These Demented Lands Read online

  ‘Long as you have a good lead beast the others follow,’ says stubbly guy.

  ‘You don’t have an Ordnance Survey do you?’ says the bearded, ‘We’re using this fifteenth-century one and it’s loaded with inaccuracies.’

  The girl one went, ‘We’re following the old black cattle-drove roads, come a hundred mile across Mainland.’

  I held out my shaking arms, ‘Whats all this for?’

  ‘University project.’

  ‘Some of the financial backing’s EEC.’

  ‘And a bit from the Arts Council . . .’ the bearded one added.

  ‘Keeping them all together at night’s a hassle but we wanted to prove it could still be done,’ girl one goes.

  ‘Got anything to eat?’ I came straight out with.

  ‘Well, we’ve been doing hunting and fishing, trying to do the fifteenth-century thing with Gore-Tex and a video camera thrown in!’

  The stubbly leader guy goes, ‘We’re just about to make camp down by the river though; we’ll try a spot of night-fishing, bound to come up with something good.’

  Second Night

  IN THE SHEER pitch dark over there I could hear the lead beast meandering, crunching out grass with those side-head jerks. The herd was tethered in black beyond where the bearded one was hunting with his fold-out crossbow. My bottom was saturated wet-through on the sodden grass by the campfire; suddenly old Last of the Mohicans stepped back into the wobbling shadows of the cast light. You noticed how he was smoking a joint, holding the crossbow by his thigh.

  ‘How can you hunt at night?’

  ‘Instinct,’ he goes, then blethers on, ‘In the Middle Ages they think all folk were permanently stoned from lysergic growths of roots in cereals: everyone wasted, dressing up animals in clothes and putting them on trial.’

  Out of the darkness from the night-fishing came the stubbly Leader guy and the girl one with video camera. They had a coiled-up eel and a leaky bucket full of tadpoles. I wouldn’t try the eel but the bearded one goes that it tasted a little like chicken. When they boiled the tadpoles each floated to the top of the bucket. The bearded one ate some then his face all curled up in the firelight. He picked up his crossbow then marched off till we couldn’t hear him. When he returned he had a dead goose with an arrow in it. They chucked it all on the flames without even plucking, but it just went on fire, then exploded.

  ‘Where’s the lavvy?’ I goes. Really meaning if they had any lavvy paper.

  ‘Just go anywhere,’ goes the girl one.

  I gave her a look – her ladyship there – but she didn’t have the gumption to cotton on. I walked and walked trying to get out of sight of the three of them round the campfire but you just couldn’t tell at what bit they didn’t see you any more. I cooried down and jobbied; the grass so wet it reflected the smeary line of campfire, the big blades of grass that I clutched and ripped out again and again to heave upward using both hands then toss away aside. It was the way life humiliated on top of everything: having to take a shit when you’d eaten nothing for forty-eight hours.

  As I walked back towards the campfire you could see them, their pitch-black stick shapes, and I fell massively forward right over a black thing that rose up under rolling me to the side where my breath got knocked out and I swore in fright and clamped my arms over tum-tum; I curled, twisted head and looked into the face of the Devil, ‘Brotherhood,’ I whispered, then laughed out as I jamp to my feet so the breathing of the cow was at my chest; I gave out a wee yelp of scaredeyness then stepped backwards to see if the others had seen me do it.

  I walked up to them and plonked myself down. ‘Jesus, I’m famished,’ I says.

  ‘It’s not just you!’ the bearded one started howling and with a thung the crossbow at his thigh went off while I dived sideyways, holding myself away from the cinders’ edges. We all heard the arrow hit, registered the pause, the ground shake out in the night; the first thump was the beast’s knees coming down, the second big bump the body keeling side-wise.

  Using a burning branch in his outstretched arm, the Leader led the way till we came to the carcass; the arrow had gone right in between its eyes.

  ‘Jesus, the lead beast, you’ve gone and killed our lead beast, you crazy good-for-nothing.’ The Leader shook his head. You could see the black blood in the hair on the dead cow’s forehead, arrow stuck out.

  ‘How are we going to lead them?’ the girl one was going.

  ‘The hell with that, lets roast this one,’ I says. The other three stared at me in the burning torch-light over the black, wet carcass.

  The Leader and the bearded one were eating with the dark blood still up to their elbows, fingers stuffing the thin meat strips into their mouths.

  ‘I did a four-year stint in the Fleshers up at Far Places; that’s how come I know these lands and I know your man Brotherhood at The Drome.’ Leader chewed.

  ‘I’m nothing to do with him, I’ve never met the guy.’ I shook-shook my hand cause I’d burned my little finger on the hot meat again.

  ‘Oh. You just don’t look like one of the regulars at his hotel. I used to deliver the meat there. He would always collar you, y’know? This weird way of just launching in to stories, as if they were directed right at you; he wouldn’t do it to me but I heard him doing it to the younger wives up in the Observation Lounge at nights, fire burning just like this – Brotherhood, the Sanctions Buster, trying to get a rise out the girls, talking history, his face just hidden, back in the shadows: “. . . so you’re not familiar with that daughter? Her fate is well documented. I’ve researched it all. I used to be partial to a bit of research; the dusted golden bibliotheque light falling down on me, the worn desk, the place across from the main doors where I could take a café au lait and smoke a local brand. Ah, the daughter; she fell pray to the Parisian mob in that best studied of years for a little insight on human nature. 1789 and the mob had practised forms of revenge on their former oppressors, or shall we say tyrants, for what is life but a choice of tyrants and tyrannies? Anyway rape was very much in the air and this daughter, this particularly milky aristocrat, was cornered in her palace – some palace, I forget now and it doesn’t matter anyway. You can imagine the cake those men made her eat after they tore away such fine silk and lace,” and somewhere like here, Brotherhood would pause for effect, “. . . so fair her skin, some scholars have documented that even the women of the mob felt compelled to ride on her as sliding figureheads along with their men. To the universal disappointment of these avengers, the young girl fainted, or perhaps even died under their attentions so they dragged her into the courtyard where the servants and the girl’s parents were standing, captured. In front of the eyes of the girl’s mother and father, the revolutionary factor severed the head and limbs of the daughter. One seditionary lay the remaining torso before its mother and father, removed his breeches, found the torso’s true part still intact and, in the firelight, to the howls of his comrades, that individual made a new kind of love to the headless, legless, armless trunk. Imagine the scene if you will! When he stood up grinning at the mother, the blood that coated him would have glistened black in the hand-held torch-light and the flames of the now-burning palace. Not content with this, though, our children of the revolution loaded an old cannon with gunpowder and fired the severed head, each limb and finally the violated torso, against a stone wall next to the mother and father who were forced to watch. The mob then subjected the parents and the entire household to the dismemberment and cannonball-express treatment.”

  ‘Out of the semi-darkness around the Observation Lounge fireplace, punctured by the intensifying then politely manoeuvring cigarette tips, one of the young wives’ voices spoke:

  ‘“But that was so long ago . . .”

  ‘Brotherhood’s voice speaks, after a throaty, experienced chuckle, “I lied.”

  ‘“About what they did to that girl?” the youngest wife, the non-smoking one whose veins show around her temples in the light at breakfasts, the grey light o
f a universe that doesn’t know how to stop existing, that hums in the Observation Lounge window, sickly in its monotony: a jellyfish light trembling off the Sound waters.

  ‘Brotherhood spoke, “No. All these things did happen, I just changed the date and a few details. Everything I describe happened in Europe. Last year.” The Sanctions Buster sniggered in the darkness.’

  The cattledrovers had no tents, they’d been wrapping themselves in animal skins bought at an upholsterer’s, except the bearded one who slept high in a tree to escape floodwaters. I put on the extra yacht jacket and pulled up both hoods tight, using the clothes in the kitbag as a pillow, I got a better night’s sleep than underneath that coffin the night before. When it was still dark I was taken out of doziness by the strangest patrolling lights across the glen floor. I wasn’t that sure if what I’d seen had been a dream or actual – the movements of the queer shadows – so I turned my head, looking over the gone-out fire towards the river. I saw a little island, its black base by the lit-up water, the twigs and branch clumps so thick you couldn’t see through; the topmost whorls of black twigs were burning, the water-line wood giving out smoke wisps as the whole contraption was floating downriver, casting its light on either bank till it moved way down the glen.

  Third Night

  IT WAS EARLIER in the day I had seen the horse. I had been moving along the glen floor then, way in the distance, seen the big horse walking towards me. It was one of those shire things: had a harness round its neck and gave me the filthiest look as it headed off, breaking into a trot now and then. I stood looking round but there wasn’t a soul.

  That night I sighted a chain of burnings all the way down the next glen, the flames reflecting on the black water of the river, running away like a flow towards the coastline. I imagined a convoy of the burning clumps drifting, but the longer I looked I realised the burning islands in the river were not moving along the river’s length.

  ‘Charlie!’

  I heard him calling up ahead before I saw his torch-light and stepped off the track.

  ‘Charlie!’

  You felt kind of sorry for him so I called out of the woods, ‘Is it a horsey you’re looking for?’

  You saw the guy go all agog, rooted to the spot and slashing the beam of his torch left and right then shield his eyes. I stepped out, his beam jittered across to me, shimmied up and down my body then it clicked off. ‘Jesus,’ he goes, under the breath, then, ‘What are you doing out here at night?’

  ‘Know The Drome Hotel?’

  ‘Brotherhood’s place? You trying to get there or more like get away from it?’

  ‘I’m going there.’

  ‘You seen that bastard Charlie?’

  ‘The horse? I saw a big horse early the day but it was way miles back in the last glen.’

  ‘Oh Christ, what way was he headed?’

  ‘To the coast and going like the clappers.’

  ‘Damn him, he thinks he’s still on Mainland. Every Friday he’s on the dot at five, buggerlugs, he knows when to knock off so he just starts for home, won’t do a stroke of work after five. It was old Charlie got the train derailed back on Mainland: got stuck at the level-crossing with a load of logs behind him, train came along, crashed over the logs and off the track, old Charlie just walked on home to his stables easy as you like.’

  ‘What is it that’s going on here; all those . . . bonfires right up the river?’

  ‘We’re contract loggers, thirty men clearing the wood up above the big house; those fires you see, it’s the rock outcrops along the river. With all the sneddings and wastewood we burn the rocks at night to break them up, then we dynamite in the morning and clear the stone; we’re trying to deepen the river, so we can float the logs right out of the Interior and downriver towards The Drome to barge them away up Sound.’

  I came straight out with, ‘Got anything to eat?’

  ‘Look, those guys here, theyre a bit girl-mad, you know, all they’re after right the now is a bit of Up the Klondike to Bangalore with a wee touch of ginger; an innings, a game set and match finished off with a full flavoured robusta . . . y’know what I mean?’

  ‘Aye.’ I goes.

  ‘I just don’t think you should go marching in.’

  He paused then he goes, ‘Let’s see you closer up. You from The Island?’

  ‘Nut.’

  ‘Why you headed Brotherhood’s way? That mother won’t let us pick up the logs at the river mouth by The Aerodrome there . . . he wants a cut o’ the money.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be? Why’s everyone so scared of Brotherhood, he’s no the bogeyman is he?’

  ‘He’s killed people, in Africa and two young girls from just the next glen here.’

  ‘How do you know he’s killed people? He’d be locked up.’

  ‘He didn’t axe them or anything, but he might as well have.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘My name?’ I tried to decide. Lynniata, or Serenella Cerano Berniez or other of the names that I’d used to amuse me. In the end it was my own name I spoke out and that he spoke back, the vowels pushing from the end of his lips as he seemed to stand on tiptoe, face unseen.

  ‘Food. Look around your feet———’ (and here he said my name) . . . ‘you’re in the land of milk and honey.’

  I looked down at the deep shadows by my boots, the splurge of his torch-light flittered around my toe-caps, then I picked out a scattering of shining, gold-coloured tins, flat ones with curvy edges; I cooried and picked one up.

  ‘Rations, probably dumpling or, if youre lucky, boiled sweeties. Army rations nicked off the Territorials. This guy called Nam the Dam, sort of drunk who flies a helicopter, he’s doing the provisions drops every week but he’s some crazies on board that’re tipping out the boxes all over the hillside; we’re walking miles finding cans scattered all over the shop.’

  You opened the can with a key, like a Spam can and it was dumpling inside that I ate with the edge of the guy’s knife. We sat down against a tree trunk while the guy smoked a cigarette.

  ‘Know how these hills were planted with forestry?’ he goes.

  In between chomps of the dumpling I goes, ‘Nut.’

  ‘Old Bultitude had these cannon. Old gunpowder ones, back in the fifties he had them dragged up the glen here, then they spent days shooting canisters of spores and seedlings at the mountainsides.’

  I nodded, thought of Brotherhood’s story of cannon. There was only the inhale-glow from the guy’s ciggy that lit up his deep eye-sockets.

  He whispered, ‘Know why we’re chopping down the forest? Eldest son from the Big House at the bottom of the glen shot himself up here last year, blew his brains all over a rowan tree. The old lady up at the house looks out onto this forest from her bedroom. She shifted rooms in the big house but whenever she saw the wood it reminded, so . . . we’re to chop the whole thing down and burn every trace of it. I’m up here with Charlie. Some of the slopes are so steep you can never dream of getting a tractor up, so we haul all the lot out with Charlie and his spinnel. I’m normally planting the trees so it feels bad, but a lux penny is a lux penny.’

  ‘Look, I’m meaning nothing by it, but can I lean my head against your shoulder?’ I says.

  He goes, ‘Course. Aye, have a wee snooze.’

  In the dark I went, ‘Did Brotherhood really kill girls?’

  Speaking, so’s his shoulder trembled nicely against my cheek he says, whisperly, ‘It’s so warming that you trust me here: a girl in woods at darkness looking as divine as you . . .’

  I bumped my ear on his shoulder in the laugh . . . ‘Divine!!!’

  ‘. . . Come striding out of the dark East with some water stars over your shoulder. I mean I’m not after you or anything.’ He breathed in all excited and says, ‘Do you believe in poetic moments? I believe that’s what happiness is: trying to live a succession of poetic moments, not stuck in the Portakabins with that lot but out, under the last trees
, meeting a tall crazy girl . . . watching the sunrise in a stranger’s arms.’

  ‘Hey. I’m not crazy.’

  ‘. . . ‘Magine a life that is one long poem . . .’

  ‘. . . I’m moving off before light but can I put my arm round here. I just need to cuddle . . .’ The shoulder shook.

  ‘I’m married and I love her. Is this being bad?’

  I goes, ‘This is not being bad; I bet she’s dead lovely.’

  ‘When she smiles she frowns at the same time. She used to work up at the old tracking station where the Observatory was. It was summer, she undressed so slowly outside it was dark before she drew her tights down and with a match she showed me the faint mole on her thigh that corresponded exactly with the shape of the star cluster she’d been studying. Her mobile phone went off but she left it in the grass somewhere and I knew as we kissed she was really trying to remember my name from back at the party, saying she didn’t care where her life went. When she lay back she lost who I was forever, mumbling the names of the blue stars above us.’

  After a good bit I says, ‘It must be so lovely to be like that.’

  ‘Ho, here’s me and a girl I’ve knowd a half-hour with her arm round me . . .’

  ‘It doesnt count,’ I says, ‘Believe me, mister, I want you to love her more. I want you to say hello. I’ve kicked myself free the earth long ago . . . I don’t count.’

  ‘Aye? A blow-jobbing’s out the question then?’

  We both laughed and a bird crashed free of the drooping umbrellas of pine branches, shaking so much waterdrops out, the canopy of twigs swung back up all the higher.

  Out of the nightness he says, ‘It’ll happen to you too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Love.’

  ‘Nah. There was someone once but, never the right person since . . .’

  ‘It’ll come, it’ll come like a disease.’

  ‘No.’

  There was long long quietness.

  ‘Look at the stars; this world so big and just us here,’ he went.