These Demented Lands

by Alan Warner

  ‘You put her in 15.’

  ‘“Sign here,” I said to her.’ Brotherhood took a card for registration from the pocket of his dinner jacket then slid it across the bar-top to me. I almost touched it with my fingers but held back and deliberately didn’t glance down at what I knew was there: the fat, girly bubbles of writing on a card identical to the one Brotherhood had mockingly made me fill out on my day of arrival. Brotherhood stared at my face, hoping to catch my eyes trembling downwards: relishing the possibility of seeing me seek salvation in the pursuit of some pretty girl with healthy little stools who’d come rambling out of nowhere.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a lovely name?’ Brotherhood taunted.

  I looked down and the edges of my mouth curled as eyes rested, not on the name but the numeral 15 in Brotherhood’s writing. I looked back up; the usual blankness, hiding the hope I’d given up, without memory of when, was all my face showed.

  ‘I led her up the corridor.’

  ‘Were you looking at her?’ I was feigning interest, trying to play our game, staking a claim in Brotherhood’s universe the way I’d been able to a month earlier when I began my investigation.

  He replied, instantly, ‘No. Obviously I was walking in front, striding into the darkness of the corridor before the sections lit up. When we got outside the room I was especially nasty because I stood talking without opening the door or handing her the keys that I’d kept, clutched in my hand all the time.’

  ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘The usual cack . . . “Perfectly respectable, my lovebirds, we fly them in; expecting a plane right now, explains the togs; I mean we’re very informal here, up in our rather lovely lounge,” now, mark my words and report back Sam Spade, give some credit to me cause I said . . . Ooops, shush.’

  The male honeymooner from number 6 had stood and was crossing the dark lounge towards us, wearily swaying between the armchairs and circular tables.

  ‘Yessss . . . sir.’ Brotherhood showed his teeth.

  ‘Is it okay to order food now?’

  I didn’t grace the guy with the curiosity of turning to even glance at his brand-new-wife’s cream-stockinged legs, the lycra reflecting orange flames from the log fire. I knew everything; all was pre-ordained. On tonight’s stroll, arm in arm around the concrete slabs forming two figure 8s in the pine plantation, the backs of those stockings would be splattered from the calves to the back of the knees with precise little dots of wet mud – even although it is a frosty night the slabs are laid so badly, mud is squeezed out from beneath as a foot is placed on each – those dots of mud will dry in the darkness, as each stocking lays concertina’d all night beside the bed in number 6.

  ‘Here,’ Brotherhood sliced the menu at him, ‘The soup’s broth. No . . . it’s leek.’

  The honeymooner crossed through the shadows to the safety of fireside brightness beside his young wife. They hunched over the menu.

  There was no need to ask, I knew he would continue.

  Brotherhood lowered his voice, ‘I said, “Yes, very informal up in the lounge, big blazing log fire,” I said to her, “Not totally informal though,” that made her perk up a tad, “I mean we have exclusively married couples up there so nothing too provocative.”’

  I barked out a glut of laughter, genuinely in admiration of Brotherhood, I put both my palms flat on the bar-top, ‘You’re a genius, Brotherhood, that’s just first-class, it really, really is!’

  ‘Wait, wait,’ he rocked back on his heels, ‘What she said was, glaring at the keys I was fiddling with in my palm, “That’s awful interesting, Mister,” she used the word “Mister” the way a child would, “I don’t have many clothes with me, they went down with that stinking little ferry that almost killed me, but rest assured if I had anything, it’d be so short, soooo short it’d be halfway up my butt. Don’t ever tell me or any other girl how to dress – and can I have my keys?”’

  ‘She walked into that one; let me guess when you’re driving up to Far Places in the limo next?’

  ‘Ummm, tomorrow?!’

  We both laughed out loud. I said, ‘Past the Wee Freeze . . .’

  ‘Past The Best Little Hairhouse in Town . . .

  ‘Into Horan’s Fashions.’

  ‘What size is she?’ Brotherhood shrugged.

  ‘Ten, the women I fall in love with are always size-ten tops.’

  Brotherhood asked, ‘Your wife?’

  ‘That was before I left her, she’ll’ve lost a lot of weight since I walked out.’ I smiled defiantly, the pain only half cranked up through the whisky spookers. ‘What’s she say next?’

  ‘Oh, come on, I think I’d a fine tactical opening created, it was all over to her. I sneered, held out the keys so they dangled down and she had to pick them rather than grab, “Make yourself at home . . .”’

  ‘Wait, wait . . . you hadn’t handed her the kitbag . . .?’

  ‘Steady on, Sam Spade, you don’t think I’m carrying some women’s libber’s grenade launcher; she had it all the time – not looking as if she was letting go either – so I say, “Make yourself at home, I’ll be seeing you up in the lounge later; we’re serving dinner in ten minutes.”’

  I said, ‘Wow, so she was Florence Nightingale on our latest Titanic.’

  ‘Of course, aye, but let me finish my tac-au-tac; she asks, “Is the telly back on yet?” “Yes it is, it’s just come on the minute you arrived, you brought a flooding of eternal bullshit with you.”’

  I smirked and flicked at my empty glass.

  ‘By now she’d got the key in, opened the door and leaned, fumbled around to find the light switch, forced it on with her palm and seen there’s no TV. She looks at me with real hatred, dead sexy. “I had the TV in this room taken up to my father; he’s very ill in bed you know.” “Can’t I have a room with telly . . .?” Telly, that’s what she calls it. “No you cannot have a fucking tell-eh,” I say, and feel like shoving her in the door but I said, “There are two in the lounge.” “I’m no going up there” . . . No like that, “Oh yes you will be,” I say, “The radiator doesn’t work in this room,” and I lean in and slam the dobr behind her.’

  I was holding my chin down onto my chest with laughter, ‘She’ll be checking out at dawn, man!’

  Brotherhood gave an inward look that startled me. ‘I don’t think so!’

  I held up my glass and wiggled it, ‘Charge this to room 15.’

  We both laughed and Brotherhood replied, ‘I will, you know I will!’ he took the tumbler from my fingers and turned his back on me, I could see his hands pour out a large slap of sherry-cask whisky, not bothering with the measure; he stooped, removed the ice-tray, dropped three cubes into a glass towel, folded the fabric twice and with a serrated mallet suddenly and sharply pulverised the ice. The honeymooners from 6 actually stopped their hushed conversation. I smiled at the back of Brotherhood’s dinner jacket, I’ll permit myself a foolish and private instant of an old croaking that I guess must be affection for this guy, dangerous and capable and at least a worthy enemy, out here on the edge of the world.

  Brotherhood sprinkled the ice splinters into the tumber, thudded it onto the bar then treated me by pouring the very cold water from the decanter himself; crushed ice tinkled up to the lip of the glass and he crossed through the shadows of the Observation Lounge to take the honeymooner’s order. A few of the honeymoon couples drifted up for feeding time, seething as usual, unhappy to be stuck for a fortnight with couples so identical to themselves; couples who, even with their talk of holidays, prudently hinted-at salaries, company cars and wedding days, were ultimately unable to differentiate themselves from each other. It was only slavish conformity to their desperate bid for happiness in wedlock that limited the infidelities and orgies that Brotherhood tried to orchestrate for his amusement.

  I pushed my plate away, as usual never eating dessert. I’d had the scampi, assuming it would be safest; all Macbeth had to do was drop it in the deep frier. My fingers smelled of lemon w
hen I lifted the last of the cheap cigars to my mouth.

  ‘Plane in fifteen minutes; I just talked to him on the radio, low pressure coming in so he’s straight out.’ Brotherhood walked away from my table and began putting on his cashmere overcoat. I stood and tossed the paper napkin onto the plate.

  Mrs Heapie had loaded two bottles of bad bubbly into an ice-box with four tall-stemmed glasses. I crossed to the bar. Chef Macbeth had on that silly flying hat (I suspected he kept it on while cooking).

  We trooped down the spiral staircase and Brotherhood moved behind the reception desk to arrange the polaroid camera he trained on his latest victims.

  ‘Got that drop-dead-gorgeous thing a beauty, eh?’ Macbeth spluttered away.

  I smiled.

  ‘Stuka dive bomber, Nyeemmmm!’

  ‘Shut up. Come on,’ said Brotherhood and we stepped out the front door through the ridiculous fake Mexican portico. Outside in the dark we moved towards the staff caravans. Brotherhood looked directly up into the sky. There was low cloud but the ceiling was still acceptable.

  ‘Just going to put my heater on,’ Macbeth crossed over to his caravan. I shook my head but only under Brotherhood’s eye. He corrected me with that look and strode off to the lean-to where the limo he’d bought off a yank at the old tracking station barely fitted. I tossed away the cheap cigar butt.

  Chef Macbeth: his lithe shanks, the icy-blue arm tattoos, the police record left behind in two cities, the son he never saw – I knew it all without having to prise it from him over cans of cheap beer back in his caravan. This man fiddling away at his remote-control aircraft, the heart-breaking teariness in his eyes as he worked – his banal dumbness as he stood, stupefied, holding the control box with its outrageously long aerial, circling the aircraft round him. To come near to what Brotherhood had reduced this man to! Maybe that was why Macbeth carried the flick-knife I’d glimpsed in the single dirty navy-blue dress jacket he wore when they would watch Saturday comedy programmes; laughing towards the prettiest wives – the closest to intimacy he could get – jokes they didn’t share but clutched to as a means of unity. By standing close to him (never laughing) I could peep down into the knife pocket. I could imagine Macbeth in stabbing mode – a whippity expression so you’d be more inclined to sneer and spit in his face rather than drop when he stuck you. Brotherhood had Macbeth in complete control, refusing him any of the cars for the Saturday-night disco at The Outer Rim, baiting him with the possibility of another winter’s employment, the reward of a hotel bedroom out of the caravan – earwig invasions in the rainy season, ants and mice in the heatwave.

  Brotherhood had dumped the ice-box in the limo, crossed and unlocked the garage doors, ‘You take the Volvo.’

  I started it up, revving high and sliding the heater control to the red though only cold blew out. Chef Macbeth appeared in the Volvo headlights, slouching towards the wee van. I watched the tail-lights of the limo bump across the deep, circular tyre-ruts of the turning place. I revved up and followed, moving the gearstick into second. I braked as Chef Macbeth in the van came right up behind, headlights creating dark shadows inside the car with me.

  In my full beams, Brotherhood parked, stepped out the limo with his open coat swinging. He marched the gate open and crossed in front of his headlights. Even when it was open I could read the angled sign . . .

  AIRFIELD

  NO ADMITTANCE

  ACCESS TO

  SHORE ON

  LEFT

  The limo accelerated ahead fast. I drove through the gateway; Macbeth peeled off to my left, his headlights swinging across the grass of the strip showing the life-belt on the jetty, momentarily lighting up a cold-looking birch sapling on the shoreline which I noticed had a piece of seaweed hung from one twig.

  I followed the patches of limo headlights hovering across the grass towards the southern threshold. I accelerated up into fourth along the edge of the runway . . . a month since we had used the car headlights for a night-landing: there were no tracks on the grass. I hunched toward the windscreen, squinting, careful not to stray on to even the edges of the grass strip. At the threshold the limo veered over the far side and I angled the full beams ahead, out towards the river delta beyond the whin bushes. I pulled up the handbrake and, leaving the engine running, walked over to the limo with my hands in my pockets.

  Brotherhood seemed startled when I appeared in the dark, just standing there. He jumped, leaned over and unlocked the passenger door.

  ‘Jesus you nearly made me crap myself.’

  ‘You must have a guilty conscience, or is it all the ghosts parading round this end of the runway that worry you?’

  ‘Your ghosts,’ he said. ‘How is,’ and he paused to curl up his lip, ‘Work going?’ he kept staring out of the windscreen.

  Cautiously, I said, ‘I don’t have the propeller from Alpha Whisky; I need a diver to go down and find it if it’s at the end of the runway here. There are prop marks on one of the Hotel Charlie wings, I can calculate impact speeds by the distances between the gashes. I can tell all sorts by the prop, the exact angles of impact, pitch, engine conditions . . .’

  ‘Quite the forensic scientist aren’t you? When you’re chomping away on the bint from 15 I bet you can tell the blood type of the last man who squirted up there.’

  I smiled, ‘The answers are always there, in the wreckage; the answers are always in the wreckage, Brotherhood.’

  For some reason, and I remember this clearly, Brotherhood murmured, ‘Maybe it was a ghost last squirted up there.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you think, even if you got out the wreckage, you could swim that distance on a winter night in pitch darkness then climb up a hillside . . .?’

  ‘That’s what happened. A night circuit and they crash into each other . . . right, it’s their own fault for trying anything so crazy, but at the same time, as a professional, I’ve got to know exactly what happened. I know those planes were going in the same direction when they came in. Why did Alpha Whisky fly into Hotel Charlie?’

  ‘And who gives a shit about happenings ten years’ time ago; it won’t bring the fellows back.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you dignify those horrible seconds of terror when you have it clear what happened. Like at Mount Osutaka when I was with the Boeing guys, we had five hundred and twenty dead up there and we were in in five hours. The rear bulkhead had collapsed and the Captain, I listened to that guy’s voice, though he was talking Japanese, I was listening to the background noises on the cockpit voice recorder, as he was fighting for control; thirty minutes he kept that plane in the air, steering with his engines and what was left of the control surfaces. When he couldn’t get it over Mount Osutaka there were no survivors. I was there, Brotherhood: broken pines, ravines, wrenched aluminium, Dunlop tyres flopped skyward. And the bodies. Everywhere. Fatalities everywhere on the crash site and something I’d never seen before, everywhere, little notelets of paper, I bent to pick some up: on every one the little bamboo houses of Japanese writing, fluttering through all that shattered wood and burst suitcases and twisted limbs: goodbye notes. For thirty minutes they’d been in terror; what God lets you suffer thirty minutes just to die? Yet among that numbness they found time to pen words of farewell to the ones they loved. Even in extended death all we bother to do is confirm our love and say goodbye; what poems could equal those little notes?’

  ‘Have you quite finished? There’s nothing more revolting than hearing death sentimentalised. If the shitbang had gone up in flames those notes would have twirled heavenwards as ash. And your masterpiece? Incomplete.’ Brotherhood looked at me and shook his head.

  I said, ‘I need to gather evidence. Aircrash Investigation frees you from causality: we’re time travellers, obsessed with only a few seconds, minutes at most, of the past. All else becomes secondary and we live those moments again and again, until we’ve become part of the thing we investigate, we feel we effected that packet of time we weren’t present for . . .’

  Brotherhood put his
head back and chuckled. ‘I hand it to you; you’re really something else.’

  ‘Know anyone who’ll raise the propeller if he can find it?’ I smiled.

  ‘I do actually, I mean if that’ll really keep you happy and I think it might. There’s a man they call The Argonaut. He doesn’t come cheap,’ Brotherhood raised an eyebrow.

  ‘That girl must’ve swum ashore in the darkness with the Grainger child too.’ I smiled over at him.

  ‘Maybe we should dump her in the drink and see how she gets onto our island?’

  ‘Maybe?’ I said and Brotherhood seemed to perk up at the idea, then he nodded through the windscreen. I opened the passenger door and walked across to the Volvo in the cold air.

  The landing light seemed to hang still in the air above the Sound. Fear was all I felt, the fear that had stuck with me through all I had done and said, through the women, the breaking hearts and empty achievements – the illness waiting inside of me. Then it was the fear of becoming part of Brotherhood’s plans and the first suspicions that he planned to replace me with her, the newcomer in 15.