69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess (18 page)

I drove Alan to Netherton, the best-preserved recumbent stone circle in Buchan. I parked just north of the village of Crimond. Like a lot of places we’d been visiting, this ancient monument was on private land but I couldn’t be arsed to get the permission of the owner to view it. Since the circle is situated just off the main road between Fraserburgh and Peterhead, I guess a lot of those drawn to it simply trespassed. Both flankers were still standing, as were five other stones. There was a mess of stones inside the circle which might be the remains of a cairn. I lay back against the recumbent. It had stopped raining but the sky was completely overcast and there was very little light.

As Alan came towards me he shimmered, his body was translucent. I thought of the pathless mountains of Iceland, but as the spectre advanced it struck me that the ghosts of the north came from no land known to man or woman. These were the secret people, their kingdom was the north under the
Fir Chlisneach
, the polar aurora. They were always young there. Their bodies were white as the wild swan, their hair yellow as honey, their eyes blue as ice. Their feet left no mark on the snow. The women were white as milk, with eyes like sloes, and lips like red rowans. They fought with shadows and were glad; but the shadows were not shadows to them. The Shee slew great numbers at the full moon; but never hunted on moonless nights, or at the rising of the moon, or when the dew was falling. Their lances were made of reeds that glittered like shafts of ice, and it was ill for a mortal to find one of these lances, for they are tipped with the salt of a wave that no living thing has touched, neither the wailing mew nor the finned
sgádan
nor his tribe, nor the narwhal. There were no men of the human clans there, and no shores, and the tides were forbidden.

As Alan advanced I screamed and my cry was drowned in rolls of thunder and the pealing of lightning. The heavens opened, rain lashed against me and as I lay on that stone altar my legs were forced apart by some unearthly force. Alan pierced me with his lance, then melted into my body and in that terrible downpour the countryside was ruggedly and boldly beautiful, with a sullen suggestion of freedom about it. I thought of my parents and simultaneously banished them from my mind. I’d come to Aberdeenshire to get away from my family. My father had wanted a son and dressed me as a boy until I was twelve. I’d been Anna at school and Alan at home but even after I’d reached puberty Alan would not leave me alone. I’d tried to divorce myself from Alan but what happened at Netherton was better. Alan was melting into me. We were merging just as Old Aberdeen and New Aberdeen, Woodside, Torry and Ruthrieston had been melded into a single city by the sheer force of a growing population. If I could not expel Alan, then I had to gather him up, not to imprison him but to integrate him into my being.

I had to let what was separate exist separately and embrace what remained in all its unity. Aberdeen was quite distinct from the countryside spread before me at Netherton, even if the road north to Ellon and Peterhead was basically an extension of King Street, where I’d once lived. The Don was a natural barrier and the Brig o’ Don that had carried me over the river was a marker on my line of flight. The bridge, a fine Gothic arch, was flung over the river, from one rock to the other, the height from the top of the arch to the water is 60 feet, in width 72 feet. It was built by Henry de Cheye, Bishop of Aberdeen, who, on returning to the city after being exiled, applied all the profits that had accumulated during his absence towards the cost of construction. As I looked around me thoughts of water receded, instead I found infinite peace in a frightful disarray of bush and grass, sprinkled with heather and demure bluebells that blushed in the wind and rain. I saw the land as it was, and would be and had been. There was an invoking calm of things past and things to come in dark green woods with arabesque parterres of tinted leaves and mosses with pine needles and pine cones embedded amongst them. Once the skies cleared, the sun would be baffled by the boughs that weaved their shade.

I pictured myself going slowly through the remnant of a forest of old, round about which the woodmen had been terribly busy. Quite suddenly the music of a matchless voice struck my ears, trilling through the listening air like notes from a faultless lute. I stood still and listened. A peasant girl was singing a melodious north-east ballad, for Buchan and Aberdeenshire were the land of the song. It was with the Bronze-Age farmers that the song first invaded what is sometimes called Scotland but might be better understood as south-west Scandinavia. Here the chants of those that had erected the recumbent stone circles were preserved for ages in human hearts, living ever new on human lips, and attuned to undying music and to the strident tones of rushing and falling waters. The history of this part of Scotland, like that of most borderlands, is one of storm and stress; but the raging waters of the North Sea maintained the eastern border of Aberdeenshire intact. Thus the work of the dialectician consists of listening closely to the journeyman and the labourer, since the entire human history of this land is enfolded in the melodious voice of the proletariat. The language of Picts, Celts, Norse, Africans and Saxons is sublated in the Doric.

It is this cultural cross-fertilisation worked through in the common tongue that marks the working class as the progenitors of all the riches of mankind. The voice of the proletariat corrects and redresses the imbalances of bourgeois history, a long-pent-up vigour rushing into expression. It may be melancholy, but it is the matchless, quiet sadness of nature, the deep communion of the mind over which has been thrown for centuries the hypnotic spell of loneliness, the sublimity of silence, the potent lure of quiet places, breeding deep thought untainted by the idealist distortions of bourgeois life. Now that Alan had merged within me his poisoned lance was no longer a threat. I would never meet him again. We would never part. It was only by embracing the gross matter of my body and the wastes it produced that I was able to comprehend my historically determined place in our world.

It was with a sense of wholeness and unity that I trudged alone, but not alone, back to the car. As I made my way through Grimond I picked up a hitch-hiker, who told me his name was Callum and that he was studying geology at Glasgow University. As we talked the shore began to grow bold and rocky, and indented in a strange manner with small and deep creeks, or rather immense and horrible chasms. I suggested we get out of the car and take a walk since no one interested in geology should simply pass by the Bullers of Buchan. This famous landmark is a vast hollow in a rock, projecting into the sea, open at top, with a communication to the sea through a noble natural arch, through which boats can pass, and lie secure in this natural harbour. There is a path round the top, but in some parts so narrow that the traveller must walk hand in hand with fear, as the depth is about 30 fathoms, with water on both sides, being bounded on the north and south with small creeks.

Near this is a great insulated rock, divided by a narrow and very deep chasm from the land. This rock is pierced through midway between the water and the top, and in great storms the waves rush through it with a vast noise and impetuosity. On the sides, as well as those of the adjacent cliffs, breed multitudes of kittiwakes. The young are a local delicacy, being served up a little before dinner, to whet the appetite, but, from the rank smell and taste, seem as if they are more likely to have a contrary effect. I was once told of an honest gentleman who set down for the first time to this appetiser, but after demolishing six with much impatience declared that he had eaten half a dozen and did not find himself a bit more hungry than before he began.

I told Callum we should have sex on the edge of the cliff and then roll ourselves off it if we achieved a simultaneous orgasm. Callum didn’t think this was a good idea since it looked like it was coming on to rain again and the ground was already sodden. He proposed we go to my car and make love on the back seat. His suggestion struck me as a typically male fantasy and I scotched it, saying that if we were not going to have sex under the open skies and within earshot of the roaring waves, then we might as well head back to my pad in Aberdeen where we could fuck in comfort. This scenario was quite acceptable to the hitch-hiker, so we returned to the car. Callum attempted to engage me in conversation but his talk bored me, so it was in silence that we drove down King Street, up Union Street and along to Union Grove.

Callum wanted to use the toilet when we got back to the flat. The bulb had gone and I didn’t have a spare, so I took the bulb from the light in the hall and transferred it to my windowless bathroom. As my guest relieved himself I stripped. I allowed Callum to take me in his arms and push his roving hand up between my easily separated thighs, where he explored with lecherous fingers the secret charms of my ripe unctuous quim and laid bare the hidden beauties that clustered around the junction of my fleshy thighs. I reclined on the sofa and spread myself open to afford Callum the fullest gratification by a near inspection of the gradually swelling mound and full voluptuous lips of my well-garnished cunt.

While my guest stood over me I unbuttoned his Levi’s, pulled up his shirt and drew forth his rod. I took it coaxingly in my well-practised hand and with a stimulating touch passed my fingers gently up and down the shaft and over its pendant head. Then, leaning towards it, I took it into my warm mouth and played around its top and neck with my pliant tongue, while with soft suction I compressed my lips as I moved my head back and forward over it. I played gently with Callum’s cock until at last he could no longer stand my soft caresses and plunged his burning tool into my maidenhead. He came quickly taking little care over my pleasure since relief from the boiling tension inside him was the only thing on his mind. After Callum had come I made him tongue my quim so that I too might be afforded respite from the passions that churned within me.

The strip light in the kitchen needed replacing and once it got dark it became impossible to cook. Instead Callum and I wandered up Union Grove to The Déjà Vu. The establishment had recently been converted from a conventional café to a bistro. In the process the prices had doubled. I had tapas, Callum ate a fish dish, we went dutch on the bill. Callum wanted to spend the night at my pad but I told him to dream on and gave him instructions for getting to the youth hostel. Once I hit the sack I dreamt I was a ventriloquist’s dummy dreaming I was a woman. I give my dreams as dreams and it is up to the reader to discover whether I reason better when I am asleep, or whether these nightmares are but a fiction and all along the Afro-Celtic social ‘body’ was wide awake.

ELEVEN

I LET
Anna sleep on since she was only hindering my research into K. L. Callan’s
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess.
Besides, I was getting more than a little sick of the conversations she was having with an imaginary friend called Alan. Let me tell you it’s no easy thing being a ventriloquist’s dummy and the way I was being made to muff-dive every spoilt college girl who got a thrill from molesting inanimate objects was getting on my wick. Anyway, there wasn’t much I could do in the house. The sky was overcast and even the light bulb in the toilet had gone. I’d have strained my eyes attempting to read without illumination.

I got into the car. One of Anna’s college friends was asleep on the back seat. Nancy woke when I started the engine. She immediately began complaining about the fact that she had an essay to write on
Father and Son
by Edmund Gosse. I sympathised, the book was tiresome. Years ago an English teacher who dabbled in amateur dramatics had attempted to interest a class of thick rich kids in this work by having me discuss it with him. I’ve always found accounts of childhood in autobiographies inordinately depressing since kids have so little control over their lives. I mentioned
The Grass Arena
by John Healy as an example of this. The early sections of the book, Healy’s childhood and time in the army, are tedious. As the book progresses the sense of narrative disintegrates. Instead of a plot Healy offers a series of routines whose random appearance resembles the non-linear structure used by Burroughs for
The Naked Lunch.
Nancy didn’t reply or even ask me where we were going. She didn’t seem bothered. Not even after we’d passed through Cults and Peterculter. So I just keep talking.

It was a shame that Faber and Faber thought Healy’s anti-narrative required a preface from Colin MacCabe. The introduction was quite obviously there for the benefit of middle-brow readers who needed reassurance that in consuming the autobiography of a wino they weren’t suffering a lapse of taste. Healy’s form suited his descriptions of alcoholic derangement and while his redemption through chess was cheesy in the extreme, once he’d used the game to get off the booze the sudden shift to life on an Indian ashram was a masterfully unsettling stroke. Surreal in much the same way that Bill Drummond’s account of a train journey across India in
Annual Report to the Mavericks, Writers and Film Festival
unfolded with the iron logic of a dream. Drummond tearing each page from a book of Ted Hughes poems as he read it, and making these lyrics into paper planes that he threw from a train window.

My conversation flowed and we sped through Banchory to Aboyne. I parked beside the graveyard, pleased that the rain was easing off. We walked up a forest track and found Image Wood stone circle easily enough. It was situated in the trees at the edge of a field. Very close to where a flock of sheep were grazing. There were five stout stones. Three jammed together. Two slightly apart. I didn’t think much of the site, although the confusion over whether it was 3000 years old or merely a folly erected in the 18th or 19th century appealed to my sense of the absurd. I took a photograph in which the trunk of a felled tree doubles up as an outlying stone. We left shortly after we’d arrived, having found the site singularly lacking in ambience.