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By Root 1264 0

up a steep narrow wooden stair and switched a light on. Her austere manner and clothing had made Lanark expect a stark room. This room was small, with a sloping ceiling and not much furniture, but there were many sad little personal touches. Childish crayon sketches of unconvincing green fields and blue seas were fixed to the walls. There was the only clock Lanark remembered seeing, carved and painted like a log cabin, with a pendulum below and a gilt weight shaped like a fir cone. The hands were missing. A stringless guitar lay on a chest of drawers and a teddy bear sat on the bed, which was a mattress on the floor against the wall. Rima clicked the switch of the electric radiator, removed her coat and became busy with a kettle and gas ring in a cupboard-sized scullery. There were no chairs, so Lanark sat on the floor and leaned on the bed. The radiator heated the small place so quickly that he was soon able to remove his fog-sodden jacket and jersey, yet though his skin was warm he was still shaken from inside by spasms of shivering. Rima carried in two large mugs of black coffee. She sat on the bed with her legs folded under her and handed a mug to Lanark saying, “You probably won’t refuse to drink it.”

The coffee flavour was drowned by the taste of sugar and brandy.

Later Lanark lay back on the bed, feeling comfortable and slightly drunk. Rima, her eyes closed, rested her shoulders against the wall and cradled the teddy bear in her lap. Lanark said, “You’ve been kind to me.”

She stroked the old toy’s head. Lanark tried to think of other words. He said, “Did you come to this town long ago?”

“What does ‘long’ mean?”

“Were you very small when you came?”

She shrugged.

“Do you remember a time when days were long and bright?” Tears slid from under her closed lids. He touched her shoulders.

“Let me undress you?”

She allowed this. As he unfastened her brassière his hands met a familiar roughness.

“You’ve got dragonhide! Your shoulderblades are covered!”

“Does that excite you?”

“I have it too!”

She cried out harshly, “Do you think that makes a bond between us?”

He shook his head urgently and placed a finger on her lips, feeling that words would move them farther apart. His anxiety to be tender to someone who needed and rejected tenderness made his caresses clumsy, until genital eagerness sucked thought out of him.

He felt relieved afterward and would have liked to sleep. He heard her rise briskly from his side and start dressing. She said curtly, “Well? Was it fun?”

He tried to think then said defiantly, “Yes. Great fun.”

“How nice for you.”

A nightmare feeling began to rise around him. He heard her say, “You’re not good at sex, are you? I suppose Sludden is the best I’ll ever get.”

“You told me that you didn’t …. love …. Sludden.”

“I don’t, but I use him sometimes. Just as he uses me. He and I are very cold people.”

“Why did you let me come here?”

“You wanted so much to be warm that I thought perhaps you were. You’re as cold as the rest of us, really, and even more worried about it. I suppose that makes you clumsy.” He was drowned in nightmare now, lying on the bottom of it as on an ocean bed, yet he could breathe. He said, “You’re trying to kill me.”

“Yes, but I won’t manage. You’re terribly solid.”

She finished dressing and slapped his cheek briskly saying, “Come on. I can’t apologize to you again. Get up and get dressed.”

She stood with her back against the chest of drawers, watching while he slowly dressed, and when he finished she said inexorably, “Goodbye, Lanark.”

All his feelings were numbed but he stood a moment, staring stupidly at her feet. She said, “Goodbye, Lanark!” and gripped his arm and led him to the door, and pushed him out and slammed it.

He groped his way downstairs. Near the bottom he heard her open the door and shout “Lanark!” He looked back. Something dark and whirling came down on his head, heavily enfolding it, and again the door slammed. He dragged the thing off and found it was a sheepskin jacket with the fleece turned inward. He hung this on the inside knob of the bottom