These Demented Lands (2 page)

I kneeled and picked up the wet child, ‘Nah, honey, I reckon he's safe and sound and we'll be seeing more of him.'

‘Theres gey-few saints to be found on this ruck of an island,' the Harbour grumbled.

‘I've got to get her out these clothes.'

‘We've no kiddies' gear. Wrap her in a towel and I'll get those on the heater. As for you, help yourself to the clothes; the most expensive yacht jacket's there, so take one; there's a wee lifejacket in that you can blow up! Italian. As per usual I just bill the ferry company . . .'

‘How do you mean, as per usual?'

‘Hell, girl, third time this winter the wee boat's been sunk. El Capitain on the
Psalm 23
thinks he's still in the cod war; hasn't left the bridge for months, gets a bottle of malt sent up every morning.'

The quiet one of telly-aerial repairers piped up, ‘We were sunk time before, so we took out good luggage insurance this time.'

‘Here on the razzle though,' goes Redhead, ‘Trek straight up to the Aerial Bothy, check the box and it's the usual fuse blown; phone home to base and tell the suckers it's a major job of about four days; book The Outer Rim Hotel and drink ourselves into the Olympics; claim the booze as expenses then go back up on our last day and fix the fuses . . .'

‘Works every time,' says the Tall.

‘Mummy and Daddy send the Kongo Express for me at night,' the wee thing smiled. I took her behind the row of waterproofs out the gaze of the drunk telly-aerial repairers though she was so young.

‘Aye, pet,' I goes, then, ‘Arms to the high sky.' I tugged her top up, the wetness in the lycra squeezing out at her tiny wrists before the sleeves both pop, popped up and dangled. I squeezed the top out. When she bended over: the amazing smooth, perfectcrack of her child-bum. I scoufuled up her ribbons and ponytails with the towel.

After I'd chosen, I took the little girl up back of the Chandlers where there was a mirror. I couldn't even hear the telly-aerial repairers bawling back there. I took off my old, tatty steerhide jacket: all tears and fatherings; I ever-so-gingerly plucked out the CD Walkman. I opened the lid; the girl giggled as water poured out. It was utterly jiggered, and I just took the CD that was Verve: All In The Mind (HUTCD 12), though it was track three, Man Called Sun that I always listened to, if you must know. I slipped it in the pocket with an eye to the future then dropped the Walkman on the floor; she asked if she could have it; I explained it was kaput and all that. My other Verve CDs had been in the carrier bag (lying on the Sound floor, shiny-side-up, reflecting the searing phosphorus colours lifting above them).

I stripped, looked, run my palms down over tum, glanced at the sproglet, but she was fascinated with the buttons on the Walkman; I turned to study the dying suntan, the unshaved legs with a swirl of wet hairs on the backs of thighs. I started
looking through what I'd chosen to fully enjoy the . . . the feeling . . . what I would call, in the other words,
La me da igual,
but no, those are the other languages from . . . Down There and the things that happened to me, walking in moonlight with dark sunglasses among forest fires and shooting stars. So in this language I've made this daft deal to tell my story in . . . 
La me da igual
 . . . how can I say it in the old words? The Indifferent Feeling; yes! The Indifferent Feeling. That's what I had enjoyed as the Harbour let me choose the clothes in the Chandlers. I'd just crammed things in the kitbag he'd given me. The Harbour noted the items down and kept a receipt for himself.

I'd says, ‘I'd do anything for some real girl clothes,' but I was stuffing the gear away like it was nobody's business and that's The Indifferent Feeling: heavy men's work-shirts still smelling of their cheap dyes; big baggy-pant boxer shorts, even
S
too big for me; socks all colours, enough to pad the small good boots I grabbed; and always not caring what colour combinations I was getting, cause The Indifferent Feeling . . . what I call privately
La me da igual
.

You see The Indifferent Feeling mostly in eating places and clothes shops. It's harboured in middle-aged guys who live not pretending anymore. They come in, a wee-bit-overweight guy, grey hairs here and there, money in the pockets but no concessions to fashion – in other words to women. He needs a new jacket so he finds one that fits, throws it on the counter by the till. The assistant tells him the jacket comes in three other colours; the man shrugs, no doubt by now counting out the notes and not even looking at the
assistant girl who is young, dead pretty and, as you look at her clothes, carefully dressed – cause that still has meaning. She's got lies she can still believe in, but our friend, well that shrug shows it all. It's not just that I feel free when I live The Indifferent Feeling myself, it's that I find it so attractive in others. When I was way Down There, in those days when I only ate in restaurants, I would see men, those same men who had lived, I would see the indifference they really tried to hide, terrified Life was going sour on them; their smugness was losing its novelty; they stared at a menu that five years before would have given them a pleasing feel. But they had come to understand how childish it was, how little it mattered if they placed A or B inside their mouths and masticated it to a tight bolus. They never ate desserts cause their fragile pride wouldn't allow them to speak out those silly names.

While I'm on about it may as well mention what, to myself, I call The Correspondence Feeling. There's the others I could explain: The Toffee Feeling, The Thin Hair Feeling, The Rudder Feeling, The Cheese Sandwich in the Back of the Car Feeling, The October Afternoon Feeling, Peeling the Tangie Feeling: all the ones that make me me. Aye, The Correspondence Feeling: I had it when we were out there swimming in the Sound and the Devil's Advocate had set fire to the petrol tank . . . no, it started even before that, when my eye lighted on the orange-end glow of his cigar,
then
there was the petrol burning then the light of the campfire up the mountains: ‘flame, flame, flame'. Sometimes you see it on a city street: three strangers moving in different
directions come adjacent, each has a yellow jacket on so you get this row yellow, then your eye follows along and a huge yellow juggernaut is passing beside so, when the light catches it,
all
is shimmery yellow on the pavement and reflected in the shop windows . . .

When I materialised front-of-shop and declared, ‘I'm looking for The Drome Hotel, that one with the graveyard beside,' The Harbour coughed and the telly-aerial repairers stared at me. I took the dried clothes to dress the girl and when we returned The Harbour cleared his throat again and goes, ‘Yonder is Brotherhood's domain.'

‘Brotherhood. Brotherhood?' I says the name.

‘That's a right weird place out yon, we'd never dream of holing up in it.'

There was a good bit silentness.

The Tall went, ‘Who's Brotherhood?'

‘He arrived back here piloting on old PBY flying boat; all these French hippy chicks were on board; anchored offof The Outer Rim Hotel, the girls sunbathing up on the wings, diving off then swimming in for lemonades . . .'

‘The Sanctions Buster we called him back then, account of his carry-ons down in Africa there; his Dad kept good health and was running The Drome as a decent . . .'

The Harbour laughed and goes, ‘Brotherhood's forgotten dream. Young men's dreams that pepper out: of setting up an island casino at The Drome with
Folies Bergère
girls; punters choppered in.' The Harbour snorted, shook his head in sort of despair, ‘What he's got is as close as he can get to the pimp he wants to be.'

The Tall and me looked at the Harbour in sort of appeal. I goes, ‘What're you meaning?'

‘You'll be seeing . . . soon enough, soon enough.'

We stepped outside under the rattling lampshade. The Harbour says, ‘You wonnie be needing your kitbag less you plan leaving us, and if that Devil's Advocate doesn't show soon we'll be needing all heads we can get along the shores.'

I went, ‘Far is it to The Drome?'

‘Don't think about it, lassie. Fifteen mile as crow flies. Over The Interior. Twenty-five round the coast road. On a Saturday night, now, you could get The Disco Bus that circles, gathering all the young ones for their dancing at The Outer Rim. It's a hell of a sight, yon, on the way back, but none's brave enough to get aboard; even High-Pheer-Eeon who swims over from Mainland on his hunting and scavenging missions was found locked in the boot at the garage one Monday morning: Turns out he'd been using the boots to move round the island for weeks, too feart to go upstairs.'

I began to cross the Slip with the little girl's hand in mine. ‘Now how do you get home?' I goes.

‘You ring the little lectric bell for The Kongo Express.'

‘Nah, seriously honey.'

Then we came to the top of the slipway:

It was only months later I'd read His pages, typed on the toy Fisher-Price typewriter, pages dated Wednesday seventeenth, Thursday twenty-second and Friday twenty-third.
His
 . . . pages, the one they called the Aircrash Investigator, or the Failed Screenwriter, or the Man From The Department of Transport, even a name: Walnut or Warmer, though one night in The Heated Rooms when I pressed him he says his name was Houlihan. I read in his pages that never had the months, just the useless, mixed-up dates, how he came ashore as a Foot Passenger from the big Weekend-Only car ferry, and of course his eye saw the dent in the bottom right-hand corner of the road sign, where a provisions truck coming off the Slip must have clipped it one.

I like that sentence:
where a provisions truck coming off the Slip must have clipped it one.

Beyond the sign, the little girl tugged me to the left and we passed a
HISTORIC CASTLE
symbol road sign, down a path we came to a railway station but, the weird thing was, it was
a miniature station I saw emerging out the dark as the girl pressed the buzzer. The roof of the station only came to my chin and I could see the close-togetherness of the little rails of the track and out the dark wind that moved the looming spruce trees at their tops, came a miniature train with
KONGO EXPRESS
writ on a brass plate at the front.

‘Aye-aye. Wanting dropped anywhere?' The driver looked at me. ‘Niagara Falls, Mount Kilimanjaro, Makarikari Salt Pans?' he yelled out a laugh.

‘The boat sunk,' I says.

‘Watch out for snakes and tigers,' he shrieked, then he shrugged like as if to say sorry, ‘It all reminds her ladyship of the good times, when she was beautiful.'

‘Can I sleep in the princess's tower?' the girl, who had sat in the little coach behind the driver, covered his eyes with her hands.

‘Do you know of the man Brotherhood?'

The driver says, ‘John Brotherhood, the Sanctions Buster. He sailed in a rusty old minesweeper – that's how he got started; he was innocent then, and of the crew only Brotherhood and the Captain didn't get seasick. They drank two bottles of rum a day. When they approached those white beaches, Brotherhood stepped out of the bridge; mosquitoes like he'd never heard were whining past his ears then the minesweeper mounted the sand and the hull opened up as a whole invasion force of government soldiers poured up the beach to the palms. The soldiers had been hidden down there in their own vomit for a week. Then Brotherhood realised the whizzing past his red ears were bullets and he was viewed
as part of the invasion force. “I thought you knew,” the Captain said, crouched on the decking. “Welcome to Africa.”'