Somehow, just writing this makes me feel better. Can hardly feel fingers, it’s so cold here. Light is from candle stub, must go.
7 Nov Sun
I hate boats.
8 Nov Mon
10am
The worst trip I’ve ever had ended last night when I was rowed to a beach the size of a g-string, and left. I didn’t know how long I’d be waiting there in the pitch black with only the sound of waves to keep me company, but was vomiting too much to demand an answer. Finally, a few minutes or an hour later, someone came. I expected, for the money I’ve shelled out and the exclusivity, a porter who’d also climbed Everest and cowed everyone with his yachting skills at Cowes. He would, of course, carry me to Puddock House and deliver me to the tender attentions of my personal butler, who would have my bath ready. God, I stunk, and never want to see a slice of white bread again. Even the thought of white bread makes me retch.
Puddock House!
It’s no old manorhouse. It’s just a stone cottage, no bigger than a cell that someone would get housed in if he broke into a convenience store.
Its heat is a fireplace.
Bath: tin tub.
Cold water, or water from sleeve in Aga cooker.
At least that’s what Macman says.
I thought that Agas were only decoratively archaic, like gas fires with ceramic logs.
He says this one needs fuel, and there isn’t any I can see. There is in place of a basket of coal or logs, a basket with clumps of dirt.
This place should be called Siberia’s Siberia.
Macman is a scream, if only I were warm, fed, clean, and watching him on a screen.
He’s full of stories. Here’s one:
It’s said, he said, There’s nae poackits in a shroud, so that is why every man on Bowfin Island was buried with his everyday clothes on, even if they are bloody, torn to buggery, or mockit in the crotch as would give you the dry boak.
Oddly enough, I understand him, even to the dry boak. And it’s eerie that he used that line about the shroud. He couldn’t be taking the piss out of me, but I do suspect that he used it because he heard that I had when explaining my extravagance to the first captain on this journey. Nosey parkers, they’re all fascinated by everything about me. So along with me, the saying has been passed on along the line of people I’ve had to interact with.
I must make do with the man. He’s all I’ve got. Besides, if I pause to think anything less than good of him, I don’t think I’ll be able to last until tomorrow. This place is
9 Nov Tue
10 am
First the good. There are birds here that I wouldn’t have believed, even in my wildest. The place is a bloody twitcher’s paradise. Yesterday as I was writing this, a Siberian chiffchaff flew into a bush not three yards away. I stress here that this was not a ‘possible Siberian Chiffchaff’. It didn’t call. Grey and olive above, it had a very Siberian-like head pattern. It was, I stress, no straightforward collybita. Definitely not the common. It also has quite a lot of yellow across the breast. It was also unbanded! I would say with certainty that it was a definite sighting. Of course I dropped this journal, and I was trembling as I dug in my pack for my virgin Outer Hebrides Bird Checklist. It wasn’t there! Bugger! I must have left it home. There was nothing for it. I would have to make one up in the journal. An annoyance, but that was only the lead up to the main show! Imagine how prophetic my imagined tweet had been: eat yr hrts out! Bowfin Is! Try find on map! 1 Siberian Chiffchaff
I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited, so I fumbled reaching back into my pocket, and had to stand up. By then with all the commotion, the bird had long ago flown off, but it had served its purpose. Anyway, my phone wasn’t in my back pocket, but then I remembered that I’d put it in my anorak, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my pack. I ran back to the hovel and it wasn’t effing ANYWHERE. Macman was peeling potatoes and I asked to use his, but he said, What phone?
NO PHONE! For the whole time I’ll be here. And here I just had the best sighting of my life, and it’s gone to waste!
I wanted to choke Macman, but instead, I must be civil. It’s torture, but he heated the water and washed my clothes and wiped my anorak down and made a pretty good stew, and—unbelievable, but it’s true, sleeps in Puddock House too, on the other side of the room, a hellish blessing. More about ‘Puddock House’ later.
The torture continued. I went outside to cool off, and as soon as I got there, a male Dotterel pitched up. Then a female Ring Ouzel teased me, and flew off. A Ring Ouzel! Here! I was so upset that I tromped off and within five minutes, saw a spectacular pair of geese, as unbanded as everything here. I felt a sense of choking, I was so excited. But I didn’t know for sure. If this was a pair of Bean Geese, that means that I was the first person to sight one south of North Uist in 20 years. But I had to check. It would be awful if I twitched Bean and they were, say, Richardson’s Canadians, which sounds ridiculous but all of a sudden I was uncertain about everything. It was all so extreme!
So I dug out my Birds of Scotland, only to find—an apple. That’s it. An apple. Oh, and The Source, my waterproof-covered journal where I store my passwords and a lot of code I’ve written. It’s my stone-age backup, the only place I trust to keep these things safe, and now I remember. I took it with me so that if my flat is broken into, no one steals it. And here it was, able to slip out of my pack. I could have lost it at sea along with my phone while I was spewing my guts out over the side, or when I was shitting over the side (did you know that small fishing boats don’t have loos? It should be illegal).
So HERE I AM. i cant twitch, i cant tweet. i might as well have stayed at work for all the good this crazy waste of time has been.
Tomorrow can’t come soon enough. I dread the return trip, but soon it’ll be history. In the meantime
2pm
Macman is useless. I told him that he didn’t wash my stuff enough. They stink. He said, You’re bowfin.
I had to walk away, because I couldn’t afford giving him my mind. He’s unbalanced enough. Still, I was fuming. He had no excuse, treating me like luggage. I mean, on that boat, the ‘captain’ had a bit of one, and I can even laugh now at the image of someone like him getting laid out as a mattress for telling a passenger “You’re LAX.”
But say there’s another explanation, some New Age slop—”Be one with Bowfin. Om.” I reckon Macman will spout that on the day he takes to dreadlocking his ear tufts. So he’s not only useless but inscrutably mad.
Still, I can’t get the smell out of my nostrils. A mix of vomit and something sweet, that kind of sweet of something dead. Nightmare sweet. I can’t get it out of my nose.
3pm
Darkness is coming soon. I finally got Macman’s name. It’s Peasgood. I don’t know the spelling, but it’s Mr Peasgood. And he’s got a sort of sense of humour. Remember what I told you, he said, when he saw me trying to scrape away the smell from my bare arms. He led me to an area where he said the smell came from, a very stony place where he repeated his story of the inhabitants having been buried with their clothes on. The ground was practically all stone with a covering as thick as an op-shop’s Oriental carpet. He picked up something and told me to open my hand. It was, he said, a vertebra. !!!!!
The smell he said, comes from all those bodies. It’s come and never gone away, though they were buried here that many years ago. I couldn’t get out of him WHEN. That’s why this is Bowfin Island, he said, and the penny dropped. Stinking Island!
Does that explain the sounds last night? Puddock House felt alive in ways I couldn’t bring myself to say here yesterday, but I never before thought I’d ever be glad to have a roommate who’s an old man. If it weren’t for Mr Peasgood, I might have died of fright. There isn’t room in the place for rats, but all night it sounded like the walls were streaming with rats. The place is made of stone. It’s impossible.
Now that I know where the bodies are buried. Now that I think of the sounds, they were like fingernails
, long toenails. I wouldn’t sleep alone if I was told that I could live forever, and with no need to work again, if I only slept here alone for one night.
I asked Mr Peasgood why the people hadn’t been buried in the deep dirt here. He was horrified at the thought. That’s peat, he said. We need it to burn. So that’s the big Oxo cubes of dirt by the stove.
Did I say before that he has a pet? A huge toad! It can’t be native.
He talks to it.
A month later?
Snatching a moment to say something for posterity here. I’ve learned how to make a fire in the Aga. I’m learning how to cut peat, and make a stew. Actually, cook it. I’ve also learned how to cook porridge. As for Mr Peasgood having a pet toad that he talks to, the toad is actually giving him instructions. I know how that sounds. I can only tell it like I see it. I can’t tell you what the toad says. You couldn’t cut his accent with a knife. You’d need a giant’s cleaver.
Which leads to the birds.
When I’m not doing chores, I’m allowed to watch the birds. I’ve never seen so many. Some small bird with a red breast and short tail was singing this morning, and it was so beautiful in the way it tilted its head up and wagged its tail when it hit some notes. The birds here are fascinating. They do the most interesting things, and their songs!
Last year I downloaded Birdsongs of Britain thinking it might help me spot. It was useless. Now I know why. Some bird with, say, a red breast and a yellow cheek is gonna look the same each time you spot it, but its voice isn’t like a ringtone. It’s unpredictable, and I think, moody. Sometimes after the rain, you’d think it’s won Lotto. But the same bird can also sound petty, lonely, frightened, morose, and I swear, horny.
At dawn and dusk, that’s when I love to listen. Those are always busy times for me, when I should be setting the fire then or boiling water, or other chores, but instead of dobbing me in, Mr Peasgood always smiles indulgently, sometimes offering up a saying. He’s got so many. My favourite is Listen at a hole, and you’ll hear news o’ yoursel. Aye, he has an accent. It’s not like Mum’s, but then I don’t know what Mum’s was, exactly. She was always vague, born in Glasgow but then she says she moved around. She must have, to meet Dad. I’ve lived in well-heeled London suburbs all my life—didn’t know they were ‘well-heeled’ till I went to work and talked with other galley slaves—and Dad was plain vanilla pom.
So Mr Peasgood sounds a bit thick, but understandable. I had to literally pull up my socks here, learning how to dress. He’s always wearing his tweed jacket, every rip always neatly darned. No stubble allowed here, though no electric shave. “Twitch and Tick’ is now a cleaning rag. Shirt tails that are seen get dipped in salt water before being shoved down my underpants against my bare bum. As I said before, I learn fast, so that only happened once.
He’s something of a stickler, but you have to be to live here. And about another thing, like everything else that I couldn’t believe at first, but learnt soon enough that he was absolutely right: Bowfin Island only smells to foreigners. It’s lucky for us that they never come here. I expect I’ll find it enough of an interruption when he gets his half-yearly delivery of oatmeal and his few other treats. He asked if I wanted more paper, another journal that I can write in, but I don’t really see the need any more when this is full. It is an affectation, isn’t it? After all, who will care to read this, really? I wouldn’t read yours, whoever you are if you read this sometime somewhere in the sometime future.
I’m grateful and kind of amazed that Mr Peasgood didn’t just murder me or something for intruding upon him. It was unforgivable, what his nephew did, even if Hear did it out of caring, a sense of responsibility. So what if a man chooses to live someplace you wouldn’t? So what if he likes the dead more than the living tweeting chirping never-shutting-up masses? So what if he wants to live in a place that smells so bad that you have to get used to it to bear it. No one tries to stop people spending their working life, which is, like, all their life, in hair and nail salons, or reeking restaurant kitchens.
So what if Mr Peasgood is getting old. He’s got so much company here that he will never be alone.
And dropping me on him wasn’t exactly charitable, was it?
Luckily, he’s a good sport. My invasion of his personal space has been treated by him with more grace than I’ve ever seen in an office.
The dead are less accepting, but he’s been there with me all the way, by my side.
I had no idea till yesterday that he also intervened on my behalf, saying that I shouldn’t be put to death, that I wasn’t a hostile invasion force of one, and did not seek to claim this Duchy for my own. I found out all this when I was formally brought before the toad. I was told to kneel. I did, of course. The toad didn’t say a word to me, but no one could stand up to his look. He’s got an eerie calmness, a majesty, that comes from, all I can think of is: assurance. He’s never undermined by social networking, that’s for sure. He has only these subjects under him, and doesn’t seek for more.
I couldn’t help but be awed.
Mr Peasgood could have been a great lawyer.
Spring
Just before I toss this into the sea for who knows who to find, I must say how happy I am that I’ve proved myself. Laird Puddock has appointed me Assistant Chief Minister!
Oh happy days!
As Mr Peasgood says, Let the dunlins sing!
I must ask him what a dunlin is, but there’s only so much time in the day.
A Castle In Toorak
Marion Halligan
The bouncer was cute. I gave him a wicked smile, he frowned, looked us up and down slowly, and let us in. I knew he would. We looked good, our clothes were right, we were young and pretty. Me more so than my sister Annie, who’s younger than me, everybody says so, about being prettier, but she doesn’t mind, I look after her, and make sure she’s dressed properly. That’s my career, clothes, or will be, and she’s going to help me.
And then it’s not that big a deal. It’s a new in place, but hardly crowded with celebrities. I thought I saw Lara Bingle with some hunk, and maybe that was Miranda Kerr, but no, just someone with the same eyes-too-wide-apart face. Of course it was very dark, hard to see anything at all. The lighting cast strange flaring shadows, you wouldn’t have known your own family.
Annie and I usually go out on Friday nights. We allow ourselves one cocktail, the most glamorous and extravagant they’ve got, and leave it at that. We don’t binge drink, and don’t waste money, either. We rather like the kind in big round glasses with cream in them as well as exotic liqueurs, then it’s as though you are having dessert as well. We make the drink last, taking small luxurious sips, and see what happens. Sometimes we dance with one another, sometimes some guy asks us, it’s nice sitting over an amazing cocktail and wondering what will happen next.
Annie saw the guy first, standing against the bar, with a head of curls and a tiny goatee beard. I looked at him, and he came over. Would you ladies permit me to join you, he asked, in a posh voice, and we said, Why not.
It all started from there. He wanted to buy us another cocktail, but we said we only ever had the one, and he said, How elegant. He did have a rather funny way of talking, old-fashioned, as if he belonged to another era. He gave us his card, and said he would like to see us for coffee the next day, so we arranged to meet at Caph’s, late in the morning after we’d been shopping. In the bright light of day he was very colourful, with his reddish curls and beard, his bright blue eyes, his pale clothes. We knew from his card that his name was Frederick Barbour. We used to have an uncle Fred who was lovely, so that seemed a good omen, somehow.
He was very polite and not at all pushy. His manners were lovely. At first we didn’t know which of us he was interested in, he included both in any suggestions he made, but gradually it became clear that it was me he cared most about. It’s you, Cat, of course it is, said Annie, and I did feel pleased. But at first the three of us went around together. He was an IT specialist, he said,
had his own business, but he was more interested in talking about his family history than in his present circumstances. He told us he was descended from Frederick the Holy Roman Emperor, that Frederick called Barbarossa, which you know, he said, means red beard, and you can see it persists til this day. He pinched his little red goatee. Got excommunicated by the pope and walked barefoot to Canossa, and waited in the snow until the pope relented. Do you have a title, I asked. Oh, mobs, he said, King of Germany, King of Burgundy, King of Arles, not to mention Duke of this and that and Holy Roman et cetera, but what’s the point, these days. They’re all out of date. Plain Frederick Barbour does me.
He was really very handsome. And very romantic. And kind. After a good while he asked me to marry him, and I said yes. We planned it for the end of the year, when I would have finished my fashion course. I didn’t have anybody to talk to about it. No parents. There was a stepmother somewhere, but we hadn’t seen anything of her since our father died. She was the worst kind. Didn’t quite dress us in rags and put us to work in the ashes, but just about. Favoured her own horrible children. When she was little, Annie called her that stepwoman, which I thought was marvellous, and we always thought of her like that. We escaped when we were sent to boarding school, a good one, we flourished there. That was the good thing our father did for us.
The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013 Page 12