
After considering