These Demented Lands

by Alan Warner

  When I materialised front-of-shop and declared, ‘I’m looking for The Drome Hotel, that one with the graveyard beside,’ The Harbour coughed and the telly-aerial repairers stared at me. I took the dried clothes to dress the girl and when we returned The Harbour cleared his throat again and goes, ‘Yonder is Brotherhood’s domain.’

  ‘Brotherhood. Brotherhood?’ I says the name.

  ‘That’s a right weird place out yon, we’d never dream of holing up in it.’

  There was a good bit silentness.

  The Tall went, ‘Who’s Brotherhood?’

  ‘He arrived back here piloting on old PBY flying boat; all these French hippy chicks were on board; anchored offof The Outer Rim Hotel, the girls sunbathing up on the wings, diving off then swimming in for lemonades . . .’

  ‘The Sanctions Buster we called him back then, account of his carry-ons down in Africa there; his Dad kept good health and was running The Drome as a decent . . .’

  The Harbour laughed and goes, ‘Brotherhood’s forgotten dream. Young men’s dreams that pepper out: of setting up an island casino at The Drome with Folies Bergère girls; punters choppered in.’ The Harbour snorted, shook his head in sort of despair, ‘What he’s got is as close as he can get to the pimp he wants to be.’

  The Tall and me looked at the Harbour in sort of appeal. I goes, ‘What’re you meaning?’

  ‘You’ll be seeing . . . soon enough, soon enough.’

  We stepped outside under the rattling lampshade. The Harbour says, ‘You wonnie be needing your kitbag less you plan leaving us, and if that Devil’s Advocate doesn’t show soon we’ll be needing all heads we can get along the shores.’

  I went, ‘Far is it to The Drome?’

  ‘Don’t think about it, lassie. Fifteen mile as crow flies. Over The Interior. Twenty-five round the coast road. On a Saturday night, now, you could get The Disco Bus that circles, gathering all the young ones for their dancing at The Outer Rim. It’s a hell of a sight, yon, on the way back, but none’s brave enough to get aboard; even High-Pheer-Eeon who swims over from Mainland on his hunting and scavenging missions was found locked in the boot at the garage one Monday morning: Turns out he’d been using the boots to move round the island for weeks, too feart to go upstairs.’

  I began to cross the Slip with the little girl’s hand in mine. ‘Now how do you get home?’ I goes.

  ‘You ring the little lectric bell for The Kongo Express.’

  ‘Nah, seriously honey.’

  Then we came to the top of the slipway:

  It was only months later I’d read His pages, typed on the toy Fisher-Price typewriter, pages dated Wednesday seventeenth, Thursday twenty-second and Friday twenty-third. His . . . pages, the one they called the Aircrash Investigator, or the Failed Screenwriter, or the Man From The Department of Transport, even a name: Walnut or Warmer, though one night in The Heated Rooms when I pressed him he says his name was Houlihan. I read in his pages that never had the months, just the useless, mixed-up dates, how he came ashore as a Foot Passenger from the big Weekend-Only car ferry, and of course his eye saw the dent in the bottom right-hand corner of the road sign, where a provisions truck coming off the Slip must have clipped it one.

  Editor’s note: torn text glued to manuscript:

  WEDNESDAY 17TH

  if that was his concept of the devil it certainly wasnt mine. My eye lighted on the bashed road sign back at the landing jetty. In its lower right corner it had taken an impact so I stood on tiptoe to squint. It was a forward impact of about ten miles per hour, traces of a green, metal-based paint remained embedded in the reflective coating at the edges of the laceration where the impact had not chipped the insect-eye reflective coating. By examining the crease-lines on the rear of the sign I could tell the impact had been less of a factor than the weight of the vehicle behind it . . . a faster impact would have left less stress-bearing marks in the tensile areas, however the proximity of the edge had allowed the forward impact forces to bleed off the sign. Had impact occurred closer to the centre of the sign, which is free-standing, fixed to two hollow aluminium poles embedded in sea-decayed concrete, the entire sign could have collapsed. By the sudden rightward movement of the impact scar I could tell the vehicle had shifted to the right. By calculating graze depth and presuming aluminium contact without the aid of lab tests (by which I calculated the forward impact speed) I estimate an impact speed of 9.463 m.p.h. and a contact time of 3.768 seconds though it would be difficult to take these results seriously without more time at the site but I’d the disco bus to catch. My calculations are shown on the 22nd and the 23rd. I noticed a 45-gallon drum with an interesting smash in the side but I couldnt be bothered.

  I like that sentence: where a provisions truck coming off the Slip must have clipped it one.

  Beyond the sign, the little girl tugged me to the left and we passed a HISTORIC CASTLE symbol road sign, down a path we came to a railway station but, the weird thing was, it was a miniature station I saw emerging out the dark as the girl pressed the buzzer. The roof of the station only came to my chin and I could see the close-togetherness of the little rails of the track and out the dark wind that moved the looming spruce trees at their tops, came a miniature train with KONGO EXPRESS writ on a brass plate at the front.

  ‘Aye-aye. Wanting dropped anywhere?’ The driver looked at me. ‘Niagara Falls, Mount Kilimanjaro, Makarikari Salt Pans?’ he yelled out a laugh.

  ‘The boat sunk,’ I says.

  ‘Watch out for snakes and tigers,’ he shrieked, then he shrugged like as if to say sorry, ‘It all reminds her ladyship of the good times, when she was beautiful.’

  ‘Can I sleep in the princess’s tower?’ the girl, who had sat in the little coach behind the driver, covered his eyes with her hands.

  ‘Do you know of the man Brotherhood?’

  The driver says, ‘John Brotherhood, the Sanctions Buster. He sailed in a rusty old minesweeper – that’s how he got started; he was innocent then, and of the crew only Brotherhood and the Captain didn’t get seasick. They drank two bottles of rum a day. When they approached those white beaches, Brotherhood stepped out of the bridge; mosquitoes like he’d never heard were whining past his ears then the minesweeper mounted the sand and the hull opened up as a whole invasion force of government soldiers poured up the beach to the palms. The soldiers had been hidden down there in their own vomit for a week. Then Brotherhood realised the whizzing past his red ears were bullets and he was viewed as part of the invasion force. “I thought you knew,” the Captain said, crouched on the decking. “Welcome to Africa.”’

  ‘Caaan I?’ the girl goes.

  ‘You must ask Mother,’ went the driver.

  I says, ‘Crossing The Interior to The Drome. What way?’

  ‘Past the mud huts, try not to wake the baboons.’

  ‘Byeee.’ The little girl took away one hand to wave and the miniature train did a circle till its red light jerked and shaked away down the little track, its redness showing on the rails before it dived into a tunnel that seemed made of papier mâché. I trod on along the track, through the silly wee tunnel and round another bend. When I turned right onto open hillside the king baboons must’ve seen me cause they started such a commotion, and this in turn got all the bloody parrots along at the castle going bonkers.

  Bended double like the clans at Culloden stepping into the end, I traversed bensides ever upwards. I climbed straight through steady blackout – the sodden Levi’s going stiff on both thighs with the perishingness – knowing always, hung up in some place of aboveness like a cyan-coloured censer swinging in the wind, snugged up in the clam of a scree-clagged corrie, was the campfire: the campfire with its angle of floor that had let me see it when I swam out in the Sound but hid from view deep down at the sole bulb of Ferry Slipway below.

  When I came on them it was sudden. The campfire lifted up out of the darknesses as I heave-heaved up a bank. I ducked down though I knew from the fire area, against nightsky, I’d be invi
sible.

  Two guys – old, kind-of-harmless-looking-slack-jowelled-brotherly-baldiness made you trust them, as if one could never do anything bad in the always-look of his brother. But it was beyond them, it was lying within the light of the fair-old-bleeze. I squinted, made sure I was seeing what I was but I was so cold I stepped into their light and both men swung and looked at the coffin sitting beside them on the fold-down trestles before they bothered turn and begin to study me.

  ‘Aye-aye,’ coughs one of the brothers.

  ‘Come away hence and form a square circle, girl.’

  ‘Aye, let the dogs see the rabbit,’ says the First Spoken.

  ‘Where the hell’ve you been? Specting you for hours,’ says the Most Baldy, pretend-annoyedly; he nicked a peek at First Spoken who let out a honky laugh.

  ‘Busy the night.’ (Gasped, glancing round.)

  ‘Rush hour . . .’

  ‘Off our feet . . .’

  ‘Visitors are such a strain.’

  I lowered myself beside the flames and looked into them, smiling; I announced: ‘I cross the Interior to The Drome.’

  ‘We go the other way. To open ocean. The three of us,’ First Spoken spat into the fire. ‘Guess what we’ve buried under that hearth? A fat clucky hen snaffled from old Gibbon’s Acres wrapped in silver foil. Ready in . . .’ (his watch clicked down as he flicked a wrist) . . . ‘just a jiffy.’

  ‘Know how to catch a chicken?’ asked Most Baldy.

  I goes, ‘Nut.’

  ‘You catch em at night,’ cackled First Spoken.

  ‘They cannae see in the dark!’

  ‘Cannaesseeeeee!’

  ‘Would you like a wee bite chicken?’

  I goes, ‘Oh yess I would. Yum-yummy.’

  ‘Alexander. I hope you’ve polished the silver.’

  ‘It was bloody parrot last night and never again.’

  ‘Can I ask?’ I looked across at the dark oak coffin on trestles.

  ‘Scrawny creature. A parrot steak.’

  ‘Dad,’ nodded the First Spoken.

  I nodded back.

  ‘We promised him he’d be buried at sea . . .’

  ‘And when he went from us a week on Tuesday we go and find you have to book years in advance for a burial at sea with the navy.’

  ‘And him on the convoys all those years, is that not right, Alexander?’

  ‘And of course all kinds of rules and red tape about doing your own bloody burial at sea . . .’

  ‘Money makes no difference.’

  ‘“Nae pockets on a shroud, boys.”’

  ‘That’s what he always told us, “Nae pockets on a shroud,” so we’re burying him at sea ourselves, on the other side of the island; we have to cross to The Inaccessible Point, and cause it’s inaccessible we have to take him in on foot.’

  ‘And we’ll need a boat to take him right out to sea when we get there . . .’

  ‘Cast him off on the last voyage; right far out so the wood coffin doesnt float him back in . . .’

  I says, ‘Have you heard of a man called the Argonaut?’

  ‘Him in the kayak? We couldn’t trust Father to a one like yon.’

  Just then a sound came from the coffin, I swung round towards it. It was coming from the insides of the coffin, it was the purrr, purrr, purrr of a cellnet phone.

  ‘It’s Dad’s.’

  ‘He asked to be buried with it . . .’

  ‘He was very attached to it . . . never out of his right hand . . .’

  ‘It’s still in it . . .’ the First Spoken muttered.

  Most Baldy turned away from me to the First Spoken and went, ‘That’ll be old McKercher after his fee,’ he looked at me and says, ‘Our accountant.’

  The phone stopped ringing and after a silence the First Spoken produced a packet of Chesterfields that he offered round. I shook head and goes, ‘I’ve recently quit, thanks.’ Most Baldy took and they lit up offof the fire. Some spits of rain started to come down.

  ‘Contrary to speculation, these are what James Bond smoked,’ goes the First Spoken.

  The Second Spoken: Most Baldy, says, ‘I am not James Bond nor was meant to be,’ he stood and crossed over towards the coffin where a large sheet of polythene was folded; he picked it up and shook it out so’s it made a big crackling noise. We were all looking over at the coffin: on its varnished side, bolted on, was a white metal plate with the black letters reflecting in the campfire’s unsteady light:

  DAD 007

  ‘What’s that number thing fixed to the side?’ I goes.

  ‘It’s the personalised number plate from his Jaguar, there’s the other on the opposite side.’

  The Most Baldy draped the polythene over the coffin to protect it from the rain.

  ‘Right, lets dig this chicken up!’ goes the First Spoken. He took a stick and began shoving the red-hot cinders aside to get at the little oven he’d made in the soil under. Sudden, both men turned and looked out, towards the darkness of the Sound, then I heard it too, turned and saw the new light and the flashing red one too, moving: a cone of light pointing down and sweeping a sparkly circle over the waters.

  ‘Nam the Dam, what’s he doing?’ the First Spoken moaned.

  ‘The little ferry got sunk by the car ferry; there’s a man missing.’

  ‘It sunk? What again!’ went the Most Baldy.

  ‘That Nam the Dam shouldn’t be out there, this is official.’

  ‘He’s an old yank from Vietnam with his own Westland Wessex. He lifts a lot of posts and wire when they’re fencing high on the mountainsides. He does mountain and sea rescue in his spare time, it’s bloody disgrace; you’re a damn sight safer stuck on a rock face or floating at sea than you are in his old rust-bucket.’

  I goes, ‘Why’s he got yon name?’

  ‘Mind out now, lass, the Piston of Achnacloich’s coming out. Come on now, son, out you come now, son’; the First Spoken whipped out his knob and started doing just a massive number one on the flames of the campfire that hissed all wild; I jumped back from the balloons of steam and the old dangling doosey there as the smelly clouds lit up a bit then a last wet shadow flipped before all was pitch blackness.

  The Most Baldy’s voice went, ‘Well. Guess we won’t be eating that chicken.’

  ‘They call him Nam the Dam cause he was a Huey pilot in Vietnam who spent twenty-five years recovering in Amsterdam before he came here.’

  ‘If the lunatic sees us he’ll come in and try to land; then he’ll be all for lifting Father, flying him out to sea and dropping him from the helicopter.’

  I says, ‘Wouldn’t that be more simple?’

  ‘Lassie, lassie, you’ll no understand how a Navy man won’t let an airforce man into his business if he can help it.’

  The voice of the Most Baldy went, ‘Specially no some yankee with a long beard who’s never seen shirt nor tie nor soap and water.’

  We watched the searchlight from the helicopter patrol the Sound waters. It started to rain more, all the heavier.

  Into the dark I says, ‘Do either of yous know that guy, John Brotherhood, who has The Drome Hotel?’ I could hear the raindrops patting on their plastic jackets. One coughed but I couldn’t tell which. When one spoke it was the Most Baldy.

  ‘We read Joseph Conrad; there’s a bit where a girl is asked if she really believes in The Devil.’

  The voice of the First Spoken says, ‘She answers that there are plenty of men worse than devils to make a hell of this earth.’

  I slept under the coffin, the polythene flappered and the mobile phone inside the coffin got a couple of calls through the hours of darkness. I couldn’t get to sleep as the slate-grey dawn of mists began. I crawled out letting the rain wash my face; I tiptoed past the tent and away round the sheep-paths and down into the first of the glens. Around midday I saw the bright yachting jackets high on the ridge above, moving towards the wide base of the telly aerial. In the distance, the multiple aerials of the old Tracking Station and Observatory
: the upper structures of rusted satellite dishes lost in the mist or cloud.

  I was so hungry I trembled when I stopped walking forwards so it was best just to press on. At the end of the glen, in the versant of the extinct volcano I came to the floor of moss, a-drip with water. Little droplets clinging to the frothy emerald and curly serrations of the lichen. My tongue flicked at the diamonds of liquid then my lips clamped onto the moss, by rubbing my face side to side with the base of my tongue right out I could gulp down gallons and taste the salady smeg of raw blossoming life. I could connect to our fetid origins in the faded, damp places. I found a pink growth and kneeled, my arse up in the air as I shoved my face deep-deeper into that planetary sponge of mossflowers, biting away at the base.

  The cattledrovers seen me, bum in the air as they came down that old drove road. It was the stubbly Leader who shouted, ‘The moon’s up already,’ that got me turned round and on my feet like a shot.

  You stared at the sight: the lazy swing of the cattle walk, with big diarrhoea splatters all up their shanks; there were one, two, three . . . eleven and the leading beast with its special coat all wet.

  I crossed to the stubbly Leader guy, over the grass of the drove road that was so waterlogged it was reflecting the sky: I seemed to cross a floor of clouds towards him.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ he went.

  ‘Drome over there.’

  ‘There? We’re headed landward to the Hinterlands. Today we’ve taken them over the Mist Anvils, skirted the Woodland Edges, now we’re headed for The Far Places and we’ll swim them over the Sound.’

  ‘Never. Can cows swim?’

  ‘They can swim miles,’ the girl one with the video camera bawled.