These Demented Lands

by Alan Warner

  He pushed at a digital watch that bleeped, ‘Half-two in the morning. I put all my information into this watch, look, look . . . it reads it out, I’ve got all sorts programmed in here . . .’

  I opened the drawer with my passport, driving licence and a single fake Department of Transport claim form, then I shoved the lot in my trouser pocket. Why not, an absurd final wager. Go through the motions, maybe get some edible food. Should be able to cross it in a night. Really, I’ve been bored with this for months and I don’t care about her; she’s like all the others. I’d wipe away the half-hearted pulsation I call love the same way I’d wipe my sperm off her thigh with a hankie.

  ‘Is that the place on the coast, The New Projects, along from Ferry Slipway?’

  ‘At The Inaccessible Point, the houses there were mainly financed by The Island Society for Encouraging Fisheries but the Argonaut built his own; you’ll notice it, oh aye.’

  ‘I’ll need to check the prop. How am I to know it’s the one?’

  ‘You just remember the Knifegrinder,’ he backed out the caravan and wheeled his motorbike off, starting it at the far end of the drive.

  Friday the Third. Dawn

  SO I CROSSED the mountains. I had no intentions of saying goodbye to the girl. I left the CD on the dew-soft grass outside her caravan, turned my head towards the breeze coming off the Sound. I walked without looking back, climbing away from 96-Metre Hill.

  When I reached the Devil’s Advocate’s camp the fire didn’t seem to have been lit for days. The tent was zipped up and sealed with a little padlock you’d use on a case. I took a black, hard piece of wood charcoal to slash the material then tugged it apart. The interior smelled of stale Ritz biscuits. There were a few books. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, Who Moved The Stone by Frank Morrison, Aleister Crowley’s book of Magickal Correspondences and a copy of Viz.

  Higher in the hills everything was budding, the trees dotted with the prayer-like, still-enfolded hands of leaves. I could hear the healthy life of water ahead and I was moving through the saplings, turning first this way then that, leaning to avoid the thicker branches.

  I slept in the glen the foresters were clearing, in a larch cluster, waking at least every hour. In daylight I walked using my shadow on the ground to judge what horseflies or big insects were buzzing behind me.

  Brotherhood had told me how the hillsides were planted: the cannon from the man o’ war dragged up and the mountains pounded all day with canister-shot of seeds, spores and cones, ‘The hillsides streaked with gunpowder smoke but flowers and shrubs sprouting from that beautiful warfare.’

  Afternoon on the second day I came out on the jutting rocks high above The New Projects: there was a cluster of bungalows around a pebbly beach, all looking vulnerable to flood-waters, and further back a lower, longer house skirted by a wall, its roof tiles catching the light. The usual debris of the island lay on the high-tide mark: rusted tanks, nets, creels and skiffs capsized on the grass against the rain. Just offshore were the bright pink and orange dots of mooring buoys. Something else, further out into the water of the bay: on a raft.

  I followed the curving path down onto the fenced fields below the trees. It was then I heard the beat – steady and unmistakable with no accompaniment, then the slash of a cymbal: someone playing a drum set.

  As I squinted at the horizon where sea met evening sky I saw the flash of a hi-hat. Out on the water floated a small raft with a drum kit on it that must have been nailed down; a man was hunched on a stool playing a steady rock beat. The drum-raft was secured with a long nylon rope to the shore. It tilted slightly in the low swell.

  I strolled towards the houses, soon enough recognising the Argonaut’s place. It was surrounded by a waist-height wall: the wall gave off a strange light with the sun behind it and I suddenly realised that the entire construction was made of green and brown beer bottles fixed together with cement. I looked up at the tiles on the roof which also sparked in the afternoon blue – the roof looked like drips of paint had been splattered across – yellow, red, terracotta and pink caught the light.

  I moved close to a dirty double-glazed window then tried to peer in but all I could see were some diving cylinders lined up against the opposite wall. Wandering round the large bungalow there was a satellite television dish fixed up on a gable above the lean-to that housed a compressor for filling air tanks. Two small children stood mutely beside a rusty swing in the next garden, staring straight at me.

  As I looked in the window I noticed a change in the air round me and realised that the drumming had stopped. I squinted out to sea: the figure stood up quickly on the raft, the dripping line nearest the drum set cleared the surface and the figure used it to pull himself in, towards shore. When he was closer he secured the drum-raft and got into a small, moored kayak which he began to paddle towards me.

  ‘Hello,’ I shouted.

  The bow of the kayak scraped onto the shingle. I noticed, written in thick, silver marker all over the battered orange fibreglass, carefully lettered phrases . . . ‘And the merchants of the earth will weep and lament’ . . . was one I could decipher.

  The man stepped out, sinking both his boots in the water over their tops, but he didn’t flinch, just stared at me; he was wearing a diver’s jacket over a T-shirt that read: I Hate Oasis.

  ‘I’m loud, man. I have to play out there or the neighbours’ children can’t sleep; I play the drums loud, man!’

  ‘Right,’ I nodded.

  ‘Jazzrockfusion that’s my bag, man, right? Mouzon or Cobham or Williams: who was the greatest; that is the question, my friend, that is what I use to judge a man. Who do you think was the greatest drummer?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t follow music much. Verve are good.’

  ‘You a city man?’

  ‘Mainland.’

  ‘That’s grave enough, my friend.’ He sooked out of the water and bandied his way over to me still nodding.

  ‘I understand you have some salvage I could be interested in: an aircraft propeller?’

  ‘Salvage. Salvage is it? Some kind of collector are we? Is it sunken spoil that’s your thing, gold ducats, silver chargers? Or are you the straightforward upright man who prefers to insert his unwashed penis into the mouths of children?’

  I took a step backwards but he crunched past me and said, ‘When our myths fade we must revitalise them. Understand?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Re-vitalise,’ he muttered, then giggled. Suddenly he spun and pointed to a complex of railings and planking moored off the rocky point. ‘Brown crabs in my keep cages. Good money per crab but someone’s robbing them and it ain’t no seals; seals are my friends: if I play good and steady they jump up onto my raft. A seal can suck out a fish through the net and an eagle will take a lamb in a land where death has no mercy. How did you get here?’ he frowned.

  I shrugged, ‘I’m on my way to Ferry Slipway along the coast, I just wanted a peek at this prop out of curiosity.’

  ‘Well you know what happened to that cat.’

  ‘Did you find it about five hundred yards offshore about a mile south of the threshold out at The Drome?’

  The Argonaut was walking away.

  ‘Mr Scorgie,’ I called.

  He was walking towards the end of the pebble beach where a curve of rocks overlooked his keep cages.

  Very dark, then the gentle swelling and dying of the lighthouse on top of the summer colony steeple. Sometimes I could see a pale line of surf tip and froth close in to the rocks.

  I heard the slopping of the whisky as he thrust the bottle, from a Spar or Co-op, out of the darkness. I saw the pencil of light from the steeple canter across the sea towards us: it bloomed in our eyes then juddered off over the plateau of rocks to our rear. I swallowed some booze back and said, ‘I’d love a cigar.’

  ‘A cigar, is it?’ Argonaut mumbled.

  ‘These rocks are destroying my arse, I’m tired and I was wondering . . .’

  ‘Look, look, do you see it
– see that out there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out there, ‘bout sixty feet, ‘bout fifteen fathoms – wait, wait till the light has passed.’ The white beam from the lighthouse came spratting over keep cages, highlighting the hand-railings on the walkways. ‘Do you see them too?’

  I looked at the blackness then, made visible in the convex portions of the low swell, I saw lights, electric torch-lights below the water. ‘I can see them, I can see them too,’ I said in a hushed way. They were moving very slowly towards the keep cages.

  ‘You see them, eh?’ The Argonaut laughed and stood up.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Divers: the holiday cottage around the point there. They’ve cut the wires at the bottom of the cages. Here.’

  He passed me a little bong that he must’ve had hidden at the spot. The dope smoke went down me clean and creamy and perfectly cooled. The Argonaut took his blast then he screwed off the top and drank out the coolant water from inside. ‘A mix of brandy and water,’ he explained. The Argonaut stood up and announced, ‘Come on and I’ll take you for a pint; you’ll get a cigar in the pub.’

  I jumped to my feet and followed him down the rocks in the darkness, beneath the stars which were wobbling above us unsteadily.

  I said, ‘I didn’t think there was a pub on this side of the island,’ following the Argonaut’s deviating route down a steep track, bare rock skittering under my boots. Then I heard the shallow clucking of waters and the Argonaut commanded: ‘Get in here.’ He seemed to be kneeling down then I realised he was sitting in a small outboard boat tied to the rocks. ‘Eh, right.’ I stepped over the gunwhale and put my arse down as the outboard’s engine splattered into life and immediately throttled up; the boat leapt forward, jumping over the black water: my shoulders hit the planking and for a mute instant I saw my erect leg point straight up and my steel-toed boot saluted the thin sliver of moon.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Can you see where you’re going?’ I shouted up at the night sky.

  The Argonaut’s voice came out the darkness: ‘You just lie and enjoy the voyage,’ and being stoned off my cock that’s what I did. My cheek against the inner membrane of the boat, I saw the stars slowly wheel round the sky above me, and felt the quick trembling of the water below.

  When I sat up we were moving round in a wide, tracing arc, leaving a curve of moonlit froth behind us. There was a clustering of lights on the shore. This was a part of the island, despite my vow to explore every inch of it when I landed, which I had never seen.

  The Argonaut closed down the power and the bow of the boat gracefully fell down. I saw a single fishing vessel tied up at the pier. Our boat slipped past and manoeuvred in to the side of the pier where there was a small stone slipway. He tied up and we stepped onto dry land.

  At the top of the slipway I looked over towards a building, gold-coloured spotlights pointed up to a sign which read:

  THE OUTER RIM HOTEL & BAR

  Outside, with two guys leaning against it, their elbows up on the roof, was a parked, silver Opel Manta ennobled with chrome wheel-fittings, tall aerials and fog-lights. Six or seven fat candles were placed on the car’s roof – the flame light made the vulgar car look strangely beautiful, as if it was about to be used in some religious procession.

  The Argonaut sighed, ‘Ah, the whelk-pickers must be abroad. Here come some of them now.’

  I turned; I could see a set of car headlights crossing the dark waters towards our shoreline but there was no road or bridge way out there, only black water, yet there were the headlights moving across the surface of the sea.

  The Argonaut explained, ‘It’s a DUCK amphibious vehicle that can go on land and sea; purloined from the army, no doubt.’

  I saw the vessel’s headlights approach the beach and it mounted up onto the land on wheels, great scooshes of water flooding off its flanks. I heard catcalls and yells and whoops. Myriad little points of light began to bob then fall from the rear of the amphibious vehicle: it was a large gang of young men with little lamps, like coalminers’, attached to their nodding foreheads by little straps.

  The Argonaut explained: ‘Halogen bulbs. They’re over for the Low Tide Festival. They’ll get all inspired up in the Outer Rim Bar there; a few tokes then at closing time out on the shore and pick whelks until the tide comes up at dawn – they collect a few ton of them – late tonight you’ll hear their voices, calling to each other in the dark; they’re quite the crew: so wasted they all think they’re extras in Star Trek. You know, they breed up children just to be whelkers?’

  We walked towards the two men standing by the car with the candles on top of it.

  ‘Ahoy, it’s the Argonaut come to grace our shores,’ shouted one of the men who was wearing an illuminated halogen lamp on his forehead. When he addressed any words to me, I had to squint at him as the lamp shone in my face.

  ‘Halley’s Comet, how’reydoin pal . . .’ said the Argonaut.

  ‘Ohnosobadnosobad,’ beamed the one called Halley’s Comet. ‘It’s hoaching busy with us lot in there. Here,’ Halley’s Comet passed a joint across the car roof, ‘Taste a little starlight from the Central Belt.’

  I shook my head so it was passed to the man next to him.

  The Argonaut said, ‘Hey, this is Halley, this is the Superchicken – we call him that on account of his mentalness, he’s no very scared of anything.’ The Superchicken was holding a big whisky and he nodded at me. ‘Our friend here’s a Mainlander looked for some bitter salvage.’

  Halley nodded gravely, ‘He might get some.’

  The Argonaut asked, ‘Car out the night; what’s up with the bikes?’

  Superchicken replied, ‘Well, I come in the living room this afternoon and the bastarding wee brother has the Yamaha, completely dismantled, spread out across the carpet on bits of newspaper.’

  ‘Bit of a flicker if you’re in a hurry,’ Halley added.

  Superchicken looked at him, paused a few seconds, then said, ‘Just a bit of a fucker all together.’

  ‘What about the Suzuki?’ asked the Argonaut.

  ‘Steering wobble. Tried to ride through it on the long straight road at the point. The steering wobble started about seventy-five mile an hour. Tried to accelerate beyond it but when I got to eighty miles an hour I was finding the handlebars really difficult to hold in position, tank-slapping like crazy. When I got to ninety-five miles an hour I was taking up both lanes of the road going from side to side.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s a serious wobble, man,’ nodded Halley, his forehead lamp flicking up and down the car roof.

  The Superchicken said, ‘Aye, mind you, the steering wobble disappeared at a hundred-and-twenty-five.’ Superchicken shrugged grimly then swigged from the whisky.

  The three men talked on like this for a time. At one point the Argonaut mentioned a body he’d taken from the bottom of the sea, a whelk-picker who had fallen from the amphibious vehicle one year: the last thing they had seen was his yellow-coloured forehead lamp shining below the surface of the night-water then fading like a candle as it sunk away down, the pale white hand still outstretched.

  I must’ve been still stoned listening to their ravings. I was looking up at the sign on the building.

  ‘Outer Rim of what?’ I suddenly asked.

  Halley looked at me, ‘Outer Rim of everything,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Away in there and get your cigar and get us two drams, tiny triples, ice in one, eh?’ The Argonaut held out a twenty-pound note which I almost snatched.

  As I stepped inside The Outer Rim Bar, virtually everyone was wearing an illuminated halogen lamp on their heads – the individual beams cutting through the smoky dark air of the place. I pushed my way to the front.

  Leaning on the bar I noticed a girl who had no lamp on her head; however she did have an electric kettle instead of a handbag. I could see her make-up things and stuff inside it. As I scrutinised a bit closer I noticed she had a stocking, all balled-up and hanging out of the bottom of one
of the legs of her jeans.

  To my dismay the barman had on a halogen lamp as well. I looked up at the whiskies and said, ‘Eh, two Whyte & Mackays; triples please.’

  ‘Do you want ice in either of the whiskies?’

  ‘Ice in the Whyte but not in the Mackays, please!’

  The barman glared at me, his lamp shining right in my face.

  ‘Ahm, just ice in the one please.’ I looked at the selection of cigars which was nothing special. ‘Can I have a Hamlet as well, please.’

  The barman said, ‘Plain, cheese, Spanish or mushroom?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Plain, cheese, Spanish or mushroom?’

  ‘What, the cigar?’ I said to him.

  The barman said, ‘Cigar? Oh! Hamlet! I thought you asked for an omelette. It’s your fucking accent.’ He shook his head, plucked a cigar from the tin and dropped it on the bar with my change.

  The girl with the kettle was looking in my direction. I smiled and, nodding to the crowded room full of drunken people with lit-up foreheads, I yelled, ‘We’ll be okay if there’s a fucking powercut.’

  The girl just stared at me.

  ‘Here for the Low Tide Festival?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m here to try and get laid; I don’t have any friends but I’ve got a packet of Mates in my kettle.’

  ‘That’s the most beautiful chat-up line I’ve ever heard,’ I said.

  ‘Who says it was a chat-up line, you fucking wank!’ As she walked away I noticed a pair of lime-green knickers emerging from the bottom of her other trouser leg.

  Back outside I handed the Argonaut and Superchicken their whisky. Halley had rolled another joint. I lit my cigar by leaning over to a candle. I could feel the men had been talking about me when I was inside the bar.

  Suddenly Superchicken explained, ‘We’re in the habit of using candles cause we keep running the batteries flat by having the headlights on out here.’

  ‘Very pretty,’ I smiled weakly, watching a candle flicker under the little glass that sheltered the flame.

  The Superchicken said, ‘Look the crack’s going to be crap here with whelk-picking going on; I’m taking a drive over to Sweetbay, come along, we could light a driftwood fire on the sands.’