Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [180]
He steps into a detached part of America. The seats seem upholstered in soft buffalo hide, the climate is five degrees above skin heat, somewhere a tiny orchestra is playing. The engine is inaudible and, once over the ferry, the lochs and mountains, like films projected onto the windows, pass backward at great speed. The driver, a taciturn man with a thick neck, asks Thaw where he’s heading. After a while Thaw says he’s going to Stirr. The lady says, “You may find Henry a little taciturn. There’s a blood clot in President Eisenhower’s brain and the market’s responding badly.”
Thaw shuts his eyes and dimly sees his father and sister in a grey field. Mr. Thaw holds out a skein of wool which his sister winds into a ball. When he opens his eyes it is dark and the car climbs a long winding drive to a building like Balmoral Castle but with a neon hotel sign on the front. He is breathless again. The lady says, “We’ve looked up Stirr on the map and you’ll never make it tonight. We’re going to stay here and we suggest you do the same. It’s a little expensive but—”
She is clearly going to make a generous suggestion so Thaw interrupts by saying that a good night’s rest is worth any expense. They all get out of the car and enter the hotel. At the reception desk he says he isn’t hungry and will go straight to bed. They bid him goodnight.
The hotel is vast and he is surprised by the smallness of his room. He is very breathless but gets into bed, takes two torpedo pills and sinks into sleep at once.
Twice or thrice next morning he dimly hears someone knocking and calling the time and he rises at last about eleven. He breathes easily but his mind is stupid, his body heavy. He has missed breakfast and takes coffee and toast uneasily in the corner of a huge lounge. He pays his bill at the reception desk and goes outside. The day is windy and overcast. A dislike of returning makes him unwilling to face the long drive-way; besides, the wind is pushing him the other way. He walks round the hotel and over some lawns, fingering the last half-crowns and coppers in his pocket. Passing a rectangular pool of waterli-lies he flings them in. A path leads through a rhododendron shrubbery to a gate onto a moor. He goes through.
The moor rises to a ridge between two rocky hills. There is no path, and sometimes the heather gives way to mossy patches where his feet sink and squelch. He takes two or three hours to reach the ridge and rests on the leeward side of an untidy heap of stones. The heather before him slopes down to the ocean, but a hump of it hides the shore. He sees arms of land dividing the grey water, some patched with fields, others rocky and sloping up into mountains. He thinks one might be Ben Rua. He notices that a nearby stone in the heap has a surface carved with words:
Upon
THIS SPOT
King Edward
had lunch after stalking
28th August, 1902
For some reason this seems funny and he laughs a lot but isn’t really happy. He takes another pill which makes him slightly happy, but not much, so he throws the rest away. The wind feels colder. He stands and idly consults the compass. The needle directs him downhill.
After walking for a while he sees the ground sloping away on each side as well as in front. He seems to be on a promontory, but the wind and the slope and his instinct make it easier to go on. The promontory ends in many little cliffs with slopes of heather and tumbled rocks between. Descent is easy at first, then he comes to steeper rocks and must scramble down gullies of loose stones that collapse and slide. He falls the last few yards and lies under boulders among withered bracken, thinking, I’m sore and don’t like it. There is a bleeding scratch along one leg and a shoulder aches. He feels sticky and sweating, his heart hammers and he thinks, I need a bath. He pulls off knapsack, coat, jacket, jersey, and then feels the cold and walks down a steep beach of big pebbles like stone eggs and potatoes. They slide awkwardly. He stumbles across