by Will Self
Although Carl had outwitted the Driver, there remained the question of when a party should be dispatched to the Sentrul Stac. It was late in the season, and the Hamstermen were neither confident pedalers, nor could they swim. In former times they may have prided themselves on their Bold ascents, not just of the Sentrul Stac but also of the other, lesser stacks that stood in the sluggish waters of the great lagoon. Most years the Sentrul Stac boasted the largest blackwing colony, although oilgulls also shared the pinnacle, taking the lower galleries. The fowling party would pitch camp on the summit and on successive nights harvest the birds there and on the other stacks. In former times, when the stacks had been more numerous and the Hamstermen more intrepid, they had stayed out on them throughout the breeding season, their vessel carrying several loads back to the shore. However, in the past few generations the birding had, increasingly, become a symbolic activity – a means of inducting the lads into the mysteries of dadhood, rather than a serious part of the island's economy. In the time of the Driver this tendency towards emasculation had increased, almost as if the imminent erection of the New London that he called over had sapped the will of the Hamstermen to maintain their own more laborious paradise.
So it took a full blob of lengthy debate and preparation before the day dawned when the party was readied for departure. First the pedalo was dragged out from its shed and every seam caulked anew, each dad working on his allotted portion of the vessel. Next the fowling ropes were oiled and coiled, the cradle repaired and lashed to the pedalo's gunnels; finally the supplies – chiefly takeaway, tanks of moto gubbins and evian – were stowed.
While all this was under way, Carl and Antonë had little opportunity to talk alone, for they were constantly observed by the other islanders. Böm assumed that Carl had volunteered because he hoped to use the pedalo to effect their escape and was learning how to handle it. When they did manage to grab a few words in private he was disabused of this notion: Nah, Carl said, lookit ve syz uvit. Vares no way we cúd andle it. Nah, Eyem gonna distrak vem, an wyle Eyem gon Ure gonna gé ve stuff togewer 4 ve trip. In answer to Böm's quite reasonable inquiry as to how they were going to cross the five clicks of open water separating Ham from Barn, Carl had a single word: Motos. Antonë, weer gonna swim wiv ve motos.
The Sentrul Stac reared from the waters of the great lagoon about five clicks due southeast of Manna Ba. Its jagged peak was thus the opposite pole of the Hamsters' diminutive world to the rubble of Nimar in the northwest. Effi Dévúsh's legends told of how this stack – and the three further to the east, as well as the four smaller ones grouped around it – were the stepping stones that the Mutha and her giant company had thrown down in the waters so as to cross between Ham and the scattering of uninhabited islands to the south.
Those Hamsters more under the influence of the Driver were inclined to view the stacks as natural features, left behind during the MadeinChina, when the sea had broken into the lagoon and washed away the land. From the moment when he first rounded the Gayt and saw the great lagoon, Antonë Böm had entertained a different hypothesis concerning these curious features and longed to visit them. Each year that he'd remained on the island, he had asked to be allowed on a fowling expedition. The Hamstermen would never take him: fowling was too dävine and too dangerous a pursuit for off-islanders to be allowed to participate. To climb the stacks was the most daddyish of all the rituals in a daddyish world. If a mummy or an opare so much as looked at the cradles or ropes when an expedition was being organized, it would have to be aborted.
This was to be Carl's first time out to the stacks, although he'd sat at the feet of the Council for enough fowling seasons to know what to expect. Sat at the dads' feet and listened in minute detail while they mulled over the nature of their adversary. For, to the Hamstermen, the Sentrul Stac itself had a brooding personality. It was like a rocky pine cone – a series of open chambers, all set in tiers, one upon the other, rising up sheer out of the waves to the height of forty men. At the top of the stack there was a platform forty paces across; this was thick with shrubbery, as were the cavities below. All the stacks had this coating of vegetation; where the lagoon washed at their bases, hanks of seaweed clung to the crete, while above the waterline clumps of buddyspike furred their contours. In the summer, they tinged the air with their flowers, so that a bluish nimbus formed about the summits of the stacks. Now they were gone, and the Sentrul Stac was a grim snaggle, streaked white and black with birdshit.
The Hamstermen maintained that their forefathers had deliberately seeded the birdshit with buddyspike to provide handholds; however, this shrubbery was only shallowly rooted, and it was a foolhardy fowler who relied on it to support him. The first Hamster off the pedalo and on to the stack was charged with climbing to the summit, where he would tie one end of the rope he carried to an irony stanchion buried in the crete; the other end he would let down to his companions, so that they might lash on the cradle. It was also the first bloke's task to descend the rope and dispatch the sentinel blackwing. The Hamstermen would arrive at the allotted stack by night, when the blackwings were all asleep save for the one bird charged with guarding them. If this one could be prevented from uttering a warning cry, then the rest would remain oblivious as the birders swung their cradle from one nest to the next, twisting their necks with the same easy rhythm they employed ashore when casting seed or scything the wheatie crop. If the stack jumper failed in his task, the whole colony would lift off and mob the invaders. With their wingspan as great as a man's outstretched arms, and their sharp, downward-curving beaks, the blackwings were fearful aggressors. Many a Hamsterman had fallen to his death from the stacks, the blood from his ruptured eyes spreading slick on the heaving swell. Carl's own granddad, Peet Dévúsh, had fallen from the Sentrul Stac and died. This was the curse upon the Dévúsh line – for the Hamsters believed that if a bloke was sufficiently dävine the choppa would come. This was a great host of seafowl, flying in such close formation that the falling man could be caught on their backs, then lifted up and set safely back on the stack once more.
Shuvoff, mì luvs! Fred Ridmun cried, and under a bigwatt screen the prow of the Ham pedalo flattened a stand of blisterweed, grated on shingle, then hit the water, sending up a plume of emerald spray. The dads pushed the stern of the craft, their bare, moto-oiled feet slithering on the mat of vegetation, while the lads splashed thigh-deep in the wavelets, yanking on the prow. In the effort of their final push was a dread anticipation – but then came the mysterious moment when the dead weight of the beached pedalo was transformed into the live motion of being afloat. There was a clamour of shouting and more bellowed instructions from the Guvnor as the dads and lads unshipped the long pedals and took their places. The mummies came out from their gaffs and commenced an eerie ululating. The motos had been led down from their wallows especially to participate in the leave-taking – and they sent up a frightful bellowing.
Then there came a shout from the bow, Reef up! There was the swish of seaweed and the patter of Daveworks against the hull. Ship pedals! the Guvnor cried, and they all waited, frozen in their frail shell, as the screen wheeled around them and the reef grated beneath them. Then they were over, the pedals dipped to the water, and the pedalo sped offshore.
Seated in the bows with the other lads, Carl turned back and saw the green wall of the island stretch into a band, then a ribbon, and eventually shrink until it was but a green cap set on the massive furrowed brow of the sea. The Hamsters on the shore were reduced to an agitation of waving arms, while some way apart from them, in front of his semi, Carl could make out the Driver, a black stroke on the ledger of the land. Even from this distance Carl could sense that the Driver's savage gaze was upon him, doubtless willing him to mistime his leap on to the stack, to fall and release his final flying breaths as bubbles in the briny.
Carl grabbed Fred Funch's belt and leaned forward over the gnarled stempost. Fred let his head dangle down so that the bow wave tangled with his hair. Using both hands,
he picked out the Daveworks that had lodged in the seams of the boat's timbers as they ran over the reef. Dragging him back up, Carl sat, tense and expectant, as Fred sorted the plastic shards into the appropriate categories: reel, toyist, reel, toyist, reel, toyist… The others amplified these words into a chant with which to punctuate the rhythm of their pedalling. The pedalo, slewing in the current, shook itself like a leviathan breaching for air and picked up speed. Carl picked up one of the Daveworks, biggish, bone-white and the size of his own middle finger. The way its two smooth sides met at a sharp right angle recalled to him the corners of Luvvie Joolee's whitewashed room. It was the stillest place Carl had ever been in: stiller than the Shelter, the doors of which were always open to the breeze; stiller than the blackened interiors of the Hamsters' gaffs, which were ever eddying with smoke, milling with people and motos; stiller even than the deepest thicket in Norfend, where a leaf fragment spun or a scuttlebug trundled.
Carl fingered the broken jagged top of the Davework and looked back towards the island, now wholly encompassed by the ragged edge of the sea. How small it was, and how vast were the waters; if they chose to – if they could will such a thing – they might simply stretch a little and swamp it for ever. The Davework was real: it had a single, enigmatic figure 7 incised in it. Carl recalled the one moving thing in Luvvie Joolee's chamber besides its inhabitant's grooved lips. As she had droned on about the PCO, her husband's sectaries, the politicking of the Guilds – matters of which Carl could not even begin to frame a comprehension – he had watched the dial of the meter. A black stick was pegged to its centre, and when the Exile began the stick was aimed at a 6; when she finished at 7.
The Sentrul Stac mounted from the waves as the Hamstermen's pedalo drew closer. While from the island it gleamed in the foglight, near to it had a dark and impenetrable appearance. The shaggy, shit-spattered greenery merged with glossy seaweed at the point where the swell washed its flanks. The mephitic fumes of the birdshit enveloped them. There were also strange hanks and even coils of a nacreous substance Carl couldn't identify encrusting the base.
– Wossvose? he asked his stepdad, who had shipped his pedal and come forward.
– Vem? Fred laughed. Vemiz oystahs, mì sun, oystahs. Gúd eatin, yeah, we av em on fowlin trips, but we nevah taykem bak oam.
–Y nó?
– Coz vey iz lyttul creetchus an U gotta suckemup alyve, innit.
– Vare 2 taystë 4 ve mummies Bsydes, put in Fukka Funch, an vay lookabit lyke cunt, wooden wannem gettin ennë Ideers!
There was a shout of laughter from the other dads. The separation from Ham was having a paradoxical effect on them: they were all craven in the face of the mighty sea and the sweeping wind, yet dävine and pagan alike felt the dead weight of the Driver's hand lift from them, and this led to ribaldry and defiance. That psychic melding that had occurred a generation before on the voyage to Chil half happened again, and the Hamstermen experienced a complete accord with one another, sniggering and jibing, slapping and teasing the lads.
Fred Ridmun brought them to order, and they pedalled the vessel in below Blakk Stac, which stood about half a click from the Sentrul Stac. Here, in a patch of dead water, they could wait out the hours until darkness, when it would be time for Carl to make the leap.
– Vat Dryva, said Sid Brudi, chewing meditatively on a piece of curried moto as the pedalo rocked gently on the swell, ee stopsus wurkin awl ve tyme, ven sez ee wansus 2 B maw produktiv.
– Yeah, his brother Dave chimed in, maw produktiv but ee wansus 2 getridov ve motos. Iss nó rí.
Carl looked from one thin, green-eyed Brudi to the other. He thought of Salli, and unbidden a memory came to him, of the two of them assisting motos to mate. Salli smearing Gorj's folds with moto oil, while he, crouching beneath Runti's great sagging tank, guided his tiny cock in.
– Wotevah U fink abaht ve Dryva, said Fred Ridmun, breaking in on Carl's reverie, ee az ve faredar, ee nose ve runs an ve poynts. U ló ardlee no nuffink. Nuffink. We ad bettah caul sumovah nah 4 Daves lukk, yeah?
This appeal to the Hamstermen's religious instincts had the desired result: they put aside their takeaway and, gathering themselves into two cabs – one at the stern, one in the bow – they began to call over. Carl was joined by Fred and four other dads. Äteen! cried Bill Edduns, and Fukka Funch – who had the knowledge of this one – commenced: Leev on leff Marryleebo, leff alsop playce, leff baykastree, forrad pormanskware … The arcane words drifted over the waves, and some inquisitive oilgulls came spiralling down from their nests on the Blakk Stac. The fowl floated alongside the pedalo and called over their own rasping Knowledge.
It wasn't until lampoff that the Guvnor halted the calling over. The Hamstermen stowed their gear and took to their pedals. Slowly, the pedalo came out from behind the Blakk Stac and crept over the booze-dark swell, silvered at its peaks by a dipped headlight. Hunched in the bow, wrapped in his cloakyfing, Carl felt little fear. Ever since the pedalo had cast off, in this more compact version of Ham, this floating islet, he felt once again the tight and affectionate enclosure of his early childhood. Whether the jump killed him or not, he was at least accepted.
Where the long skeins of oysters scraped at the sea there were streaks of phosphorescence. A milky deliquescence of birdshit hung in the water at the base of the Sentrul Stac. High above the pedalo in the purpled darkness, the Hamstermen sensed the sleeping blackwings – not so many as there had been earlier in the season, but, from the comings and goings through the long second tariff, they knew there to be thousands. A remorseless coo-burbling was caught by the breeze and flung down to them.
– Ears ve roap. Fred hung the heavy, moto-oiled hank around Carl's neck and shoulder. U jump, U grab, U clyme. Wunce U R up on ve Stac, ve clymin iz eezee Enuff slongas U doan slippup. Upontop yul fynd ve stayk eezee Enuff 2.
– Eye no, Dad, Eye no, Carl broke in. U toll me iofowzan tymes awlreddy.
The pedalo nosed in closer and closer, until Carl could make out the first ledge, a man's height above the top of the highest swell. When the bow was only three paces away, he rose. Fukka grabbed the seat of his jeans, and Carl buckled his belt over the hank of rope. His arms were grasped firmly by the Guvnor so that Carl could place his right foot on the stempost. Carl relaxed his legs as the pedalo nosed still closer. Dave B wiv U! came the whispered invocation from the dads, and then, as the pedalo reached the top of a wave, feeling his centre of gravity shift to the point of no return, Carl flung himself into the darkness.
Two days later, when, with the tinting screen, the pedalo came wallowing round the eastern cape of Ham and headed for Manna Bä, the anxiety among the waiting mummies had reached a dangerous level. They knew there had been no injuries on the trip, because kids had been dispatched each morning to the giant's gaff on the margin of the Gayt, from where the top of the Sentrul Stac could be clearly seen. If one of the fowling party had been injured, the dads would have scraped away some of the cap of shit on the summit. Yet this did not discount the possibility of a fatality, for there was no point in giving any warning of such a dread eventuality. If a dad had died on the expedition, then the mourning would be both extreme and protracted. As the pedalo drew closer, the mummies made ready to rend their cloakyfings and beat their brows. A widow would swoon and feign death herself for the first blob. She would take no food and accept only water trickled through a sphagnum sponge. She would soil herself and lie prostrate. The exigencies of tending her – together with the funeral calling over for the dead dad – would paralyse the working life of the community; so, in part, the Hamsters' worry was not simply for the loss of a beloved but also a fearful anticipation of these privations.
Bert Ridmun waded out into the chilly water to hail the returnees: Orlrì?! And when his dad's voice boomed back, Orlrì! a whoop went up from the Hamsters on the shore. Another few units and they saw that the gunnels of the vessel were within a hand's breadth of the waterline, so overloaded was it with blackwings. Carl was standing up in
the bow, a triumphant grin on his face. As the keel grounded on the sandy shingle, he leaped into the waiting arms of the Hamsterwomen, who petted and caressed him with many tender cries. Salli Brudi was with them, and she had a special intensity as she brushed his cracked lips with the back of her freckled hand. Looking up from the unaccustomed cuddle, Carl was confronted by the mirror: in it were the hooked beak and mad yellow eyes of the Driver. The old crow glared hatred at the lad. Nevertheless, he understood the situation well enough: in the Hamsters' minds such bounty drove out any thoughts of Breakup for the moment. The Driver turned and stalked away towards the Shelter.
To be replaced, on the fringes of the crowd unloading the pedalo, by the rubicund face of Antonë Böm, who came forward at once to assist. He was greeted with much warmth by the fowlers. Orlrì, Ant, they said clapping him on the shoulder, lookívis 1, and they thrust into his arms the floppy carcass of a blackwing. However, there was little time for chitchat since the fowl had to be unloaded and stored in the fridges for the night. At first tariff the serious business of dividing the catch, plucking, gutting and currying them would begin.
The following evening there would be a Dave's curry – the last of the year. Fred Ridmun would offer up half his own share, together with half that of the stack jumper, for the consumption of the rest. A further quarter portion of the Guvnor's would be snuck away to the Gayt and placed before the monumental bronze head that lay near the southern shore. Despite the calling over of the Driver, most Hamsters remained convinced that this enigmatic, bearded visage was that of Dave himself. The quantifiable offering was significant, for, as exact as they were in all aspects of their property – according ownership to the last peck of wheatie and drip of oil – so their cohesion was preserved by gifting. Power resided not among those who retained their bounty but among those who divested themselves of it.