Looking for Mrs Dextrose (25 page)

“Oh, that? That’s Call-That-A-Hill? The indigenous people used to worship it. Before they all got killed. Wanna stop and have a look?”

Sightseeing. Actual sightseeing, like normal tourists did. I couldn’t wait. Wash away with something worthy some of the degradation I’d been forced to endure. I only wished I had
brought a camera.

“Have you seen it up close?” I asked Charlie.

“Why would I want to do that?” he replied.

Our driver turned off the Nameless Highway and followed a stony trackway that ended in a square of sand marked out with logs. A sign read:

“Fuck!” exclaimed Charlie. “You have to pay to park here! You sure you wanna see it? It’s just a shit rock.”

As he turned off the engine, Dad became fully conscious. He was sweating profusely, though the morning was cool and the windows were open.

“Gob like a rattler’s minkhole. So dry,” he moaned. “Need booze.” He groped at me. “Got any booze?”

No. No-no-no. I had to keep him off the booze. It was my only chance – and his, I felt convinced – to maintain our burgeoning relationship. At least the truth offered him no
opportunity. “No, it all blew up, if you remember. But Dad, you don’t
need
it. You’ve been fine without. You’ve been
better
without.”

He leaned across me to get at Charlie, which placed his head next to mine. His breath was fetid, swamp-smelling. “Got any booze, you?” he demanded.

“Who, me?” But Charlie could tell he was in no mood for play. “Er, no, sorry, don’t drink. Teetotal.”

That set him off. He launched himself at our hapless driver, raging and all out of self-censorship. “Why you little life sapping, gut wrenching, turkey basting, copulating, peach fuzzing,
tool gripping, tit wanking, shit sieving, low living, pot pissing patsy!”

Then he slumped back into his seat and broke down in tears.

The final precious molecules of alcohol must have been soaked up into his system while he slept, and he had entered withdrawal. Whatever, we had no booze, with zero chance of procuring any, and
that was an end to it. He would just have to push through, and I could only imagine the practice would do him some good.

There was nothing I could do to help him and, anyway, I was pretty keen to get going on the sightseeing.

With Dad blocking the door my side, hunched and juddering, Charlie had to let me out of his side. I stretched my limbs and exhaled noisily, wondering why they had built the car park a good 100
yards from Call-That-A-Hill?

I could understand the name, at least. It wasn’t much of a hill, more an exaggerated mound, flattened on top. It was the only noticeable bump for perhaps hundreds of miles around, which
presumably afforded it the celebrity. Under the rising sun it assumed an alluring red blush colour, of an embarrassed lady’s cheeks, or a smacked bottom.

I didn’t have any dollars so I pushed a tenner sterling of Quench’s money through the slot in the pay-box. Why did I pay? Call it decency, call it what you will; I also had a fear
that in this land anything was possible, and that a parking inspector might have been lying in wait nearby, disguised under camouflaged sheeting.

Close up, the rock was bulkier than I had expected. Call-That-A-Hill? was at least three times my height and perhaps 50-feet wide, roughly square-shaped in cross-section. Its
surface consisted of wide, shallow grooves, running vertically from top to bottom. How it had become flattened off, I had no idea.

It felt like sandpaper to the touch and when I scraped at it with my fingernail a few grains came away. Sandstone. Had I had the time and inclination, I reckoned I could have whittled it down to
a nub within a decade.

I tried doing the proper tourist thing of wondering how long it had been there, and what had formed it, but was clueless. Instead I decided to circumnavigate the block, stroking my chin
thoughtfully.

I was amazed to discover, on the far side, a door. A wooden door made from a single sheet of hardboard, attached to the face of the rock with hinges, cracked and bleached. It was short for a
door and above it someone had scratched into the sandstone:

Next to that was a small bell on a curved strip of metal, employed as a crude spring, and attached to that was a length of string.

How bizarre! Were there actually people inside Call-That-A-Hill??

I had to find out. But did I dare ring the bell? Did I? What if someone irate appeared, armed or otherwise? Old me, the Glibley version, would have baulked at the idea, would have sneaked
quietly away and dismissed the notion of regret, that I had never satisfied my curiosity.

I pulled hard on the string a few times. The bell rang, tinny and hollow.

The door did not open and there came not a sound from within.

I rang again.

Nothing.

I was debating whether to try the door myself, when it suddenly opened just a touch. Then a touch further and a head poked out, blinking in the daylight.

It was a disturbing little head, white and smooth, so thin-faced it might have been a skull on a stick, someone’s idea of a prank. I had to double-check for eyeballs to be sure that it
wasn’t.

“What do you want?” went the head, snuffling and grouchy. The sort of voice an actor might use to portray one of the meaner characters in
The Wind in the Willows
.

“I. Er, I,” I stammered.

A wizened grey arm appeared and pointed upwards. “Can’t you read?”

Having regained composure I said, “Yes.”

The arm disappeared inside. “Don’t you know what a Hermitage is?”

Actually, I didn’t. I knew there was a Hermitage museum, though I didn’t know where, and imagined this might be something like that, offering a pictorial history of the rock, perhaps
with the odd diorama. “Is it a museum?” I guessed.

He screwed up his face, and I think I heard a foot stamp petulantly. “No! No it’s not! It’s where a hermit lives. Do you at least know what a hermit is?”

“Yes, I do” I said. “It’s someone who lives on their own.”

“So shit off!”

The door slammed.

I was rather lost for words.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, clambering into the cab.

My father was trying to sulk while in the grip of
delirium tremens
. Although I felt sorry for him, it seemed best to remain stoical on his behalf.

I went on: “There’s a hermit living in the rock. And he has a bell over his door! Why would a hermit have a doorbell?” The thought had struck me on the way back to the truck.
It was most curious.

Dad perked up. “There’s some mink out there?”

“Yes, a hermit.”

He began clawing at the door handle.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” I warned. “He’s not very friendly.”

“Minks!” went Dad. “Anyone that lonely must have minking crates of booze!”

He flung himself out of the cab and began staggering towards Call-That-A-Hill?

Charlie spoke. “Can we leave without him? He gives me the creeps.”

We watched my father’s return. He didn’t seem to have been at the Hermitage for very long and he wasn’t carrying any crates.

When he returned to his seat I noticed he had a black eye, to add to his litany of facial wounds.

“What did he say?” I enquired politely.

He didn’t reply.

It wasn’t long after we left Call-That-A-Hill? that a dot appeared on the horizon and grew and grew. Too large to be a single structure, it had to be an actual
settlement. At last.

Charlie pointed at it. “That, boys, is Flattened Hat. Last stop on the line, where I make me fortune.” He flicked his hat brim.

Dad stirred from his slump. “They got bars there?”

“Sure,” said Charlie.

That cheered him up no end, and filled me with dread.

I shifted the subject off alcohol. “So you’ve been there before, Charlie? To Flattened Hat?”

“Plenty of times. Used to ride the Nameless Highway selling me combs. Back and forth, back and forth. Know Flattened Hat well.”

“What about Pretanike?”

He looked at me as if I’d just propositioned a moorhen. “No way!”

“Why not?”

“Cos it’s rubbish. Nothing to do there.”

“But it’s vast. A city?”

“So they say.”

“You mean you’ve never been?”

“Wouldn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I told you, cos it’s rubbish.”

“How do you know?”

“
Cos everyone says so
.”

“Who’s everyone?”

He was becoming exasperated. “My
folks
. My
friends
.”

“Small town, is it, where you live?”

“How’d’you guess? You must’ve pass Socks ‘N’ Sandals, right?”

“Mmm.” I didn’t elaborate.

“That’s me local. There’s a dirt track behind that leads to me hometown. Glow Coma, it’s called. Nice place – small, but nice. You should come visit.”

“I’ll do that,” I lied.

“Me Pa, Kai…” – I nearly choked on my epiglottis – “he runs a farm there. Used to work with him, till I went out to seek me fortune.”

Jesus. “Hence the combs and the bagpipe tuning?”

“Hence the combs and the bagpipe tuning.”

He took a hand off the steering wheel and held it up for a high five. Tinged with self-loathing, I obliged.

Pedestrians – actual other people – a grocery, street-lighting, residential housing, a school (if pokey, at least serving education), burger joint, trees (with
green leaves), roads with kerbs… All of these we passed as Charlie turned off the Nameless Highway into Flattened Hat. Not that we had spent ages apart from what might be termed
‘normality’, just that the events of the previous 36 hours or so had taken quite a toll on my psyche. The familiar sights were such a blessed relief. It felt as if I had escaped.

For starters, I couldn’t wait to lie down on a bed with a mattress, linen and pillows, the sort of thing I once took for granted. I was knackered. My eyelids kept closing; I would dream
something bizarre for a split second, then a movement of the vehicle would jolt me alert. My limbs felt heavy, I was filthy and dishevelled, and my mouth tasted of drains.