Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [131]
“Won’t she find out?”
“No no. She’s managing a tearoom in Largs and her visits home are erratic, to say the least.”
Drummond took a knobbed cane in one hand and they set off for the ball.
Outside the lamps were lit and tramcars clanged and sparkled. A cryptic drama seemed unfolding throughout the city. An old woman and man argued quietly at a street corner watched by two little girls keeking round the corner of a lighted fruit shop. In a firelit room, seen through a ground-floor window, a man stood with a towel round his neck, shaving perhaps. Near the school they stepped into a room full of smoke, noise and people. Drummond forced a way to the bar and Thaw slid after him between backs and shoulders. Drummond handed him a large whisky and told him to knock it back in one. A blonde and a brunette leaned smiling toward Thaw and the blonde said, “Does your mother know you’re here?”
He said, “Mibby. She’s dead,” and turned away, pleased by his harshness. Drummond bought two cigars. They lit them, went out and marched up Sauchiehall Street issuing smoke like chimneys. Thaw was surprised to find the stares of the bypassers amusing. He began laughing violently but coughed violently instead.
“For God’s sake don’t inhale, Duncan!” said Drummond, slapping his back.
“There’s prestige in looking ridiculous with you, Aitken.”
The door of the annexe was thronged with people trying to buy tickets or bribe an entrance from the doorkeepers. Drummond and Thaw mounted the steps side by side, Drummond cleaving a path with his great axe-blade-edged nose, Thaw opening one with the pallid inclined carapace of his brow. Officials in exotic costumes shouted “It’s the Drummond!” “It’s the Thaw!” and cheerily ushered them in. The janitor gripped Thaw’s sleeve, drew him aside and indicated Drummond, saying, “Beware of that lad. When drunk he’s fit company for neither man nor brute.”
The triumph of arrival faded. He sat at the edge of the dance hall grinning unhappily at the revolving carnival of couples brushing past his knees, his eyes sucking visions of thighs and hips, fluttering breasts, throats and glances. Molly Tierney, dressed like an oriental dancing girl, spun gleefully in the arms of a white-robed Arab who was McAlpin and saluted Thaw with a raised forefinger. Suddenly two girls said “Hullo!” and sat on each side of him. “Don’t you recognize us?” asked the smaller girl on the left.
“I’m sorry, I’ve a poor memory for people.”
“You met us in the pub, don’t you remember?”
“Are you the girls who asked that question? No, I don’t remember your faces.”
“Why?” asked the girl on his right. “Did we look awfully hard and experienced?”
“Not at all,” said Thaw hurriedly. “Are you at the university?”
“No, the art school.”
“Are you in the first year?”
They laughed.
“No, the fourth.”
The pale girl said to the dark, “It makes you feel terribly ageing,” and then, to Thaw, “Why aren’t you dancing?”
“I’ve no sense of bodily rhythm.”
“Oh, we’ll soon teach you that,” said the dark girl, rising to her feet. She led him to a corner and showed him how to move his feet; then she took him onto the floor where he partnered her, feeling clumsy and apologetic and desperately wishing she was the pale girl; then she took him back and gave him to her friend. He felt the difference at once. Her body was firmer, supple without fragility, her hair was pale gold, drawn smoothly back from pale brows to the back of her head. She wore earrings made from small stones hung on thin chains, her dress was black with a square-cut neckline. Sometimes she spoke words directing his steps, sometimes words of congratulation. He looked straight into her eyes, imagined being married to her, thought of Molly Tierney and felt no regret at all. He thought, I’m being ridiculous, and kept looking in her eyes; the dark pupils grew very clear and her face and head became a dim white and gold shape around them. He thought, She’s like marble and honey, and shaped the words with his lips.