These Demented Lands (6 page)

‘Don't have one.'

‘Hell, there was a boy came stumbling out the bushes back there with bow and arrows, wanted them sharpened when he saw what I was; man, I'm such a dab hand with that wheel I could sharpen your pencil if you had one.' He walked back to his bike and started dismantling the gear, kicked it off its stand and accelerated up behind so's I stepped aside into the grass.

He braked beside me and pointed straight up the mountain to the behind of me. ‘You'd be the quickest trotting over yon and falling down onto the foothills behind; keep a mile this
side of the river and move west, it'll take you right into The Drome.'

As I climbed I kept the turning to watch the little bike move down the glen, Knifegrinder not tilting into the corners but taking them weirdly upright, so slow he seemed as to have stopped on the corners but no, he was moving on forwarders then suddenly really sped up on a fast bit of straight.

I moved into the lashing of mist among the scattered rocks, level sections of tuft grass broadened out then hoiched up onto another flanker. Peewee nests were a-clutter; mummy birds swooped down yelling at me and another did the old hop-along pretending to have a broken wing to lure me away from the nest – tenderly I stepped over the near-invisible tawn circles with the tiny yellow and brown eggs.

Higher near ridge-crest, the rondel trees of the valley floor clustered closer into mushy clumps of black with bumpy edges. The whole island seemed to slip down through me like a disc, spread out round, saw otherside from up there, distant mountains lifting up as if explosions of steam, cloud pillars like spring blossom, the mountain range I was named after on the opposite side of the Sound that lay with a wet sun along in dazzling shimmers, up to where the water turned angry black – wide wide ocean that goes forever ‘cept maybe for a Pincher Martin rock jutted out the teeth of ocean bed. I stood looking out into that sea that surrounded us.

Weeks later up in the Observation Lounge it was the thought of our entrapment by water that got me talking about The Rudder Feeling. I was sat with the short skirt on,
the tops of my thighs thinning as they dove into the hem I'd just cut, under the bewildered gaze of new-husbands and suspicious new-wives; I'd mesmerised them: the tale of my arrival at the London airport with my lipstick all snogged off as I walked along those millions miles of corridors and through customs in bare feet with just a plastic bag of dirty knickers; strapped on my back a huge teddy bear that'd been won me at the shows in, maybe Formentera maybe Fuerteventura, who knows? I was laughing, my black eyes averted, laughing for myself alone – at least one-time joys insured forever, even against that perilous stay in Brotherhood's sphere. I says, ‘Rudder Feeling is very different from Toffee Feeling. The Rudder Feeling is when I was wee my foster-dad would hold my hand and take me to see the fishing boats. I'd no interest in boats, only in the textures and sizes of their rudders and propellers that I could see hung in the bluey-green world below the curves of the hulls. It gave me scaredness lying in my bed thinking about those rudders, held there forever, punished above the cold Atlantic seabeds that were always rolling out below them.'

The Aircrash Investigator, The One Who Walked the Skylines of Dusk with Debris Held Aloft Above His Head, HE nodded quick, several times, the whisky jamp up the insides of his tumbler and he says, ‘You fear underworlds where the seabed is the earth, the unsteady surface a new sky, you hate the Living Things: basking shark or angler fish that might brush against you bare leg and those rudders and propellers . . . their contant immersion, made them thresholds into that underworld.'

He was right. I nodded watching as his faraway eyes turned to the gunmetal of the Soundwaters.

That was all later though; before my Banishment, so I clambered on up the steepening braes till all the island was way below me and I was dropping through the grey seams of sideyways rock – some cliffs were too sheer so's you had to make the big detours and wind down into the foothills below, using the sheep tracks.

I saw the tent way back on the lee dip in 96-Metre Hill, the oily tong of smoke crawling up above the larch scatterings. Even a real ways off you could pick out his bulk afront the tent.

‘Ahoy there,' I waved.

‘Well. Venus on the Half-Shell,' the Devil's Advocate shouted, his voice carrying a little away with the smoke from his campfire.

‘I'm so so sorry; the petrol, in that tank. You could easy of died.' I walked up to quite near him.

‘Sit down, dear, sit down. I'll tell you this, I was instrumental in the recent demotion of St Christopher from his position: patron saint of wayfarers.'

‘Aye. I know,' I goes.

‘Well! He certainly wasn't on board our vessel that night.'

‘Thats right enough. They were searching for you. In a helicopter.'

‘Worry not. I met two Mormons crossing these hills to The Far Places on their mission from Salt Lake City, Utah.
The gentlemen informed me a search had been called off. A reward has been posted for an escaped bear and that helicopter's esteemed crew are scouring the hills for the grizzly.'

‘From the zoo at the castle?'

‘The same.'

‘This island is crazy. Its all like a dream.' I looked at the Devil's Advocate's face. It had the same similarities as all the other menfaces I'd been seeing.

‘Where is it you wayfare to?'

‘The Drome Hotel. That's a great tent you've there,' I says.

‘So. Mr Brotherhood's lair.'

‘Is it far?'

He went, ‘Just beyond those trees.'

I stood, leaving the knapsack, then ambled over to the larch trees. Below me lay the wide waters of the Sound; the graveyard surrounded by the rivulets of the river outflow; the bright green of the airstrip threshold; the grass runway behind the pine plantation; the Big Road and, there, in among the pines, the roofs and angles of The Drome Hotel and outhouses.

I sauntered back to the wee camp. The Devil's Advocate was breaking off specks of loaf and tossing them in front of him. As I got closer the fat man turned to me and mouthed shushness. I spotted the robin redbreast bobbing on the mossy log and saw the two total black beads of its eyes.

The Devil's Advocate goes, ‘They say the robin tried to remove the crown of thorns from Christ's head; the blood stained the bird's chest.'

I went, ‘Is that right? You couldn't spare some of that loaf could you?'

He looked at me closely and held out the bread so's the robin redbreast dove off thanklessly, ducking and rising away over tubular hulks of mossed-out tree trunks long-fallen on the spongy hillside.

‘Ta.' I screwed off a chunk of bakery loaf and held out the remaining back to him. He lowered those eyes, the whites so clear you'd think he had make-up round the skin. He looked back at my must've-been-black eyes; narrowed his own.

‘You don't look well.'

‘I'll be fine when I get to the hotel.' I saw him look me up and down and somehow, I knew he knew right there and then.

‘Sit down here by the fire.' He stood and shifted off the log that he'd cleared the moss from and must've been sat on so much the wood was dry and smooth. I put my arse on it and bit away the rest of the loaf.

‘I've tinned soup, tinned peaches cold down in the burn there. Join me?'

I nodded quick.

He walked towards the rushing sound of the river then turned back to look at me. ‘The Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Peter. Chapter 3. Verse 18.'

‘Mmm. Uh-huh,' I nodded, chomping on the bread.

Split-second he sunk beneath the hill buff I whipped round and stuck my head in the tent. It smelled of sweat, there were lots books, a big crumpled-up sleeping bag in the strange blue light caused by the tent fabric. A big backpack leaned against
the zipper door. I fiddled with the side pockets, looked back over my shoulder and tried another then scuffled forwards, keeping muddy boots off things. As a pillow, he was using a rolled-up towel that was damp; I reached in for a wallet and moment I touched it I knew what it was.

When he rolled back up the hill I saw him spit the butt of a fag out then wave the cans joyously.

‘Brotherhood who owns The Drome, there seems to be a lot of crap talked about him,' I says.

‘John Brotherhood.' He nodded, pretending to chew something, swinging round and dumping more branches on the fire, letting twigs brush against my feet threateningly. ‘You've changed your jacket,' he smiled.

‘This is my old favourite. Yon other one, I got after the wee ferry sunk. We all got free clothes from the Chandlers there. You should've seen it. How did you get ashore safe?'

‘It was a miracle,' he smirked, both dirty hands held up. He produced a cigar from inside his cassocky thing, kneeled and, twirling the cigar, heated it on the new flames. ‘You always warm a good cigar so it bums evenly and . . .' he nicked the end with good white teeth then, looking vulnerable, he trembled on his knees holding the cigar in his mouth, ‘You must
never
let the flame you light with touch the cigar, or you can ruin the whole flavour; you light a cigar on the heat that rises above the flame. Listening?' he says, outright scary now.

‘Know what kind of cigarettes James Bond smokes?'

‘Sure. What makes you mention James Bond?'

‘
What
then?'

‘Chesterfields.'

‘Is James Bond a saint?'

He'd got the cigar lit and laughed out really loud at me, ‘A confessor if ever there was one! Dear, he might be the only one we've got on this earth.'

‘You really do what the Harbour guy says back at the sinking? Eh . . . says you were a decider, who should be saint and that.'

‘Thats exactly what I do.'

I nodded. There was silence. We stared at each, then I broke it by reaching in and taking out the penknife. ‘It's got a can opener.'

‘I've got my own.' He took out a knife and started digging in to the can top. ‘I was in Mexico recently.'

‘Oh aye?'

‘Yes. There had been reports of a miracle. I was sent to investigate. A rural area. The face of Christ was appearing as an apparition on the outside wall of a little chapel. I arrived there on a Sunday to find the crowds gathered and on their knees before the south wall and I could see it too . . .'

‘You could see?'

‘Oh yes. I saw it. The face of the Saviour: the beard, the cheekbones from Golgotha. So I waited until midnight; myself and the priest went out with buckets and water, swept down the whitewash on the wall . . .'

‘And . . .'

‘It became evident the local farmers had been praying to a poster for a 1973 Willie Nelson concert in the next big town.'

I looked at him and burst out in the hysterics. He smiled, then laughed too. He tipped the soup into a very new-looking pan with wee fold-out handle, wrapped his hand in a cloth then held the pan in the flames. ‘Look,' he nodded.

The sun was well down the far end of the Sound, the mountains sloping out of the shores on each side; along the ridge of the next hill, across the river, fairly sloping down to the verge of the big road, moved the figure, silhouette cut out against the light to the behind. The legs feeling their way, they juttered forward gingerly; arms shakily erect, holding the wide, flapping piece of whateverness above, held there cause too big for under-arm. He moved on, casting his own shadow over the dead bracken spreads; if you had to imagine the right music for the sight of him moving across the skylines it might be Stone Temple Pilots doing Big Empty offof The Crow soundtrack or if you had to choose a Verve song you'd obviously go for something offof the first album, Slide Away would be best.

The Devil's Advocate went, ‘A resident from The Drome Hotel.'

‘Friend of Brotherhood's?' I squinted into the afternoon.

‘From what I've heard. Those are bits of two aircraft that crashed on the airfield ten years ago. This one here, who collects all the pieces, arrived a few months ago from the Department of Transport. Apparently they've re-opened the case. He's living in the hotel amongst all those horrible couples, investigating why the two planes collided; just little planes but two men were killed.'

I took the soup and ate it out the pan with a spoon. It was
too hot, though, so I rested it on my knees and watched the figure of The Aircrash Investigator with his burden, vanishing among the hillshadow. I says, ‘In the nineteen-seventies, was it guns and stuff Brotherhood was selling way over in other countries?'

‘Yes. And unrepentantly from that school that if he didn't sell the goodies to them the next man would. I used to know young Brotherhood. He once told me of some war – there were so many – and the airforce managed to get fuel but they had no weapons left at all: no rockets, no bombs, not even bullets for machine guns. Brotherhood presumed there would be no airforce attacks but there were: the jets came in low and very fast over civilian villages. The pilots emptied bags of rusty nails out the open cockpits. “Nails travelling at 300 m.p.h. can make quite a decoration on a child's body,” those were Brotherhood's words. It's unusual. He never shows any feelings yet it was clear the day made a hefty impression on him. He said that was when he understood the Devil had won the struggle one day no one noticed; we're just under the impression the struggle still goes on. For him that was the day he realised all men dream of the nuclear explosion when they make love and secretly crave the destruction of their own children out of curiosity. Love was a petty illusion and he made it his business to show love existed nowhere in the world. That is why he set up this ludicrous honeymoon hotel; he likes the vulgarity of it and amuses himself searching for the proof he always finds, showing none of the couples is truly in love . . .'

‘But love does exist; only yesterday . . .'