by Daniel Shand
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’
‘Aye.’
‘You still wanting to do that?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I reckon so.’
‘Well,’ I said, pushing myself up against the sofa bed and patting myself down with my good hand. ‘That’s an OK idea. Not bad at all. But the thing is, is that whatever you tell them, you’re going back inside. That’s how parole works. That’s how parole violation works. So as I said, it’s an OK idea.’
Mikey’s face crumpled.
‘Now,’ I went on, finding the item in my hip pocket. ‘As to a better idea, how about that?’
I flicked the piece of paper towards Mikey. He caught it between two fingers and inspected it. I might have realised how much I’d miss the boy when he was gone, but I hadn’t turned soft. I couldn’t let him go wandering back home, blethering away to anyone that’d listen about this, that, and the next thing. Oh no. Too much at risk for me.
‘You really think so?’ he asked, turning Isaac’s map over. ‘What if it’s bollocks?’
‘If it’s bollocks then we’ll have had a nice drive.’
‘Then we can go back?’
‘Then we can go back.’
We passed the rest of the crossing in silence. Mikey sat in the driver’s seat, looking at the crude map, and I put my head back on the sofa bed and closed my eyes. Isaac’s group, the Church of the authentic fucken Jesus, whatever it was called, had sounded mental. Absolutely cuckoo if they let a cunt like him join anyway. But. If they were mental, if they were God-bothering losers, then there was a good chance they weren’t up on criminal justice. They probably didn’t read the papers for anything other than counting up all the letters in a headline to see if they made 666.
A black cloud was entering me by the eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion or concussion. What was it they said? Sleep was bad for a concussion? Or maybe it was good. Cleared the old synapses out. It didn’t feel bad or sore, so I had to be safe. There was nothing I could do anyway. It was closing in fast.
11
We were outside Paisley when I woke, my body howling with pain. I stood up, struggling to walk along the moving van, and plonked myself into the front seat.
‘I didn’t know you could drive,’ I croaked.
Mikey nodded. ‘Aye. Got lessons inside. Never took the test though.’
‘Shite, really?’ I said. ‘Go and pull over. I’ll do it.’
He glanced at my arm, lying across my front like a dead fish, shook his head and laughed.
‘I suppose,’ I said, and winced from the pain speaking caused.
‘What is it you do with one of them?’ he asked. ‘Is it dislocated, aye?’
‘I dunno. Maybe.’ I gave my shoulder a gentle prod with my good hand and a bolt ran through it.
‘You’ll need to get it seen to. It’ll probably get poisoned or something if you leave it hanging.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Or it might set like that.’
The road took us skirting the mouth of the Clyde. The water was greenish and a gang of riverboats was parked up by the road.
‘Ha,’ laughed Mikey, pointing. ‘Like on that bairns’ programme.’
‘Rosie and Jim,’ I said.
‘Do you remember watching that?’
I did remember – Mikey sat on the arm of the couch beside me after school, even though we were too old for such rubbish.
‘Not really,’ I said.
We drove on, coming to a stop in a wee place nestled in the tail of Loch Lomond. We bought fish suppers for lunch and ate them in the van, parked by the water. It was good. I felt fond of my brother and I knew that if we kept on like this then we would be fine.
You could go two ways out of Balloch, west or east around the loch. Mikey studied Isaac’s map, the tip of his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth.
‘I mean,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t really show you roads or anything.’
‘No. That’s true.’
‘I think this is an… Is it an island?’
I took a look myself but couldn’t make any sense in the messy renderings of mulls and sea lochs.
‘I reckon we go this way,’ Mikey pointed, ‘around the top of the loch, then back down that side.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘That looks about right.’
We drove on, taking the eastern road. The day was clear and apart from my shoulder and a few other nagging aches I was in good spirits. I remembered hearing that a bad shoulder would work its way back in, with time.
‘Here,’ laughed Mikey, tapping the steering wheel. ‘What happened with those two? What did you tell them?’
I swallowed. ‘What two?’
‘Y’know? The American ones. That Louise, Lou-something, she was all right, eh?’
‘She was OK,’ I conceded.
‘I reckon you had a bit of a thing for her,’ he smiled. ‘Picking them up from the train station and that.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘All right, sorry. But so, what did you say to them?’
He glanced over a few times as I struggled to come up with a lie. What could I say? That I hadn’t mentioned it? That I hadn’t mentioned stealing a motor to come and find him? Or that I’d told them something else? But what?
‘Eh…’ I said. ‘Just that I was going for some messages.’
‘Messages,’ he said and nodded, once, and just like that the good feeling in the van went. We drove on in silence, him not believing me, me hating him for not believing me. Neither of us able to say a word.
The road took us tight against the loch’s east shore. I looked out over the water and tried to conjure up the king eel, but my heart just wasn’t in it. All I saw was the loch’s black surface and the low sky of brutish clouds, brilliant hazes of light shafting through.
We drove on until we ran out of road. Mikey turned and we went back the way we had come.
‘Might have taken a wrong turn,’ he said.
We came through a place called Drymen and went further east. We drove through lush fields, greener than you could imagine. So wet, so alive. Whichever way you looked the horizon was ringed by swollen mountains, closing in.
‘You sure this is the way?’ I asked, eventually.
‘Aye, I am. Well, pretty sure. We go up this way.’ He pointed at the oncoming road. ‘Swing round the top of the loch and down.’
‘All right,’ I said.
Half an hour later we were approaching a suspiciously large town, the fields giving way to housing estates and roundabouts. A road sign confirmed it, welcoming us to Stirling.
‘Fucken Christ,’ I said.
‘Aye, aye,’ muttered Mikey. ‘I know.’
Back we went. Back west. We were losing the day with all the fannying around. Back to Drymen and another try at going up and around the loch. Once again we ran out of road. It petered away in a land of rocky ochre hills and cold bodies of water.
‘What are you playing at?’ I said as the end of the road approached and the emptiness beyond opened up.
‘It’s a fucken hard map to follow,’ he said.
‘I know, but still!’
He pushed his fingertips into his eyes with frustration. ‘This country,’ he growled. ‘How can it be so hard to get about in this fucken country?’
‘Don’t blame the country. It’s not the country’s fault.’
‘No wonder it’s such a shit hole when you can’t even get from A to fucken B.’
He parked and went outside to blow off some steam. I opened up the back of the van and sat in the doorway, struggling to roll my fag. Once it was done I smoked it and watched him rampage up and down in impotent fury. I was too angry myself to laugh at the performance.
In the end we decided to camp where we were and try to get back to Balloch in the morning. Try going up the west side instead. There were some meagre rations in the van and we still had our gas stove.
I did my best with setting up the stove but Mikey had to take over. He rooted out the supplies we’d taken from the old man’s house and dispensed two tins of beans into the saucepan.
After dinner we went for a walk around the loch, turning back halfway because my arm was hurting too much. We went to bed early, out of boredom. Mikey pulled the sofa bed apart and we went down for the night. I slept on my right side to help with the pain.
I woke to a strange sound. It was like running water or bells. Light and tinkling. I pulled myself out of bed and opened the curtain. There was another van parked up beside us with a young man working away inside. A woman and a little girl were making their way across the grass to the loch, the little girl’s laugh ringing out,
I opened the van door and stepped out. The man looked and I nodded. He nodded back. After some coughing, I rolled myself a fag and leaned on the bonnet of the van, looking out at the loch. That was the time to see nature, first thing. The water was full of lights and the sky and the land were fresh and empty. There was the slightest chill in the air that would soon disperse.
I watched the woman and the girl as they wandered down to the shore. The girl was about five or six, the woman maybe mid-thirties. They stood at the edge of the water and I could tell they were chatting to each other. Then the girl took off, into the water and the woman was trying to get her to come out, but also laughing.
I never understood the appeal in children. We had a couple of cousins growing up, Kevin and Darryl. Our mother’s brother’s bairns. I remembered them being hideous wee lumps, especially the younger one. He had them gummy eyes and a slimy mouth and he squinted at everyone. But his mother thought he was the best thing she’d ever seen, which is what I could never understand. They said that when you had a bairn your brain or your body pumped out a load of these chemicals that made you think it was great, the baby, despite being all weird and dirty.
There were a lot of things like that. Things I struggled with understanding. The way that people sat and talked to each other about nothing at all, nothing important, nothing urgent. Just blethering. What was the point? What did that get you? Nothing, was the answer.
I watched the little girl play in the water and after a while the man came out of their camper and joined me, leaning on the bonnet of his own vehicle.
‘She’s some lassie,’ he said, nodding to his daughter.
‘Aye.’
‘Whatever you say, she does the opposite.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Here, how is this for a site? We saw your van and thought it must be allowed.’
I shook my head. ‘We’ve only been here a night. Probably heading off later.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Right.’
I heard movement from inside our van, Mikey waking. I laughed, loudly, at the man’s comment to let Mikey know I was talking to someone and to stay inside.
‘You all right?’ asked the man, confused.
‘Aye, I’m fine.’
‘That laugh,’ he said.
‘It was funny, what you said.’
‘Was it?’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Best of luck.’ I smiled at him and slipped back into our van.
Mikey was on the edge of the bed, bamboozled with sleep. His hair stuck out at the back from how closely I’d cut it.
‘Who was that?’ he whispered.
‘Just some wankers. Tourists. A couple and a wee lassie.’
He nodded and then frowned. ‘A wee lassie?’
‘Aye.’
He ran his fingers through his hair and stubble and into the cracks of his creased eyes. ‘A wee lassie,’ he whispered.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘No problem.’ He looked around the van, humming and hawing. He shoogled his knees. ‘Shall we get going then?’
I sat down in the passenger seat, and twisted round to face him. ‘What’s the rush? Don’t you want some breakfast or that before we head off?’
‘Nah, I don’t think so. I fancy heading off early. Hitting the road like soonish.’
I nodded. ‘All right, if you say so.’
He jumped up with my permission and pulled his jeans on, hurrying to get the van started up. We turned it around and I could see the girl and her mother returning from the water, carrying a clear bag with water inside. The man waved at us as we took off and once we were away down the road Mikey let out a sigh.
‘What’re you sighing at?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t sighing. It was a yawn.’
‘It sounded like a sigh,’ I insisted. ‘Like you were relieved.’
‘Nope,’ he said.
Our mother used to ask Mikey whether if I jumped off a bridge he would do the same. She was saying that he always copied me, that he looked up to me, that he did what I told him. As far as I could remember this was correct. When we played soldiers in the gardens I was always the sergeant and he was the private. I even remembered us playing trucks, on the living room floor. Mikey having the best truck, the shiny red one, and me holding out my hand for him to give me it, and he did. No words were exchanged, just the truck.
We drove straight through Balloch then up the west side of Loch Lomond. The water was still and calm, with the hills on the far side reflected completely in the surface. At a point where the loch narrowed the road split in two and we took the left way, cutting across to the head of yet another body of water. I checked the napkin map. It looked like we were on the right track. We would go south and through Garelochhead and then we would be close to this Very Heaven, whatever it was.
Once we were through the town we started to see barbed wire fences springing up on either side of the road.
‘What’s all that?’ Mikey wondered, nodding at the fencing.
‘Not sure,’ I admitted.
Grey hulking buildings began to form behind the fences. They looked like abattoirs or prisons. They made you feel cold.
‘This is weird,’ said Mikey. ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’
‘No. Me neither.’
We crossed a roundabout and a sign read HM Naval Base Clyde.
‘Oh,’ said Mikey, pointing at the sign as he negotiated the roundabout. ‘So it’s the army or something. That makes sense, with the barbed wire and that.’
‘The navy.’
‘Aye. The navy.’
Something about the name stuck in my mind. There was something significant about it. Then I remembered. ‘Christ,’ I said. ‘I know what this is. This is where they keep all the mad nuclear stuff. The nuclear subs and that.’
‘Nuclear subs?’
‘Like a submarine and it’s got nuclear weapons in it. Like the A-bomb and that.’
‘Oh,’ said Mikey. ‘Christ.’
I checked the map. Isaac was directing us south of there, so we kept going. The navy base was marked on the map with a skull and crossbones. The granite edifices died away and the road took us along by the water once more.
‘That place gave me the willies,’ Mikey said.
‘I know,’ I said, watching them vanish in the rear view mirror. ‘There is something off about it.’
‘Woah. Look at this.’
My attention snapped ahead. Hanging from the trees on the left side of the road was a large scarecrow or guy. It wore multi-coloured garments and had an afro wig on. The sign around its neck read SHUN THE MEGATON.
‘What’s that all about?’ Mikey wondered.
I said that I didn’t know. It looked like a protest of some sort, probably to do with the nuclear weapons housed behind us. I could only assume that someone had strung it up there as a warning. We kept on going and further down the road another sign appeared, nestled in the branches of trees: HONEST INTENTIONS PEACE CAMP.
‘Peace camp,’ Mikey read. ‘Is this us?’
‘I think it must be.’
‘Here we go,’ he said, turning left into the trees and onto a narrow path. There were signs and mad little figures dotted along either side of us. Mannequins dressed up in suits like
politicians, holding plastic automatic rifles in their stiff arms. Bedsheets hanging between branches saying stuff like BAIRNS NOT BOMBS and ATOMIC DEATH. At the top of the path was an open area where we parked. A small wooden bridge led away from us, further into the woods.
‘You sure this is a good idea?’ he asked me.
I looked out into the trees with the hanging sheets. ‘Aye,’ I said.
Mikey gave me a woeful look and slunk out of the van. I followed him and we wandered across the footbridge. There was bunting strung along the path to lead the way. The trees around were thick and old, green-barked with moss and lichen. The wind carried a soft tune that sounded like it was being played on a flute of some kind. I could smell a wood fire too.
We passed a clearing where the trees had been chopped away. There was a group of three men working, sawing wood and digging foundations. They stopped when they noticed us watching.
One of them held a hand up. ‘Afternoon brothers,’ he called.
‘All right?’ I shouted back.
‘Here for a visit?’ asked another.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, you’re very welcome,’ said the first.
‘What’re you building?’ asked Mikey.
The second man laughed. ‘Only the very first official church for the congregation.’
‘Oh,’ said Mikey. ‘Right.’
‘We can show you,’ said the man. ‘There’s proper blueprints and everything.’
Mikey shook his head. ‘You’re all right.’
I gave them all a thumbs up and we kept going along the twisting path. The sound of human voices was growing louder and we were catching glimpses of people moving around ahead.
Mikey tucked his chin into the collar of his anorak.
A few heads turned when we entered the clearing but no one was concerned by our arrival. You would have struggled to notice two new faces amongst the hubbub we emerged into – a mass of moving people, a wild circle of tents enclosing them all. The sharp divide in the peoples of the camp struck me immediately. Some were what we used to call crusties, meaning lots of dreadlocks and baggy pyjama bottoms and small beards and jewellery. The rest were dressed in what could only be described as robes. Identical magnolia robes. The camp was also split in two – one side a messy bazaar of tents, different sizes and colours, festooned in flags and banners and signs. The other side was cleaner and starker, an arc of canvas yurts.