These Demented Lands Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Alan Warner

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part One: First Text

  First Night

  Second Night

  Third Night

  Part One: Second Manuscript

  Saturday the Fourteenth

  Sunday the Fifteenth

  Monday the Sixteenth

  Part Two: First Text

  ‘Some of them . . .

  Part Two: Second Manuscript

  What must have . . .

  At nine o’clock . . .

  Wednesday the Eleventh

  Another summer came, . . .

  Thursday the Second. Moon in Capricorn

  Friday the Third. Dawn

  The letter

  Dearest pa-pa . . .

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A young woman makes landfall on a dark Scottish island where nothing seems real – is she alive or dead, in some form of purgatory or even Hell itself?

  About the Author

  Alan Warner is the author of five novels: Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos, The Man Who Walks, and The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven. In 2003 he was chosen as one of Granta’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists.

  ALSO BY ALAN WARNER

  Morvern Callar

  The Sopranos

  The Man Who Walks

  The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven

  For Mark Richard,

  Michael Ondaatje . . . thanks.

  Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–94)

  These Demented Lands

  Alan Warner

  ‘Multitudes of people! Walking up the hills!’

  In the Name of the Father, Black Grape

  ‘We went down into the waste, and accordingly began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge.’

  Kidnapped, R. L. Stevenson

  FIRST TEXT

  Part One

  First Night

  I GOT NEAR the island; Ferryman was about to ask me to see a ticket when the boat started to sink: ‘If it’s the return tickets yous have got, best swim for it,’ Ferryman bawled then he jamp over the side into blackwater.

  It was neardark. Since Ferryman’d cut the outboard engine all was silent; could hear the loose, metal lampshade on the single bulb above the Boat Chandlers at Ferry Slipway. The lampshade was clattering in any gusts before they reached.

  A low roll of cloud had circled the island and seemed to hold the luminous dayness in its depths and bulges. You could see the braes: the bare rowans, the dark spruces, larches below the cloud then the true mountainheads above, behind the five silhouettes of the passengers facing me who tilted gently to one side. Water breached the gunwhale and busily began filling the bottom of the boat.

  The blonde kiddy with the sticking plaster over her eye who’d been staring at me since Mainland (apart from suddenly turning to spew then spit over the side); the telly-aerial repairers who’d been so mortal and rackety; the fat man with the cigar and huge metal-looking crucifix:

  All went straight into silentness.

  Big fat man shot up, ‘Car ferry’s wake’s gone and sunk us.’ He hauled his crucifix and chain above the baldiness then tossed them over the side; the tip of his cigar glowed brighter as he rose up by the oarlocks, rocked the boat then stepped overboard. I turned away from his splash and saw the huge black ship vanishing into the dark Upsound, could still read the words on the stern:

  PSALM 23

  Greenock

  I looked down and saw the ghostly-pale glow of the petrol tank – no more than a plastic jerry-can – that in eight months’ time I would be reminded of by a catheter bag (the drop petrol in the bottom like thick, lazy urine).

  I savvied right enough that the petrol tank would keep me afloat so, with the telly-aerial repairers sat like daft apeths, I stepped forward and drew a real squeal from the blonde child as I bunched her ribbons and ponytails in both my hands and hauled her up to chest level, threw a left arm round; she kneed me on the left bosom as I swung, huffed out a puff and grabbed the petrol-tank handle with the right hand – in two

  steps we were up

  on the transom, leaping, then,

  for the split second,

  soaring

  over moonless nightwater,

  with the blonde hair of the child in my arms,

  the brightest thing in such

  darknesses.

  When you first hit freezing darkwater there’s a strangeness and instant when you feel and see nothing, then that liquidy seep in through the most porous bits: top of jeans, front of whatevertop, slowly, slowly down your back under the air bubble of your jackets (jacket’s . . . jackets’: do you need these comma things??) jacket’s shoulders . . . it’s certain you do feel the pull of that new dreadweight your clothes are starting to become.

  When my wrecked boots hit water I was smiling and the surface shocked into my face. I’d misjudged the strength of that long-orangey-rubber-tube-thing connecting the petrol tank to the outboard and it really breenged us round twisting my arm behind my back. I shivered, opened eyes: the splash had turned the little blonde girl’s (girls?) hair jet-black. I tried to yank the jerry-can; the sinking boat tugged back at me then the cap popped off freeing the petrol tank. I let go the handle to try turn myself; I just let go for a jiffy, but, with a sure movement, together, the half-blind child in my arms and I sank beneath the nightwater.

  I opened my eyes in the static and rumble. A landscape of colours was glissanding on the lunar seabeds way below; my black legs slowly kicking so thin in silhouette. I hugged that wee girl tighter to me. A constellation of pinkish bubbles rose up under my feet then drifted, swole, each bubble’s angle reflecting a diamond nova from both its north and south pole. In the furthest distances of this universe the rising planets and blue stars from seabed geysers, a huge surface of tiny bubbles, wobbled under us lit by deepest flarings below: a coral reef gone insane in the colours of these killing seas.

  Just then Ferryman’s boat sank – away there – past us, its bow pointed deaddown and you saw the gilt, hand-painted lettering on its stem flashing a last time in the wildlights before

  IN GOD WE TRUST

  the black hull darted into a bank of turquoisey bubbles, the orangey fuel pipe, trailing behind – straight up as a plumb line.

  Though it forced us deep towards those seabed burnings, I tried to heave-ho the little girl up: shove her surfacewards. I was sorry for our death . . . I’d heard around that the drowning could be no so bad but there was that book that had scared me: the Pincher Martin book; the book of drowning. Just when I was getting the All Dramatic I felt a trickle of cold on my wrist in naked air, rolled and was on the surface. Bruised-blue sky above was now dark though I was fairly positive there was still a little light when we’d gone under; now was nightimeness so I brought the kiddy onto my chest. The fuel tank was just bob-bobbing beside, I grabbed at it and then the bright and coloured water around us just flickered and switched off like swimming-pool lights.

  ‘What was it?’ she whimpered.

  I goes, ‘I don’t know, darling.’

  The sticky-on patch had come away in the salt water and a dead eye, like a green jewel of frozen phlegm on some winter pavement, stared down at me from her beautiful little button face.

  By holding the handle of the jerry-can to my side and kick-kicking, we curved a shaky course in towards the lonesome single bulb above the door of the Boat Chandlers at Ferry Slipway.

  Ahead, a minute point of tangerine light flourished then dulled; through the
perishing cold I creaked a nervous smile. Big fat man was grimly wheezing shorewards, the cigar still miraculously alight in his mouth.

  ‘Ahoy there,’ I says.

  He spoke out the side of his mouth, ‘Saint Moluag challenged Saint Columba to a race, from Mainland to this island: first one to touch the land. So they spun across in their coracles and Saint Columba was holding a good lead close to this shore; Saint Moluag took up his axe, chopped off his little finger, hurled it onto the island shouting, “There, I touched the shore first.”’

  He clached out a snigger then sucked on his cigar. I thumped the petrol tank over to him, ‘Kick in on this and we’ll race you.’

  ‘Race him, race him!’ the wee girl was bouncing, flooding water over my bosom. Big fat man took the cigar stub out his mouth and dropped it into the spout of the jerry-can. A ten-foot spew of flame jamp out the cap-hole propelling the fat man furiously towards the shore. He screamed, the orange fountain of light – for a second – lit up other heads, clutching seat-cushions or other stuff, kicking in shorewards to Ferry Slipway.

  A patch of burny water sailed away west, upsound, before withering into a shape at the back of my mind. Then I saw it: an echo of the flames up there above the cloud – the ancient and dour light of campfire, high on the ben sides.

  Dripping sodden-wet, still holding the child, I booted in the door of the Boat Chandlers and one of the telly-aerial repairers lunged towards me holding out a bottle of Bunnahabhain. I shook head no and let the child down to the ground, ‘Lights. I saw such strange lights out there, deep in the waters,’ I says.

  ‘The Phosphorous Beds,’ the Harbour whispered behind and sort of nodded to the kid at my leg. ‘They dumped hundreds of tons of phosphorus bombs in the Sound after the war; last few years they started burning up. Who knows what else’s down there. Those colours: divers won’t go near; the canisters sometimes come up in lobster pots on fire . . . you see a streamer of white smoke whipping above a well-decker.’ The Harbour turned away, spoke even quieter, ‘Sometimes, burning phosphorus canisters wash up on the beach, and sometimes kiddies find them, you know?’

  I nodded. ‘Did all get safely ashore?’

  ‘No sign of the Devil’s Advocate, Ferryman’s way out in the dinghy and we’ve phoned for Nam the Dam to do a fly-by in his chopper.’ The Harbour accepted the whisky bottle offof the redhead telly-aerial repairer.

  ‘Be as well with yon Argonaut and his line,’ the redhead says.

  The tall one from amongst the telly-aerial repairers squinted at the redhead who explains, ‘Argonaut’s some kind of crazy salvage-diver-cum-Armada-treasure-hunter from across the island.’

  The Harbour says, ‘He’s a body-finder too; anyone drowns in these waters it’s aye Argonaut who can find where the bag of bones’ll wash up or where the currents’ll have it lying in fathoms.’

  The redhead goes, ‘Sails round the islands in a kayak with all these words from the bible writ all over.’

  ‘He moves between the islands. Big ships have sighted him in his kayak miles out to sea,’ The Harbour tilted back the bottle so its base near touched the ceiling.

  The tally one asked, ‘Who is that fat guy, some sort of a lawyer or a religious freak, or what?’

  The Harbour goes, ‘Nah, nah he’s a pape from the church. He’s the Devil’s Advocate: decides who should get to become a saint and who shouldnty and all yon; wandering hills with his tent, researching into saints; canonisation it’s called, trying to find out dirt in the past of already-saints . . . he’s sort of an investigative journalist for God.’

  ‘Well if he’s on the ocean bed getting his eyes ett out by crabs, the church’ll be down on this ferry like a shot . . .’

  ‘Shush!’ I snapped at the Tall, jerking my head down at the child.

  ‘Is big fat man drowned or all burned up?’ the kiddy says.

  ‘That Argonaut,’ the Harbour smirked, ‘He’s pulverised out the mind on the drugs. He goes down diving on acid, to fix a line on those bodies he finds, and conducts a wee religious service with a flare.’

  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.

&nbs
p; 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 . . .