by Alan Warner
I says, ‘The three wise kings.’
They laughed. The Argonaut says, ‘It’s true, I followed the light in the eastern sky, Nam the Dam hovering overhead.’
‘I dunno what you’re so chirpy about, Brotherhood’s bolted in your rowboat towing your bong-bong drums behind.’
‘What! Bastard. Well, I’ve paid respects to the Messiah. I’m off.’ Argonaut bolted.
‘He says I was already dead,’ I goes, Drowned. I’m in netherworld; purgatory.’
‘You shot at him,’ smiled the Investigator.
The Devil’s Advocate says, ‘I really suggest, before the forces of the state arrive, we all leave. My patience hasn’t paid off; meanwhile . . .’ He stepped out into the flame-lit night.
The Aircrash Investigator kneeled by me in the old car; he says, ‘Haven’t you and I heard the chimes at midnight.’
‘Happy New Year,’ I says, then, ‘That means you’ve really lived, eh?’
‘Yes, to the full,’ he went.
I goes, ‘It’s from My Own Private Idaho.’
‘Nah, it’s Shakespeare.’
‘Aye?’ I went.
‘Have you lived?’ he says.
‘Aye,’ I goes.
‘Will we . . . go . . . together, you, me?’
‘Together,’ I says. ‘Us?’
He went, ‘Yes. For always, with her.’
I thought of Brotherhood. What had happened to him. He was darting and zig-zagging through the groups of young people. Some were still arriving, gawping silently at the huge burning of the hotel, spilling from the disco bus; a tractor had drawn in a horse box that opened and young girls thundered out.
Brotherhood was casting a black shadow in the flame of his burned hotel. Wrapped tight and held to his chest: the filthy towel holding the shard of metal or plastic. As he wondered if even the ghost had come to dance, the wrapping fell free and the thing he was carrying bumped ahead of him. It hit the ground and seemed to bounce once, then suddenly it went rigid like metal, but at first it had changed shape with the impact. Forgetting the towel, Brotherhood stooped, picked up the fragment, and stumbled down the embankment, the Devil’s Advocate chasing him, but Brotherhood was into the first boat he found and power-rowing out. The Advocate had screamed, sat on the shore and only then noticed the uncoiling rope on the drum-raft, the Knifegrinder slumped unconscious on its stool.
But the Advocate had to choose. On or until another day. As the drum set moved out into the waters of the Sound, the Advocate limped through the dancers, back towards the frazzling beams of the collapsed Observation Lounge.
After carefully placing the wreckage part in the bottom and rowing into the black sheet of the Sound waters, probed by the Oyster Skerries beacon, Brotherhood was halfway across before he realised he was towing something. He cast it loose. Next afternoon, Knifegrinder was awoken by a passing trawler far out in the ocean.
Brotherhood never saw Psalm 23 till he heard the clean sheath of its prow – the still-going beats of the new century covered the ship’s approach.
He reached for the fragment then the boards flew under him and he was in water. John Brotherhood trod water. Like a lightning storm far below him, the seabed flickered, showing the stomachy depth of the Sound. He stared and shivered with loathing after the stern of the car ferry, at his burning hotel half a mile away; then he began to swim, not back to the island, but kicking out onwards to the uninhabited banks below the mountain range.
‘For always?’ I says.
The Aircrash Investigator went, ‘Here’s the deal: I’ll always hold the hair out your face while you puke.’
‘Aye. All right then,’ I goes.
There you have it, Dad; all you need not to know surrounding the birth of the beautiful grand-daughter I’ll make sure you never see. Forgive my elliptical style: I want you to die in the maximum possible confusion. Don’t dare even think of me on your death-bed.
When the fire engines had arrived they knew it was a dead loss, so the firemen danced in the big top where Lucky People Center were fashing it up. The firemen’s reflective jackets looked fantastic in the lights.
We were headed other way, the flight into Egypt. The Advocate and the forester put me and my daughter in the coffin pulled by Charlie the shire horse – a bit covered in Vongole sauce but I was spattered with blood anyways – and off we slid, up the driveway, rumping over potholes and much nicer up the flanks of 96-Metre Hill. Old Charlie tugged us, the Aircrash Investigator following, smiling at me and the wee thing under our mound of blankets. For the first since coming to that island I wanted sleep but Aircrasher was pointing and forester was shouting, the Advocate staring up. Up at the tracking station where the Observatory once scanned the heavens, the telly repairers had got flashing semaphores diving and dotting, up and down and up and down the enormous aerials – each mast lighting up in different rhythm: chaos of blinkings, dyings and flourishings like God’s Christmas tree: the entire sky seemed to be doing press-ups. I could see the stars lurking beneath the pulsars of masts and when I looked back at the Aircrash Investigator, a fantastic column of flame and smoke was over his shoulder. I lit a Silk Cut, Extra Mild.
Goodbye.
Morvern Callar
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the Scottish Arts Council for a bursary and the K. Blundell Trust for an Authors’ Foundation Award
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781407063843
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 1998
4 6 8 10 9 7 5
Copyright © Alan Warner 1997
Alan Warner has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by
Jonathan Cape
Vintage
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
www.vintage-books.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099577911