These Demented Lands

by Alan Warner

  ‘Stay here your three nights. Gawp at the circus and try to keep out of Brotherhood’s schemes – whatever you get your kicks from – then get your schoolgirl’s arse out of this place and never come back.’

  She carried on staring at me then said, rapidly, ‘And I thought you were a goody. Why should I?’

  ‘You’d have a nicer time in other places.’

  ‘Threat?’

  ‘You know.’

  She laughed but it wasn’t convincing, ‘You’re really starting to interest me, Mr Civil Servant Man.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Kylie Minogue. You’re out your league in Drome Hotel.’

  She stood up and made for the door. ‘Does our deal stand?’

  ‘For three nights as loud as I want but your CD.’

  ‘Three nights . . . to start with,’ she said and definitely did not do any looking back.

  I took off my clothes and climbed into bed. I let the CD music run on; it was some young-sounding band, moaning on with a real enthusiasm. These young pessimists; what a joke – all day long they lament the darkness of the universe then drink all night and at six a.m. you can bet they won’t be shitting a peptic ulcer out their still-tight arseholes. They want everything – even the right to pessimism; they won’t accept it’s a pleasure reserved for those of us over thirty.

  I pulled up the sheet round me, holding its edges as if another human being was in bed with me. I thought of the only dream I would have: cigars . . . Havanas . . . The Real Thing. I took pleasure in my drowsiness with that relish for the simplistic found in most doomed men.

  Sunday the Fifteenth

  FROM MY NOTES of that day:

  8 a.m. That drugged-out alcoholic’s helicopter passed over the runway with a large grizzly bear dangling beneath in a netting.

  Stool: colicky/green. Certainly no darkenings of blood from a – for instance – ruptured rectum.

  In the afternoon I had to walk to that old bastard Gibbon’s Acres to barter for the left cabin door of Hotel Charlie. There was no sign of the Newcomer around the hotel.

  Smoke-like mist was tight down on the low slopes of 96-Metre Hill above me. Across the Sound the ragged, torn line of vapour ran along the mountain range. I tugged up the hood on the functional jacket then trotted down to the shore, legging up shingle until I had walked along as far as I could at the rocks. I stepped up onto the Big Road verge. Because of the hood, my view to the rear had been obscured for so long that when I finally turned around, with a shock, the view I thought so familiar to me seemed suddenly foreign, as if I were seeing it for the first time. As if my experiences pacing out the dimensions of every metre on the runway were simply rehearsal.

  The mile of shoreline to the delta beyond the graveyard, the slow-moving tidal waters of the Sound, the hotel, its outbuildings, the boathouse where I was re-constructing the two doomed planes, the Celtic crosses of the ruined chapel among the pine plantation by the airfield: all these constituted my universe and my future. But my familiarity with those dimensions, every piece of earth covered by my own feet – that certainty was gone for a bewildering instant, then just as suddenly it leapt back to me and I recognised this land I saw. I frowned and walked on.

  Mr and Mrs Heapie passed in their ancient Austin and I nodded grudgingly. Joe the Coal passed in his ex-Army Bedford and I waved.

  The jacket was heavy with drizzle when I reached the long, puddled dirt track to Gibbon’s farmhouse. Old Gibbon was working in the outhouse itself with a clown: the Knifegrinder. I walked to the side wall: the lower sections of the bizarre barn were constructed out of heavy railway sleepers, which in itself was unusual because there was never a railway on the island, save the miniature affair along at the military zoo. Cheap plywood had been nailed onto the sleepers and now warps and curls were prising gaps of light between the boards. Gibbon had been delighted to find an economical way to get a lick of something waterproof to douse the boards. He’d been too mean to buy paint: when the biscuit bakery at Far Places had gone bust, Gibbon had taken away gallons of raspberry food-colouring from the auction. To his amazement, the stuff was completely waterproof; the lower sections of the outhouse were soon crucially pink: raspberry pink. As a paint it proved sturdy enough but the outhouse’s downfall came when Gibbon’s cattle strayed from the fields into the yard and began licking the walls. Not only did they remove all the colouring up to five feet round the structure, the constant licking and pushing of the cattle wrecked sections of the walls and Gibbon had to fence off the outhouse to keep it from destruction.

  I crossed the muddied yard. The upper sections of the building, where the cabin door to Hotel Charlie was incorporated, was a hodge-podge of corrugated iron, the side walls of a caravan, plastic greenhousing material, unidentifiable sheets of metal and see-through plastic and even an old island road sign, so a large side section of the wall read:

  ‘Hullo,’ I yelled. The door was on the far side of the outhouse so I’d called out before marching around to it.

  The two men, who were hunched over Knifegrinder’s motorbike which he used to turn the sharpening stone with some kind of belt mechanism, suddenly swung round together – which surprised me, since the noise of the bike inside the outhouse must have been quite bad. The Knifegrinder had a selection of douse-slashers and scythes laid out before him. Both men looked at each other then the Knifegrinder’s arm went out and he killed the motorbike.

  I found myself standing outside – exactly opposite where the Hotel Charlie door was fitted above the bank of sleepers and licked plywood; misshapen bits of metal rose up to the ceiling like a geodesic dome in a scrapyard.

  Gibbon crossed to where I stood, effectively a non-invitation to the interior of the outhouse. Strangely, the door of Hotel Charlie separated us and Gibbon reached up and slid the actual perspex window of the door open.

  ‘Aye-aye, how’re you doing?’

  ‘I’ve brought the compensation forms.’ I unfolded one of the forms I’d reproduced on the photocopier behind the reception at The Drome. I handed it through the open window of the aircraft door.

  Gibbon removed the broken spectacles from his boilersuit pocket and put them on. The Knifegrinder came striding up behind him and began tirading, ‘It’s legitimate salvage that, it’s legal landfall, you’d best be getting a good price . . .’

  ‘It’s up to him to put an estimate,’ I snapped.

  ‘Well look here now, mmmm, last summer I lost a Suffolk, lovely Suffolk offof the maggots; broke its horn, maggots get in there off the fly and ate out its brains. I’ll claim back the price for that. One thousand six hundred.’

  I had to smile. Gibbon strolled off, the compensation form stretched out in his big hands as he walked forwards to the sheets on the floor with the array of scythes and implements.

  ‘How will we get it down?’ I asked.

  Gibbon looked up at the aircraft door in the patchwork of debris, ‘Hell, man, give it a tug and it’ll come away there.’

  I took hold of the shiny door-handle and pulled: the wall area ballooned outwards. I put my palm against the section of road sign to the left and saw the bits of metal had been spot-welded and roughly rivetted, most of the holes round the rivets had rusted, with sorry, drooping stains trailing downwards.

  ‘One thousand six hundred!’ The Knifegrinder was looking between me and Gibbon, ‘Your department’ll pay that? Man I’ll track down your bits of planes.’ He leapt up at the window on the aircraft door, hanging on with his fingers: the entire wall wobbled inwards then out on his weight, the Knifegrinder drooled at me.

  I whispered, ‘Ever hear of a propeller? I wonder how much the Department would pay for that?’

  ‘Propeller? Propeller! Yess, I can find you one . . .’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s gotta be the right propeller.’

  Gibbon was calling, ‘Hi, let go of that door or you’re going to be bringing down the whole contraption . . .’

  ‘Propeller . . . thousands . . .’ The Knifegrinder’s eye
s rolled back and he held his face up to the ceiling, the door ripped out and his weight on the window edge suddenly forced it down so he stumbled forwards and bounced off the railway sleepers; I saw him bent over, cavorting sideways: the whole wall creaked then juddered. I grabbed the door at the hinge where it had folded with the Knifegrinder’s weight, hoisted it up and stepped back from the structure as more bits began to fall – what seemed to be the aluminium hull of a flat-bottomed boat, another road sign, a bedboard: all came a-tumbling down.

  I swayed away from the crashing as sections of the ceiling collapsed. I held the left cabin door of Hotel Charlie awkwardly under my arm as I hurried up the pot-holed driveway. I passed it across a fence, clambered over myself, then lifted the door and began a short cut over the foothills to skirt the back of 96-Metre Hill, avoiding the camp of the Devil’s Advocate.

  I found the door painful to carry uphill. Soon I opened the window and placed my head through it, holding the door up with both hands, around me like a collar; the sun blustered through the vapours, burning like a necklace of fire around my head on the raw aluminium where the white and blue paintwork was scratched away or had lifted off.

  I moved up and down the slopes, wary of the grass, reduced to slime in the lee of some hills by the weeks of rain.

  Under the brief sun I descended into the silver clouds of a shower below the camp of the Devil’s Advocate; I knew the shivers of sunlight still racing across the slope flanks would be falling on the bare aluminium of the door, crashing flashes over to the man at his camp as I tried to steady my way down the lands. I paused at one point both to lift my face to the larch where Carlton was found and to indicate a challenge to the Devil’s Advocate to come down to the hotel and battle on my terms.

  I took the cockpit door of Hotel Charlie to the boathouse. Under the single bare bulb I walked over the rounded tiles of the floor, leaned the door against the bent fuselage of the aircraft; the shattered wings were supported on beer crates from the hotel, to bring them flush with the top of the cabin where the pilot was killed, his rib-cage flattened by massive deceleration injuries and the impact of the engine being driven through the instrument panel, severing both his feet. I had seen the photos of that corpse too, with the massive contusions to the facial area.

  The fuselage was too distorted to be able to fit the door in roughly its original position. I stood awhile in the space I’d kept clear for the wreckage of Alpha Whisky, the black tiles swept by myself after Brotherhood granted me the boathouse. Each round, black tile beneath my boots was an inverted champagne bottle, plunged into concrete by Brotherhood himself in the 1970s, before he wearied with boating.

  I walked back to my room to wash and change. I could hear nothing from the bathroom of 15 as I lifted water to my own face and thought of Carlton hitting the Sound in darkness and the fear he must have felt.

  I liked to arrive early for dinners to display my connections with our leading family. I spun up the spiral stairs two at a time: Brotherhood, Macbeth (in chef whites!) and Mrs Heapie were all there and turned to look at me. As I strolled towards them a lump rose in my throat, like when I watch the saddest movies; I looked at the spotlights shining down on the bar, the chairs and table stretching off into the darkness then coming against the burnished ambience of the brass frieze, the log fire fumbling a few shadows up the brass to the point it met the pine-panelled ceiling. The frieze was of a sinking Armada ship, its masts at a stricken angle. It’s the only home I have now.

  ‘It’s Mad Max,’ called Brotherhood and the others smirked. Heapie was on her third courtesy coffee, I would have guessed, and her third cigarette; one dimpled elbow hung by her side.

  ‘Yon lassie in 15; ah could’t get in all day for her sleeping! I’m no putting up with it; can make her own bed,’ Heapie mumbled off into an inhalation, then perked up looking out into the near-dark, ‘Oh look, here comes Shan. Who’ll be this coming over?’

  ‘Usual?’ said Brotherhood, not smiling.

  I nodded and Brotherhood poured a small Linkwood then dropped a single, half-melted ice-cube in. He placed it in front of me and just for a second I thought he was going to ask me for the money.

  ‘I’ll charge that to 16,’ he stated.

  Mrs Heapie had crossed to the panorama window and watched the lights of The Charon coast into the jetty and secure. Two figures wearing anoraks scaled the ladder up onto the pier. I yawned. The young walkers didn’t cross the airfield, distinguishing them as non-locals. I heard Mrs Heapie exhaling over by the broad glass.

  ‘Aye, that’s Shan way back over again!’ she announced. As if obeying her, the launch cast off and moved astern.

  Unable to endure any more of Heapie’s Commentary On Everything, I stood, stretched and walked to the farthest table-for-one where I sat down. Brotherhood gave me a cruel smile. I smiled back, shook my head. You are standing there twisting a paper napkin between your fingers and you’re about to put on The Emotion Collection for the arrival of the first couples, but I know you’re just waiting for her to appear: I hope she stands up to you, hope she is worthy, her only defence might be her virtue. If she has any.

  Couples began to converge on the Observation Lounge. Mrs Heapie was serving in her tartan skirt, Brotherhood worked behind the bar and transferred the meals from the kitchen lift.

  Mrs Heapie tried to put me down by stopping at my table before bringing me cutlery. I countered her: ‘Bring me a Remy Martin, the deluxe, with crushed ice and mineral water.’

  ‘What are you eating?’ she snapped.

  ‘I haven’t decided . . . Mrs Heapie.’

  Defeated she walked away. I sighed. I feel jubilant, close to a victory, like when I was twenty-five.

  Brotherhood crossed over with my drink, ‘Good evening.’

  ‘How the devil are you!’ slapping him just above his buttocks. He was lost for a reply, the idiot, so I said, ‘Let’s set sail on the sea of dreams.’

  ‘Yes let’s,’ he nodded.

  I winked at him and, pretending nonchalance, Brotherhood strode off.

  I took healthy swallows of the cognac, even recognised one of the couples who had arrived the previous night. From Heapie’s monologues I knew they were in either room 12 or 11.

  Heapie returned, ‘Made up your mind, then?’

  ‘I’ll have the soup, whatever it is.’

  ‘It’s lobster bisque,’ she leaned over, horribly near, her huge breasts almost touching the tablecloth; she whispered, ‘Canned.’

  ‘Forget the soup,’ I thought of the monster in the cockpit of the plane on the seabed. ‘What else is there?’

  She leaned back as if about to spit, hugely, on me.

  ‘Melon. Prawn.’

  ‘Melon, I’ll have that. What’s for main course, I mean if you’d brought me a fucking menu!’ I shouted. All the honeymoon couples looked over.

  ‘Entrecote steak, vegetable pie. Fish.’

  ‘Get me a steak, very well done, don’t let Macbeth piss on it, and clear my plate when I’ve finished. I’m going to have a dessert.’

  ‘You never have a sweet.’

  ‘Aye, well I am tonight. I’ve got a sweet tooth, Mrs Heapie.’

  The melon was foul; Macbeth must have had it in the fridge since it was dessert the previous week – it turned to a hardly-sweet mush the second it was dropped on the tongue. I picked at two pieces – ate the grape off the top – all the time staring at the railings of the spiral staircase. My attention dived over there each time a head appeared, though each materialised into the linked, dual heads of a couple arm in arm. Oh for someone with a bit of independence.

  A few voices stopped talking and I looked up. More voices should have stopped. Her arms were bare and tanned, she was wearing black Levi’s but she disarmed that long-tight-jeans look by the neat, battered boots she was wearing and she’d wrapped a baggy cardigan round her and fastened it at the waist. I glanced at Brotherhood and a selection of supposedly happy, newly-wed men, regretfully watch her crossing the
floor.

  I stood, took two steps towards her: all the couples’ heads followed me but it was Brotherhood’s face I was watching. She wore a necklace: a gold chain so thin and fragile at first I mistook it for a strand of hair that fell and tumbled.

  ‘Join me in this poisoning experience,’ I mumbled, head averted away from Brotherhood’s gaze.

  ‘Aye, all right then,’ she shrugged.

  She ordered (vegetable pie) and we ate in silence, sometimes a smile: me raising eyes to heaven when Mrs Heapie collected plates. Our complete silence infuriated the audience more than anything. I gobbled down the stringy, underdone steak, the powdered potatoes. I asked for bread and wiped my plate.

  ‘Let’s have a sweet,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because desserts are funny,’ I said.

  ‘I understand what you’ve got against them; you really want to eat them but you never ever do, eh? You think I can’t fathom it out but I can fathom it out, normally you’re just the old grump basically . . .’

  I laughed. Heads turned.

  ‘. . . No, let me finish, you think you’re above such things whereas you’re really a sport but you don’t like saying the names of the things, ’cause you take life so seriously, which in a way shows how amazingly childish you are. If you had kids of your own you might not be so gloomy about just words on a menu. You don’t, have you?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  Mrs Heapie crossed to our table and the girl said, ‘Two Double Whammy Choc Dollops please.’

  After the sweets she wanted tea. The Observation Lounge was emptying. Down in the pine plantation the crazed couples would be circling in their futile little ballet of desire.

  Brotherhood had waited his moment and suffered. As the last of the couples left he crossed to where we sat.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he laughed at us.

  ‘Aye, alright,’ she said. I almost clenched my teeth. She was out her depth and too near the edge for Brotherhood.

  ‘And your room?’

  ‘Bracing.’

  I smiled.