These Demented Lands (17 page)

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.'

‘Nah, I'm staying put. Business here,' said the Argonaut.

Superchicken started puffing out then chipping the candles from the roof of his car and tossing them in at the passenger foot space. ‘I'm just going over for an hour or two; no into it?'

‘Nah, can't be bothered,' shrugged Halley.

Superchicken stooped and climbed into the car, we all stepped back as it started up.

I said, ‘Sweetbay, that's an amazing sounding place.'

‘That's the original Gaelic name for it,' said the Argonaut, ‘Sweetbay. Centuries ago some old greyhead had second sight that one morning all these little children would walk down the sand to the water's edge and drink the salt water
which was sweet; then it was always called Sweetbay. But when I was a kid, in 1975, this barge
The Lusitanos,
got stuck out on the reed beds then sunk; it was carrying ninety tons of sugar that became invisible salvage: it all dissolved, and for a week all the kiddies could walk down on the sand, lift the seawater to their lips and it was sweet.'

We watched the Opel Manta move forward onto the pier then turn expertly, stopping just before the edge – the long nose of the car butting out once on the forwards suspension and the full beams pointing out to the dark sea. The pitch of the engine changed as it revved backwards fast, reverse lights illuminating the rising mast of the fishing boat behind. The headlights of the car shone directly at us and I held a sheltering hand to my eyebrows just in time to hear a thump, the back of the car jumped then, for an amazing instant, I saw the headlights rear into the air sending two spectacular beams upwards through the night sky . . . There was a loud impact and I saw the mast of the fishing boat tip itself slightly towards us.

‘Oh, fucking
Jesus,
the Superchicken's finally gone over the edge of the pier,' shouted Halley. Already figures were running over the wooden pier to the edge of the structure.

When we got to the edge it was to find the Opel Manta at a forty-five degree angle, its rear rammed onto the middle of the fishing boat's deck. The front wheels were resting on the edge of the pier, the radiator just showing above the bollards' level. Superchicken was still sitting smugly at the steering wheel with his arms folded, reclined back on the angle: he had wound down his window. ‘How about
that
for fucking
double parking,' he barked, and suddenly switched on his hazard warning lights.

Argonaut shouted, ‘Get out the car, you arse, those moorings might go and I'll be grinning at your puss on the bottom.'

More whelkers were piling from The Outer Rim Bar and looking down on the boat, their head-torches darting and circling on the planking of the deck.

In a slow continuation, Superchicken crawled into the back seat, opened the rear door and slid out, his belly showing as his Motörhead T-shirt pulled free of it; his running shoes dangled a moment then he stood on the deck of the boat.

Halley warned through clenched teeth, ‘Skipper Murdo's no going to appreciate it when he sees the burroch.'

‘When's he due to go out?' asked the Argonaut.

‘Soon. With this tide I can't see him waiting for a crane (he pronounced it ‘cranee') to come over from the garage on the other side of the island.'

‘Not for a garish heap-of-shit-car like yon,' Argonaut nodded seriously.

A few of the whelkers helped the Superchicken up the ladder; when he got onto the pier they started clapping his back as if he'd achieved something.

‘No bother, no bother,' Superchicken announced.

The Argonaut sent me to the bar with Superchicken to buy him a stiff one. While someone went in search of the First Mate on Skipper Murdo's boat, the whelkers began making
their way down the shoreline for their night's strange harvest – they were shouting and stooping, a crazy swarm of tiny light bulbs, weaving, clustering and separating along the darkened beach.

It was soon established that the deck planking of the boat was intact, no damage done, so all Superchicken could do was watch as the First Mate arrived, looked at the canted vehicle, shook his head and said, ‘This takes the biscuit, this does.'

They let go the forward mooring and the car crashed down on the deck as the boat swung outwards.

I stood on the pier. A squad of whelkers and the Argonaut held the car secure as the boat turned astern and sailed out into the weak dawn light, listing badly to port, before the men on deck hoisted the Opel Manta – with its aerials, spotlights, sports steering wheel and trimmings – then, in about a hundred feet of water a quarter of a mile out, threw the car over the side; it hesitated on the surface a moment then was sucked under in a twist and swirl of froth.

Everyone began to reconvene in The Outer Rim Bar.

I awoke to shouting and couldn't remember who or what I was. Something was stuck to my face. I sat up from the hard floor I was on. Pain seemed to be shuttling from left to right and back again in my head. I remembered: I'd crossed back to the Argonaut's house. He had the propellor hung on the wall of his long, empty living room, with the carpet that smelled of the sea, the wallpaper scratched and marked up to waist height, the roof tiles of the mad house all different because
Argonaut himself had raised them from two sunken barges, using buckets and winch.

After smoking another hookah-full, Halley and the Argonaut had shrugged on air tanks and masks, put the regulators in their mouths and, carrying the equipment, walked into the water to rig the keep cages with explosive charges.

I'd stayed, drinking, as their torch-light crawled under the surface of the bay. When I'd needed to crash out later Halley had pointed to the box room, ‘There's a sleeping bag in there.'

I looked around me: up the walls, on the floor and in my hair the little polystyrene balls adhered with static. The sleeping bag was lying in a corner. There was no light or window in the room; in the darkness I'd ignored the sleeping bag and shoved my shoes into a beanbag, ripping open the lining and pulling the torn fabric up to my chin. I thought it was a bit tight when I'd squeezed in.

In front of the house Argonaut was shouting:

‘You stoned-out bampot, that's lime cordial.'

Halley's Comet had fried all the bacon and egg in what he thought was olive oil from a bottle in the scullery.

Nam the Dam's Westland came lifting over the high ridge above us, circled the bay, blowing up spray, then landed somewhere along the shore.

It was twenty minutes before I recognised Brotherhood's walk coming along the beach.

I nodded to him.

‘Afternoon everyone. I'm so pleased to find you; thought
you might have left the island, our little Forbidden Planet where we can play at The Tempest daily.' He nodded back to where the helicopter had landed in a field: its stopped rotors, long and drooping; sheep cautiously moving closer. ‘My father is dying; have to send for some specialist equipment from the Mainland, could I have a private word?' He threw an arm round Argonaut and manoeuvred him southwards along the shore. When he returned he said to me, ‘You left without saying bye.'

‘It must've slipped my mind.'

He paused, waiting for me to ask about her, so I didn't. He knew how strong I'd been to walk away so suddenly, my absurdist repertoire exhausted. He knew my humanity was a defeat over him so he'd been searching the hills in the helicopter, perhaps hoping to find me next to the corpse of the skinned, emaciated kangaroo.